Producer Barry Rosen said , " We was very lucky that [ Vandernoot and Kirsch ] was so human @-@ grounded , so we could really play off of them and the way they looked at things that [ Paul ] went through . They was also able to get into real @-@ life situations , romances , getting in trouble , jealousies 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 .