(Courtesy of Sony Pictures)
Nicholas Sparks knows how to tug at a woman’s heart. The author is king of romantic love stories and six of his book titles have been remade for on-screen theatrical adaptations. “Dear John” is his most recent story to be released into theaters.
Savannah, a college girl (played by Amanda Seyfried) and John, a soldier (Channing Tatum), fall in love over the summer and their relationship is tested when John is sent to war. The two write letters back and forth with hope they will reunite to find the same bond.
Stars of “Dear John,” Tatum and Seyfried, give some insight on the movie.
Q: How do you think this relates to college students? Do you think this will identify with people?
Tatum: I hope so. I think that this is about that first love that you have. I hope people think of their first loves. It’s really important once you find someone that you care about to really take care of them and hold on to them as hard as you possibly can.
Seyfried: College-aged kids are finding each other and it’s that whole challenge of actually realizing that this is really the person that you’re going to spend the rest of your life with. In our story they met that young, it happens and it’s realistic, so that love can thrive if you let it.
Q: How do you feel about playing a representative role and how has it had an impact on you?
Tatum: It for sure had an impact on me. It really wasn’t a representation of a real soldier in real life but “Stop Loss” was and I’ve gotten to know a lot of soldiers and some of them are my best friends now. This is my third soldier role now. It’s in no way shape or form in my head at all that what I do makes me understand a soldier, because I don’t think me or anybody else that is not in the armed forces will ever know what it’s like to be a soldier.
Seyfried: Now, I really appreciate the sacrifices they are making, as well as leaving their loved ones — that’s a whole other story. Not only are you risking your life, but you’re risking what you have here in the United States.
Q: What kinds of goals do you set when you’re choosing a new project to work on?
Tatum: You try every time that you read a script; you want to push yourself. You want to stretch and do something different. It’s kind of hard because as soon as you do a movie, if someone did a dance movie, every single movie on the planet gets sent to you. You’re like, ‘Gosh, I can’t do dance movies the rest of my career.’
Seyfried: It always has to be something different than the last one.
Q: Do you feel the ending will disappoint people or will they be satisfied?
Tatum: I’m very, very satisfied with the end of the film. It’s just really real and a little different than a lot of [Nicholas Sparks’] other books. We just, I think, took it a little step farther and added a little more hope at the end. We added another page…I think we’ve done the ending of the movie in a way that doesn’t change the book and we give you a little more hope than maybe the book might have had.
Q: What makes “Dear John” stand out against this genre of romantic war drama?
Tatum: I hope that people don’t think that it’s about war. I really don’t want people thinking that they’re going to go in and have another depressing war movie on their hands. This is a love story between two kids in love for the very first time and it’s that first love that you can’t get right.
Seyfried: Yes, it’s a character study of the two of them and how they dealt the fact that they were in love and they couldn’t control their environment at all.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Sara Handing at Sara.handing@colorado.edu.
