Based on The Decameron, the new Medieval sex comedy THE LITTLE HOURS features a host of characters, situations and jokes that will likely make you say “That’s just wrong” more than one. It’s so blasphemous that the Catholic League say “It is trash, pure trash,” and they aren’t wrong; except that it’s very funny trash. Featuring a host of horny nuns (Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, Kate Micucci, Molly Shannon), a sex-addict hired hand (Dave Franco), a priest that is falling in love (John C. Reilly), a vengeful estate lord (Nick Offerman), and a bishop (Fred Armisen) who has no idea what to make of it all, THE LITTLE HOURS is a classic tale of wickedness, sexual depravity, and drunkenness, with a pinch of witchcraft. And thanks to writer-director Jeff Baena, it’s all very funny but also mostly period accurate.
I caught the film for the first time at its world premiere at Sundance, and still think it’s one of the funniest films of the year (perhaps second only to another film starring Dave Franco that comes out this December). Since then, I’ve hosted a few sold-out Q&A screenings here in Chicago with Baena and Plaza (one of which also featured Micucci). Shortly after I saw the film at Sundance back in January, I sat down with a group of the film’s actors (Franco, Brie, Shannon and Micucci) to discuss their involvement in the film, jetting off to a remote part of Italy to film it, and giving themselves over to ancient witchery. Please enjoy…
Dave Franco: How you been, man?
Capone: Good.
Molly Shannon: So you guys know one another?
DF: A couple of years now, right? A couple interviews and other stuff?
Capone: The first time was on the 21 JUMP STREET set.
DF: That's right, yeah.
MS: How fun.
Capone: He adopted me on the set. We had meals together. It was fun.
MS: Where do you live, Steve?
Capone: In Chicago.
Kate Miccuci: Oh, nice.
MS: You do? How nice.
[Alison Brie arrives.]
Alison Brie: Hi, I'm Alison. Nice to meet you.
Capone: Nice to meet you too. I saw the screening yesterday morning, and the audience was so into it. But I love that it's committed to history, it's committed to religion, and it's committed to somehow making those two things funny. When you were first like approached to do this, did you get the script, did you have a conversation with Jeff? Alison, I know you had worked with him before, but this is quite a different movie than JOSHY.
AB: Yeah, it was a conversation over coffee, and obviously Jeff can speak so intelligently about this stuff at length because he studied it, he minored in it [at NYU]. He's obsessed with it. So he was really good at pitching it, and the whole idea sounded so unique. Tackling any piece of art that has to do with religion, I think, can be tricky or taboo or scary. But this take on it, and because the source material is 600 years old, it felt like a safe playing space, and an exciting idea that hasn't really been explored recently in this way.
MS: Exactly.
Capone: So what was the pitch? Do you remember?
MS: I remember he took me out for coffee and he was like, "I have this great idea. It would you, Aubrey, Alison, Kate, and you guys are going to play nuns." And it was over coffee on the east side of LA. I'm not sure if Dave had signed on yet. [To Brie and Franco, who were only engaged at the time; they married in March] Did you guys sign on together?
AB: No, I think I signed on first and then I slowly kept massaging Dave into doing it.
MS: Yes. I remember him just saying it would be us girls and I was like, "This sounds fantastic." And I think it's a wonderful place for strong female comedians and actors. It's like, what a great idea for a place for all these great female performers. And I think there were so many movies in the 1930s that had strong, wonderful parts for many women, and it reminded me of that. So I was like, "I'm in." I was in after 15 seconds of the conversation.
AB: Yeah, nuns, we shoot it in Italy, comedy, the people that were involved. Also, he talked a lot about, and you mentioned this before, just because women were nuns, people didn't join the church because they were religious necessarily. And so the main idea when he was pitching it to me was about the fact that at that time, so many women were nuns just because they were the youngest in their family, or their family couldn't afford a dowery, or it was a very political move. So, they actually did have these sexual desires. They were not super devout like we think of them as being very devoted to God. And these people were not that, necessarily. They fell into living there, but they still had sexual desires, they still wanted to drink and party. And so that idea felt exciting, without feeling like we were exploiting the church or religion or any of that stuff.
