Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a nice, albeit wayyyy too early morning, chat with some of the team behind the comedy ROLE MODELS, which comes out today.
I got the chance to sit down with Seann William Scott, Jane Lynch and director David Wain when they came through Austin for a press tour for their flick. Apparently Paul Rudd was disappeared shortly after being interviewed by Capone and the authorities still refuse to look into my suggestion to search Capone’s basement. We already lost Haley Joel Osment to that horrible dungeon, I’d hate to see Rudd succumb to the same fate.
At any rate, we have an interesting chat about the flick that might have been a tad livelier if it wasn’t so gosh darn early in the morning. Keep in mind while reading this that the interview was done prior to the election. In fact, I was wearing my Snake Plissken T-Shirt which has Kurt Russell’s eye-patched image next to the words “I Don’t Give A F*** About Your President,” which was my voting shirt since the day of the interview was the first day of early voting in Texas.
With that, you should be all set up for the interview! Enjoy!
Quint: Hi, I’m Eric.
David Wain: Hi Eric, good to see you!
Jane Lynch: Hi, Eric.
Quint: It’s good to meet you.
Jane Lynch: Nice to meet you, too, I Don’t Give A Fuck About Your President. (laughs) What’s that from?
Quint: ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK.
Jane Lynch: That’s great!
Quint: Yeah, but early voting starts today, so I figured its my…
Jane Lynch: Your civic duty.
David Wain: Remember that? “I don’t give a fuck about your president.” Remember ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK?
Quint: I do…
[Everyone Laughs]
Jane Lynch: (to David Wain) Did you have that shirt ironed?
David Wain: No.
Jane Lynch: ‘Cause it looks as good as it did… It must be polysester.
David Wain: No, you know what I did? I put it on that lovely suit rack they give you at four star hotels like this one. (laughs)
Quint: Let’s start with the script, when you got it, at what point…
David Wain: Can somebody shut that door, so you can hear us better?
[Seann William Scott gets up and shuts the door to the adjoining room with the publicists and assistants]
Seann William Scott: (to the people in the room) Stop talking! (laughs)
David Wain: Seann is the star of the movie and my intern.
Seann William Scott: And his fluffer.
David Wain: Right now he’s not working on anything, so…
Seann William Scott: I fluff him.
David Wain: … I’m just giving him a hundred bucks a week to clean up after me…
Seann William Scott: Not even a hundred, dude. After taxes…
Quint: I knew Tim Dowling a long time back, met him right after he did GEORGE LUCAS IN LOVE…
David Wain: Yeah, classic.
Quint: … which is hilarious, and he spent a lot of time trying to get features going; I read a lot of his earlier scripts that just never got picked up, so at what point did you get the project? Was it still his and then you guys kind of took it and made it your own or…
David Wain: No, it was far more byzantine than that really. Seann had been attached I think before Tim, is that right?
Seann William Scott: I think it was Tim’s, like that was more the script that he had written and then Paul got on and it went through a process before we got David and that’s when it really went into shape.
Quint: So, how much different was it? I had never read any of his drafts...
David Wain: There was actually intervening writers, but there was numerous writers involved, but essentially in the largest strokes, Tim Dowling created the basic framework of what its about and what the beginning, middle, and end is in a broad stroke and then Paul Rudd actually did his own draft of the script at a certain phase of the development and then after that is when I came on and then that’s when me and Paul Rudd and Ken Marino really sat down and kind of stripped it back to the core and started over with it and really kind of built it particularly for Seann, for Paul, and in fact for Jane and creating a new movie that’s more in our voice.
Quint: You mentioned it last night at the Q and A, where you just decided to go out to everybody who is funny. I know, for instance, when I saw you (Jane) in the trailer it was almost like a stamp of approval. And then the actual film, you get people like Louis CK and Ken Jeong… it’s almost a smorgasbord of the funniest people out there right now.
David Wain: It’s like IT’S A MAD MAD MAD WORLD.
[Everyone Laughs]
Jane Lynch: Yeah, yeah! That’s like one of my favorite movies ever.
David Wain: I’d like to think of this as the CANONBALL RUN of movies.
Seann William Scott: It was true, every time that somebody would come out it was like “Oh my gosh.”
