From their collected experiences around Hollywood, both screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker and animation director Chris Prynoski are familiar with the trappings of fame, as well as the desperation of those without it to attain it. Wearing a pair of outfits that Walker noted, “could combine for a really great Hunter S. Thompson costume,” the Nerdland creative team was at ease discussing the first feature film to emerge from animation house Titmouse, Inc. where Prynoski also helms Metalocalypse. Nerdland (read our review) takes a satirical look at a pair of ne’er do well Los Angeles roommates—aspiring actor John (Paul Rudd) and wanna’ be screenwriter Elliot (Patton Oswalt)—hung up on fantasies of making it big in the movies.

In their sit-down interview with Way Too Indie, Andrew Kevin Walker and Chris Prynoski discuss Nerdland‘s nihilistic vision of modern society, their shared appreciation for improv in moderation, and how the dream of writing the Great American novel has shifted.

What was the launching point for this story?

Andrew Kevin Walker: It was an original script I wrote and I tried in different ways to get it made. It was written to be live action – that was kind of the way I imagined it. It’s kind of loosely based on mine, and my best friend John’s life, trying to break into showbiz.

I tried to get it made as an animated TV show; I took the script and broke it down into smaller episodes then left it open-ended. Then when that didn’t happen because no one was interested, I broke it down into little five minute, bite-sized pieces that probably would have added up to one feature but they were made to be little internet shorts and that didn’t work out.

So I just regrouped again. I went back to the feature and I tightened it up. I had been watching and loving Metalocalypse and all the stuff that Titmouse, Inc. does. I’m wondering, “who are these geniuses? These mysterious weirdos who do all this amazing animation.” I managed through agents to get a meeting where I went with my script, they took a look at it, and it was a beautiful thing from there on.

Chris Prynoski: A lot of times you get these scripts and there’s a lot of work that has to be done, but this was very clear. I’ve been those people, I know those people, our studio exists in that neighborhood. It was very clear, I could see how this would worked and I was super stoked.

So the script you brought in to Titmouse was the feature version?

AKW: It was the feature version and that’s what we ended up doing. Fully independent, self-financed, sweat equity feature.

That’s despite Titmouse having not done a feature to that point?

CP: Yeah, we work on features. We do pre-production on features but our own movie that we have control over. We’ve done some direct-to-TV features but this was our first real feature that we had control over. I’m stoked, I’m really proud of it.

There’s a real nihilistic presentation to the world of these characters – is that your general perspective on society?

AKW: I think it’s exclusively about the entertainment industry and the kind of sweaty-palmed desperation you have when you’re outside looking in, trying to get in. I do think it’s interesting that in modern day society, fame can be this big (Andrew spreads his hands apart) like it always was, or fame can be this big (Andrew holds two fingers an inch away from one another). Small fame can become big fame and go back to small fame again then you really want another taste of that.

I don’t think there’s as many people looking to write the great American novel like there used to be, I think everyone’s either trying to write the great American screenplay or shoot the great American YouTube video. Looking in at Hollywood at this point is just kind of looking out at the world, in a way.

There’s a de-evolution in our popular entertainment that you can see through these characters aspirations – is that something concerning for either of you?

CP: I don’t know if it’s concerning as much as it is the way it is. It’s not like we’re trying to be like, “Hey, we’re making this important movie that’s going to change the way things work. If people just like watch this they’re going to have this revelation.” It’s more like, “Hey, this sucks, right?”

AKW: Yeah, isn’t this funny?

CP: This is the way we live. It’s funny, it’s weird. Society is obsessed with fame for fame’s sake.

AWK: Hopefully there’s a certain amount of recognition – especially for our peers. It does go beyond that now since everybody can be famous in their own way, in their smaller or larger social circle.

CP: Yeah you’ve got a phone. You can make your own YouTube video. Everybody’s got their own movie studio.

Andrew, a lot of your previous writing had been comedic but not quite so overtly comedic. You mentioned you had been working on this script for quite a while, was this your desire to do an out-and-out comedy?

AKW: I really do love comedy, I watch a lot of comedy. Humor comes into everything that you’re writing – no matter how serious or self-serious it is. I’ve written darker stuff that’s kind of balanced with comedy and this is almost a comedy that’s balanced with darkness.

Chris, when it comes to the character design, many of the characters have traditionally attractive features that get exaggerated in discomforting ways. What kind of calculation did you make to decide how far out the look of the world would be?

CP: Oh it was definitely a calculation because these days it’s kind of – in a weird way – easier to make stuff look beautiful and shiny and clean. With computers that’s the default. We made a conscious effort to make this very crunchy and rough around the edges. [Make it] feel like hand-drawn drawings. Not use a lot of the bag of tricks we use on other things like there’s no depth of field in this, there’s hardly any lighting on the characters – really just used in special circumstances – there’s not a lot of the, like, fancy stuff we use on other productions.

We really wanted to make this feel almost like films that were shot under an oxberry. You know, the production designer Antonio Canoobio, we really wanted to challenge ourselves by not going slick with it. It sounds kind of counter-intuitive.

That has its own appeal, too. It’s a distinctive look. People talk a lot about “the Adult Swin aesthetic” but it’s got its own distinctive style so it’s not so easy to just lump them all together.

CP: I think it’s more of a sensibility or a tone than an aesthetic with the Adult Swim stuff. I did the first character lineup but beyond that I pretty much handed the whole movie character-wise to Joe Bennett, who did most of the character designs. Obviously I had input on it but you see a lot of his hand there. He’s got a great mind for comedic detail. Little things you’ll notice on the characters that are really, really smart.

At what point did Paul Rudd and Patton Oswalt become involved and what did they help bring to Nerdland?

CP: Patton was the first actor of any of the actors to get involved. He had done voices for other cartoons and is a fan of Andy’s. He said yes in the room to it, which was great, and kind of had a cascade effect.

As far as stuff that those guys added… it’s interesting. The way I record, is you record the exact page, you do a loose pass and then you do an improv pass. These guys did so much incredible improve but what ended up in the film was really, largely, what the script was. There’s heightened parts where we used the imrpov but it’s all woven in to what’s there on the page.

AKW: Patton and Paul did amazing improv. Paul Scheer really stuck out to me. He was insanely amazing. Kate Micucci and Riki Lindhome in a way had such thankless parts and they made a lot of very little. But every actor did improv in great ways.

I think Chris was very judicious in choosing a balance between improv keeping the flow moving forward. I think we’ve all seen improv where you see a piece of a film get caught in an improv bubble for a minute. You’re kind of there on the day with them, appreciating that moment, and it might be a little longer than maybe [necessary] and then things get started again. So I think [Chris] was kind of great in judging stuff and choosing it very thoughtfully.

