November (film) - Development

Development

The film's original script was written by Benjamin Brand, who had written and sold several unproduced screenplays to studios. Brand had served as an assistant to producer Danielle Renfrew on the film Groove (2000), which Greg Harrison had directed. Brand, Renfrew and Harrison were friends, and were living in their hometown of San Francisco developing separate projects at "mini-major" studios which, according to Renfrew, were "wallowing in development hell". Brand then read a newspaper story about a shooting during the robbery of a store, in which the robber had hidden the body of the proprietor behind the counter and then taken the proprietor's place at the counter as customers came in. Inspired by the story and its setting, as well as experiences in his own life (he had once been a teacher of photography at the Academy of the Arts), Brand wrote a screenplay and presented it to Renfrew and Harrison. They were both impressed; Harrison said it was "fascinating ... kind of an abstract exercise in narrative, which I thought was exciting and bold".

Brand and Harrison worked through several drafts of the script over the following six months. Harrison, who cited the "terrible, terrible" experience of coping with the death of a close friend as one of his personal inspirations for the film, focused their efforts on inserting a more profound element of emotion into the script; in his words they were "trying to express the subjective experience of trauma". Once they and Renfrew were satisfied with their work, the group began pitching the project to various production companies. Renfrew consciously chose to avoid taking the project to major Hollywood studios such as 20th Century Fox or Warner Bros.; instead, she opted for "smaller companies who were interested in doing something off of center". A breakthrough was achieved after a meeting with director Gary Winick, who had established a company in New York City called InDigEnt. The company specialised in backing low-budget films shot on digital video such as Personal Velocity (2002), Tadpole (2002) and Pieces of April (2003). Greg Harrison's debut film Groove had impressed executives at the company, and John Sloss of Cinetic Media said, "November is exactly the kind of sharp and invigorating material that has made InDigEnt what it is".

Before the development of the film, Harrison had cast actress Courteney Cox in a Garry Trudeau-scripted ensemble film being developed at Fox Searchlight. Cox was a comic actress widely known for her role on the television sitcom Friends and had participated in only a handful of more serious productions. While the Garry Trudeau project was intended as a comedy, Harrison said he felt Cox was "very capable of drama and was very willing and wanted to transcend her comedic persona" when they had first met. The project did not enter production, but when Harrison began casting for November, Cox became a prime candidate for the lead role. He offered her the part without an audition: "Courteney's biggest challenge is redefining herself ... I knew I could bring something out of her that people haven't seen before", he said. Cox, who said she is more similar to her character in November than her Friends character, Monica Geller, said, "I wanted to make November because it's fascinating, confusing, ambiguous, eerie and makes you think. There aren't that many movies where you leave the theater and want to talk about them". She added, "it was trying to take you through a woman's experience of tragedy and through all the stages. I loved that".