JB: Well, I’m really proud of this one, I think it came out great. Besides that, I’m just looking forward to a break. I don’t really have anything on the horizon right now. I’m going to go out to the desert and recharge, because I’m kind of burnt creatively. I want to take a break, and come back like the Phoenix from the ashes.

Jake Kasdan

Q: For this movie, was it helpful having worked with Mike White before?

JK: Yes. It was great. We met on Freaks and Geeks, so there was already a common ground in our sensibility. I love his voice, I love his writing, his sense of humor. I’m just a huge Mike White fan. I love Chuck and Buck, it was fantastic.

Q: What did you have in mind when you were casting this movie?

JK: Well, we knew we were going to have to do a big audition process. We read hundreds of kids, which is not as much fun as it sounds like. And I had just done a pilot for this show called “Undeclared” immediately before, so I had been casting for seven straight months by the time we started shooting Orange County.

Q: How did you end up with Colin Hanks and Schuyler Fisk?

JK: At the end of this massive search, I had those two kids, and I didn’t really have any backup. There was nobody else. I read hundreds of guys, and I had sort of been conscious of Colin, and thought he might be great. I just had this hunch. It’s very hard to find people that are that good looking and also funny—I guess good looking people aren’t funny, and funny people aren’t good looking! Schuyler, I just think she’s fantastic. Incredibly open, honest, soulful. She’s got that kind of vulnerability and honesty that you never see on her contemporaries. It’s very hard to find. And she’s beautiful. So yeah, I just love those kids.

Q: If you ever get stuck during shooting, would you ever think about what your father [director Lawrence Kasdan] would do?

JK: Yes, I think I would think that. I guess it mainly comes up when there’s a situation between people, or when there’s some kind of small conflict about something—then I would think about how my dad would handle this. And on this movie, with great directors like Garry Marshall and Harold Ramis on the set, you’re always in student mode. You hope you never stop being in student mode, and you gotta ask those questions, especially when you’re surrounded by great comedy directors.

Mike White

Q: So why did you choose Orange County as the setting for your story?

Mike White: I just wanted to go somewhere that kind of embodied a popular culture wasteland, and it seemed like as good a place as any in my experience. [laughter] It seemed like it would be apt.

Q: The movie boasts a stellar cast. Did you have specific actors in mind when you wrote the roles?

MW: Well, not for the leads. Lily Tomlin is sort of the archetypal person for the role she plays. But in my head, I’ve learned that if you write for a certain actor, you’re just going to get your heart broken. So this was sort of like a weird wish fulfillment fantasy, where suddenly everybody who I could have ever wanted to do it said yes. So that was a cool part of it.