CP: Yeah it’s so easy to get caught up when you’re in the booth recording with these guys making you laugh. It’s like, “That’s great! That’s genius!” Having done Metalocalypse it happens all the time. There’s so much more than we can use in any episode. You really, really have to work hard on focusing. Not falling in love with something that is not going to work or ultimately not work as well.

AKW: It’s almost like unless you were there on the day it’s not the same. It stops the movie for a second. But that’s what blooper reels and Blu-Ray extras are for.

At some point you have to kill your darlings.

AKW: Absolutely. Or the darling has to be the thing from the script that gets taken out, and the improv goes in its place.

CP: I got to say, too, the combination of Paul and Patton – they had such good chemistry together. You really felt that these guys knew each other very well, they lived together, they were roommates. These guy were recording on opposite coasts. They could hear each other and see each other on a screen but Paul was in New York and Patton was in LA.

They made these characters likable while they were riding a dangerous line where people could have just checked out and been like, “these guys are assholes and I’m not with them anymore.”

AKW: The most embarrassing thing for me… Every actor was bringing so much more to everything that was on the page. I would be the one laughing the hardest at my own stuff I had written. To hear Patton Oswalt’s voice saying these lines after all this time living with it on the page, and then Paul Rudd and on and on from top to bottom… there’s not a lot in here by an actor or actress you don’t know.

For Rudd and Oswalt particularly they’re not even altering their voices much, it’s a lot through their natural congeniality.

AKW: And also I think it’s selling the friendship between them. It lets you keep caring about them no matter what semi-despicable things they discuss doing and attempt to do.

Is there a future for the characters of Nerdland?

AKW: That will be determined out there rather than in this room but they certainly live in my heart.

CP: I’d love to work with Andy again on something, who knows.

AKW: We’re already trying to figure out what to be able to do next together. It was just the best experience ever.

Gangly-armed or thick-necked with off-colored skin tones or noses—the harshly drawn inhabitants of Nerdland don’t have the benefit of beauty to mask their ugly insides. They’re off-putting even when appealing. Like many of the character designs on Adult Swim cartoon shows, the characters’ distinctive features are sharpened and exaggerated in ways that makes their appearances unsettling. It should be no surprise that Nerdland comes from Chris Prynoski (Metalocalypse, Motorcity), veteran of the late night Cartoon Network universe, where absurdist and divisive humor has thrived for the past couple decades.

In the heart of the entertainment industry, nearly 30-year-old roommates John (voiced by Paul Rudd) and Elliot (Patton Oswalt) feel their shot at world fame is dwindling. At first, both seem like familiar characters repurposed for Nerdland’s grimy, stoner sketchbook aesthetic. The pair live together in a rundown Hollywood apartment with old beer bottles and pizza boxes strewn across the floor. Elliot, a would-be screenwriter, who spends more time on the couch playing video games than writing (a depressing familiar conceit) ends up penning a script about a vengeful Rip Van Winkle waking from his slumber to shotgun blast open the skulls of strip club patrons. His roommate John—an aspiring actor—is the gentler, naïf, Lenny Small-type. When John tries to pass off Elliot’s script to a well-known movie star, John fumbles the pages and rips his pants in an effort to pick them up, exposing his puckered anus to the crowd.

The hand-drawn feature animation is the first feature from animation house Titmouse, Inc., a smooth transition to the big screen that borrows animated TV comedies’ fast-paced style. Quick cutaways pepper the dialog-heavy moments with visual gags. They reveal the protagonists’ dreams of red carpets lined with adoring fans or boob-filled, heavenly utopias, many of which feel ripped from an angsty teenage boy’s fantasies. But like a random episode of Family Guy, these jokes range in quality from shocking and fun to predictably cynical. Its misanthropic charms often redeem Nerdland, but John and Elliot’s aversion to productivity can become grating to watch for the duration (even if that length is only 83 minutes).

John and Elliot’s pursuit of fame at any twisted cost makes the pair progressively harder to like. Nerdland‘s mocking vision of LA is short on any redeeming personalities. Filled with silly caricatures of the fame-worshipping underclass, it’s clear that the director Prynoski as well as the screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker hate just about every person in this world. And yes, that’s the same Andrew Kevin Walker who wrote Se7en and contributed an uncredited rewrite to Fight Club—a film with similar nihilistic social satire. With a considerably scattershot plot, one which has a somewhat episode design, Nerdland lacks some of the narrative momentum that comes from more cohesive stories.

While a majority of scenes revolve around the funny duo at the cartoon’s center, recognizable voices make cameos throughout. Comedians such as Molly Shannon, Paul Scheer, as well as Garfunkel & Oats’ Kate Micucci & Riki Lindhome make extended appearances. Among the funniest roles, Hannibal Burress’ discomforting slant on the standard, slovenly Comic Book Guy pairs well with his wry delivery. Like many of the notable comedians that lend their voice to Nerdland, Oswalt and Rudd don’t alter their voice for their roles—they’re each well-suited to the characters and make for an amusing, albeit unlikely pairing.

Victims of a media-driven culture, John and Elliot ultimately determine that their shortest path to recognition is through notoriety—though as a hapless pair of unskilled, intermittently unemployed slackers the duo’s ability to accomplish anything is questionable. Some of their antics are hilarious but as the film progresses, many of the bits drag on too long. Prynoski and Walker find some strange insights on their race to the moral bottom with John and Elliot—a commentary that often acts more searing and urgent than it is—but like a developing TV comedy, Nerdland is often best in small patches.

Mental real estate is growing scarce as the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to expand, introducing dozens of new characters (both super-powered and not) every year for fans to get acquainted with. Mere months after the jam-packed, super-sized Avengers: Age of Ultron hit theaters, we’re visited by the Ant-Man, a funny little fellow whose brothers in arms aren’t Asgardian gods or raging green monsters, but tiny critters skittering about, virtually invisible to the naked eye. Where does a mini-hero like Ant-Man fit into the pantheon of larger-than-life superheroes? Will anyone even notice?

Probably not. Peyton Reed‘s Ant-Man is a respectably entertaining cog in the MCU machine, but it does little to set itself apart from its beefier big brothers. It’s got things other Marvel movies don’t: it’s a heist movie; Ant-Man’s the first superhero father (Hawkeye’s a secret agent!); the action is small-scale (and very easy to follow). But Reed ain’t foolin’ nobody. This is as formulaic a movie as Marvel’s ever produced. Its third act is a lot of fun, but everything beyond that feels safe, as if the movie is afraid to dive into the loony ideas it dips its toes into (James Gunn‘s Guardians of the Galaxy dove straight into the deep end, positioning it as the cooler, edgier alternative to the Avengers). If only all superhero movies could be as courageous as their mighty protags.

