She has a good friend (Tyne Daly), a good job that she has had "forever," a warm home full of her mother's odd stuff, an eclectic wardrobe and a huge smile. Collaborating with Terruso, the two were able to create a much larger and full story that explore more of who Doris is, where she came from and where she is going.ĭoris Miller, played by Sally Field, has a good life. In Showalter's mind, Doris and the Intern was too short to really show off the character. She is an eccentric and, in a lot of ways, damaged person, but I also saw a great deal that I identified with and I think a lot of other people will, too." "To begin with, there aren't a lot of movies that have an older actress playing the comedic lead role. "The character of Doris and her story were new and different," he says. Fourteen years later he created the television series Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp which featured all of the same cast. He wrote Wet Hot American Summer, which didn't do particularly well in 2001, but has since grown into a cult classic. Doris was a new kind of comedic protagonist with a lot of potential for development." "She develops a crush on a teenage intern and when she realizes that it's unrequited, she steals his bicycle. "It was a very funny, very sweet, offbeat little film about a middle-aged office worker named Doris who marches to the beat of her own drummer," Showalter remembers. Michael Showalter viewed Laura Terruso's film, Doris and the Intern, while he was teaching at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. Hello, My Name is Doris, actually began as an eight-minute short film written and directed by a film student. It's a sweet and wacky coming-of-age story about someone who should have arrived decades earlier. Hello, My Name is Doris is sneaking into theaters this weekend and stars two-time Academy Award-winner Sally Field and New Girl's Max Greenfield.