Doing very well in limited release in their debut weekends are the independent films The Ghost Writer and The Good Guy. First, the Roman Polanski directed film The Ghost Writer starring Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, Olivia Williams, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Hutton and Eli Wallach earned an impressive $44,750 on each of the four theaters that the film was shown in for an opening weekend total of $179,000. Also doing well in limited release was the Manhattan based romantic drama The Good Guy featuring former Gilmore Girls star Alexis Bledel, Scott Porter and Bryan Greenberg. The movie, which had an edge on the competition by opening Wednesday before the weekend was shown in only nine theaters and earned $4,022 per theater for a total of $36,200 in its debut week.

That’s so great! Go check out The Good Guy if you haven’t seen it yet.

Since August 2007, Main Street has followed Wall Street’s escapades with not-exactly-checked outrage. Even though most of us aren’t exactly sure what credit default swaps are, we know they’re bad, led to a financial crisis and somehow brought down the entire country of Greece. So hedge funder-turned-director Julio DePietro’s timing for his new movie, “The Good Guy,” which flits between the bedroom and a Wall Street firm’s trading floor, is particularly fortuitous. The movie comes out tomorrow and brings together Alexis Bledel (”Gilmore Girls,” “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”), Scott Porter (”Friday Night Lights”) and Bryan Greenberg (”One Tree Hill,” “How to Make It in America”). Speakeasy caught up with Bledel, Greenberg and DePietro to chat about the film.

The Wall Street Journal: In “Postgrad,” your character moves to New York for her boyfriend, and in “The Good Guy,” she ends up staying for him, potentially abandoning a great career move. Why?

Bledel: In “Postgrad,” my character Ryden can be a career woman and she can have a relationship, but she’s been inconsiderate. She realizes she loves [Zach Gilford's character] at that point in her life and needs to go explore that further. Beth, my character in “The Good Guy,” is romantic and because she has this ideal, I think that has her feeling sort of trapped. I think it depends on whether women have it all.

OK, here’s an example. Taylor Swift has been getting some backlash recently because she mostly writes about waiting for true love at 15. Whereas, Beyonce, at that age, was writing about owning her own house and being independent. Do you think the two can be reconciled?

I think everyone wants to be swept away. It kind of dampens the fun and emotion of [being in love] to think about the realistic repercussions about what their life might do to alter yours. It’s good to walk a fine line. When you’re a 15 year-old you don’t really know yet. Taylor Swift and Beyonce are two different artists with two different priorities. And it’s good for girls to have both as examples.

You are diplomatic.

I am very diplomatic.

Do you have any moratoriums on the type of guys you’ll date as a result of this movie? i.e., no finance guys?

I’m pretty open minded. To me it’s more romantic to think that it’s possible to meet people from any walk of life. You might connect with them. I don’t think that I have a type.

What’s next for you? I heard rumors of a “Gilmore Girls” movie. Can you confirm or deny?

I just finished a film called “Conspirators,” which was directed by Robert Redford. I haven’t read anything about a “Gilmore Girls” movie. I really liked the way they wrapped up our story in the finale. They brought it full circle.

It’s only fitting that “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” star Alexis Bledel is wearing a stylish salmon-colored dress for an interview rather than blue jeans. After all, the pretty, blue-eyed Houston native is no longer a teen.

Bledel, 28, is all grown up. Following a seven-year run on the popular TV series “Gilmore Girls,” playing a precocious teenager and the “Traveling Pants” adventures aimed at the high school crowd, she matriculated to the working world in “Post Grad” last year.

Now, in the independent pseudo-romantic comedy “The Good Guy,” she’s a full-fledged working Manhattanite with a good job, a place of her own and independence.

Then she meets a guy named Tommy (Scott Porter), who initially seems like ideal boyfriend material. He’s good looking. He’s smart. He has a high-paying job on Wall Street, where he is a hotshot hedge fund manager.

(It should be noted that “The Good Guy” was made just as the financial markets were starting to collapse, and though some adjustments were made in the script to reflect the financial crisis, the film has somewhat of a nostalgic, pre-recession feel to it.)

Complications arise when Beth meets Tommy’s handsome co-worker, Daniel (Bryan Greenberg). Daniel is less worldly and savvy than Tommy, but he also seems to be more in tune with Beth’s emotional needs and interests.

