"I LOVE YOU BETH COOPER was always a movie," writes Larry Doyle in the preface to the latest edition of his 2007 novel. "The book is every teen movie ever made, the ultimate last wild night, as well as an affectionate dissection of the genre, exploring the myths and rituals of adolescence, an anthropological meditation if you will... with lots of sex and comedy." And now it is a movie. A Chris Columbus movie. Which means it's very sweet, very sincere and, well, less a "dissection" than a straightforward entry in the genre. With lots of (suggested) sex and comedy. And this is fine. Though fans of Doyle's novel may miss his witty, self-aware prose (as well as a number of R-rated gags), the veteran comedy writer has adapted his tome with the utmost respect. This is still the gently absurd tale of high school valedictorian Denis Cooverman's wild night out with head cheerleader Beth Cooper. The journey still begins with Denis (an agreeably dorky Paul Rust) going off-script during his commencement speech to profess his love for comely lil' Beth (a fetchingly lil' Hayden Panettiere), and it dutifully hits all of the narrative highlights as the duo outrun Beth's coked-up soldier boyfriend, Kevin. According to Doyle - whose resume includes several seasons with THE SIMPSONS and BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD, a longstanding humorist-in-residence gig at THE NEW YORKER, and, further back, a stint with SPY during the magazine's glory years - this is the first time one of his screenplays has made it through the production process without getting utterly fucking mangled. This is because, unlike LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION (which is much better than its reputation) or DUPLEX (which nearly ended cinema), Doyle was collaborating with a director who dug his vision and wanted to preserve it. Also helpful: said director's films have made over $1 billion at the domestic box office combined. As someone who's enjoyed Doyle's writing for decades (even before, in the case of his SPY contributions, I knew it was his writing), I've been pulling for him to catch a break in Hollywood. I wish I could say I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER is that break. While I certainly think it's good enough to find an audience, 20th Century Fox is promoting the movie like Mike Judge directed it (though, to be fair, I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER at least has a poster). If it hits this weekend, it's because God's a Walter Monheit fan. Speaking of the be-monocled critic, there's a mind-blowing (to me, at least) revelation near the end of this Q&A for anyone who read SPY during its '80s heyday. It's after our incredibly respectful Annette O'Toole conversation. We also discuss the challenges of adapting one's own work, the inventiveness of the film's supporting cast, and the unimpeachable ethics of quote whore Peter Travers. Read it all.

Mr. Beaks: Why is it that so many of the great high school comedies are written by men in their thirties or beyond?

Larry Doyle: I didn't know that they were, but you probably need to have a certain amount of emotional distance to understand it. The great high school comedies like AMERICAN GRAFFITI and DAZED AND CONFUSED have a really strong nostalgic element to them. It may be that after you've been away for a while, you realize what was important about it. It could just be that you have to wait until you get into your thirties to make a movie like that.

Beaks: The book was picked up by 1492 fairly early. Obviously, Chris Columbus has experience making movies like this. Did you have a sense then that it had found the right home?

Doyle: They definitely seemed to get it and like it. Those are the two most important things. There wasn't a lot of talk about... you know, a lot of times when people say things like, "There's a movie in this," they mean "There's a different movie from what you did." (Laughs) "We see a movie here. And what we're going to do is change the male character to female, and set it in space." So they seemed to really get what we were going for. That was good. And the process of developing the material went forward in a very good, collaborative way. Everybody seemed to agree on the type of movie we were trying to make, even though we had to find it in the script. Because with the book, there was a bunch of different ways you could go.

Beaks: It would seem like the biggest trick to adapting the book would be managing tone. It veers from slapstick comedy to heartfelt moments. Was that the biggest challenge for you?

