"Anything But Love" is a loving tribute to the beauty and style of movies from the '40s and '50s. Isabel Rose co-wrote and stars in this contemporary tale of a young woman who chases her dream only to find herself torn between the life she desires and the fruition of her lifelong ambition of becoming a singing sensation.
What inspired you to write ?Anything But Love?"
I was raised on the MGM movie musicals from the '40s and '50s.

Every Friday night we would have Shabbat dinner, which is like a traditional Jewish meal. We didn?t go out on Friday nights. After dinner we would all go into the living room. My father had a movie projector and a camera because he?s a professor ? this was before VCRs and home theaters and everything. We would then watch a movie. From the age of 6 to 16 every Friday night of my life I saw a musical.

I really wanted to create a thank you note to my father for giving me such a fun, relatively wholesome, cinematic education and upbringing. That was part of the initial inspiration. That coupled with the fact that I became engaged and my fiancée was transferred to London. I had to give up my creative life in New York and move to London and become a banker?s wife. I was so horrified of that. I was very frightened about giving up my identity. I took the themes that I was struggling with in my own life and I coupled them with my desire to recreate one of those [movie musicals].

Did you actually pack up and move to London?
In my real life, I chose the corporate guy and I did get married and I did move to London.

However, I?m no longer married.

So you move to London, then get divorced, then do the movie?
No, I actually just recently got divorced. I went to London and it rained every day. My husband would run off to work at 7 in the morning, and I didn?t know a soul. I came back to New York just to relieve the monotony and sadness.

I met my best friend, Robert Cary - who ended up writing the film with me and directing it - at the Carlyle to see Eartha Kitt. I flew in from London for this. My husband hated cabaret music and I just wanted to do something I couldn?t do with him. On the way to see Eartha Kitt at the Carlyle, I was in a taxi cab and all of a sudden the whole movie idea came to me. I jumped out of the taxi and ran into the Carlyle. I said, ?Rob, Rob! I think I have an idea for a movie. What do you think of it?? He really liked it and the next morning we started working on it.

I commuted from London for a year to write the script. In my mind I would write my way out of that moment in London ? and I did. I wrote the script in 1998. It took me a year to raise the funds, and finally after you have no idea what ? except that it?s an indie film so you can imagine all the hoops I had to jump through ? I found some people who would help me finance the film, and allow me to star in it, which was another thing that I wanted to do. Everyone thought I was out of my mind, and I probably was.

I said to my husband, ?My movie?s going to get made. I?m moving back to New York. If you want to stay married, I hope you?ll move back with me.? Which is what he said to me two years earlier. ?I?m moving to London. If you want to marry me, you?re moving too.? We came back to New York and I made the movie.

The whole thing was really joyful. We were all really proud of it. Then for one year, I was rejected from every film festival you?ve ever heard of ? and also some that you haven?t heard of. My husband who is a very bottom-line banker was really unenthused by this failure. I continued to push the film, and I also gave birth to our child, and I also wrote three other screenplays with Robert. I also wrote a book, which I just actually sold to Doubleday. I kept myself enormously creatively busy. But after a year, we were walking down the street and he just said, ?You know, Isabel. Somebody has to be the person to tell you this and it?s going to be me. You failed. You?ve achieved nothing in all the years I?ve known you. I don?t know what the hell you?ve been doing.?

He actually had the nerve to say that?
Yes. So I said, "You sound like an idiot banker." Basically he said, "Is your movie in a movie theater?" I said, "No." "Is your book in a bookstore?" I said, "No, not yet." He said, "Honey, I rest my case." I was standing right by that pit at Ground Zero. I just thought, "Life is too short. I believe in myself and I believe in this project. I?m going ahead with it." That was basically the end of the marriage, but it was like an extra special bee sting to my butt that made me jump up and say, "I am going to get this project over the finish line. There is no way the banker is going to have the last word." Basically a year to the day that that conversation took place, my movie got picked up and I sold my book.

PAGE 2:Isabel Rose on Working With Eartha Kitt, Costumes, and Story Ideas