Capone: I almost hate to say it, but that is another one of the interesting things about this film is that it's kind of sexy at times. It's not like funny sexy, it's like genuinely, “Whoa, what's going on here?”
AB: Oh yeah. I think the threesome scene is very sexy.
KM: Yeah. Also you two in the garden is pretty sexy.
AB: Thank you!
MS: And when all the girls drink and get so mischievous, like “Come on over.” I love that scene.
Capone: That drunk scene, that's probably the best scene because it feels completely genuine. It feels like it's something that could have happened then or it could have happened yesterday.
AB: Yeah.
KM: Yeah. That's true.
DF: Real quick, going back to when Jeff was initially pitching us the idea, to be fully candid, there was originally only a 20-page outline briefly describing how the story would play out. And it was very scary going into it having so many unknowns and realizing that we were going to come up with so much on set.
Capone: You mean dialogue?
DF: Yeah.
Capone: Wow, I would have guessed that you were adhering more or less to something very written.
DF: We talked about it at length, but ultimately Jeff really wanted us to put everything in our own words so it felt natural. But, yeah, a lot of it was very loose and I think that's why the chemistry feels really good, just because you really have to listen to one another when there is not a concrete script to work off of.
AB: I think that was something about it getting pitched to us that was scary and also really exciting, to try something new. The whole thing felt like a weird dream idea of a job that's like a bunch of our friends were going to go to Italy, we're going to make this movie about nuns. These are all people that I know and love. [To Shannon] Although, I don't know that we had really met before. But it really felt like a ’70s experimental film to me. “There's not really a script, we're going to play nuns, we're going to take some of our closest artist friends and go live in Italy for a month and shoot something.” It felt like wild.
DF: That being said, when we got there, it was very clear that Jeff had the whole thing mapped out in his head.
AB: Oh yeah. No, he did.
Capone: Did any of you actually take a crack at The Decameron? What do you remember responding to when reading that? He said yesterday morning that it actually reads pretty modern.
AB: It is very funny. I loved it. It seems daunting because it's this big book and it's obviously been written so long ago, but the stories are like one to two pages long. The main story that our whole movie is based on is two pages long. And it's snappy. It's all very sexy and funny.
DF: Yeah, it's written in a way, too, where I would believe that it came out this year. There's not language of like, "Where art thou?" It's like everyone's talking the way we're talking now and I think that was a big part of the reason that Jeff wanted us to speak how we normally do because it wasn't so much different then than it is now.
AB: Yeah, and it's satire. It's all about priests and nuns drinking and having sex.
MS: And the mother superiors were known to be the biggest drinkers—the wild ones.
AB: They'd been there the longest.
MS: The booziest.
Capone: From a practical standpoint, for those of you playing nuns, wearing that garb every day and dealing with...I don't know if it feels restrictive or heavy or itchy that outfit was.
AB: It is.
KM: I remember the first day, I don't know if you remember this, but you were like “This is uncomfortable,” and I was like, "Yeah." Like we had this moment…
AB: It was pulling on our necks.
KM: We had this moment, Alison and I, where we were both like, “How do we do this?” You get used to it, but the first couple days it was like, it makes your posture different. You just feel so stuck.
MS: It's quite heavy.
KM:And also, itchy. Very itchy.
AB: I think at first you think “This will be such a comfy costume and I can eat whatever I want. It's like I'm in pajamas,” but that was not the case at all. It's very repressive and I felt so depressed. A week in, I was just so depressed wearing the outfit.
KM: But it also it works for our characters; you feel what it's like.
MS: Yeah, that's all. And you're just showing a little portion of your face and you're really restricted; you can't use your body at all so you're emoting all through this little section of your face. And we didn't wear much makeup at all, but I remember being like, "Just a little more. I want to look natural, but mama’s gotta bring home the money!” [laughs]
AB: Go into the other bathroom and just put a little more on.
MS: I would cheat a little. “Just a little more eye liner.”
KM: I think in some weird way it's almost more revealing because it's just your face.
AB: There's nothing to hide.