Michael Douglas anchors the film as Hank Pym, a scientist who in the ’70s invented a super suit that grants its wearer the ability to shrink down to bug size while retaining the strength of a 200-pound man, essentially making him (or her) the stealthiest, most dangerous super soldier the world’s ever seen. Fearing the chaos that would ensue should the technology fall into the wrong hands, Hank hides his invention away to never be found again. Fast-forward to present-day, and it’s found, again, by his former protégé, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), who’s taken over PymTech and plans to unleash an army of shrinking suits on the world.

Unwilling to let his ass-kicking daughter, Hope (Evangeline Lilly) don his old suit, he employs talented thief Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) to infiltrate Cross’ labs and steal back the dangerous tech and end this mess. Scott’s just been released from prison and has vowed to give up his former life of crime, but Hank promises to help him reunite with his young daughter (Abby Ryder Forston), who lives with Scott’s ex-wife, Maggie (Judy Greer, underutilized again) and her husband (Bobby Cannavale). Unable to secure a clean job due to his dirty record, Scott agrees to take on the proverbial “one last job.”

Formulaic. Formulaic. You can smell the tropes from a mile away. Just as the plot gets set in motion, the film screeches to a halt as we watch Scott learn to use the Ant-Man suit and speak to ants with his mind (it’s a protracted training montage). Running parallel is a story of father-daughter resentment, which comes to a head in a terrifically acted scene between Lilly and Douglas that nonetheless makes you feel absolutely lousy in an otherwise largely comedic affair.

Rudd always seems to know how to make a scene funny, but seldom do I find his smartass-ness downright hilarious. He’s a comedian of modest talents, though he’s well-rounded and handsome enough to make him a viable leading man. He gets a passing grade. His greatest strength as an actor is that he’s pretty hard not to like, which in the case of a movie like Ant-Man comes in handy: we genuinely want to see him reunited with his daughter. (Just for the record, Ryder Forston is insanely adorable; she’s missing her two front teeth, so none of us stand a chance.)

The surprise standouts of the cast are Tip “T.I.” Harris and Michael Peña, who play Scott’s bumbling burglar buddies. Peña’s comedic delivery is off-the-charts good, and he actually sort of makes Rudd look bad; Rudd’s jokes get mild chuckles while Peña’s makes the audience explode with laughter. Stoll has a great look, his powerful frame and villainously bald head making him more physically imposing than your typical mad scientist. If you blink, you’ll miss his best moment: somberly, like an abandoned child, he asks his former mentor why he pushed him away. Hank replies, “Because I saw too much of myself.” The movie’s pervading theme is one of the passing of generations, which stimulates little thought and doesn’t lend the movie much richness. It does, at least, give the story a solid foundation.

Thankfully, the movie gets really darned good once the big heist gets underway. After an hour or so of mediocrity, things really click into place; the action becomes more playful and inventive, and the actors start to let loose (especially Peña’s character, who sucks so bad at going undercover he just starts clocking security guards left and right and talking smack over their unconscious bodies). The final battle takes place in a little girl’s bedroom, and the ensuing visual gags are wildly entertaining and super funny. Ant-Man‘s micro-comedy isn’t as funny as the stuff Pixar did with the Toy Story franchise, but it comes close, which is a major compliment.

If Ant-Man‘s finale wasn’t so great, I wouldn’t hesitate to suggest you skip the movie entirely. References to other movies in the MCU (a certain winged Avenger makes a guest appearance) are cute and fun, though your enjoyment of that stuff depends on your geekiness level. Edgar Wright had an infamous falling-out with Marvel Studios partway through production and was replaced by Reed, and I wonder if the balls Ant-Man seems to be lacking went away along with the Shaun of the Dead mastermind.

Right about now, a few short weeks away from the premiere of The Avengers: Age of Ultron, it’s pretty easy to forget that Marvel‘s got another movie cooking for release this summer in the form of Ant-Man. The film is set to drop July 17th and the second full trailer has arrived (though the first consisted mostly of a voiceover from Michael Douglas, so might as well consider this the first real one).

While most of the plot details are being kept under wraps, what we do know is that Ant-Man follows Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), a reformed small time crook, who falls under the mentorship of Hank Pym (Douglas). To save the wildly powerful Ant-Man suit, Lang must put his thieving skills back to work and pull off an impossible heist, all while the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

After all the drama with Edgar Wright finally settled, Adam McKay punched up the script, and Payton Reed (The Break-Up, Yes Man) stepped in to direct. Rudd’s supporting cast is pretty top-notch: Judy Greer, Hayley Atwell, John Slattery, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Pena, and Corey Stroll as Darren Cross/Yellowjacket.

So, there are a ton of questions left unresolved here (most of them being in the vein of, how great would Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man have been?), but Rudd is a lot of fun with the right material, and this trailer shows that he’s been given some room to breathe and be Paul Rudd. And, while this Ant-Man might be a more vanilla, more paint-by-numbers-Marvel-movie than the dream version could have been, we’ll be lining up July 17th to watch two tiny guys fight on a model train set.

Ant-Man Trailer

Writers David Wain and Michael Showalter won over audiences (though not critics) with their 2001 nostalgic summer-camp satire Wet Hot American Summer and attempt to repeat their success with their new rom-com parody They Came Together. The film pokes fun at just about every romantic comedy trope and cliché out there, but committing the same mistakes as the cookie-cutter genre it’s parodying isn’t ironic enough to justify laughs. Many of the punchlines are either beaten to death by repetition or are needlessly explained why they’re funny. And there’s nothing funny about that.

The film begins at a dinner table where Joel (Paul Rudd) and Molly (Amy Poehler) recall how the two of them met to their friends Kyle (Bill Hader) and Karen (Ellie Kemper). Right off the bat the film acknowledges that their story is very much like a corny romantic comedy, as if admitting their own corniness gives the film a free pass. Not long after the lovebirds start describing how they began to date, Kyle blurts out from across the table, “You weren’t kidding, your story really IS like a corny movie!”. Cue the eye rolls.

Both Joel and Molly had broken up with their significant others shortly before running into one other (literally) on their way to the same party. However, it was not love at first sight. The two start off on the wrong foot by getting into a loud argument after blaming the other for the collision. They definitely don’t seem right for each other. After all, Joel works at the Corporate Candy Company which threatens to shut down Molly’s small indie candy shop. Though in the very next scene the two instantly settle their differences in a book store upon discovering their love for the fiction genre. It’s suppose to be ridiculous, that’s the joke.

