The Notebook turns 20: Director Nick Cassavetes and author Nicholas Sparks reflect on the film's lasting legacy

It's been 20 years since The Notebook first hit theaters, and, as Ryan Gosling's Noah memorably tells Rachel McAdams' Allie in the film, "It still isn't over."

In fact, despite mixed reviews and never cracking higher than No. 4 at the domestic box office, the film would go on to be something of a sleeper hit, finding new life across its runs on VHS, cable, DVD, and Blu-ray. It's now considered a defining romantic film of a generation and continues to find new audiences. A Broadway musical adaptation, which debuted earlier this year, was nominated for three Tony Awards.

Author Nicholas Sparks, whose debut novel of the same name was the source material for this pop culture mainstay, is still tickled by its success. "That's been really fun because, yes, what I remember [from the time] is it was a moderately successful film, but now you look back, and it's iconic," he tells Entertainment Weekly. "It's probably one of the most remembered films from that year. It still stands the test of time."

It's even more of a pleasant surprise for Nick Cassavetes, who almost didn't direct the movie. Sparks' novel was first optioned for film in 1995, prior to its release in 1996. It spent seven years in producing hell, enduring script rewrites and director changes, before finally crossing the desk of a reluctant Cassavetes, who was tapped to do a different film at the time. By his own admission, he only read the Notebook script so that he could "speak intelligently about it" when he turned the studio down.

Those who have seen the movie know it's a legendary tearjerker of a story following an elderly man (James Garner) living in a nursing home with his wife (Gena Rowlands), who has dementia. He spends his days reading her the story of their long love (played out in flashbacks by Gosling and McAdams) so that she'll remember him. When he got to the end of the script, though, Cassavetes wasn't shedding tears — he was laughing because he knew he had to do the movie. "I suspect many people are apple pie type of people, no matter what they say and how cool we talk or what we present, that we're just hoping that we find somebody that understands us and we can relax and spend our lives with them and have that be an ongoing great thing," he says. "So yeah, I definitely stand up for it. A lot of people call it corny, and I'll say, absolutely, it's corny, but you know what? At the same time, love is corny. It just is. I really like the film."

Both Sparks and Cassavetes cite the performances of McAdams and Gosling as being central to their ultimate satisfaction with the film, but even their casting took a winding journey. At one point, Britney Spears and Jessica Biel auditioned for the role of Allie, and Tom Cruise and George Clooney were considered for Noah. And while Cassavetes admits to liking all of those actors, he says he wasn't interested in seeing "an actor that's fallen in love with 10 other actresses [on screen]." "I've seen him do it a million times. Then you get to the point where you're like, oh, look, it's Tom Cruise, falling in love with somebody different this time. It doesn't feel quite as authentic," he says. "And we were lucky to have them at the beginning of their careers. And you really believed it."

Of course, as the story now famously goes, McAdams and Gosling didn't believe it either — at least at first — and did not get along on set. Cassavetes revealed in a 2014 interview with VH1 that the two even had a confrontation one day in which they "started screaming and yelling at each other" but ultimately resolved their grievances. Ten years later, the director says he regrets opening up about that.

"The last time I did an interview on this thing, I spilled the beans on that. I regretted it," he says. "Everyone's like, why are you telling that? I'm like, I don't know. It caught me on a bad day, but if they're around, I apologize to you guys. I shouldn't have spilled the beans."

In a twist that only Hollywood could conjure, the two stars would eventually go on to date from 2005 to 2007. As Cassavetes puts it: "They fell in love and became a wonderful, wonderful, fiery couple. I still think they got lots of respect and love for each other, but in the beginning, it wasn't like that, and it took them a while to get used to each other. But they're both the greatest actors in the world, and some of the things that I asked them to play were so difficult, and there was nothing they couldn't do."

This was true for much of the cast, which was full of "fantastic" veteran actors including Joan Allen, Sam Shepard, Garner, and, of course, Cassavetes' mother, Rowlands. It wasn't the first time mother and son worked together, but it has taken on a bittersweet new meaning for the two in the years since. Cassavetes tells EW that his mother, 94, whose career has spanned nearly seven decades, two Oscar nominations, and one honorary Academy Award, has Alzheimer's disease. "I got my mom to play older Allie, and we spent a lot of time talking about Alzheimer's and wanting to be authentic with it, and now, for the last five years, she's had Alzheimer's," says the director, whose grandmother, actress Lady Rowlands, also had the disease. "She's in full dementia. And it's so crazy — we lived it, she acted it, and now it's on us."

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This calls to mind a particularly funny memory of working on the film with his mother, though. Cassavetes recalls showing the finished cut to studio executives, who returned with the note that they wanted Rowlands to cry more at the end when her character finally remembers who she is and comes back to her love. When the director had to tell his mom they needed to do some light reshoots accordingly, the veteran actress was not pleased. "She said, 'Let me get this straight. We're reshooting because of my performance?'"

"We go to reshoots, and now it's one of those things where mama's pissed and I had asked her, 'Can you do it, mom?' She goes, 'I can do anything,'" he recalls. True to her word, on the very first take, he says, "I promise you, on my father's life, this is true: Teardrops came flying out of her eyes when she saw [Garner], and she burst into tears. And I was like, okay, well, we got that... It's the one time I was in trouble on set."

Besides the memorable performances, Sparks, whose latest book Counting Miracles comes out in September, says the comment he gets the most about the film and novel is how people relate to the story.

"'This is the story of my parents,' or, 'This is the story of my wife and I,' things like that. I've heard that quite a bit over the years, very frequently. And I think that's why this story resonates. I think most families, most people have a personal connection with dementia in some ways," he says. "It speaks to that question of, what if I'm lost? Am I going to be alone? And the answer in The Notebook is no, he's going to love you anyway."

It helps that the film "holds up pretty good" to modern audiences, too. Cassavetes says he got to experience this firsthand a few years back when he took his youngest daughter — who had been "far too cool" to have previously seen it — to a screening of the film as part of a career retrospective for Rowlands. He says he looked over at his daughter during the film to see her "completely busted up." "She couldn't even believe it," he says with a laugh.

Getting reflective for this retrospective, Cassavetes concludes: "Ryan and Rachel have gone on to great careers; they're completely different people than the kids that they were. Mom's got Alzheimer's, [Garner]'s dead, [Shepard]'s dead. It's a different time period now. We probably all made beautiful films that didn't do very well over the years, but this one caught the zeitgeist, and it's a beautiful memory, and I'm happy that people enjoy it. I'm happy that it's out there."

The Notebook is available to own on digital.

You can get more information about Alzheimer's and dementia, find support services, make donations for research efforts, and more at Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Foundation of America, and other sites.