Jim Rash moved The Way Way Back shoot to accomodate Carell

Actor-turned-director Jim Rash was so desperate to land Steve Carell as the lead in his new comedy drama The Way Way Back, he took the shoot to Massachusetts so the actor could work and still spend time with his family. Rash, who won an Oscar as the screenwriter of George Clooney’s The Descendants, admits he was willing to do whatever was necessary to secure the Despicable Me star’s talents to portray Trent, the overbearing boyfriend of Toni Collette’s character in the coming of age movie.
He says, “My writing partner, Nat Faxon, and I wrote a letter to Steve to chase him. He wrote back that he loved the script but wanted to spend the summer with his family. So we wrote him again and said, ‘Well, what if we shoot in Marshfield, Massachusetts’, where he was planning on vacationing with his family? So that worked out; the crew lived on the street where Steve spent the summer.”