Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris  burst onto the Hollywood scene with Little Miss Sunshine. Six years later, they’re back with the fantasy film Ruby Sparks, written by and starring Zoe Kazan.

The film centers on a writer, Calvin, played by Paul Dano, who writes about his dream girl, Ruby and somehow brings her to life.  As their relationship has its ups and downs, the writer is tempted to go back and write more stories about Ruby because everything he writes about her becomes real.

The film may sound a bit like the premise of Weird Science and the filmmakers are aware of this.  Dayton says that he and Faris didn’t view the 80’s film before working on Ruby and that he watched it after production was done to make sure there weren’t an unintentional homages and that Ruby Sparks could stand on its own.

Kazan adds that she doesn’t see the comparisons to Science as valid when you view both films. Unlike Science, Ruby is created by Calvin unintentionally by because “his need for her is so great.” And if he set out, on purpose, to create “somebody he could control completely,” then “he would be a sociopath.” Kazan adds that Calvin only begins to try to control the relationship when he feels like he’s losing her and the script looks at the crazy things we’ll do for love.

Kazan say she has also heard comparisons to the Will Farell film Stranger Than Fiction and she doesn’t believe those are valid either.

“That movie is about free will and identity, and ultimately it’s about God,” says Kazan.

Dayton tells io9 that he sees the film more as a romantic comedy that deconstructs the idea of the “perfect woman.”  He acknowledges that Weird Science also does that, but he added that so do a lot of other romantic comedies like What Women Want.

“We thought of it as a genre-bending film,” says Dayton. “I like romantic comedies. Good ones are hard to find, but when they work it’s a really pleasing form. But this clearly was something different, and we liked that it went to a darker place — and that it also explored very real things that happen between people, even though the concept was somewhat fantastic.”

“There were certain traps we had to avoid falling into with the fantasy girl,” adds Faris. “We always said that once she appears in his life, even though she came from a dream, she’s absolutely real and he has to deal with that.” Even when she’s just appearing in his dreams, she’s giving him a hard time and challenging him — and part of why she’s his fantasy is the notion that she challenges him.

Faris went on to add that the movie is an example of magical realism.   “We love the tradition of magical realism, in that life is full of magic and there isn’t a clear line between what is real and what is imagined,” she says.  “We liked the way that this movie speaks about magic, and the way that magic is a part of life. You don’t have to explain any of it. There’s no stardust or lightning bolts, to explain any of it.”

Writer and star Kazan says that the movie was inspired by the story of Pygmalion.  

“I was walking home from work one night and I saw a mannequin ain a trash heap and I thought it was a person — and it scared me, and I sort of flashed to that myth, and that uncanny feeling of thinking something is real when it’s not, and woke up the next morning with the seeds of this in my brain. So it’s a lot of thought distilled into a moment of inspiration,” she says.