"Her Minor Thing" was produced by Crescent Moon Films, which is based in Sacramento, California, and consists of Jim Meyers, Debra Meyers, Vikki Wagner, and Heather Simpson. Heather is the only partner not living in Sacramento. She is originally from Sacramento, but has lived in Los Angeles now for many years.

"Her Minor Thing" was written by Jim & Debra Meyers, a husband-and-wife writing/producing team. "After writing two scripts together and making two films together, we're still married!"

"HMT" was shot in 23 days, in June-July 2004.

We shot at numerous locations in the Sacramento, California area. Production took place in Sacramento (19 days), Folsom (2 days), West Sacramento (1 day), and El Dorado Hills (1 day).

We wanted to portray as much of Sacramento as possible. We've included many recognizable local landmarks in the movie, including The Firehouse restaurant and Raley Field, which is home to the Sacramento River Cats, our AAA minor league baseball team. Other prominent locations included KXTV News10, Powerhouse Pub in Folsom, beautiful homes in East Sacramento, and the Hyatt.

As far as we can tell, "HMT" is the biggest feature film made in Sacramento that was both written and produced locally.

Sacramento has often stood in for other cities in the movies, but we believe this is the first time we've seen so much of Sacramento on-screen. It's also one of the few times Sacramento is actually playing itself.

Charlie returns to directing after a hiatus caring for his sick father, famed actor Walter Matthau. Both his father and his mother, actress/author Carol Grace, passed away in recent years. Charlie says that taking on "Her Minor Thing" was good therapy for him.

Charlie says that comedy is harder to direct than drama "because you either get a laugh or a smile or you don't. With drama there are shades of gray, whether it's working or not." Nevertheless, he is more confident in his decisions when he's filming comedy. "I trust my instincts more. I think it's the genre I have most to contribute to as a filmmaker."

Heather Simpson, one of the producers, who also has a role in the film, introduced Charlie to the project. He had read a lot of independent scripts, but "Her Minor Thing" was the first that really grabbed his attention.

Estella appears in almost every scene in "HMT," which is a lot of work. "I do see it as a heavy responsibility, but I look at it day by day," she says. "Otherwise it would be overwhelming."

Although Estella plays a virgin she is not one herself, she says readily. "I have to act the part. My feelings on virginity are that it's a personal decision. But this isn't the kind of movie where they're trying to make a point. It's supposed to be fun."

You'd never guess, but Christian has had no formal acting training. "I get insights from other actors, or coaches who may be on the set," he says. "I've seen good s**t and bad s**t. I've hated people and I've been in love. It's already there. It's already in storage. It just comes out and I don't think you need to go somewhere to find it. I've been to the four corners of the world on emotions."

Christian was particularly excited to be working on the movie because it's the first time he plays a romantic lead. "I'm always the bad guy. In real life I'm a bit of both, depending on where the moon's at. I'm moody and I do have a temper. In Oklahoma there's two things to do there, that's drink beer and fight. I kinda grew up with that." He was also happy because he was a huge fan of Walter Matthau. He has a lot of his movies. He admits to getting "teary-eyed" when he learned of his passing.

Michael Weatherly likes to joke about the character he plays in "HMT." "I can play shallow, but I have to fake depth. It doesn't come naturally," he says. Even though his character, Tom, has his faults, Michael forgives him. "I like him. He just has misplaced enthusiasm."

Rachel Dratch compared working on "Saturday Night Live" to making a movie for us. She said the pace, of course, is quite different. On SNL, the actors may learn what they're going to do two days before airtime. And the preparation is different, of course. "On SNL, you don't think 'what did my character do before this scene starts'," Rachel says. "A movie is a little bit different. But I'm trying to think of this as a scaled back version of SNL."

We're very proud of the look of our film. The people of Sacramento were very helpful to our production, and the attractive locations they provided to us gave the film tremendous production value.

The Sacramento Metro Fire District was extremely helpful. They provided numerous vehicles, people, and props to lend authenticity to the film. It really gave our fire department scenes a great look.

The Sacramento Film Commission was fantastic to work with. They even let us shoot the Kathy Griffin scene in their offices. Thanks, Lucy!

Much of the story is set in Midtown Sacramento, which is where the two writers of the film formerly lived. It's a very unique part of Sacramento. Most of the characters in the film live in Midtown. Tom, however, lives in the Fabulous Forties, a very nice neighborhood next to Midtown; it's the same neighborhood used in the aerial shots of "American Beauty."

Charlie brought along some very experienced people in some key positions, including our director of photography, John J. Connor. John has a lot of experience, and it shows in our film. He gave "Her Minor Thing" a terrific look.

