The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants comes to life on the big screen June 1st, but don't let the title fool you. The film isn't really about pants. The Warner Brothers adaptation of Ann Brashares' popular novel depicts the tale of four childhood friends who are about to be separated for the first time and plan to stay connected through a pair of jeans.
According to the stars of the film, Alexis Bledel (Gilmore Girls), Amber Tamblyn (Joan of Arcadia), America Ferrera (Real Women Have Curves), and Blake Lively, this is not just a movie that will only appeal to young girls.
"It's about real people, real issues that people have dealt with over time. All these issues are timeless and they are not issues that just girls deal with. Men and women deal with these things," Lively said.
"Are we selling it from the point that it's not a chick flick? Is that what we're doing?" Tamblyn jokingly said to Lively as she walked into the interview.
"I have some friends I've known my whole life and we have been through a lot together. A lot of experiences. For them to see a movie like this in this kind of format is pretty intense for young women. I think even for guys we're not dealing with girly issues. It's not about the first time we got our period where a guy has to f****** cringe and run for his life. There are real issues about sexuality and fitting into family, dealing with family. All things like that. It doesn't matter if you're a guy or girl. If you don't feel that you're not human. Those are all human developments," Tamblyn said.
The film cleverly interweaves between the four main characters and focuses on the separate issues at hand.
Bledel plays Lena, a girl uncertain of herself and going to visit her grandparents in Greece for the summer. Tamblyn portrays Tibby, a negative and cynical teen who is befriended by a young cancer patient. Ferrera plays Carmen, who is going to spend the summer with her alienated Dad and learns a hurtful secret. Lively, who makes her film debut, is Bridget, an over confident and beautiful athlete who goes to soccer camp in Mexico for the summer.
Before the girls leave for their summer excursions, they find a pair of secondhand jeans from a vintage store that fit each girl perfectly although they are different sizes. They decide to use the jeans as a way of staying in touch while they are apart. Each girl will wear the pants for one week and then send it to the next with a letter describing the experiences she had while wearing them.
In the beginning, they see the jeans as a way of staying united and as the strength they need to get though the difficult times ahead.
"You don't get to understand until you see the movie, which is sad, but it's not a story about pants at all. The pants kind of disappear and at the end, the narration, we say, "With or without pants, this would have happened to us anyway." It wasn't the pants," Ferrera said.
Bledel elaborates, "It's ultimately an object that only has meaning if people give it that meaning. So for these four girls it was a symbol of their connection and they wanted to stay connected when they were apart. It's a nice idea for young people to know that can keep people in their lives if they choose so."
While the girls made it clear this film is not entirely "a chick flick", they hope the audience won't be scared off by the title.
"'Sisterhood of Traveling Pants?' What the heck does that mean? It's going to be about gumdrops and like shopping sprees and like dancing pants. That's what I thought. There was no way I was going to read this stupid script even though I hadn't done anything else," Lively laughed.
"Exactly like Blake said, my agent was like, 'Oh, there's this script called the 'The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.' Why don't you take a look at it?' It sat on my desk for months. 'Have you read it?' I'm like, 'I'll get to it'. And then I finally did and begrudgingly so. But halfway through I was just like wow. This is great. I didn't expect this. I didn't expect to care about these characters or for this story about teenagers to have this complexity," Ferrera said.
"I'm just hoping that the title doesn't make people go 'Oh God, I'm not watching that,' because I think people will be pleasantly surprised with what they find," Ferrera continued.