Jane Lynch: “Oh my God it’s Kerri Kenney!”
Quint: Cool, so I guess was that always the intention? To stuff as many funny people as you can into this movie?
David Wain: I’ve never done or thought about doing something any other way. I mean it just seems like…
Quint: I’m sure it’s a comfort zone, too.
David Wain: It’s a comfort zone too to work with people who are sort of in my group that I’ve always worked with and I also just feel like if you are making a comedy, why shouldn’t you get the funniest people to be in every role? It just seems like a fairly logical cause and effect there.
Quint: Sometimes I know that studios will want more of a certain kind of people…
David Wain: More chiseled.
Quint: More underwear models… So, you guys had a certain level of freedom on that.
David Wain: You mean people like Jessica Alba?
Jane Lynch: Did you get to have whoever you wanted in this? Like they didn’t say “Well, let’s try to get this somebody for this part…”
David Wain: It wasn’t at all like “Oh, you want that person? Let’s run their box office numbers.” But they obviously weren’t like “Just cast anyone, we don’t care.” Obviously the producers and the studio were creatively involved in every step, but they… Every part I had to sort of talk to them about, but in large parts they went with my choices.
Quint: That’s good, especially coming out of the indie-comedy world, I’m sure that could have been a really bad horror story if they weren’t onboard.
David Wain: I’m very fortunate and lucky to say that most of my buddies that I’ve been working with since I was 18 years old have all become like somewhat established in one level or another and so they were like “Oh, you can get Kerri Kenney?” and I’m like “Well, yeah…”
[Everyone Laughs]
David Wain: “I can call her, anyway.”
Quint: And you also have another cornerstone of great comedy I think and that’s cursing kids. You have cursing kids, which is like up there with like midgets and monkeys. It adds an automatic star.
Seann William Scott: “Midgets and monkeys…” (laughs)
Quint: It’s true, every movie with a midget or a monkey is better.
David Wain: Only when it started to come out and get reviews online and stuff did I even think of that as a thing we were doing.
Seann William Scott: I didn’t think about that either.
David Wain: There’s this one character and that’s what he is, but I didn’t think of it as like “Oh my God, put cursing kids in there. That’ll make it funny!”
Seann William Scott: I don’t think kids… Chris (Mintz-Plasse) was like eighteen or nineteen and so it’s just Bobb’e (J. Thompson) who it’s like I think while we were doing it we were like “Lets get him to swear more, because it’s so hilarious.” It was just…
Quint: Yeah, just part of what made him funny.
David Wain: In fact after the first preview cut, the swearing all across the board was way over the top. We felt like it was just a little bit distracting and too much.
Jane Lynch: Yeah, you have to use that sparingly.
David Wain: So we had to peel it way, way back. In retrospect, I would have done more on set. I think we all, both in with the script and improvising, we were like “It’s rated R” and got a little lazy and “fuck” just became the default word to use, but…
Seann William Scott: You were actually really good about that, though. I remember on the set, because I always go back to that and I was swearing and you were like “Let’s not swear anymore.”
David Wain: It’s just that every time you say it, it dissipates the time when you want to use it as a shock value or as a joke, but we did a good job, I think. You should see the first cut, there’s twice as much cursing. We just carefully chiseled out a lot of it.
Quint: Yeah, you just pick the ones that are good connectors, like the “Fuck you, Ms. Daisy.”
David Wain: Of course and then we did the TV version, were everyone had to come in and record the TV friendly version of their lines, like “Screw you, Ms. Daisy.”
Quint: Those are awesome by the way. Did you ever see THE BIG LEBOWSKI one?
David Wain: No.
Seann William Scott: No!!! For TV?
Quint: Yeah. They keep every scene, except the ones with nudity like at Jackie Treehorn’s party where there’s a naked girl, but they keep every scene, but they have the actors coming in and I think this is something where they had them come in like years later to actually do it and so you have scenes like the big “This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass” rant…
Seann William Scott: What does he say?
Quint: He says “This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps.”
[Everyone Laughs]
David Wain: No way!
Seann William Scott: That’s pretty awesome.
Jane Lynch: See, that’s fun! I like that.
Quint: It’s great.
