‘Fools Rush In’ producer remembers Matthew Perry: ‘Sweet and genuine’

nypost.com:

Matthew Perry played a slightly fictionalized version of veteran Hollywood producer Doug Draizin in “Fools Rush In,” Perry’s first big-screen movie.So it was sad that Draizin, who produced the 1997 film with Michael McDonnell — a labor of love that took 10 years — was at the UCLA football game in LA with his son when he heard the news about Perry’s death.“We’re at the football game and my son looks at me and goes, ‘Matt Perry just died,'” Draizin told The Post. “The irony of it is [that] my son is the reason we made ‘Fools Rush In.’ It was about his birth.

That’s the reason how this movie organically got made.”Perry starred in “Fools Rush In” as Alex Whitman, who’s overseeing the construction of a nightclub in Las Vegas and has a one-night stand with Isabel Fuentes (Salma Hayek) — who shows up on his doorstop three months later to tell him she’s pregnant with his child.

Isabel wants Alex to meet her large family without them knowing he’s the expectant father. It’s a true story, other than the name changes. (Isabel was named Anna Maria in real life; Draizin and Anna Maria eventually got divorced after having a son and two daughters.)“I realized it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and we went and got married that night [in a Las Vegas chapel],” Draizin said. “And then the realization of having a baby in six months with somebody I didn’t know, especially coming from completely different sides of the spectrum — a Jew from New York and [Anna Maria] from a small town in Nevada …”Draizin said that Perry really wanted to get the role right.“When I first met Matthew for him to do the movie we really got along,” Draizin said. “He said to me, ‘If I do this movie, I want to do you proud.’ And I thought that was very sweet.“We.