There are moments where the self-aware comedy works. One of the few laugh out loud moments is when Molly recites a paragraph of specific details while ordering a muffin, only to find out that the entire passage is actually verbatim on the menu. But unfortunately, many of the gags are simply exhausting. Case in point when Joel replies to a bartender, “You can say that again”, who then proceeds to repeat his line over and over until it becomes annoying. A similar instance occurs when someone shouts “swish” after every missed shot on the basketball court. It’s funny maybe once or twice, but definitely not on the fourth or fifth.

They Came Together certainly relies on the undeniable charm of Rudd and Poehler. Maybe a bit too reliant. Both actors do their best with the material, at times elevating the writing better than anyone else could, though even their great comedic chemistry is not enough to save the film. Perhaps that’s why Wain gathers an army of an ensemble including appearances from Ken Marino, Jason Mantzoukas, Ed Helms, Melanie Lynskey, Max Greenfield, Jack McBrayer, Kenan Thompson, and even Judge Judy. These are all welcoming additions but unfortunately all the talent goes to waste with the weak script.

Even a with a short-and-sweet runtime of 83 minutes, They Came Together overstays its welcome with repetitive jokes. The real kicker is many of those jokes weren’t all that great to start with. For example, there is a running joke that New York City plays SUCH an important role in the film that it’s almost a character itself. I suppose this is a dig towards Woody Allen for claiming the city is its own character in his rom-com Manhattan, but I think the joke will mostly fall on deaf ears. They Came Together tries too hard to become a self-aware parody that it forces its humor, generating much less laughs than expected.

Those who understand and appreciate the humor of David Wain and Michael Showalter have no doubt been anticipating They Came Together, the first film the duo has worked on together since Wet Hot American Summer, their TV endeavors aside. (Fans will be happy to hear that in the Q&A following the premiere the duo said a Wet Hot American Summer prequel is in the works). To appreciate their comedy means also appreciating those they pay homage to, the spoof films of Mel Brooks and Jim Abrahams, who perfected the craft of effectively using films to make fun of films with a distinctly self-aware humor. They Came Together, rather than directly parodying romantic comedy films (though there are some obvious references dashed about the film), seeks to poke fun at the entire genre, incorporating almost every major romantic film cliché there is. What makes it more effective than say an outright parody film like Date Movie, is it’s use of major comedic talent and that Wain/Showalter touch that, though sometimes baffling and always ridiculous, almost always elicits a laugh.

The film is about Joel (Paul Rudd) and Molly (Amy Poehler) as they tell the story of how they met to two friends at dinner (Ellie Kemper and Bill Hader). Set in New York City (which is repeatedly jabbed at as the “third main character” of the film), Joel works for a large corporate candy company and Molly operates a small candy store. Joel is just getting over his smoking-hot ex (Cobie Smulders) who cheated on him with his successful co-worker. Molly has also recently broken up with her boyfriend and turns down her accountant’s advances (played by Ed Helms) to focus on herself. When friends try to set them up at a Halloween party they run into each other on the way there and instantly dislike each other. It isn’t until they see each other later at a book store where they discover a mutual love for (gasp) fiction books that Molly agrees to a date and their romance begins. From there almost every romantic film cliché appears. She’s lovably klutzy. He’s a responsible older brother, caring for his aimless sibling (Max Greenfield). They fight over family differences (hers are all white supremacists, whoops) and break up. He finds solace in his ex, she tries dating her accountant, eventually leading up to a wedding that needs breaking up and a solid ten minutes of every romantic movie ending they could fit in.

Wain and Showalter prove once again there is no joke they won’t beat to death, going just over the line enough to bring it back to life. It’s a humor that revels in straddling the line between ridiculous and ridiculously funny. The two delight in the humor of repetition and certain scenes take it to the point of exhaustion. Those who don’t find it funny, will find it utterly obnoxious. Much of the film’s success relies on the impeccable chemistry between Pohler and Rudd, two actors well aware of each other’s methods by now and perfectly cast in their stereotypical roles. It’s idiocy for the sake of idiocy, but has so much charm and excellent timing that this reviewer’s funny bone was tickled for 90 minutes straight.

If you aren’t laughing, you’ll probably be shaking your head, but there are very few people in this world not won over by Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler. Let’s be honest, we’d watch them read the phone book.

It’s been nearly a decade since Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy introduced Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay’s (then a newcomer) absurdist brand of humor to the masses, a brand of humor that earned the film the biggest cult following for a comedy since perhaps Caddyshack and lived on in McKay’s subsequent (mildly less successful) films Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Step Brothers, and The Other Guys (all starring Ferrell). In Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, McKay and his now-way-more-famous cast return with a bigger, broader, less memorable chapter in Burgundy’s story. The laughs still hit hard (I was bowled over quite frequently) and the wonderful cast is as sharp and witty as ever, but multiple, needlessly inflated, disposable plotlines drag the film down, and the novelty of McKay’s unfettered randomness has all but worn off in the last ten years.

It’s 1980, and happily married newscasters Ron Burgundy (Ferrell) and Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate, as beautiful and quick as ever) arrive at an impasse when Veronica beats Ron out for a coveted position at the news station and their boss (Harrison Ford) rips Ron’s job away (in Ford’s signature callous growl). Brimming with jealous rage, Ron leaves his wife and son (one of the worst child actors I’ve seen this year) and tracks down his old news crew to start a new career path at GNN, a news network in New York, where they help to pioneer a revolutionary concept called “24-hour news” (yuck yuck).

Returning are Steve Carrell as weatherman Brick Tamland, an extreme representation of McKay’s affinity for random dialog; Paul Rudd as reporter Brian Fantana, the embodiment of faux, cologne-collector machismo; and David Koechner as sportscaster Champ Kind, an ambiguously rape-y pervert with a hilariously uncomfortable affection for Ron (long, dick-to-dick hugs). Ron and his brigade are met with fierce hostility in New York, dished out by rival hot-shot anchor Jack Lime (James Marsden, surprisingly very funny) and their alpha-female station manager (Meagan Good). With everything stacked against him (including a miserable 2am time slot), Ron stands stubbornly determined to out-career Veronica, and finds his path to success in the form of the trashy, nothing-news we’re now oh-so familiar with in 2013 (in a stroke of “brilliance”, Ron reports on a car chase and sticks with the pursuit until the perp is caught, earning him sky-high ratings).

