 Producer Barry Rosen said , " We were very lucky that [ Vandernoot and Kirsch ] were so human @-@ grounded , so we could really play off of them and the way they looked at things that [ Paul ] went through . They were also able to get into real @-@ life situations , romances , getting in trouble , <unk> and so on . " Although Vandernoot and Kirsch are three years apart in age ( Vandernoot being the older of the two ) , on set Vandernoot treated Kirsch like a young boy , while Kirsch seemed to her like a younger brother because of his youthful appearance . 