David Wain: The classic one to me is DO THE RIGHT THING in that famous scene where he goes to the deli and he’s like “give me some D batteries, D mother fucker, D.” Then it’s like “D mickey ficky, D.”
Quint: (laughs) But, you also made a point last night that I thought was really funny, was how awesomely beat up Seann got in the movie, because it just seemed like every story that came out during the course of the Q and A was like “Yeah and then he really hit me in the balls” or “Yeah, he really did slap me in the face.”
Seann William Scott: Yeah! Bobb’e… Paul was really good at…
Jane Lynch: He blackened your arm.
Seann William Scott: That’s the thing, I remember…
David Wain: Paul’s got a few more features under his belt.
[Everybody Laughs]
Seann William Scott: I remember when he hit me in the balls, I really honestly thought I had just swallowed my own testicles. I remember he walked away and was like “I am so sorry” and he goes “I just thought you would get a better reaction if I really hit you.” I’m like “Dude, I’m a fucking actor, so I could have just tried to make it look like I got hit in the balls.” That’s a dangerous thing!
David Wain: But look how good it looked in the movie.
Seann William Scott: That is true, but I survived it.
Quint: Hey. Pain is temporary, film is forever.
Seann William Scott: (laughs) Exactly! And I think also, too, there are like three other moments where Bobb’e hits me in the face, because I think we realized after the first time it was just so funny and then none of it made it in the film right? It was just one moment, but he just enjoyed it so much. He kept doing it kind of half-assed, which still hurt. There’s that one scene were we are doing a share group…
David Wain: And there was the one were he apologizes to you and there was also the one where it ended in the car where he’s like “Why why why?”
Seann William Scott: Oh that’s right, yeah.
David Wain: There’s a million scenes like that.
Quint: Jane, what about you? When you came on board… I gathered from last night’s conversation that you were able to kind of fill the role pretty instantaneously, because they kind of shaped it for you, did you feel that when you read it or did you…
Jane Lynch: Yeah, I did. I felt like they got me and they knew me and they liked me. It was like all Sally Field over it…
[Everyone Laughs]
Jane Lynch: It was extremely flattering and then to read what they gave me was pretty awesome and it was all on the page.
David Wain: Then again, I think we kept gussying it up as we moved along too. We just kept having fun with it.
Jane Lynch: You started with like “You are here and he’s over here and I don’t know which way is up,” how that doesn’t make any sense, so we kind of heightened and explored that.
Quint: That’s what happens and that’s why it’s great to be able to get so many funny people together, because it’s figuring out those problems is what ends up being the funniest stuff.
Jane Lynch: There’s some and I hope some of it is in the DVD, but with Kerri Kenney and Ken Marino, the heights they took that scene where we were giving them AB Miles as Augie’s next big work. Carrie went on a rampage monologue about it, but at the end of it was just like “I just need some help here.”
[Everyone Laughs]
Jane Lynch: Basically with her motherly duties. AD Miles, and I are sitting there with them saying “Look Miles is going to be Augie’s new big and he’s been at this for a long time” and she does this whole put upon thing, basically for… you know…
David Wain: I forgot about that! I’ve gotta find that (footage).
Jane Lynch: It’s hilarious, she goes “And then he want to wear a cape and he wants me to care about him and basically wants me to take care of him, I need some help here.” You know how people get when you are all freaked out and they are like “We’re going to make your life easier” and they are all like “Well, I need my life made easier.”
David Wain: There’s definitely some great stuff in the dinner scene, too.
Jane Lynch: Oh, I’ll bet. “Not that we were not psyched to have you as our child…”
David Wain: Paul says to her, to the mom, like, “You look like Britney Spears’ younger sister the way you are dressed,” then Kerri gives this look of like…
[Everyone Laughs]
Jane Lynch: She’s flattered by it!
Quint: These days it’s almost kind of necessary to have that kind of stuff for the DVD. I don’t know if this is the case here, but I’ve heard with a lot of comedies, they have intentionally shot more, so they could have…
Seann William Scott: Yeah! AMERICAN PIE 3, it was the weirdest thing, like “We’re going to shoot scenes for the DVD,” like “What? That’s weird.”
David Wain: Judd does that, too.
Jane Lynch: Yeah, Judd does that, too.