The satire is half-baked, laid on thick, and isn’t handled with nearly the deftness of the small, zingy, hyperbolic moments Anchorman is adored for. Narratively, the movie is a mess, with a tangle of plots and sub-plots that are so conventional and uninteresting that they bog down the film’s free-flowing, improv-is-king spirit. Veronica finds a new man (Greg Kinnear); Ron’s career focus has made him an absentee father; Brick’s found a love interest (Kristen Wiig, who merely mimics Carrell’s character, disappointingly); Ron’s success gets to his head and shuns his friends; etc. It all feels too conventional and schematic, and McKay spends an inordinate amount of time fleshing these story lines out, when all we really want to see are the gags. The crowded narrative feels restrictive, barring the talent from letting loose as much as they want to.

The good news is (yes, I said it!), the funnies are as tangential, out-of-left-field, and irreverent as the first film’s, if not more. You won’t find many über-repeatable one-liners here, but there are some scenes that absolutely kill. In perhaps the most interesting narrative thread in the film (really), Ron and his family befriend a shark named Doby and sing a 2-minute-long tribute musical number in his honor that had me rumbling so hard my throat was on fire (no one else in the theater found it as found it as funny, but hey…different strokes). McKay’s sense of timing is excellent; in one scene, Ron and his team begin laughing uproariously at a throwaway joke, and then McKay awkwardly cuts–right in the middle of their guffawing–to them standing in utter silence. Again, it’s an unquotable moment, but it’s funny as hell.

McKay takes the most bizarre, out-there scene from the first film–the incredible news anchor gang fight–and recycles it here (with the expected parade of super-celeb cameos). What’s fascinating is, now that we’re so familiarized with McKay’s comedic style, the scene feels safe, redundant, unsurprising, and dull, though it still has baseline entertainment value. I wouldn’t say Anchorman 2 is an unnecessary sequel–it’s still a lot of fun to watch these guys flex their comedic muscles–but it simply doesn’t measure up to the legendary (yes…I said it!) stature of its predecessor. Unfortunately, if this sequel is an indication of a downward trend in quality for the franchise, the forecast for Ron Burgundy’s future (okay, now I’m just being stupid) looks pretty cloudy (sorry).

Nearly a decade after its release, one of the most popular and beloved comedies in recent memory, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, finally gets a follow-up, with Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. Set in the early ’80s, Ron (Will Ferrell) finds himself at odds with his wife, Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), when she beats him out for the coveted spot of nightly news anchor at the station. He leaves her (and his son), gathers his old news crew–Brick Tamland (Steve Carrell), Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), and Champ Kind (David Koechner)–and heads to New York to change news as we know it forever.

Director Adam McKay (The Other Guys, Step Brothers), after years of his original Anchorman cast growing in popularity exponentially since that first film, had to jump through a lot of hoops to give fans the sequel they’ve been clamoring for for years, but he got it done (and even shot enough alternate footage to release an entirely different cut of the movie!). Retaining all of the absurdity-based humor McKay and his cohorts made famous in the first film (and sprinkling on top of that celebrity cameos galore), Anchorman 2 is sure to please the droves of fans who have been waiting years for new Ron Burgundy quotes.

During a visit to San Francisco, McKay spoke with us and a small group of journalists about why it took so long for the sequel to see the light, he and star Will Ferrell’s writing process, why he likes randomness so much, replacing nearly every joke in his alternate cut of the film, and more.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues opens nationwide this Wednesday, December 18th

How did you and Will approach making the sequel?
The reason we didn’t do it for so long was that we were just like, “Why do a sequel?” They usually feel kind of perfunctory, or like a cash-grab. But then people kept asking us, “What about Anchorman 2?” It suddenly became intriguing. We looked at what makes sequels work and what doesn’t make them work. The ones that work continue the story [from the first film], and the ones that don’t just repeat it. The key at that point was, “Is there another chapter to this?”

We spent an afternoon kicking around ideas when we realized, “Oh my god–24-hour news started in 1980”, and that’s not that far from when the first one took place. That’s even bigger than “the first female anchor”. Once we had that, we knew we had a movie. That is a different story to tell, and it does put them through different paces.

Your brand of humor is so tangential and wild, exploring corners of comedy that very few other films have the balls to approach. With this movie, was it difficult to one-up yourself and go top places that were even more absurd?
I think, fortunately or unfortunately, that we could do that all day long. If you gave us 300 days to shoot, we could give you 300 days of tangential comedy. That’s never a problem. If you give us the most straight script in the world…if you gave us Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, we could fill it with comedy. Our background is improv–Ferrell is Groundlings and I come out of Second City. The key is [having] a good story with enough emotional beats you can hit, and that engine is working and holding it up enough–we just want [a story] that holds it up enough. Once we knew we had that story of them coming to New York and all this change, we could do the comedy forever.

And it’s also because of your cast.
Yeah. The fact that you have four go-to point of views for comedy, you can always, in any scene, throw it over to Rudd, throw it over to Carrell, Ferrell can become the straight man, or he becomes the guy doing the messed up thing and Rudd’s the straight man. It’s never-ending with that sized cast.

You said you were kicking around a couple of ideas for Anchroman 2. What was it narrowed down to? Could you share three of the ideas?
Keep in mind–the other ones were bad ideas! (laughs) One was an “Irwin Allen” idea. I think it was still about 24-hour news, but the guy who owned 24-hour news built an underwater hotel, and the news story was that the glass they were using was faulty and Burgundy covered up the story because he didn’t want to lose his job. The end of the [film] was this crazy, 1970’s, Irwin Allen, underwater thing with the glass cracking, water flooding the room, those bad Towering Inferno shots. We actually wrote and ending with that, but we could see it getting a bit boring.

Another one was as dumb as this–they go to space, somehow. Ferrell was like, “I don’t know what this is, but somehow we’re in space.” You could justify it! You go to the space shuttle, you could have it be that this is the first reporter to go up. I was wary of those action-y third-act endings, where it’s like, you’re in a comedy, so you’re doing action, but not quite as well. It can get a little boring. Ultimately, we stuck with the characters and made it about [Ron], his wife, his son, the news, and staying in that pocket.

You still have an explosive climax in the movie.
We do. You’re talking about the gang fight?

Yes.
We kind of knew that somehow it’s crazy, since in the first movie, [the fight] is operating within the logic of that movie. Somehow, it became somewhat of a conservative ending, as crazy as it is! We weren’t going to do it at first. We said, let’s not repeat anything from the first movie. We were going to be really strict about it, but we said, “We’ve got to do another gang fight!” It would be too much fun, and now that we know how to make movies a bit better, we could do stuff we didn’t do the first time.

How easy or difficult was it to secure some of the cameos for that gang fight?
It was pretty crazy. We drew up a wish list of all the people we wanted, and what we ended up with was basically our wish list. It’s never happened before–usually, when you do your dream casting, you get 30%, 40%, only one of the people. In this case, they all said yes, and it was insane. When they all said yes, I thought, “Should we try crazier ones?” So we actually tried Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was an immediate, decisive “no”. Oprah’s person was like, “You never know!” There was an hour where we thought, “She might do this!” But then [they said] no.

