Is discussing celebrity crushes with your partner — and granting them a “hall pass” to sleep with said superstar should they ever meet — a bit of harmless fun or a recipe for potential disaster? That’s the question behind a rollicking new comedy that makes light of our cultural obsession with celebrity and sex — oh, and “Mad Men” star Jon Hamm.
“We thought this was something that couples joke about, but never really do anything about,” said David Wain, the director and co-writer of “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass.” “I don’t think anyone actually takes it seriously — but that’s our very whimsical concept: what if they did.”
While Wain’s new movie, which first debuted to good critical buzz at the Sundance Film Festival in January, is defiantly silly and full of gags, relationship experts warned that the reality of these fantasy arrangements might prove to be no laughing matter for some couples — something with which even Wain agreed. “I think when you even jokingly talk too much about who else you’d want to have sex with, you’ve got something to examine maybe in your relationship,” he said.
Released in cinemas on Friday, “Gail Daughtry” plays out like a deranged, horny rewrite of “The Wizard of Oz.” This film’s eponymous heroine (played by Zoey Deutch) is a Kansas hairdresser who once played Dorothy in a childhood production and now has a penchant for sporting ruby red shoes of her own. Gail suffers a gutting setback ahead of her planned wedding to longtime sweetheart Tom (Michael Cassidy) when she catches him in flagrante with Jennifer Aniston (playing herself) after a book signing. (In one particularly pointed barb about the vapidness of some celebrity cookbooks, Aniston is in town to promote a tome of “Straight Forward Suppers” that include “instant oatmeal” and “a bagel with cream cheese.”) Despite the pair having discussed Tom’s hall pass with Aniston just moments earlier, the reality of the discovery sends Gail into a tailspin: “I thought it was a silly little exercise! Not an excuse to have sex with Rachel from ‘Friends!’”
When the heartbroken Gail travels to Los Angeles with her bestie Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley, sporting a bone-shaped earing in a nod to Dorothy’s beloved dog Toto), she’s told by a psychic that in order to “even the score” and “level the playing field” in her relationship, she must track down and bed her own celebrity crush (Hamm, in a deliciously self-deprecating cameo in the film’s final chapter). Along the way in her journey to do the deed with Don Draper himself, she enlists the aid of a brainless talent agency worker (Ben Wang), a heartless paparazzo for whom a picture of Hamm has long been his “white man whale” (Ken Marino, who co-wrote the movie with Wain) and Hamm’s former “Mad Men” costar John Slattery, playing a cowardly, washed-up version of himself.
According to Wain, the roles for his film’s two celebrity hall passes were written specifically in the hope each actor would be game to make fun of themselves. A veteran comedy director who previously helmed 2001’s “Wet Hot American Summer” and 2008’s “Role Models,” Wain said having previously worked with Hamm, Aniston, and other big Hollywood stars has taught him that actors generally understand that they need to promote their sex appeal to audiences. “It’s just when it gets personal that maybe they might get a little creeped out, or when someone comes up on the street and propositions them. Then they’re like, Wait, that’s not what I wanted,” he said. “But it obviously goes with the territory if you’re putting yourself out there.”
Aniston’s cameo in the movie is a fitting one given it was her hit show “Friends” that helped popularize the concept of a celebrity hall pass to begin with. In one 1996 episode of the NBC sitcom, Rachel (Aniston) and then-boyfriend Ross (David Schwimmer) discuss with their buddies which celebrities they would each put on a list of people with whom they could sleep with their partners’ blessing. At one point, Ross swaps out Isabella Rossellini for Winona Ryder from his list — only to meet the Italian American model and actor in the Central Perk café at the end of the episode. This carte blanche concept was given further pop culture exposure in the 2011 Farrelly brothers movie, “Hall Pass,” which starred Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis as bumbling husbands whose wives grant them a week-long break from their marriage vows.
Discussing celebrity crushes or hall passes with one’s partner has since become increasingly common in many relationships—even if merely done in jest. One poll of 2,000 Britons last year published by the UK’s Daily Star tabloid found that a quarter of couples surveyed had a “no-strings-attached” arrangement with their partner to enjoy a frisson with a famous person, with over half saying that talking about celebrity crushes was the sign of a healthy relationship. (For what it’s worth, Hamm was not at the top of the list of Hollywood heartthrobs among those surveyed, having been beaten out by Brad Pitt and George Clooney, while the most desired celebrity women were Margot Robbie and Blake Lively.)
But despite the prevalence of these hall-pass discussions, relationship experts warn that some couples may be potentially playing with fire. “I think it’s a bad idea,” said Carrie Cole, the director of research at the Gottman Institute, an organization that trains relationship therapists. “People may discuss it. However, the idea of that and the reality of that are two very different things.
Cole recalled working with one couple who agreed to make an exception in their otherwise monogamous relationship for one (non-famous) person that one partner had been fantasizing about. “When it actually did happen, there were all kinds of hurt emotions,” Cole recalled. “It felt like a violation of the vows they had made to each other. It’s like, I know I agreed to this, but I never actually thought it would happen.”
Psychologist Alexandra Solomon, a Northwestern University professor who studies marriages and has authored a series of books on relationships, was slightly warmer to the idea of couples discussing celebrity hall passes. According to Solomon, such conversations have the potential to be harmless, silly, or even titillating — as long “there is an adequate cushion of emotional security in the relationship.” (Solomon herself recalled once meeting Marisa Tomei at a party and confessing to the Oscar winner that she was her husband’s hall-pass. Tomei, Solomon said, was such a good sport about it that she even insisted they send him a selfie.)
“When couples are happy and they feel emotionally safe in the relationship, then playing with those edges of fantasy can be sort of erotic,” Solomon said. “It can be arousing to imagine that our partner doesn’t fully belong to us,that they are a full human being with their own desires and fantasies.”
Framing these desires around celebrities, as opposed to the next-door neighbor, also typically creates something of a “safety in distance,” Solomon added, wherein the reality of such an encounter is not ever likely to come to pass—unless, of course, you’re Gail Daughtry.
“Don’t actually give your partner a real pass,” advised Wain, the director, “unless you’re willing to deal with the consequences.”