Doyle: The biggest challenge for me is that we needed to do it quickly. We were trying to beat the writers' strike. So it was good that I was intimately familiar with the material. Also, before the strike, Chris wasn't going to really direct it, so there were meetings with directors where it looked like the movie might go in a different direction - which concerned me primarily because we had two weeks before the strike, and I just didn't want to see something going haphazardly in a certain direction without the right amount of time to figure out whether it was the right direction. But, ultimately, none of that had to happen. Chris decided he wanted to direct it, and he didn't actually go into preproduction until a couple of weeks before the strike ended. So we were able to address whatever else he wanted to do before he shot. I think he was in a pretty comfortable place with the script before he shot.

Beaks: You said there were directors who wanted to take the film in different directions. Any particular "directions" that stand out?

Doyle: I can't remember the exact names of the directors, but the ones I remember most acutely are the ones that seemed bizarre and wrongheaded. One director found the relationship between Denis and Beth's boyfriend the most interesting part about the book. He wanted the movie to be not so much about Kevin trying to beat up Denis, but Kevin making Denis uncomfortable in his beliefs. And that the reason Denis was trying to get away from Kevin is that Kevin was making Denis feel that everything he felt was true was not. I just didn't think that would work in a comedy.

Beaks: That's pretty complex. It would also open the story up to a completely different thematic reading.

Doyle: It would've been like MY DINNER WITH ANDRE or something. But some of the other directors were just tonally all over the board. Chris took a fairly sincere tone, I think. Some people wanted to go wilder. We had discussed issues like voiceover and narration, and we ultimately decided not to go that way because it would seem a) way overdone, and b) maybe a little too ironic for what Chris wanted to do.

Beaks: Were you ever concerned in writing the screenplay that you would have to lose some of the wit contained in the book's prose?

Doyle: Well, the book still exists. It's still available for sale. People can buy it and read it. One of the things about my writing style that annoys me but doesn't seem to bother a lot of other people is that there's a literary archness to it - which does not work verbally. It doesn't even work when you speak it. When you read some of those jokes out loud, they won't make you laugh the same way as when you're reading them in your head. The one thing that we did have to integrate and do in the movie a little more is Denis's voice. People don't often realize this, but he doesn't talk a lot in the book. Especially in the first couple of scenes when he's dealing with the girls: he barely says anything. So we had to make him a little more verbal so that he could participate in a real way. Instead of having all of his neurotic, abstract thoughts, he has a tendency in the movie to start saying something he realizes he shouldn't, and then gets in more trouble trying to back out of things. There are lots of great characters in the book that aren't in the movie, but there are a lot of great expressions and acting beats in the movie that even the best [writers] can't fully comprehend. For example, it's a completely random beat, but when the girls are coming into the house, Jack Carpenter makes a move to kiss Lauren and she pulls away. I just thought that was great - and I think it was completely unplanned. The body language just set up the scene in a way that twenty lines of dialogue wouldn't have done as well.

Beaks: One of the changes from the book that I thought was really elegant in a very vulgar way was how she discovers the erection by feeling it rather than seeing it.

Doyle: I think she feels it in the book, too. Maybe I didn't describe it very well.

Beaks: (Laughing) Oh, really? For some reason, I thought it was different in the book.

Doyle: She's straddling him in the book, and she "notices". I think I used the word "notices". But I think Hayden is great in the movie. She plays that character really well. One of the things I really liked is that... you know, the trailer gives this impression that she takes [Denis] on the ride of his life because of what he did at graduation. She's really not like that. She's very standoffish to him at the beginning. And you get to see her gradually warm up to him. A lot of that's due to her acting outside of this specific thing that she's required to do.

Beaks: Beth is so used to be an object of lust. The idea of someone "loving" her is very foreign to her. That's kind of her journey. Figuring out what that is.

Doyle: And him figuring who she is. At first, she's this object. Then he encounters her and her veneer that she puts on, and it's only as the movie progresses that he begins to see what she's really like; he goes from adoring her to being disillusioned to genuinely liking her. Hopefully, that's the way it plays.

Beaks: Here's another thing I liked that was different from the book - although maybe this is me being a bad reader again. As she's embracing him at the end, she whispers into his ear, "Thank you for loving me."