The Barack Obama one was crazy–we had a semi-connection in the White House, and the connection was like, “He might do this! If he gets to say something with a point of view…”. The joke was going to be that he was from C-SPAN. He was going to say that C-SPAN was going to change the news, because it was going to be stripped-down, and you’d see the truth. “Someday, everyone’s going to be watching C-SPAN!” Of course, I’m sure someone underneath him was like, “Are you fucking crazy?! He’s the President!”

How did you develop your brand of humor?
It’s always been what I’ve liked, going back to the Fawlty Towers episode when the German comes in with a head injury. I remember laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes. Or, in Airplane when there’s the spinning headlines and there’s the one that says, “Boy Trapped in Refrigerator, Eats Own Foot.” A lot of comedy writers have pointed to that joke as a seminal joke. It’s those moments when all order goes away and it’s just chaos. To me, as a kid, there was nothing more exciting than watching a movie and realizing, “Oh my god–anything can happen!”

The first time Will and I ever collaborated was our first year on SNL, a sketch called “Wake Up and Smile”, which was about the teleprompter breaks [during a newscast.] It basically becomes Lord of the Flies–since they’re not being told what to say, they all revert to their animal selves. It ends with Ferrell ripping the head off of David Allen Grier, with lots of blood, and they form a cult, like, “The Order of the Hand”. They just regress immediately. The first sketch he and I ever wrote was called “Niel Diamond: Storytellers”. That was another one where we just got fucking insane. The joke was [that Niel Diamond was telling all the stories behind his songs, and he] has all these harmless pop songs, but the stories are just horrible. “When I killed a drifter to get a hard-on.” They just get more and more out of control, and we realized, “we both like this!”

You’ve got all this footage of these funny guys saying funny things, so much footage that you have enough for a second edit, which you’re going to release. How much fun is it in that editing room, and is the second edit done?
It is done. I just went in and gave all the last notes on it. It’s crazy. It’s 350 new jokes. I think there’s, like, seven jokes we couldn’t replace that were spoken jokes. Otherwise, every single joke is replaced. It’s about 10-15 minutes longer, there’s whole new runs and riffs. I can’t imagine doing a comedy any other way. When we’re in that editing room, the worst feeling is when you’re painted into a corner by a crappy joke. “Shit! We have nowhere else to go!” With every movie I do, I hate that feeling more and more, so I just make sure to have alternate takes no matter what we’re doing. It’s the greatest–I’ll go to the editor and say, “There’s got to be a better joke than that.” A lot of times I’ll remember [something we did on the day], and he’ll go and dig it out. One of the other editors will cut four versions of the scene, I’ll go “That one!”, and we’ll test screen it. The sheer volume of improv on this one, because there are so many actors, we were doing two screenings at the same time most of the time. We’d run another cut in a different theater, and I’d get to see every joke. You record the laugh track and you go, “Holy shit, that worked!” Up until we locked, we were finding new jokes. We screened the alternate version before we had locked picture on the regular release, and I found four new jokes in the alternate version that went into the regular movie. By the way, I could still be doing it now. It never ends. It’s a blast.

Were there any discarded plotlines for this movie?
No, amazingly. There are a lot of plotlines, too. I was joking with [Judd] Apatow that it’s like James Brooks were 11-years-old and into minotaurs and tridents, that’s what [this movie’s] like.  There are, like, five storylines going through it. There’s the love story with Meagan Good, there’s the broken marriage, there’s the relationship with the son, Tamland has a love affair going, there’s the news and the synergy thing…there’s a lot. I thought for sure one or two of them would be cut, but they all seemed to play.

In this case, it was just the alt jokes, the sheer tonnage of improve. It’s very funny when you tell the studio, in the first [movie’s] case, “We have a second movie.” They can’t comprehend it. I told them, and they were like, “Haha! Must feel like that, right?” I told them that we had a second movie and that we’d already cut it, and it just didn’t compute. Later, when the movie kind of hit, they were like, “What did you mean about that second movie?” They didn’t even do anything with it the first time. It was the same thing in this case. I kept telling them we had a second movie with all new jokes. This time, they believed us a little more and they’ve already scheduled it to be released.

What made you want Brick to have a love interest? Why him?
I think the answer is almost in the question. Just say, “Brick has a love story.” Will and I sit down and just spray out possibilities. We write this 25-page document of what we’d want to see in the movie that makes no sense with the story at all, these dream moments. I don’t remember which one of us said, “Brick’s got to fall in love.” It wasn’t calculated at all. It just came out of what we wanted to see in the movie. I think it’s a little bit inspired by the ending first movie where it says he’s married with eleven kids.

Are there any jokes that you went with even though they maybe didn’t quite work with test audiences?
That’s an interesting question. That’s the fun of it–there’s an artistry to that. You’re not a slave to those test audiences. We put jokes in even though they don’t work, just because we think they’re funny. But you need the audience to go on the ride with you; you can’t just isolate them. It’s this give and take you’re constantly playing with. There’s the line between Brick [and his love interest] Chani (Kristen Wiig) where she says, “I’m trained and certified…” (and then Brick finishes the sentence) “…to fire a military-grade missile launcher.” It never got a peep out of the audiences, but at one point I was like, too fucking bad–it’s going in the movie. Sometimes there’ll be a joke that I don’t necessarily love, but then it kills, and you’re like, “What? Why is it killing?” If they love it that much, it’s like, alright, they can have that one. That process is just so much fun. You’re taking the audience on a ride, but messing with them a little bit.

They do test scores [with the test audiences] where they combine the “Excellents” and the “Very Goods” and you get a number out of it. You hear about movies that get a “98” or “100”. We don’t want that. For this one, I said the highest we should ever get is a “90”–I still want 10% of that crowd not liking the movie. That was the highest we got. There still should be some people walking out going, “That got too weird for me…”, you know?

It’s been going around that Paramount had cold feet about giving this movie the green light. What was their concern, and what changed their minds?
It was purely about the fact that since the first one, all these guys have become incredibly successful. They all have high quotes, and rightfully so. On paper, if you’re going to do the movie and pay everyone what they should be paid, it was going to be a certain budget level. We told them that, and they went, “Are you fucking crazy!?” We said alright, we won’t do it, and made The Other Guys. People kept asking us and asking us about it, and we went, “Shit, man. We should do this anyway.” We went back to the studio and said we’d do a pay cut, and we still couldn’t get it right. Then, at the last second, they were able to find the right budget level, but it still involved everyone taking 60% pay cuts. But, you know what? We can’t complain. We still get paid ridiculous amounts of money for the jobs we do. Ultimately, it’s so much fun.

