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Sophomore director Peyton Reed cut his teeth on college high school comedy Bring It On with Kirsten Dunst and Eliza Dushku. His second movie is Down With Love, a cunning pastiche of those Doris Day/Rock Hudson sex comedies from the early 60s, starring Ewan McGregor and Ren茅e Zellweger as pair of mismatched lovers.

Is Down With Love a homage or a parody of films like Pillow Talk?

I never, ever intended it to be a parody, but it's definitely a homage. The writers took that whole genre of late-50s/early-60s bedroom comedies and put it through a blender. I had no intention of doing any kind of romantic comedy after Bring It On, but their script was very specific about not being a romantic comedy. It's a sex comedy set in the 60s at a very specific time when America's shaking off the squareness of the 50s, and is feeling the first rumblings of the sexual revolution.

But what's the appeal of such a film today?

At the time [60s] they were risqu茅. They were using double entendres as ways to get around the movie codes. Now when you look at those movies they seem very square, and very chaste and unhip. But what I like about them is that they're very buoyant movies, they're very easy to get sucked into. Still, they don't command much respect - they don't get taught in film schools!

Ewan McGregor and Ren茅e Zellweger have great onscreen chemistry...

I'm a huge fan of Ewan. I've seen every movie he's ever done. You get the sense that he's willing to try anything. As a moviegoer, I've not seen Ewan in a movie like this. I can't think of anyone who has more charisma. And you know, it's really difficult to find actors who can do this sort of light comedy. It's a lot of effort to make it seem effortless.

David Hyde Pierce was inspired casting...

He was so right for that role. It was fun for Ewan McGregor because he worshipped David - he's a huge Frasier fan. David was reluctant to do it at first, because he'd done a 60s period film called Isn't She Great? that hadn't turned out the way he hoped. I think he wanted to know that the person in charge of this knew what they were doing!

There've been lots of comparisons between your film and Far From Heaven. Does that annoy you?

I think the movies really have nothing to do with each other. Because that movie came out first, we've lived in the shadow of it. I suppose they might make an interesting double-bill in a movie theatre somewhere. But it got to the point where I started saying: "Our movie is like Far From Heaven but without all the jokes!"