Doyle: The book... hopefully, it's got some emotion, but it's also got a lot of satire. And satire just really doesn't play unless you do it as spoof - and spoofs suck. So I think that [Chris] was going for a much more genuine take on things, and he wanted to have the audience feel at the end that they had really shared something even if it wasn't going to continue. So that was written at his prompting. And I may have put that back in the book, because I added a bunch of stuff I liked from the movie back into the book. What did you think of the movie, by the way?

Beaks: Honestly, I liked it. I will say that it's definitely a little rough around the edges at times, and... maybe the pacing isn't always great. But I really liked it. And I'm bringing up that line "Thank you for loving me" because it really gets at the nostalgia for all those girls you loved from afar in high school. It definitely evoked something in me.

Doyle: It's weird. Some of the reviews have been really vicious. I don't even know where that comes from. I mean, is it the perfect movie? No. But it's a sweet movie. And it's funny where I think it wants to be funny. I think the actors are really engaging. So I find some of those reviews mystifying. You get some people saying, "It wasn't a laugh riot." Well, it wasn't meant to be one.

Beaks: You know where I think some of those reviews come from? They realize the studio isn't really pushing this movie, and now they've got leeway to really tear into this movie.

Doyle: I hope it finds its audience. I think it's a good movie and a good interpretation of the book. I mean, you could've done a different one, but I don't know if a different one would've worked any better.

Beaks: Again, I think you made the right decisions as to what you omitted. I was really with it all the way.

Doyle: Well, we'll see how it does. One guy decided, based on some Peter Travers tweet - and that's the perfect word to use for Peter Travers. But Peter Travers, the easiest lay in show business, hated the movie! I can't tell you how many times Peter Travers has raved about the biggest pieces of shit I've ever seen. So, based on that [tweet], somebody online decided to blame me for everything that had gone wrong with comedy over the last thirty years. I guess that's what you've got to deal with.

Beaks: Reaching back to THE SIMPSONS and BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD even?

Doyle: Oh, yeah. I was responsible for ruining THE SIMPSONS, and I ruined the Loony Tunes franchise.

Beaks: What about THE NEW YORKER? Did you ruin THE NEW YORKER?

Doyle: Just that my name on anything was a sign of poor quality.

Beaks: (Laughs) That's ludicrous.

Doyle: Sometimes, if they get ridiculous enough, they can't hurt anymore. But it was annoying. And that's the other thing! I went to the screening - and, as someone who wrote the book and worked on it, I have a very critical eye, believe it or not. And there were a few things in the movie that I wish were better. But every time I've watched it with an audience, they've really enjoyed it. I don't know what other measure there is of whether something is good. It's supposed to be a piece of entertainment, and if it entertains people, I don't know why they're getting a big stick up their butt, to be honest.

Beaks: One thing I thought was a really smart substitution was referencing THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD instead of STAR WARS [for a scene I'll not spoil here].

Doyle: That worked out really well because we got to visually copy it later. That was a good substitution - although it was a legal one, as you might imagine.

Beaks: I figured as much, but it's better. STAR WARS references are so trite anymore. And I love ROBIN HOOD. It's one of my favorite movies, so that actually made the scene more rousing for me. And his whole training montage was very well executed.

Doyle: Whoever that kid is who played the young Rich, he only has one line, but he sure sold it.

Beaks: And while we're talking about the cast, I really want to single out Jack Carpenter. I have a feeling that I'll be seeing this kid a lot over the next few years.

Doyle: I thought Jack Carpenter was great. He really held the screen the whole time. I think they all did a great job. I also really liked Lauren Storm as Treece. I think she's got a real career ahead of her, too.

Beaks: She does a lot with her eyes.

Doyle: She has just the perfect timing and the perfect voice for that kind of character. She reminded my of Judy Holliday.

Beaks: It seems like this is the best experience you've had as a screenwriter.

Doyle: Of the movies that got made, yeah. I've had a lot of very pleasant experiences with screenplays that just died. But of the three movies that got made, this was easily the most pleasant all the way through.

Beaks: So what are you planning to do next? I know you've got a novel coming up. Do you have any other screenplays in development?