The claims that David Gordon Green is going back to his older days, where films like George Washington and All The Real Girls had him heralded as America’s Next Great Director, isn’t necessarily true. Sure, Prince Avalanche is Green’s first film in years that resembles his earlier projects, but the influence from his shift to studio pictures is just as prevalent. Even with all of the quiet, contemplative scenes this is still a very broad comedy, one that feels like a perfect middle ground between the two different sides of the director. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.

Opening with a title card that talks about a Texas forest fire in the late 80s, the film cuts to gorgeous footage of trees being destroyed by a massive fire before showing two street workers preparing for their day. Alvin (Paul Rudd) and Lance (Emile Hirsch) spend their week walking around painting lines on a road that runs through the forest mentioned at the beginning. The job requires the two of them to be isolated from the outside world, camping out along the road during the week before heading back to town on the weekend.

Lance is the brother of Alvin’s girlfriend, and it’s evident that Alvin only hired him as a favour. Lance is a young playboy with only one thing on his mind, while Alvin prefers solitude. “There’s a difference between being lonely and being alone”, Alvin says at one point, which sums up what Prince Avalanche is about. Lance is constantly looking for a way to not be lonely, while Alvin prefers to be on his own. Both of them end up getting what they wish for, but not in the ways they imagined.

For most of this entirely whelming film, Rudd and Hirsch are usually clashing over their different approaches to life. There are some welcome detours in the narrative, one involving a truck driver (Lance LeGault) who has a never-ending supply of alcohol, and a fantastic scene with a woman (Joyce Payne) going through her destroyed home that nails a lot of what Green was trying to accomplish (and it says something that this scene was never in the script). The same can’t be said for most of Prince Avalanche.

Alvin and Lance feel broadly drawn as characters, making it hard to take either of them seriously. Rudd and Hirsch do fine in their roles, but the material they’re working with is lacking. Green’s focus on nature involves several montages of nature shots which, despite Tim Orr’s great cinematography, feel less evocative and more like padding for time. There’s a heartwarming quality to Prince Avalanche that contrasts with the themes of loneliness and depression, but there isn’t enough dramatic weight behind Alvin and Lance’s situations to make the uplifting quality feel earned.

Nonetheless, there’s plenty to admire. The late Lance LeGault is great in his minor role, and the score by David Wingo with Explosions in the Sky helps support the film’s off-kilter tone. Whether or not it’s an improvement on Either Way, the Icelandic film that Green based his script on, remains to be seen, but it wouldn’t be surprising if both films can easily stand on their own merits. For Green, a director who seemingly fell into a slump after Your Highness and The Sitter, Prince Avalanche certainly seems like a step in the right direction, but it’s too light and forgettable to really make any impact.

Prince Avalanche trailer:

Back in May at the San Francisco International Film Festival, I sat down with director David Gordon Green to talk about his new film, Prince Avalanche, starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch. The film—a character study about two road workers who bicker and banter with each other as they tediously paint road lines in a burned down Texas state park—is a notably weightier comedy than most Rudd vehicles (this isn’t one), striking some beautiful, poignant notes along with the funny dialogue. It also happens to be a remake of an Icelandic film, Either Way by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson (awesome name.)

Green is one of the most versatile directors working today, constantly switching between formats. He does comedies (Pineapple Express), dramas (George Washington), television (Eastbound & Down), and even car commercials. He chatted with me about how the post-rock band Explosions in the Sky influenced the film, reinventing actors, randomly meeting a woman who changed the entire film, the late, great Lance LeGault, and more.

So I hear you love Explosions in the Sky…
Yeah, they’re kind of the reason the movie exists. They’ve done a couple of songs for my movies before. Actually, they just finished a song for my new movie that I mixed in yesterday that sounds awesome. We’d been talking about what we could do together again but in a bigger form; they wanted to score a movie. It had been since Friday Night Lights that they scored a film.

I was at a Super Bowl party a little more than a year ago, and I had this commercial in it (the Super Bowl). It was this Clint Eastwood Chrysler commercial. It was kind of crazy and epic. I was watching it with the Explosions guys and I was talking about how amazing that process was. It feels very epic when you watch it, but it was a very stripped down crew, guys in a van jumping out and filming something. We never really knew what we were going to film that morning, but we’d get up and go film a brickyard in San Francisco or we’d film a train track in New Orleans.

I was talking to them about the process of making that, and they said, “You should take that process and make something in this burned down state park outside of Austin.” After they told me about it, I went hiking up there and I thought, “Yeah, absolutely. I have to make a movie here soon because it’s going to come back to life.” It was burned maybe three months before I was there. I thought, I want to make something here immediately with this run-and-gun process. I woke up one day with a title in my head. It needs to be called Prince Avalanche.

So it was location first, then title?
It was process first, then location, then title. Then, I was doing a commercial up in New York and I was talking to my art director friend. We were just sitting around, having a beer. I said, “Ok. I’ve got the process, location, and title. I have a bunch of scripts lying around, but none of them are going to fit what I’m trying to do.” He said, “You should just remake this Icelandic film that my friend worked on called Either Way.” I said, “Is it good?” and he said, “I don’t know, haven’t seen it.” (laughs)

So, I YouTubed the trailer and I thought it looked really interesting. It was just two guys painting stripes on the road. I tracked down the movie with the intent of how I would remake it. I was thinking, “What’s my version of this?” I started getting really excited because I loved the film. It’s a wonderfully made movie. I was trying to figure out how I could put my fingerprints on it.

What are your fingerprints on the film?
I think the emotional elements of the love stories. I really wanted to bring my honest threads of lost love. Their version is a little more straightforward. It’s a beautiful movie: almost all master shots, very little coverage in it, amazing landscapes. But [my version] felt a little more raw in its cinematography and more explicit in its emotion.

I love how contained the movie feels. The only time we leave the burned park is in the shot where we speed down the road to Paul Rudd’s girl, but that all takes place in his head.
Right, that’s not in their movie. That shot is just a way for me to integrate the frustrations of relationships. There’s always something interesting for me to explore. The balance of masculinity in a relationship, two characters at odds with each other, and yet, they’re saying the same thing. I kind of look at these characters as two versions of myself, both I can relate to an incredible amount. There’s the me that’s trying to be manly and mature, and then there’s the me that just wants to get laid and have fun. Those are the stems, and I just tried to find ownership of the characters in order to do what I thought I could do with [the film], as I’m sure [Sigurðsson] did with the original.

