So how does an R-rated, young-male-skewed comedy packed with the predictable laundry list of guy-film raunch, including a sex-obsessed slacker dude, filthy talk, projectile vomiting, ear-damaging rock ’n’ roll and serial dog pooping, plus the inevitable jokes about oral and anal sex, farting, masturbation, gay bonding, and male and female lower body parts also work as smart, terrific, emotional button-pushing entertainment for all sexes and orientations?

Donald De Line, producer of I Love You, Man, may have some answers. What he does have for sure is another hit on his hands. With top studio jobs and top films to his credit, the industry veteran, operating through his De Line Pictures, continues on top of his game with this “bromantic” comedy starring Paul Rudd in a dazzling performance as a just-engaged straight guy and pal to females who has to “court” men to find male friends to adjust the awkward female/male imbalance that may embarrass at his upcoming wedding.

At press time, I Love You, Man, from Paramount and DreamWorks, was looking like a smash. On its heels, De Line’s Observe and Report arrives on April 10. The Warner Bros. comedy has Seth Rogen starring as a mall security officer who must compete with a tough local cop (Ray Liotta) to find the flasher who’s distracting mall customers and, no doubt, will be amusing audiences. Admits De Line, “Observe and Report is a harder ‘R’ than I Love You, Man.” With filthy and funny and fast and frothy or any combo working these days at theatres, the producer should have an immediate follow-up hit on his hands.

Reflecting on today’s audiences, De Line points to “the dark time in our world now. People really want to be entertained and to escape. Darker films won’t be so popular now except for something like Watchmen. But it is tough now for adult dramas that are just adult dramas. And there needs to be a pre-awareness on the part of audiences about what they’ll be seeing. But things will change.”

De Line’s professional journey to this comfortable and timely mainstream and its middle-of-the-road sweet spot is as impressive as it was eventful. Born and bred in Los Angeles, he attended UCLA and has worked in the company town his entire career. Additionally, he notes, “Both my parents were born in L.A.”

De Line started out in the business as a production assistant on sets. “I was a shlepper who did things like get people their lunches and copy scripts. I then fell into casting and became assistant to a female casting director. Then I landed at ABC as a casting executive.”
De Line’s big break came in 1985 when Walt Disney brought him in as director of production for the Film Entertainment Division. A year later, he was promoted to president of production for Disney’s “Sunday Night Movie.”

In 1993, De Line was promoted to president of Touchstone Pictures, where the films he oversaw—including Pretty Woman, Ransom, What’s Love Got to Do With it, Sister Act, Ed Wood and Armageddon—grossed over $2.5 billion worldwide.

The next stop on “de line” was Melrose Avenue, where he became president and vice chairman of Paramount Pictures, overseeing such projects as Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and Adam Sandler’s The Longest Yard. De Line launched his De Line Pictures production shingle in 1998, first based at Paramount and now with Warner Bros. in a non-exclusive deal.

Throughout his career, it seems De Line hasn’t met a genre he doesn’t like. He did family films at Disney and is now working on the animated feature Guardians of Ga’Hoole, based on the best-selling young-adult books and with Watchmen director Zack Snyder attached. He’s also getting into comic books with a live-action/CGI version of the DC Comics classic The Green Lantern.

Additionally, De Line has produced heart-stopping action with the heist adventure The Italian Job. He has embraced romance (Fool’s Gold, with Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson), the suspense thriller (Domestic Disturbance), the spy thriller (Body of Lies), creepy fantasy (The Stepford Wives), out-and-out physical comedy (Without a Paddle) and, of course, raunchy, youth-oriented comedy with his latest productions.

Will De Line admit to favorites among so many genres? “I love movies, period, and I like a lot of genres,” he hedges, explaining that his 13 early years as a studio executive had much to do with such a broad embrace. Furthermore, he loves changing genres. “For me, it keeps things exciting and fresh.”

De Line formed the “first iteration” of De Line Pictures when he began his production deal at Paramount. “I guess the second iteration came about three-and-a-half years ago when I moved to Warner Bros.”

Which brings us to I Love You, Man, directed by John Hamburg and written by Hamburg and Larry Levin, from Levin’s story. The film’s journey to the screen was a little rockier than De Line’s smooth Hollywood ride. The twisty notion of a Warner Bros. producer delivering a Paramount-DreamWorks film happened because the movie was first set up in 1998 at Paramount, where De Line began his production deal and had just discovered the project.

