Hutch Parker, the chairman of New Regency, the studio that’s backing the film, told me, “Anna’s betting that there’s another way to get on the list of leading comediennes than to be America’s sweetheart-and we’re betting that she’s right.” Right-even as she’s increasingly drawn to Colin, the Lothario across the hall. As her number is exactly twenty, she decides to forswear sex and revisit her old lovers to see if any of them is Mr. The question driving “What’s Your Number?” is not the usual romantic comedy teaser of “Will girl get boy?” but, rather, “Did girl get so many boys she won’t get her man?” Ally Darling (Faris), a hard-partying thirty-something who’s just lost her job, reads in Marie Claire that if a woman sleeps with more than twenty men she’ll never get married. If, as expected, they haven’t, the transgressors are roundly punished. “And girls aren’t that into it, either.” When such a film does get made-a “The Sweetest Thing” or “Spring Breakdown”-studios eye its receipts to gauge whether the trenches in the gender war have moved. “In my experience, girls’ revealing themselves as candid and raunchy doesn’t appeal to guys at all,” Stacey Snider, a partner in and the C.E.O. Studio executives believe that male moviegoers would rather prep for a colonoscopy than experience a woman’s point of view, particularly if that woman drinks or swears or has a great job or an orgasm. The film is an R-rated comedy that’s “female-driven,” meaning that it’s told from a woman’s point of view, and that’s always been a tough sell. “What’s Your Number?” doesn’t open until September, but it’s already ringed by skeptics. Then, of course, it becomes intensely public.
It’s a curiously private thing she does, mixing a jigger of Judy Holliday, a dash of Goldie Hawn, and a pinch of Sid Vicious to brew a winsome bubblehead. So she works to diminish self-consciousness: she doesn’t watch her performance after a take or read her reviews, stays in at night for weeks on end, and, when she does go out, seeks anonymity behind one of her forty-nine pairs of sunglasses. The mechanism that makes Faris Hollywood’s most original comic actress-a face as diagnostic as a polygraph pen-starts to quiver whenever she sees herself act or feels an ambient skepticism. “My face!” she wailed, and Mylod broke into laughter.
She’s exploring ways to let women behave badly.
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