Bledel, her long brown hair swept back in a tight bun, says she can relate in some ways to her character. As a transplanted New Yorker, she is aware of the struggles young women face there, balancing career and relationships.

“It’s a comment of sort on modern life, if not modern love,” she says of the film, written and directed by first time filmmaker Julio DePietro.

“There are a lot of little moments in it that feel more realistic than your average movie with a romantic storyline,” she adds.

For starters, Tommy is a sociopath, carrying on relationships with multiple women simultaneously while pretending to be monogamous with each of them. It’s only a matter of time before Beth discovers Tommy’s true colors. In the meantime, she develops a friendship with kindhearted Daniel, who shares her fondness for reading and traveling.

Once she finds out about Tommy’s infidelity, Beth doesn’t lash out. Instead, she simply tells him, “I feel sorry for you.”

DePietro says Bledel had the hardest job in the movie, having to first sell a budding romance with Tommy; developing an attraction with Daniel, then convincing people she had the integrity not to act on the new romance until she discovered Tommy’s lies.

“It’s a lot to ask somebody to do in 90 minutes but she did it,” compliments DePietro, who worked at an investment firm before turning to filmmaking.

Bledel, who attended NYU Film School, made her television debut in the critically acclaimed series “Gilmore Girls,” a dramedy about a close-knit relationship between a single mother and a savvy daughter. She played Rory Gilmore for seven seasons, earning kudos for her depiction of a modern teen, including two Teen Choice Awards.

She made her feature film debut in 2002 in Disney’s “Tuck Everlasting,” in which she played a free-spirited teen trapped in the repressed Victorian household.

Starring alongside America Ferrara, Blake Lively and Amber Tamblyn, she embarked on “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” and its sequel. Both movies, depicting the adventures of four friends who despite their various body types share a magical pair of jeans, were box office hits. Her role as the sweet but independent-minded Lena only boosted her profile with young women, who saw her as a role model.

Bledel, though, insists she’s hung up her “Traveling Pants” for good.

Bledel’s next move is to step back in time for Robert Redford’s historical drama, “The Conspirator,” based on the true story about the only woman arrested in the plot to kill President Abraham Lincoln. In it, she plays Sarah Weston, wife of the attorney (James McAvoy) appointed to represent accused conspirator Mary Surratt, played by Robin Wright.

Alexis is wearing a cute dress off the rack at H&M and we got her to talk about modern relationships, why women pick guys who are maybe too much in charge and how she enjoyed that fact that the film is very “real”, even including a romantic love scene break to reach for a condom!

Alexis verified there will be no more “Traveling Pants” films and we talked about her very different upcoming role as a young woman living in the 1800’s in The Conspirator.

Q: Tommy and Daniel are almost polar opposites as guy types. Why do you think Beth originally goes for Tommy?

Alexis: At the beginning she has a pretty clear idea in her head about what she’s looking for in a man. I think when she meets Tommy he’s got everything she’s looking for and she’s really happy about that and she’s falling for him. But she can’t quite see (the real) him because of this ideal that she has.

So when she meets Daniel he’s probably got none of the things that she’s looking for. At first she doesn’t know what to make of him. I don’t think she meets a lot of guys like him so I think she’s really curious and as they develop a friendship she can’t figure him out. She wants to know more and that’s kind of how they start to get close.

Q: In this film, Scott Porter’s character Tommy sure isn’t who we think he is. Do you think we should end up feeling sorry for him as your character Beth does?

Alexis: I don’t think that I’ve ever actually said to someone, ‘I feel sorry for you.’ And at that point I think she’s wanting to hurt him. I think she’s trying not to be unkind. Maybe there’s nothing left to say at that point and that’s just what comes out.

So it was really an interesting scene, I’m not one to tell people what they should feel. I think you should feel whatever you feel at that point, after watching the film.

Q: Beth was so excited to get to go to Italy and disappointed when her trip falls through. Is there any place that you, Ms. “Traveling Pants” is dying to go?

Alexis: (she laughs) I’d love to sail around the Mediterranean. That would be nice. (In the film), I think it’s also a comment on modern life, if not modern love. Everybody has these things that they would like to do but work or life or family or whatever it is gets in the way. Those things exist. Those things inspire us, just as love does but they’re just things that we want to do. Sometimes a lot of people don’t get to but I think it’s nice to mention them because that adds and informs you a little bit about who she is as a character.

