Director Peter Bogdanovich Says 'She's Funny That Way' Is Inspired by Escorts in Singapore

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYbgjC_1qLU

Making the film "She's Funny This Way" wasn't just beneficial to its cast.

"The catalyst for the movie was basically an incident that happened in Singapore when I was making a film there," co-writer and director Peter Bogdanovich tells Made in Hollywood. "It was about 'American Pimp' in Singapore, so consequently, we met a lot of escorts. And a couple of them desperately wanted to get the hell out of there. I gave them extra money to do that if they promised they’d stop being escorts."

The screwball comedy centers around a love triangle that ensues after a Broadway director casts his call girl in a play starring his wife and her ex.

"Loiuse Stratten and I were having some difficult times at the end of the '90s, and to cheer ourselves up, we said, 'Lets write ourselves a comedy ...,” Bogdanovich explains of the movie's inspiration. “It was originally written with John Ritter in mind to play the lead, and Cybill Shephard to play his wife. But John tragically died very young, and then I put it on the back burner for a while. I did a lot of other things ... I got to know Owen, and I thought Owen would be very right for this if we rewrote it and took out some of this physical humor."