Jennifer Garner and Olivia Wilde in Butter |
For 15 years, Laura has relished her high-profile role as the beautiful, loyal helpmate to her affable, artistically gifted husband. But when Bob is pressured to retire and allow someone else a chance at glory, an indignant Laura decides to enter the competition herself.
Brett Hill, Yara Shahidi, Rob Corddry, Alicia Silverstone in Butter |
And that’s not all. Bob’s would-be mistress, bad-girl stripper Brooke (Olivia Wilde) also declares her candidacy, as does his #1 fan, Carol-Ann (Kristen Schaal).
Hugh Jackman in Butter |
Screenwriter Micallef was taken by the butter sculptures he saw at the Iowa State Fair during a post-college road trip. “The butter sculptures were absolutely amazing. They’re life-sized, and they get bigger and better every year, and people take twenty or thirty days to create one. It’s just an incredible process. I thought that would be a great backdrop for a screenplay about ambition and competition,” Micallef states in the press notes.
Yara Shahidi and Oliva Wilde in Butter |
Director Field Smith saw Micallef’s screenplay as being about more than just butter sculpting. “Being British, I guess I was able to bring something of an outsider’s perspective to the world of middle America we portray in the movie. I didn’t want Butter to be a sneering parody, but rather a celebration of that world. We are not satirizing the people of small-town Iowa, nor the world of butter carving, but instead using those characters and their world as a microcosm of the American political landscape right now,” Field Smith said (again, taken from the official press release).