Q: Do you feel that Beth is just living her life according to Tommy’s schedule? Why wasn’t he ever living on her schedule?

Alexis: I think that’s just Tommy. That’s kind of his way of doing things. He likes to keep people at arm’s length and especially people he’s dating. He likes to keep people guessing because that probably gives him the control. In Beth’s mind, maybe that’s a part of her ideal man, that he is an anchor, that he gives her life some stability.

And maybe in a different kind of relationship she might discover that she could have more in her life like travel and other things if she were with a different kind of person. She’s trapped by her relationship.

Q: But yet, when she figures him out, she drops him just like that so she’s strong.

Alexis: Yeah, and I think that’s a New York woman, too.

Q: The film is pretty “real” about modern relationships. They include the moment when Beth reaches for a condom, adding some reality.

Alexis: I liked that part of the scene because it just adds a realistic [element]. Not an embarrassment but an awkwardness that happens. I mean there were a lot of little moments in the film that felt more realistic than in your average movie, a movie with a romantic storyline. That was one of them.

Q: Would you go back to TV or do a big studio film?

Alexis: Yeah. I’m open. There are great films made through studios and independently and great characters on television. I’m not really confined to one sort of medium. I’m just looking for interesting characters and good stories to do.

Q: Your character in The Good Guy is a very modern young woman but you just finished playing a woman living in the 1800’s; Sarah Weston who is caught up in the conspiracy to kill President Abraham Lincoln. Was that role a challenge? How did you prepare for it?

Alexis: Well, I was mostly a love interest but there were a lot of questions that I had about social propriety and certain manners that I thought I should have because I play Mary Surratt’s defense lawyer’s love interest. She’s from the north and she’s educated and I wanted her to be a contrast between her and this other nurse who was being accused.

But it was a story that I had not heard and so it was fascinating for me because most people are taught that John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln and as it turns out there were a lot of conspirators involved in his murder and Mary Surratt was accused as one of them. But she ran a boarding house where they conspired and it’s about her trial and how it was completely unconstitutional.

Alexis Bledel has a lot on her plate, but ‘Gilmore Girl’ fans will be happy to hear that she won’t rule out a movie adaptation. She chatted with PopEater about that possibility, and how the show kept her out of trouble while the rest of young-and-beautiful Hollywood was out in the clubs.

She also talked about her new movie ‘The Good Guy’ (out Friday), the occasional ‘Sisterhood’ reunion and what it was like working with one of Hollywood’s most handsome men, Robert Redford.

Would you bring back Rory and do a ‘Gilmore Girls’ movie?
I don’t know. I was really happy with the way they wrapped up the series in the finale and I thought they brought the story full circle. It was very satisfying for me. I don’t know what the story would be, but I would be curious to find out what it would be.

How come I never saw any photos of you drunk in clubs? How did you avoid the pitfalls?
Fatigue. I was working so many hours on that show. We worked really long hours, and I moved to LA without knowing anyone so the people you saw on the show were the people I knew. There wasn’t much clubbing going on.


Still, after the show finished?
I do go out and blow off steam but I don’t seek attention when I’m doing it. You can’t really relax and have a good time when you’re being photographed, in my mind. That kind of kills the fun for me. I go to places where that doesn’t happen.

So ‘The Good Guy’ is about dating good guys and bad guys. Do you date good guys or bad guys?
Um, I don’t know. Mostly good guys I think.

Are you attracted to bad boys?
Not if I’m aware of it… I don’t know. It’s so funny to try to define people as good or bad. I know that’s the theme of the film but no, not really. I’ve been pretty lucky to date so many nice guys.

I mean the too nice guys. Do you ignore them?
It’s nice when someone is a nice guy but he has to have something that’s complicated, not too much (complication).

You studied at NYU. Any desire to go back and finish?
Yes, I’ve kind of taken a few classes in the past year or so. I don’t know if the goal is to finish the degree. I don’t think I would finish a film degree, but I really love taking classes just to exercise my brain a bit because you do so much of one type of work and you learn a lot about it but maybe not so much about other things, so I’m really kind of informing myself on other subjects.