“As soon as I had the deal I went to [talent agency] Endeavor looking for properties. I sat with a bunch of agents, including Tom Strickler. He told me he had just talked with Larry Levin, who wrote the original I Love You, Man story. Tom tells me the premise, maybe two sentences and something like ‘a guy in his 30s needs to find a new best friend. It’s about male friendship and the intimacy of really bonding.’ And I immediately said ‘I’m sold!’ I used my discretionary fund with Paramount to buy the property.”



And then some speed bumps, including some that can be shared. De Line explains: “Levin wrote the original draft and Hamburg always liked the idea, but it didn’t happen on the Levin draft. Different talent passed through over the years as Hamburg kept circling it. I brought the project to [DreamWorks CEO] Stacey Snider. She had worked with Hamburg in the past, so she made a deal with him for the film and he went ahead and wrote his own version.”
Years after the I Love You, Man idea surfaced when De Line was at Paramount, the producer found himself in business with DreamWorks when Snider finally green-lit the project. This meant, of course, Paramount was on board because the studio for now markets and distributes the DreamWorks movies.

Known as a producer both hands-on and talent-friendly, De Line says that his collaboration with Hamburg was “one of best I’ve ever had. He is so smart and has such a singular voice, a confident voice, so you as producer feel very confident. John’s such a wonderful, straightforward guy—we had a very healthy, enjoyable experience.”

I Love You, Man is one of the canniest comedies to come down the aisle in a long time. And one of the most paradoxical: Although it is full-blown, intermittently gross-out entertainment for the guy masses, it is also emotionally rich, genuine, and unquestionably for girls too.

Much of the film’s success has to do with star Paul Rudd and his sensitive and funny comic turn as an entirely lovable and normal guy who happens to be socially awkward, self-conscious and insecure only when it comes to hangin’ with the dudes. Says De Line, “The film will be a turning point in Paul’s career, but I think both he and [co-star] Jason Segel deliver star turns.”

The film tested well. “From the first time we tested, it was across all four quadrants—older and younger, men and women—and that doesn’t happen very often. I think the film’s success has much to do with its notion of friendship and what that means in your life—for men and for women. We convey how important and enduring friendships are and what we get from them. As part of the friendship equation, we show the female counterparts, that friendship is a universal thing so important in our lives. She [Rashida Jones in the role of Rudd’s fiancée] has so many girlfriends and wants him to have the same experience in his life. So it’s very sweet, very real.”

Sweet, yes, and sometimes naughty. Is De Line worried about the R rating, or might that in fact be a plus, a signal of what audiences are in for? He answers, “I think the rating might be an asset because 17 to 34 are a real target. The rating reflects how people in the film talk and that’s how real people that age talk.”

Does De Line believe the film will travel, considering how important overseas box office has become and how comedies tend to be the most challenged? “I always factor in how a project might fare internationally. And I’m optimistic about I Love You, Man because we have a universal theme and, also, John’s Along Came Polly worked well overseas.”

So how does this “hands-on” producer characterize his involvement in his projects? “I poke my nose into everything,” he confides, with obvious relish. “I’m a producer who finds material and develops it. Maybe it’s an article, a draft of a spec script. I work with the writers, then with a good script try to convince a studio to get on board. A studio will go with just a script or they may want other elements. I’ll then work with the director on casting, finding key cast, scouting locations. All of it. During production I’m often on the set and in the editing room, I give notes. When it gets to the marketing, the studio puts a campaign together and we look at the trailers, TV spots, one-sheets, billboards maybe, and we have a continual dialogue about the artwork.”

As for what’s down “de line,” the producer is moving into a new dimension with 3D CGI animation. Production is already underway on The Guardians of Ga’Hoole at Australia’s Animal Logic, the outfit that was behind Happy Feet. And he’s now casting Green Lantern and developing The Jetsons, a collaboration with Robert Rodriguez, and a 3D live-action/computer-animated version of Yogi Bear.

While De Line and L.A. are forever entwined, he’s more than familiar with life beyond the back lots, freeways and fabled Hollywood lunches. “I’m a bit of a vagabond,” says De Line, who follows his productions around the globe. In 2007, for instance, he spent six months in Australia for his production of Fool’s Gold. He was four months onsite in Morocco and D.C. for Body of Lies and most recently was back and forth between New Mexico and L.A. for the Observe and Report and I Love You, Man shoots.

As De Line also travels the whole complex and formidable journey of a film from development to marketing, one wonders where along the way his decisions are the most critical. “That’s a good question. I think every step is so critical, and all I can do is make the best movie possible. But I’d have to name the director, because he or she has the vision, and the cast is equally important. And the script, of course, because if you don’t have a good script, you won’t have a good movie.”