Doyle: I sold a novel called GO, MUTANTS! I'm working on that, and I'm also supposed to be working on the screenplay at the same time. It's for Imagine and Universal. That looks like it's going to be a lot of fun. It's sort of like a movie where all the '50s tropes of aliens and whatever really happened. Now, a generation later, the teenagers at the school are the offspring of some of the aliens and mutants of the '50s, and they're kind of the juvenile delinquents. It plays out like REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE or HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL but with aliens and mutants.

Beaks; When you're writing a book, do you find yourself wondering how it's going to work as a screenplay? Do you allow that kind of thinking to enter your process?

Doyle: In this case, I have to. I would say that, for better or worse, I come from a child of media, so even when I'm writing a book and have no thoughts of it being a movie, I'm visualizing it in my head like a movie. A lot of writers, when they write books or tell stories, are talking about whatever the fuck they want to talk about. In other words, they're writing essays with characters attached to them. When I'm writing, I'm writing something that hopefully the reader, as they're reading it with me, is inside the story as its happening. In the prose, I'll be throwing in all of the asides and jokes and whatever, but the spine of it will be the same - moving from one scene to another where characters interact in a way that's visually interesting. The biggest challenge to me with writing BETH COOPER was that, coming from films and television, I never had to describe what was happening physically with that level of detail. In fact, they hate it if you do; they train you to put the minimum amount of description in because executives don't like to read it. But when you're writing the book, you're it; you're all of the actors, the cinematographer and the director.

Beaks: So you don't do as much self-editing? You can allow yourself to create a few extra characters and indulge in a scene that doesn't really move the plot forward?

Doyle: Yeah. I mean, for example, the book I'm writing now is twice is long as any possible movie could be in terms of things that happen. It will be paced differently, it will involve a number of side-stories that won't make it into the movie, probably a half-dozen characters will be cut for the movie version. Because you need to focus these things. I'm not a fan of these giant three-hour movies where they feel they can't cut anything out of the book. BETH COOPER especially. You can't do a teen comedy that's two hours and twenty minutes long.

Beaks: Maybe Judd Apatow.

Doyle: Well, speaking of Judd Apatow, I'll say this: SUPERBAD is a fantastic movie. SUPERBAD thirty minutes shorter? Even better. And it doesn't matter how great the shit was he'd have to cut to make it shorter. It would've been a better movie.

Beaks: There's something in your postscript interview in the book that I wanted to follow up on: What was it really like dating Annette O'Toole?

Doyle: What was it like dating Annette O'Toole? Did I say I dated Annette O'Toole?

Beaks: Oh, you said you dated Annette O'Toole.

Doyle: Well, then, it was great! (Beaks laughs) I don't remember saying that! Dating Annette O'Toole...

Beaks: It was in the "Rude Interview with the Author, Conducted By the Author".

Doyle: I would've loved to date Annette O'Toole.

Beaks: So would I! But I was too young in the '80s. That's why I'm asking you. I want to live vicariously through your experience.

Doyle: I'm getting older, so... maybe I did. (Laughs) I would still date Annette O'Toole, but I'd have to get permission. I don't think she's on my list. You know, the list you make with you wife of who you'd have a free pass [to sleep with]? Usually, it has to be someone she knows you'll never meet.

Beaks: And there's still a high probability of you running into Annette O'Toole at some point?

Doyle: Yeah. If I said Annette O'Toole, she'd have to think about it. Because I could probably find Annette O'Toole if I really wanted to. Isn't she married to or dating Michael McKean?

Beaks: Yes. So you'd have some Michael McKean problems as well.

Doyle: He's a big guy. He's much bigger than me. I remember having very vivid dreams of ALTERED STATES. That had a big effect on me.

Beaks: 48 HRS. was a big one for me.

Doyle: She's also in CAT PEOPLE, right?

Beaks: (Trying to remember) Yeah. Isn't she?

Doyle: She's in the pool, I believe.

Beaks: Oh, shit, you're right! I haven't watched that movie in forever.