When you first studied you weren’t famous and now you are. Are you treated differently?
What’s great is the students are so focused on getting their studies done and have enough going on in their lives; they’re not really concerned about me too much. So it works out alright.

So that must be a welcome change from LA?
Yeah, I feel a huge difference there. There’s so much of everything in NY. You don’t feel the fixation on the entertainment industry like you do in LA at all. Unless you seek it out, you’re not going to be bombarded with it or have it constantly brought up during the day.

You modeled while still in high school. How did you not get an eating disorder?
I had my head on pretty straight from an early age when it came to that. I noticed that that was an issue. Often they told me to lose a couple of inches around the hips and I would say no, ‘I’m a teenager, I’m not going to do that, and it’s not healthy for me.’ The thing was I was getting jobs and I was going to school and I couldn’t have done more jobs because of school so why would I lose weight for jobs that I couldn’t even do. It didn’t add up.

Ever do another TV series?
I’m not looking for it immediately, but I don’t rule it out. There are so many great shows on right now.

You just did a movie directed by Robert Redford, ‘The Conspirator.’ Were you completely intimidated or are you too young?
I think I’m too young.

Your mum must have died when you told her about it.
Yeah basically, but I was quite nervous every day on set because I wanted to do a good job. I wasn’t the most important character and I wanted to be sure I was doing everything right.

So did you offer to fetch him coffee?
(Laughs) No, he is so cool. He’s Robert Redford and everything you expect that goes along with that, but at the same time he’s really down to earth and easy to have a chat with.

You’re good friends with America Ferrera. Did you console her after ‘Ugly Betty’ was cancelled?
No, I haven’t had the chance to speak to her yet. We’ve been playing phone tag.

You’re friends with Amber Tamblyn too.
Yeah I’m friends with all three girls. We’ve all stayed in touch. We all live in New York or at least I live there some of the time.

Do the four of you ever get together?
It’s happened once or twice.

If a 12-year-old girl saw that she’d have a heart attack.
We laugh about it because we really can’t go out in public.

What would people be surprised to know about you?
Oh God, I don’t know. I feel like I’ve said so much at this point. I seem so uninteresting to myself. I’m not really clear on the way I’m perceived.

Alexis Bledel left TV after Gilmore Girls to forge a new career on the big screen with the hit Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants films.

Now she’s found herself caught between two hunks in The Good Guy. Parade.com’s Jeanne Wolf discovered Bledel’s own take on finding that elusive man of her dreams.

Love isn’t always a many splendored thing.
“The Good Guy does start out with my character having this kind of ideal fantasy of romance that I think we’re encouraged to have in movies — you know, those sweeping generalizations about the power of love and how fantastic it can be. But she gets a wake-up call that kind of brings that down to Earth. Being in love is such a complex thing because when a girl falls for a guy she wants to be swept away and doesn’t want to have to think about all the realistic possibilities. But you have to walk the line and be ready to make mistakes in relationships.”

She’s made some herself.
“Sure I have. I think everybody is disappointed sometimes. I think everyone has a different perspective, a different point of view in terms of what they’re looking for. I try to just be in tune with what is right for me. Sometimes you’re right about a guy, and sometimes you’re wrong. It’s like Vegas kind of. But that’s real life.”

And so is her safe-sex love scene.
“We almost never see people dealing with a condom in a romantic moment, even though it’s a reality. I wonder why that is. I liked that scene because it sets a realistic tone. It’s not about embarrassment, but like the awkwardness that happens, especially if you’re with a guy for the first time. Actually, there are a lot of little moments in The Good Guy that felt sort of more realistic than your average romantic story.”

Not letting fans guide her career.
“I don’t read a lot of fan mail because some of it is a little strange. That was especially true when I was doing Gilmore Girls. I’m conscious of what people’s expectations are, what a fan would like or dislike. But I think filmmakers worry about that a lot more than actors do. You need to be attracted to a role or the chance to work with a director or a script and not what the audience is going to think. At least that’s the way I approach it.”

The best part of making movies.
“There’s something really interesting about developing a character over time when you’re doing a film. When you’re doing a TV series like Gilmore Girls, it always seems to be a surprise. You get the scripts right before you start shooting the next day. You never know what’s coming next. I really, like, kind of having the whole story mapped out in a movie, being able to kind of know what I’m going to do with each scene and where my character is going to end up. But on the other hand, there’s something nice about surprises, too.”

