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Director Marc Webb used a wedding toast written by Oscar-winning screenwriter Alvin Sargent to anchor his film The Only Living Boy in New York.Niko Tavernise

Marc Webb had wanted to direct The Only Living Boy In New York since before his 2009 breakout feature,(500) Days of Summer. But when he finally had the clout to make it happen, there was something missing.

"I want to hold the theme of the movie in my hand as I'm moving forward and I couldn't quite define it for this movie," Webb recently said over the phone from Los Angeles.

Heavily influenced by The Graduate and the romance of Woody Allen's New York, The Only Living Boy In New York is a coming-of-age story of a bookish young man in his 20s who falls for a gorgeous older woman – who is having an affair with his father. In other words, it's familiar territory. Still, the crux of it eluded Webb. In need of help, he turned to Alvin Sargent, a two-time Academy Award winner for his screenplays for Julia and Ordinary People and who Webb had worked with on The Amazing Spider-Man. Sargent, now in his 90s, hardly ever writes professionally any more, but perhaps he could offer some assistance.

Review: The Only Living Boy In New York lacks the magic it strives for

Webb called and asked Sargent to write a wedding toast. The director saw it as the perfect chance to work a thesis into the film.

"He said absolutely not," Webb recalled. "The next morning at five o'clock he sent me this toast." It appears in the movie word for word.

It happens in an otherwise throwaway scene. Two of the main characters are attending a wedding when a drunken relative grabs the microphone to speak his piece.

"You're expecting this guy to ruin the wedding and he ends up saying something kind of beautiful and compassionate," Webb said. "He finds the beauty without endorsing something overly sentimental."

The speech begins with a cynical view of love, of how the happiness of this day cannot last. Everyone in the room is horrified. But as the man goes on, he talks about how the inevitable hardships and heartbreaks of falling in love are an inevitable part of the experience, and we will be better for them.

"To me, it becomes the crux of the movie in a very real way," Webb said.

Viewers may respond to it differently, of course. For some, it will be profound, as it is to Webb. For others, it will be one more clichéd wedding speech – something romantic dramas have given moviegoers plenty of already.

The same will be true of the film itself, although considering its faults, most people will likely find it doesn't move them the way the films it references – and is trying to be – once did.

The movie doesn't even have the emotional intensity of Webb's earlier work. That may have something to do with how the director, now in his early 40s, has seen his view of romance change.

"I thought of romance as a kind of simplicity when I was 22 years old," he said. "You think you're going to meet a woman and everything is going to fall into place. As you get older, you realize that those things maybe need to happen in reverse order. But it doesn't make it any less beautiful."

In The Only Living Boy In New York, Webb has certainly put all the pieces in to place. He has a script by Allan Loeb. He has a cast that includes Jeff Bridges, Pierce Brosnan, Callum Turner, Kate Beckinsale and Cynthia Nixon. He has a love triangle. He has a glimmering idealist's view of New York.

It's all right there. But as most of us realize by our 40s, even when you have most of what once stirred your heart, it's still not enough to make you fall in love.

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