Doyle: Well, I only have the pool scene.

Beaks: (Laughing) You cut out the Kinski?

Doyle: You know, she was one of those actresses who I acknowledged was gorgeous, but for some reason just didn't work for me.

Beaks: Was it because she was so intimidatingly gorgeous that you couldn't imagine any scenarios where you'd hook up?

Doyle: No, I can imagine things about all sorts of women who are out of my league. I don't have that particular problem. No, there was just something about her that didn't work for me in some way. Maybe it was because I knew how crazy her dad was.

(I started to wrap up the interview, but then we got back on the Peter Travers subject.) Beaks: You know, I could pull out a list of Peter Travers rave reviews for some of the shit he's liked over the last few years.

Doyle: I just remember he was the go-to guy of choice. You know, when I worked at SPY magazine, we decided to try to get some of those blurb people to blurb movies they hadn't seen.

Beaks: Yes! I remember that!

Doyle: We didn't catch him, but we did catch a couple of people. What would happen is they'd say they have to see the movie, and then we would send them a cassette. They weren't only movies they hadn't seen; they were movies that didn't exist. So we'd send over the cassette, and the cassette would have all the right information on it - but it would be blank. And they would call us back and say, "I didn't get to watch the movie, it was blank." But in one case, the woman who wrote for the "One Minute Review" - I can't remember her name - sent us back a blurb that echoed something in the materials. She never pointed out that the cassette was blank. She didn't even try to watch the movie. But Peter Travers was an ethical dude. He wouldn't blow you unless he saw your dick.

Beaks: I loved SPY. And I loved Walter Monheit's reviews. "Logrolling in Our Times", too.

Doyle: Those were fun. I didn't quite a few for Monheit at one point or another.

Beaks: You did?

Doyle: Walter was just the messenger that we used.

Beaks: Right. He was a fictional critic.

Doyle: But he was real guy. He just didn't write any of that stuff.

Beaks: Wait. Walter Monheit was a real guy?

Doyle: Yeah. He was our messenger. And after a while, he was like a Larry "Bud" Melman celebrity in New York. He would get invited to to all of these parties.

Beaks: Christ, I didn't realize he got that big.

Doyle: I don't know how or why he got invited, but he would go all the time. If you were at a place serving free alcohol, Walter would be there.

Beaks: (Laughing) So people would try to wine-and-dine him and try to get something good in SPY?

Doyle: One of my favorite celebrity moments when I was at NEW YORK MAGAZINE. I don't get invited to shit now that I'm actually working in the industry, but when I was writing for NEW YORK MAGAZINE, I got invited to everything. So, anyway, I went to this big James Bond premiere, and the after-party was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And that's where I saw this perfect confluence: Larry "Bud" Melman talking to Patty Hearst and Meatloaf.

Beaks: (Laughs) How did they find each other?

Doyle: What's great is that you knew they had a sense that they could just approach each other because they were all celebrities of some sort. You know how two celebrities that don't really know each other can go up and say "Hi"? A non-celebrity can't approach a celebrity in the same way.

Beaks: But isn't there also a tricky negotiation where one celebrity definitely knows he's a bigger celebrity than the other one, so the other one has to make the overture?

Doyle: Well, here's an interesting case! Who's the biggest celebrity there? I would say, at the time, Larry "Bud" was riding high. But in terms of absolute accomplishment... well, he had none, Patty Hearst had next to none, so Meatloaf would have to be the biggest guy there. But he was so long removed from...

Beaks: BAT OUT OF HELL.

Doyle: Yeah. (Pause) But I hear all three of them got married.

Beaks: To each other?

Doyle: Yes. You have to go to Massachusetts for that.

Beaks: For a three-way marriage?

Doyle: Yes. They're only legal in Massachusetts.

Beaks: And only for celebrities?

Doyle: Maybe. I don't know. I'll have to work on that joke and get back to you.

I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER hits theaters this Friday (July 10th). The new version of the paperback is well worth picking up. Faithfully submitted, Mr. Beaks