'Greek' Stars Celebrate 'Wedding'

Let's get to the point right away -- you don't have to be Greek to enjoy the new movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." I've seen it, and it wasn't Greek to me.

"We thought that Greek community would be the first to see the movie, then tell their three non-Greek neighbors," star and writer Nia Vardalos told me in a recent @ The Movies interview. "But we've snuck into the back of movie theaters and noticed our audiences and everybody from every possible ethnicity was there. I guess I shouldn't be shocked, because we went to see 'Moonstruck' -- and we're not Italian."

Vardalos and co-star John Corbett ("Northern Exposure," "Sex and the City") sat down with me recently to talk about the film, where a 30-year-old Greek woman (Vardalos) stuck in the doldrums of her life is swept off her feet by the man of her dreams (Corbett). The only problem is, her very traditional Greek family (including acting stalwarts Lanie Kazan and Michael Constantine) isn't warming up to the idea of the two being together. For you see, he's not Greek.

Perhaps the biggest challenge to making "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" a success was to separate it from the increasingly unoriginal romantic comedy genre. Vardalos didn't see that as a problem, because making it that kind of movie was never her intention.

"I never thought that it was a romantic comedy, I looked at it as a fable where the ordinary girl gets the super-cute guy," Vardalos said. "I really wanted to show an ordinary girl's journey through finding herself, whether she be Greek or whatever. I wrote it Greek because I know Greek, but I never realized how funny it was until we saw it with an audience and saw them laughing so hard. I went, 'Oh my God.'

"We had a great time on the set, but we didn't realize that things were as half as funny as they were," she continued. "So, I guess I wasn't daunted by the prospect of writing a romantic comedy because it wasn't what I set out to do."

Corbett feels part of the reason the film works so well, was because Vardalos was so versed in the source material. The script actually began as Vardalos developed the story in a one-woman stage show.

"I never saw the stage show, but she had a great platform to try these jokes out night after night after night, to see what would work and what didn't," Corbett said.

And work it did, and in ways Corbett or Vardalos never could have imagined. That's because one of the filmmakers, Tom Hanks (who produced the film with wife Rita Wilson, and Gary Goetzman), saw something more than comedy during the filming -- he saw the best representation of true romance on the screen.

"I never realized how strong the romance part was until we were shooting and Tom Hanks came to the set and saw three days of dailies," Vardalos recalled. "He looked and pointed to the two of us and said, 'This, guys, is so real.' We went, 'Oh really?' It's just that we so genuinely like each other that we did not notice that there was this huge romance in this movie. That took us by surprise."

And the success of the movie has been a welcome surprise for everybody involved. The film initially opened in 10 cities on the East Coast in April, and buzzing business and great word-of-mouth about the film has propelled it into a wider release starting this weekend. With the acclaim is coming more business proposals, but Vardalos and Corbett are keeping themselves grounded among the whirlwind of new offers that are flying their way.

In fact, nothing has changed, said Corbett, in terms of the daunting task of making the right decision for the next project. He's going to just keep approaching the business the way he always has.

"The right choice for me comes down to one question," Corbett said. "'Am I going to fun for these five weeks (I work on the film)?' This is all nice, what's been going on since the day I ended filming this movie -- it is sort of the dessert after the great meal. If they would have said to me that they couldn't release 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding,' I would have been disappointed, but I had my fun doing it. It's always a win-win situation."