AB: Like a physical comedy.
KM: No sweater acting.
AB: It was an interesting challenge.
Capone: My first question after watching it was, "Man, why are nuns so funny?"
AB: They really are. Any time people are in uniform, and particularly the nun’s habit, I think, because of what we're talking about. Because you see so little of a body, this human being turns into this whole other shape. It's like a weird ghost.
Capone: Meanwhile, you aren't even allowed to wear a shirt that unbuttoned down to your navel.
DF: Right, so, see I play a servant, and so I'm essentially wearing billowy rags the whole way through, and I've never been more comfortable on a movie set [everybody laughs]. I wish I could get away with that in my everyday life.
Capone: Did you just walk around going, "God, you guys look so uncomfortable in your ..."
AB: He's like doing cartwheels around.
DF: They were pretty vocal about how uncomfortable they were, and I wasn't going to rub it in their face until right now how comfortable I was.
KM: He was like essentially wearing like old-timey sweatpants.
DF: Yes, exactly.
Capone: Tell me about getting away from that states and going somewhere where you're isolated and you have to like form this creative community. Talk about that experience and how different it was than what you're used to doing.
AB: Well, you nailed it. It really was much different, I think, than being on location somewhere in the states where there's a Whole Foods nearby and you can still fly home on the weekend or whatever. And it was cool because we were really fully immersed in this thing, which also fucked with us. It fucked with me, because it was like, we were just dressed as nuns all day, every day, but at night we did have a really tight community. It was such a small group and such a small movie, and us and the crew would just go drink and eat pasta at night. So that part of it is really fun and exciting. But definitely we were isolated, without a doubt.
MS: Yeah, it's like a work vacation. Because we were all staying in the same hotel, and you really do go out more for dinner at night than you would if you were in your own town. So you get really close because of that, I feel.
KM: There's something, too, about the time difference because it really removed us from L.A. time.
AB: You're not talking with your friends in L.A. or texting.
KM: Yeah, everybody's sleeping when you're awake. And it really put us in this bubble, which was really nice because we felt like we were just so in it.
Capone: When did you shoot this?
AB: April last year.
Capone: So you're barely aware of what's even going on in this country at that time.
AB: Oh yeah.
KM: It's a freeing feeling to not have to worry about calling someone back, because you had a great excuse.
Capone: I realized that by the end of the movie, there are a few love stories going on here, especially with Molly and John. Talk about that aspect of it because that’s a more serious aspect of this.
MS: That was one of my favorite moments of the movie because I love when comedy is rooted in truth and emotional stuff. There's nothing better. I think comedy plays well when you really know what your characters want, and it's not just silly. I always approach it in a dramatic way. I think that that moment on the bridge where they're like, "I missed you," and they don't have to hide anymore and they can be together, and everybody's free, and then you cut and you have the beautiful crescendo of the music on the bridge, to two of them. You cut to the stars, it's chilling. It gives me chills. I found it just so touching, and it chokes me up. And I think John Reilly, I would say, felt the same way.
AB: All of us. I love that scene between John and Molly.
Capone: I do, too. The audience I was with was like, "Aw." It's almost like you don't see it coming and suddenly you realize “I've been rooting for them the whole time and not even realizing it.”
KM: I feel like there is a real sweetness throughout the whole movie, even though there are these crazy things that happen. There's a heart in every scene.
AB: Totally. None of these women know how to fully express the things that they're feeling, so some of it comes off in a very humorous way. But, like you said, it's really grounded in something deeply emotional. We talked a lot about all the different nuns—me and Aubrey and Kate's relationships with Dave—and how their all quite different. And that our story is more of a love story in that Alessandra has always wanted to get married and really fall in love and is experiencing this in a very real way. Then Aubrey just wants to exploit him for this other crazy thing. Then, Kate, who's in love with Aubrey, just is trying to emulate this thing that now she thinks we should all be doing. So, it was interesting the way we were all using him as a tool for our own emotional satiation.