We were thrilled to get our cast. We're all big fans of the lead actors. "These comedic actors are people I've admired for a long time and they're right for the roles," said Charlie. We also managed to get some of the top actors in Sacramento for many of the supporting roles.

We assembled a diverse crew, bringing together people with big-budget experience and low-budget experience. Our crew came primarily from Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the Lake Tahoe area.

There are a lot of crew people with Hollywood filmmaking experience living in Northern California. We thus were able to draw on many local people who've worked on numerous high-profile studio films.

We have a large cast. "It's a bigger cast than Dr. Zhivago," jokes Charlie. "At least that's what it feels like." Our actors came primarily from Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Francisco. Rachel, though, came all the way from New York, and Victoria came from Florida.

We held auditions in both L.A. and Sacramento, and saw a lot of terrific actors. It was at the auditions in Sacramento that we made a couple of fun creative decisions that really paid off. We decided to go against type in casting Rick Kleber as the health club guy. And we decided to combine Seedy Guy and Cab Driver into one character, because David Fine gave the best audition for both characters. Both Rick and David did a great job for us.

David Fine sort of scared people when he showed up for his first day of work. He came onto our health club set looking all weird and disheveled (he showed up in character, basically), shirtless, grungy, etc. People were ready to call the police until we said "no, he's one of our actors!"

In addition to directing, Charlie plays a sleazy guy who hits on the character played by Estella. "Typecasting," jokes Charlie.

Michael Weatherly is so great. On his one day off from the shoot, he stopped by our production offices, just to say hi to all the production assistants who didn't get to come out to the set.

Michael also has a really playful sense of humor. When he heard that one of our P.A.s had to leave the production, he called the P.A. and left a deeply heartfelt message about how great it had been to work with him, and he'd never forget him, etc. (Michael had never even met the person, but that didn't stop him; and the recipient of the message certainly enjoyed hearing it).

Michael did a couple of steamy scenes with Estella, and with Ivana (well, steamy for a romantic comedy anyway). He kept suggesting that we shoot a European version of the movie, so we could take things a lot further. Nice try, Michael.

Notes From the Writers

The working title of the script was "Men Are Jerks." In the early stages, we intended for the script to be a dark comedy about male-female relationships. While working on the first draft, we chose to turn it into a more positive story about relationships. We decided at that point to make it into more of a mainstream romantic comedy. It became more of a feel-good film.

Much of the inspiration for the script came from the fact that everyone has horrendous breakup stories to tell. Broken relationships are just a part of life; they're everywhere. And we found it particularly interesting to explore what happens when a couple breaks up when they were just about to go on a romantic vacation together. It's amazing how often that happens.

One of the reasons we wanted to get this film made was the fact that so many people read the script and said they could really relate to it. There is a lot of truth in the script, when it comes to relationships between men and women. The issues in the script are things that everyone has had experience with. Single people in their twenties have told us that the script really captured the way things are in their world.

We had to make this movie because we kept getting positive comments about the script. A lot of people who read it encouraged us to not let it go, to make sure that it got made.

An earlier version of the script had a lot more characters from the fire department. Debra used to work with those guys, and they're a terrific source of comic stories. Unfortunately, we had to cut a lot of those (and some other things) to make the script something we could shoot in four weeks, instead of five.

Since Jeana's job was based on the job Debra did when she was with Sac Metro Fire, lots of people there have asked her if the movie is based on her life. "No way!" she says.

Fun Facts

Victoria was a guest of Johnny Carson's on "The Tonight Show" 22 times. That has nothing to do with our movie, but that's a great statistic! Way to go, Victoria!

Flex, Ivana, Victoria, and Kathy are all so funny, we wish we could've written bigger parts for them. They all get some big laughs in the movie, and they also got big laughs from the crew and their fellow actors on the set. Next time, we'll write bigger parts for you guys!

Although they have no scenes together in "Her Minor Thing," Flex and Ivana have worked together four times since our production wrapped. Ivana has made four guest appearances on Flex's show "One on One."

During rehearsal for the big scene in the park, one of our actors fell in the lagoon! It was pretty funny, but unfortunately we didn't catch that on camera. Said actor did finish rehearsal, even though they were drenched and covered in mud and various other slimy substances. Before shooting the scene, the actor had to go to the home of a production assistant's parents to take a shower, change clothes, and generally make themselves less disgusting to their co-workers.

We were shooting on a sidewalk in Midtown Sacramento when about 20 teenage girls from Spain happened by. They were in the U.S. to study English. They met Christian Kane and went crazy for him, as they were all big fans of the TV show "Angel." Honestly, it was as if CK were the Beatles. These girls were crying, were taking photos with Christian, and calling their friends in Spain on their cellphones. When Christian had to jump in a car and drive around the block for a scene, he said "Don't let those girls leave!" They were more than happy to wait for him to come back.