Rom-Coms

‘Crazy, Stupid, Love’ Hits Netflix: 6 Surprising Facts About the Rom-Com

One of the most beloved romantic comedies of the 21st century has hit Netflix.

Crazy, Stupid, Love, the 2011 film written by This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman, boasts one of the star-studded casts you’ll find with Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Julianne Moore, Kevin Bacon, Marisa Tomei, Joey King, Lio Tipton, and Josh Groban.

In many ways, it is a buddy comedy following Cal (Carell), a middle-aged husband and father who throws himself back into the dating world when his wife (Moore) asks for a divorce. With the help of a handsome stranger with swag named Jacob (Gosling), Cal is able to find some confidence to get back out there, even if dating has changed. While he is helping Cal, Jacob happens to fall for Hannah (Stone), who turns out to be Cal’s daughter. As you can imagine, the comedy of errors only spirals from there.

With the film now on Netflix, there’s no better time to revisit this modern classic and see how much you really know—or maybe didn’t—about Crazy, Stupid, Love.

1. Emma Stone realized she hated heights during the Dirty Dancing scene.

While there are many romantic moments between Jacob and Hannah in the film, one of them was pretty traumatic for Stone. When she first jumped into Gosling’s arms and was lifted up on set to recreate the famous Dirty Dancing move, she told Graham Norton in 2017 it immediately brought back her internalized phobia of heights, something she had repressed after breaking both her arms doing gymnastics at the age of 7. So during their first take, Stone panicked, or what Gosling said was like “if a possum fell out of a tree and started trying to scratch your eyes out.”

Stone admitted she needed a minute—or an hour—after the incident, so she went back to her trailer and cried while watching Labyrinth. Understanding it was a major issue for her, directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa opted to use a stunt double for the scene. So it might be romantic, but it isn’t really Stone in the film.

2. Steve Carell didn’t like the film’s title.

Ben Glass / Warner Brothers / Everett Collection

While Crazy, Stupid, Love has since become a well-known title, even those working on the film were skeptical it would sell the story they were telling. While promoting the film, Carell mentioned that Wingman was one of the alternatives, though he initially didn’t see the film as just about Gosling’s character being his wingman.

3. The film’s original cut was three hours long.

Crazy, Stupid, Love ended up being just shy of two hours, but audiences would have been in their theater seats much longer if they had gotten the original cut from its directors. The directors told Film School Rejects at the time that film’s original cut was three hours, and it was a “watchable, good” movie. But they admitted the scenes they cut, some of which ended up on the film’s DVD release, were “just very talky, and it still is, but they were just very verbose scenes.” When asked if they would ever release that lengthy version, they said they are happy with the final cut that hit theaters.

4. Ryan Gosling did his research to play Jacob.

While Jacob’s relationship with Hannah—and his friendship with Cal—certainly soften him over the course of the movie, Gosling said he always saw the character as “kind of a jackass, a knucklehead with a heart of gold who has this sort of twisted wisdom he thinks he should pass on.” To get to know him, Gosling even did his homework for how someone like Jacob might seduce women. “I watched this TV show about a pick-up artist and read a couple of books about foolproof strategies for hitting on women. They are kind of terrifying, but I did manage to get some inspiration from them for Jacob.”

5. The film was written for Steve Carell from Dan Fogelman’s own personal experiences.

In talking about the film, writer Fogelman revealed that he wrote the role of Cal for Carell and even pulled from his own experiences of being single in his 30s at the time. Since he was in the dating world, his married friends would give advice, which served as the foundation for Jacob’s guiding hand. “I also have many friends who are married and have kids,” Fogelman said. “People love to give you advice. So I just compiled all of the things I knew and heard and created Cal as this ‘everyman’ character in need of some guidance and Jacob as something of a guru.”

6. The film is the first of three collaborations for Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.

While they are best known for star-crossed lovers singing and dancing their way to fame in Hollywood in the 2016 Oscar-winning musical La La Land, Gosling and Stone first appeared together in Crazy, Stupid, Love. Then, they re-teamed as a couple in the 2013 mob thriller Gangster Squad. Even though they haven’t shared the screen again since La La Land, Stone spoke glowingly about their friendship on and off screen in 2016 at the Telluride Film Festival. “I can’t even imagine what my life would be without Ryan. He’s so special. He makes me emotional. He’s so talented, but he’s such a great person to work with because he’s so collaborative and excited about the process. He’s taught me a lot about being really generous.”

Crazy, Stupid, Love, Streaming Now, Netflix