The shy kid who became a star.
“It might seem surprising but I was a pretty bashful kid. A lot of actors are shy, as it turns out. I think acting is an outlet for people to express themselves in a way they probably don’t in their real lives. I did some community theater when I was younger and I thought it was utterly terrifying just to go out on the stage. But, then, once you get over that absolute fear, it’s kind of exhilarating.”

Why you don’t see her on TMZ.
“I don’t have a secret. I can think of a lot of young actors that don’t end up in the tabloids very often, if at all. I think it just depends on how much attention you want and how much you let that influence your lifestyle.”

She’d rather party in the Big Apple.
“I go out more in New York than I do in L.A. because there seems to be more to do there for me. The toughest part of L.A. used to be driving because I was not a good driver, in fact, I was terrible. But I’ve calmed down a bit. I decided to be better.”

Imagine this—a Gilmore Girls movie!

It may not be in the works right now, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen some day.

In fact, Alexis Bledel, who played Rory opposite Lauren Graham on the hit drama series, says she’s kinda open to it…

“I don’t know what story is left to tell,” Bledel, now 28 told me yesterday during a chat at the Four Seasons Hotel. “But I’d very curious to read a script.”

Wouldn’t Rory be a mother by now?

“Oh my god—a baby bump! Could you imagine,” Bledel said with a laugh. “I actually always thought they were going to do that in the series. Since Lorelai got pregnant early, I thought my character was supposed to get pregnant early because she had all these boyfriends. Rory always had boyfriends.”

And speaking of boyfriends, Bledel stars in the upcoming flick The Good Guy as a young New Yorker who finds out the love of her life (Scott Porter) is, well, a cheating douchebag.

Bledel said she’s never dated someone similar, explaining that her love life is “not as exciting as the movie.”
The Good Guy, Alexis Bledel, Scott Porter Roadside Attractions

She just wrapped The Conspirator, a Robert Redford-directed, post-Civil War period piece about Mary Surrat, the only woman among the eight people arrested and charged with conspiring to assassinate President Lincoln along with his vice president and secretary of state.

Bledel would love to do an action movie someday. “I’m sporty,” she smiled. “But even if I’m not the action hero, I could be like one of the techies.”

And she’s been thinking about theater, too. “I don’t know that I see myself belting one out on stage, like singing on Broadway,” Bledel said. “But I think a dramatic play would be really cool.”

Gilmore Girls: The Play anyone?

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These days Alexis Bledel is trying her hand at being a film star and stepping away from television after seven years on the hit WB-turned-CW show Gilmore Girls. There she literally grew up before audience’s eyes as the bookish but fast-talking Rory who experienced first love, academic success, heartbreak, and even a spot of legal trouble. Now, though, she is just looking for more “adult” roles, which is why she took the part of Beth, a Manhattanite stuck between two suitors in Julio DePietro’s directorial debut, The Good Guy.

“That’s all I can really do [to break out of Rory's shadow], and try to find variety…I just try to find roles that seem interesting and entertaining,” Bledel shrugs nonchalantly at the press junket for The Good Guy.

But so far her film characters aren’t too far a stretch from Rory. In The Good Guy, Bledel’s character is a New York professional who has just ended a relationship with a married man and entered into a new one with a sweet-charming Wall Street guy (Friday Night Light’s Scott Porter). She is an avid reader and partakes in a book club where they read classics like “Lolita.” More importantly, though, she finds herself losing trust in her big league boyfriend and being pulled toward a secretive and quiet fellow reader (played by Bryan Greenberg).

And Bledel also just worked with Robert Redford, James McAvoy, and Robin Wright in a film about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln due out later in the year, called The Conspirator. In that film she portrays the girlfriend of the attorney (McAvoy) who defends a woman falsely accused of aiding in the planning of the assassination. Asking about that Bledel’s eyes widen and she gets animated: “It was awesome! I love period pieces!”

Bledel admits that she’s “not looking for [another series] right now…I would love to do a psychological thriller; I have one that I’m helping develop right now.” Bledel, who went to NYU for a year to study writing and directing, says she would like to step behind the camera as a producer but “I think I need to learn a little bit more about [it] first.”

The Good Guy opens on February 19.

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