“One Night Only” is now in theaters and, as its name suggests, takes place in a world where pre-marital sex is only legal for a single night out of the year. But why is that the case?
Starring Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner, the movie takes place not in a futuristic society, but rather, three years ago. At the start of the film, it’s made clear that this sexual mandate has been in place for awhile, and is the new norm. Curiously, as the story continues, there’s really no time carved out to explain why this rule came into existence — and that was by director Will Gluck‘s design.
“I did a lot, a lot of thinking about it. And there’s a lot of world building that takes place in our movie in the background,” he explained to TheWrap. “I didn’t want to do the movie that this was the first year this happened. Maybe there’s a prequel that explains why this happened, so we can answer all the questions that everyone’s having on the internet, or even after they see the movie, which is, I would love to do that.”
Gluck is fully aware that people might be asking “How could you just ignore the dystopian thing?” But, he insists it’s really not. The story is just focusing on that reality in a more practical way.
“I can tell you this: a lot of stuff’s going on in the world right now that a year ago we would go ‘no way,’ and it is now. And people have to deal with it,” he said. “And I’m not saying it’s right by any means, it’s not. But if you take this mandate that was put into place three years ago in our world, this is the third time they had to deal with it.”
“So at this stage — whether of the other 364 days, whether they were repealing against it, whether they were having you know rallies against it, which is in the movie — this one night, they got to do it,” Gluck continued.
The director also worried that he might fall into “one of my many flaws as a filmmaker,” and overexplain things if he did dig in on it a bit more.
“I rely on words too much. I love dialogue. People often say that it’s cheesy, it’s cringy, but I love dialogue,” Gluck explained. “I love the old Hepburn and Tracy movies. I love watching people on screen the way I wished we talked, that everyone’s clever.”
“So I rely on that too much, so this could have become victim to that. There’s too much discussion about that, as opposed to just if you see it, you see it,” he continued. “So in the background of this movie, if you see it again, or see for the first time, there’s many signs, and there’s many things out in New York City, and the way people are acting in the background, that while you’re following our main people, you see how other people are reacting and seeing what’s going on.”
He also noted that his passion in storytelling lies specifically in detailing people’s relationship, and how they play the cards they’ve been dealt.
“And as you can see from the movie, there’s many references to the — I don’t say politics, I say the social and cultural aspects of what was going on in this world,” he said. “People do talk about it, but at this moment, in this stage in our movie, they’d be more interested in this night. But I do want a conversation to pop out of this.”
“But also, it’s a romantic comedy. I want these people to prevail over this. So no matter what happens, we want to prevail over this and not let people tell us what to do.”
“One Night Only” is now in theaters everywhere.
