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Because it's frowned upon for someone to look a reporter in the eyes and say, "Look, I took the job because whether I direct Chinatown or Dunston Checks In, the bank insists that I make the mortgage payment on my Malibu beach house every month," Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants director Ken Kwapis is forced to rationalize his participation in the movie for the LAT:

When Kwapis first read the script, adapted by Delia Ephron and Elizabeth Chandler, he was not aware of the novel on which it was based. Nevertheless, he was interested.

"I felt I could relate to each girl's problems," says Kwapis, who prefers to allow only that he is in his 40s.

"Now clearly I am not a girl, but I found that the thorny emotional issues the girls in the story are dealing with are things I've dealt with or are even still dealing with. I also immediately felt there was an opportunity to have a unique storytelling challenge, to juggle four stories."

Kwapis did stop short of inventing a promotion-friendly anecdote about how he found the emotional truth of the story by totally pigging out on a pint of Chunky Monkey, making it impossible for him to fit into his "traveling pants" for two days.