The powering thing behind the movie was to capture the feeling of being alone and going back to Kentucky and getting walloped by a sense of family I hadn't realized was so much in place,

I liked the idea of beginning our movie with death, the place most movies end,

And I'm always surprised at who's there when you fail, ... It's usually not the people you expect to be there. It's easy to have friends when you're winning. And Jerry Maguire was kind of about that. This was about that, but it's like success and failure get trumped by an even bigger issue, which is, 'Are you going to be truly alive, and do you even know what that is?'

Life sends you angels sometimes when you're in need and, in my theory, it's usually never the people you expect to be there, ... They are often gone the people that appear with a piece of advice or something they want to give to you to help you through are generally surprising people and I wanted Kirsten's character to be that.

The entire story of 'Elizabethtown' arrived quickly, ... a tale of love and loss and the discovery of family roots in the aftermath of a very black turn of events in the life of a young shoe designer, Orlando Bloom. It was a story that would start with an ending and end with a beginning and, I hoped, give a sense of what it was to be truly alive.

I love telling stories about people that don't normally get written about. It's a different kind of life here. This is a movie from the heart, and it's a little different from the normal movies you'll see.