David Wain: We didn’t exactly do that, but we shot at least a couple of scenes that we 50% knew probably wouldn’t make it in the film, but knew that it’d at least be something to have for the DVD. There’s a lot of great stuff on the DVD, mind you there’s some great stuff…
Quint: … In the theater, too…
David Wain: Forget the theater… Get the DVD, but the theater… ugh!
Quint: Seann and I were talking earlier about the placement of this movie which is coming out the weekend after the election.
David Wain: That’s right.
Quint: So what are your thoughts about that? Are you nervous? Are you really pulling for a particular candidate now that… Do you want people that are ready to laugh or do you want people that are really depressed?
David Wain: I think it’s a win-win, because no matter who wins, everyone’s going to be ready to shift gears after the election.
Jane Lynch: Oh yeah, and move on. It’s been two years!
David Wain: At least a vacation from following it, so it’s like “How about a fun comedy?”
Jane Lynch: For two years! This is the longest campaign I’ve ever experienced in my life. It’s been at that level for two years.
Quint: It’s crazy.
Jane Lynch: And I follow it like a maniac.
Quint: Yeah, the news is going to be really fucking boring.
Seann William Scott: I missed the last debate, but it looked uneventful. Was it good?
Jane Lynch: It was uneventful, but it just kind of confirmed the differences between the two of them. He’s out of his mind and Obama is pretty sane.
Seann William Scott: Really? Why was McCain out of his mind?
Jane Lynch: McCain was almost twitching. He made his points, but he seemed really erratic crazy person…
Quint: Well, McCain was really strong in the beginning and…
David Wain: And then he just got really angry…
Quint: That was when none of his stuff stuck that he was trying to throw at Obama, so when Obama would counter that or give his argument, they would show reaction shots of McCain making faces, like rolling his eyes and…
Seann William Scott: No way! Really?
Jane Lynch: Deep down he is so… It’s not even deep down, I think it’s on the surface now, he is so pissed off that this young upstart came along and knocked him off the throne and I feel like Hillary felt the same way.
David Wain: I think he’s thinking “How did this happen? I’m John McCain,” but yeah… when I wake up in the middle of the night and watch MSNBC. It’s just always on.
Jane Lynch: I TIVO the entire MSNBC line-up and I love Rachel Maddow. I think she’s doing a great job.
Seann William Scott: I think the Sarah Palin thing is really amazing.
David Wain: We tape MORNING JOE, which is a three hour show, and make sure to watch it. We skip commercials, but…
Jane Lynch: I met him in a restaurant in New York.
David Wain: He’s the coolest guy.
Seann William Scott: Who is that?
David Wain: Joe Scarborough.
Jane Lynch: And he is great. You know he’s a republican, but he’s very fair and he’s funny and…
David Wain: Smart and always inching to the left all of the time.
Quint: Well, it’s kind of a paradigm shift now, like the Republican Party isn’t what it was even ten or fifteen years ago, so I think that’s where all of the support is coming from now.
Jane Lynch: You see people like Joe Scarborough going “I have to take powder from this…”
Quint: And Colin Powell just endorsed Obama.
Jane Lynch: You know a lot of them are saying “He’s never really been one of us.”
David Wain: Oh, God.
Seann William Scott: What was the deal with that?
David Wain: Except for the 8 years…
Seann William Scott: Is there really a video of Sarah Palin cocking a shot gun?
Jane Lynch: Oh yeah.
Seann William Scott: What was that?
Jane Lynch: She’s a hunter.
Kraken: There’s also a video of her shooting an M16.
Seann William Scott: That’s amazing.
Jane Lynch: She was on SNL. I saw the highlights of it.
Seann William Scott: How was it?
Jane Lynch: It was fine. They were kind and did some funny things and…
Seann William Scott: Did Tina come out and play her?
Quint: Yes.
David Wain: I still think she’s a total cunt, but anyways…
Quint: … ROLE MODELS…
[Everyone Laughs]
Quint: “Sarah Palin is a total cunt, but let’s get back to the movie…”
David Wain: You know what I will say about Sarah Palin? This is not even a joke, but I don’t mean her any personal harm or anything like that. I think she’s a perfectly fine person and my biggest genuine, genuine issue with her is how much she has personally contributed to this “Us versus Them” idea in this election. She’s trying to divide up America between the small town…
Jane Lynch: It’s McCarthyism at this point.
