Director Interview: The Making of One Night Only

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On the surface, One Night Only looks like a regular romantic comedy about two young attractive people named Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner who meet and fall in love over the course of one night.

Plot twist: the latest romcom from writer-director Will Gluck, who directed Easy A and Anyone But You, is so much more. This is, to quote an increasingly popular meme, the movie about the one night a year single people can legally have sex. What The Purge did for crime, Gluck has done for hooking up.

Whether you have already seen the trailer or you are just learning about this now, you probably have a lot of questions about One Night Only. So did the interviewer, even after watching the movie, which threads in the kind of worldbuilding you get from science fiction. It has been three years since the mandate went into effect, and the United States government implanted endorphin-tracking sensors into everyone wrists to enforce the new law. That is right, this is also a cyberpunk movie.

Will Gluck directed the film, and the interviewer jumped at the opportunity to ask him very specific questions such as how this became a law in the first place, whether the Supreme Court tried to intervene, and what happens to international tourists who visit America.

Will Gluck did not exactly love that line of questioning at first.

There is a lot of things in the movie that we kind of explained as much as we want to explain. All the questions you are asking, I want people to ask them to each other in the theater.

At one point, he even started quizzing the interviewer on the names of the main characters to test whether they had watched his movie. Eventually, Will Gluck came around and they had a fun conversation. He even messaged the interviewer on Instagram a few days later to say how much he enjoyed the discussion.

How did the sex ban go into effect?

Will Gluck pointed out that this is answered in the film during a conversation between Molly Ringwald, who plays Callum Turner’s mom, and her boyfriend, played by Levar Burton.

There is that scene where Burton says it was a bill that was passed by Congress. That is in the movie!

When the sex-ban bill was voted on by Congress, was it a close vote?

I think it was extremely close. I think it was about 50.01 to 49.9.

Did the Supreme Court try to intervene?

Well, clearly they have not, because it was just passed. The Supreme Court very rarely gets involved in legislation. There used to be three branches of government in the United States, until your president came around. But there is three branches of government. So it is hard for them to overturn legislation, but possible. But I think they are gonna have to wait till the politics shifts.

Will it swing back eventually?

Gee, I hope so.

Wouldn’t people just get married all the time to have sex?

One Night Only quickly establishes that sex is still allowed and encouraged for married people, and it has unsurprisingly become more popular as a result. Are Americans just having weddings left and right? Will Gluck says the answer is yes, but there is also a catch.

Well there is signage if you see it again — which I am sure you will be running out to see it again — that there is a rule about marriage. You have to stay married for one year and one day before you can get divorced. Because if not, people would just go get married, get divorced, get married, get divorced, right? But to answer your question, I bet you the standards are lower, especially when you are younger.

He continued discussing travel options.

There is also signage in the movie of airlines advertising: Fly to Cuba where it is always legal! Fly to France where it is always legal. Fly to Amsterdam where damn it is legal. So you can leave the country.

What if you are a tourist who is visiting America?

Just like anywhere else when you go to the country, you have to abide by their laws. So when you go through border security, they give you a biosensor. It takes like six seconds.

That is right, anyone who enters the United States has to get a chip implanted into their wrist.

In fact, there was a little bit that was cut out, interestingly enough. The British woman who Callum Turner gets with, she has a sensor and she talks about where she got it at the airport.

What is the punishment for breaking the mandate?

One Night Only never actually explains what happens when you break the sex ban, but Will Gluck offered an answer.

My guess is, if you do it many times, there is probably fines involved, and then if you ultimately continue to do it, there is probably some sort of jail sentence, I guess. We didn’t wanna get that far into it.

Are there mass protests against the mandate?

These are questions that we have all spent a lot of time asking, and in fact, a lot of stuff I had and I cut out.

While he did not offer a direct answer, he introduced an interesting metaphor that helps explain the entire movie.

I wanted to set up aStudioProjects situation that was three years ago and see how people deal with life now. My analogy has always been COVID. If you drop in an alien in 2022, there is signs everywhere. Some people don’t wanna do this. Some people wanna wear this. Did people fight it? People didn’t fight it? In 2022, you don’t really know the answer. But people have to move on with their lives, right? Three years earlier some shit did go down, but now it is three years, and humans have to move on with their lives, whether they like it or not.

Will Gluck also points out that the movie establishes a resistance movement, best encapsulated by an “F the Mandate” protest being held the next night, even if that protest turns out to be more of a controlled opposition.

My belief? Yes, there is huge rallies all the time against this, but on this day, for the people who are not married, they gotta do what they gotta do. And to me, that is about finding love. If there is another movie, you could do this the day it was passed to get into all that stuff.

Why aren’t condoms free on this night?

A big plotline in One Night Only is about the two main characters struggling to find condoms. Every store they go to is sold out or charging absurdly high prices. If the government is going to ban single people from having sex for 354 nights per year, protection should be free on the one other night. According to Will Gluck, the answer is that supplies were simply depleted.

They have all been sold out. Then they go to urgent care; they are sold out. She had all these condoms, but her roommate took them. He thought he was gonna go back to his apartment, so he had them there.

Will Gluck drew another parallel between One Night Only and COVID.