KM: That's a good way to put it. [laughs]
DF: My character is somewhat of a sex addict, and he hooks up with everyone in the movie. But he does have a slightly deeper connection with Alison's character just because, number one, she's not quite as weird as the others, but it's nice. It's like, she almost gives him a conscious, too, where by the end, he could run away and just leave his mess for everyone else to clean up, but he feels bad with how he deceived everyone, specifically her, and so he wants to come clean and let everyone know that it's his fault.
Capone: Aubrey is raw anger in a lot of this movie. It actually makes me scared of her a little bit.
AB: [laughs] Have you seen INGRID GOES WEST yet?
Capone: I saw it last night.
AB: It's fantastic.
Capone: Oh, it's a completely different performance.
DF: Yeah.
Capone: What is that like to be next to?
AB: I mean Dave had her screaming in his ear.
Capone: I don't know how you didn't flinch or lose your hearing.
DF: I was saying earlier that I did flinch in every single take except the one that you see in the movie. But I did lose my hearing slightly. But she was very sweet and she apologized profusely and kept saying, "Tell me when to stop," but I wasn't going to ruin the scene so I was just like, "Just keep going. Give it to me harder."
KM: Did it come back?
DF: It came back.
KM: Okay, you just have some ringing [laughs].
DF: No, I'm not still impaired in this moment. But it's nice too for my character, where, again, going back to the crazy threesome sex scene, I am slightly scared of her in that scene. And I think it works for the character. And it was easy to play off of just because she does have that raw energy where you don't know what she's going to do every take, and it's really easy to react to.
AB: Yeah, Aubrey is so fearless as an actress. It's so great for her to take on that role in terms of our three nuns. And Jeff Baena has talked about—I hate to say this in the same context—casting us in roles that are like not so far from the people that we are and the stuff we’re capable of. So it's funny to see Aubrey just take it to the furthest peak. And all of us, in that way, fall into our roles.
Capone: I feel like I'm still discovering her as an actor. I feel like I think I know what she's capable and what her limits are, but then I see INGRID last night and I'm like, “Wait, no. I've got to move that bar up a little bit.”
KM: Agreed.
Capone: The last thing I want to ask you about is the witch stuff. Is that in the books?
AB: That's not in the books.
MS: That's a good question.
AB: That's not in the books. And the lesbian stuff is not in the books either. But Jeff has talked about the penitentials and how there's so much written about punishments for homosexuality that it just can be assumed that there was a lot of that going on. And when you just have all women living in one place... Sorry, you were asking about the witchcraft, and I talked about lesbians.
Capone: That is a crazy scene.
DF: Yeah.
AB: That was an interest ing twist. That was a crazy scene to shoot.
DF: I think more than any other scene, it's the scene where the audience doesn't quite know how to react. And I think there was like nervous laughter and gasps.
AB: Because they're shocked.
Capone: It is a little shocking. Kate, you in that scene in particular are the instrument of shock. You're a big part of that.
KM: Yeah, I remember when we were shooting it, because we had one night to shoot so much, and so we really didn't have any time. I didn't have time to think about it. I just was like, “Guess I'm talking off my habit. Here we go!” But it was very freeing. I actually ended up having such a good time doing it, but it was a scary thing to know that I was going to be doing that. That's like the most shocking of all. And also, those women that were cast as extras, they were all local women.
AB: Italian women.
KM: Yeah, so that was really cool. And most of then didn't even speak English. I actually felt like we bonded.
Capone: If you're all doing it, it's not that crazy.
KM: Totally. And a few of them like they wrote on Facebook like, "Hey, that was a really fun night.” [laughs]
MS: I loved all the different body types, too. That's amazing. It was like a real celebration of women.
AB: It's one of those scenes, when we're getting pitched the movie, that we're all like, “and then all the crazy witch stuff happens.” It sounded truly bizarre. But when you watch it, it's the height of the manifestation of what everyone's feeling, it’s being acted out by these nude Italian women by a fire. It's kind of perfect.
Capone: Thank you all so much.
AB: Thank you very much.
MS: Thank you, Steve. I really love Chicago.
DF: Good to see you, as always, man.
KM: Really nice to see you. I'm glad we didn't miss each other this time.