David Wain: And it’s demonizing and it’s creating the opposite of inclusion. It’s the opposite of uniting and it’s the opposite of America. It’s the opposite of what our country is about.
Quint: I agree.
Seann William Scott: There are times when I listen to her and I’m like “Oh my goodness, she sounds like a character from FARGO,” just the whole [does a thick accent] “Yeah, you go to a soccer game and you ask one of the soccer moms and, you betchya, they say the economy is not so good, ya’ know?”
David Wain: That reminds me of how much fun it was to make ROLE MODELS.
Jane Lynch: We all chose not to have accents in ROLE MODELS.
Quint: You chose not to go for the Alaskan accent?
Jane Lynch: Right.
David Wain: You know there is a commercial and I don’t know if they are going to run it, but they put together where it’s like “This fall, you have a choice between two people to lead our country” and they show Barack Obama and John McCain and then “But definitely, these guys are not your role models” then it’s a commercial for our movie.
Seann William Scott: No way! Really?
David Wain: And then it shows you going “I’m kind of into politics.”
Seann William Scott: Wait, what was this?
David Wain: It’s just one of the forty commercials they made. I don’t know if they are going to use it.
Seann William Scott: That’s fantastic. That’s a great idea, yeah.
Quint: See, that’s what I was going for the whole time, with all this political small talk!
Jane Lynch: I love it when you (Seann) say you got a boner. That’s my favorite sophomoric term!
Seann William Scott: That’s probably the best compliment I’ve ever heard!
[Everybody Laughs]
David Wain: To me, I think it’s crucial to use the verb “popped,” like “He popped a boner!”
Seann William Scott: “I popped a boner,” yeah.
David Wain: “And then he pops a boner…”
Seann William Scott: We didn’t use “pop” though, why didn’t you tell me that?
David Wain: Um… I’m saving it for another feature.
Seann William Scott: (laughs) Yeah…
David Wain: So anything else my friend?
Quint: I think that’s about all I got.
David Wain: I just want to make sure you get what you want.
Quint: I’ve got what I want. No, it’s…
Seann William Scott: What about you, you said you liked it right?
Quint: Yeah, I saw it twice already.
Seann William Scott: You have already scene it twice?
Quint: Yeah, I saw it at Fantastic Fest and then I saw it last night.
David Wain: Are you excited to have the honor of writing probably the sixth or seventh feature on Ain’t It Cool about this movie?
[Everyone Laughs]
Seann William Scott: I’ve never had a movie to have one good positive response and that website is awesome, though I guess that’d be two now, with you and Harry. Oh there was an earlier one too, before Harry actually. Was that yours?
Quint: Could be Capone, but also you are talking about movies like… Harry’s was one of the only positive reviews of SOUTHLAND TALES.
Seann William Scott: I remember that, right.
David Wain: Let’s talk about THE PROMOTION, too.
Seann William Scott: (laughs) Yeah, that was a good review, too actually. Harry’s like “I’ve never been a big fan of this guy, he’s usually in stuff that I hate, but he’s actually pretty good in this.” It was fantastic. I loved that.
It’s funny, I had heard from Capone that Seann William Scott was a big site reader, but it was pretty weird hearing him recall reviews from years ago. He stopped into green room (read hotel room with fruit and a TV running ROLE MODELS clips) and had a nice little chat before the interview and convinced me that the reputation he has of being the nicest human being on this earth is almost an undersell.
I didn’t get a chance to review the actual film, ROLE MODELS, but I greatly enjoyed it, taking my little brother to see it on my second run at it. He flipped for it, too, which bodes well for the appeal since he’s kind of the target age… late teens.
Hope you enjoyed the interview and I apologize for all the politics. I’m sure people are sick of it by now, but it was too ingrained in the flow of the conversation to completely excise the talk… and how about that serendipity of IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD being brought up and then this interview posting after my AMAD… which was IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD? Crazy, huh?
Still got lots more interviews on the way, including my own chat with Mr. Charlie Kaufman about his new headfuck movie SYNECDOCHE, NY! Look for that one soon!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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