The location is absolutely gorgeous, but really grey. Talk a bit about the splashes of color you use throughout the film: The blue lines of paint on the trees, the mustard Emile plays with.
Yeah, there are those primary colors that explode, like the paint on the road, which you see close-up shots of. There’s the blue overalls, the red car. We really wanted to have an animated world. There’s not a lot of film influence in this, but I could cite a couple of them. Kings of the Road was maybe an influence. With our camerawork I could point to the Darden brothers. The biggest influence was Super Mario Bros. We really wanted it to be this weird, apocalyptic, wasteland landscape, and the Super Mario Bros. took over the reconstruction of the world.

Seriously?
Yeah! Jill Newell was our costume designer, and we were looking at Super Mario Bros. and The Sun, the Darden Brothers movie. It kind of became this odd…

Is that why Paul has the mustache?
Yup. We didn’t want it to be too obvious by making the distinctive Luigi, but we had the red helmets…you know, just trying to be subtle about it.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Emile and Paul had not met before production.
Correct. We all met at my favorite seafood restaurant in Austin, and I just started laughing when they started talking to each other.

So they were funny with each other right away.
Well…funny to me! (laughs)

It was funny to me, too!
The best part is that they’re playing characters that aren’t necessarily what people know them as, as actors. In a lot of ways, Emile is comedic relief in the movie, and he’s never done a comedic performance in his life. Paul takes a lot of the depth and drama of the movie, and he’s mostly known as a comedic actor. I’m really proud of being able to take actors outside their wheelhouse and try something that the world doesn’t necessarily expect of them. Show them something fresh. I tried that with [James] Franco in Pineapple Express. He was mostly known for Flyboys and Annapolis—all these pretty boy movies—and then I said, “Let’s just make him as raw and messed up as possible.” I just did a new movie with Nicholas Cage where I took him in a way that I don’t think he’s ever played. [The role] is all about restraint and subtleties, a really tightly wound performance rather than a big outrageous one. I really like the idea of reinventing an actor, at least in my own way.

Before we run out of time, let’s talk about Lance LeGault. Were there things that he said or did that didn’t make it to the film?
Everything. (laughs) He’s amazing, man. He died right after we shot [the film.] He’s an amazing singer, and he sings one of the songs in my new movie. We’re trying to keep his presence alive. Lance was an extra in a Dodge commercial I did out in Tehachapi, California in the desert. We were filming the new fleet of Dodge vehicles blazing through the desert. I kept hearing this guy talk, and I looked over and thought, “Who is that dude?” He was full of tall tales and piss and vinegar, and I just fell in love with him. I started talking to him and I said, “You’ve got a great voice! You ever do radio?” He said, “Do radio?! Man, I sang with Elvis for over 20 years!” I found one of his records in a record store recently. He’s got albums from the ’70s that are amazing. He was a bad guy in The A-Team for a little bit, bad guy on Magnum, P.I. He’s just a wild card. It was an honor to be in his presence. He’s just so larger-than-life and says the weirdest things.

So the way he acts in the movie is really what he’s like.
Oh yeah. He has the weirdest way of speaking. It’s simultaneously scary and funny. When he smacks the boombox off the log in the movie…

That absolutely killed in the theater.
Yeah, it’s one of the biggest laughs in the movie! It’s all him. He’s just wild.

The interlude with the elderly woman searching for her stuff in her burned down house really gives the movie a beautiful shape.
It’s interesting—it wasn’t in the script. We were location scouting for the scene where Paul pantomimes through a burned down house. My AD Atilla and my producer Craig were looking at these houses and they saw this woman sifting through the ashes in her house. They started talking to her, and she was looking for her pilot’s license in the ashes of her house. They were like, “Hang on…let’s go get the cameras.” (laughs) They came and got me and said, “There’s this lady…I think we should film her. She’s amazing.” We got her permission to bring Paul and a camera over there, and [what’s in the movie] is all her story. I didn’t feed her any lines.

The beautiful contrast of the film is these things that are…like, there’s a background that’s very sad, and yet, there’s humorous things happening in the foreground. In that sense, she’s seeing her loss and her devastation, but there’s something just beautiful and absurd about her looking for a piece of paper in the ashes of her home. It’s all Joyce (Payne), an amazing woman of many accomplishments. She was an artist and had a whole room of ceramics that she had built and things she’d collected from her travels—all of that was gone. She was in a very affected, emotional place, shared it with us, and then we worked her into the truck [at the end] which kind of makes her a supernatural character.

One of the beauties of a low budget movie—so low budget no one knows you’re making it, no one’s looking at you, no one’s asking you why you’re deviating from the script, it’s a three week shoot, nobody’s getting paid—is that when an idea like [including Joyce] comes along, you have to follow your instinct and go chase it. Now I can’t imagine the movie without it. But, we would have taken a different journey if we hadn’t met her.

It’s funny, we showed it at SXSW a couple of months ago, and she didn’t tell any of her family or friends that she was in a movie. She showed up with her friend who said she called her at 1pm and said, “Hey, you want to go to this movie at 4? I’m in it.” Her friend said, “What do you mean you’re in a movie?” They show up, and there’s the red carpet, Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch are there, there are photographers everywhere (laughs).

You can really feel the weight of her scene.
It’s pivotal. It’s hard on a movie like this, because I think it’s a really likable, warm movie. It’s the first film I’ve made where I feel like it’s for everyone. There’s no vulgarity in the movie, there’s no violence, nothing questionable other than maybe some moderate conversation. It’s the first movie I’ve made that I think everyone will enjoy. Obviously, we’ve got the great acting talent of Paul and Emile and Lances charisma, but she brings an honesty to it that gives the movie such a gravity that can sustain on dramatic qualities without needing the big laughs of a comedy. All of a sudden, there’s a truth that she speaks that inherently weaves through the rest of the film. Once she shows up, the film can be as funny as you want or as dramatic as you want—you’re allowed to break all the rules at that point. I kind of attribute the movie to her in a weird way.

Prince Avalanche is in theaters and on iTunes August 9^th.

Inequality for All

Inequality for All’s message—about the threat of the expanding income gap between the middle class and top 1% in the United States—is delivered by an extraordinarily charismatic and inspirational messenger, Robert Reich. Director Jacob Kornbluth couldn’t have found a better, more qualified face for his statistics-driven documentary. Reich has an uncanny gift for making complex, vast, potentially confusing ideas and distilling them down into easily digestible morsels. A former Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration, author of 14 books, and current professor at UC Berkeley, Reich lends invaluable experience and unstoppable vigor to what could have been a cold, dismaying film. You can’t help but be inspired by his conviction. Reich makes the film, much like Philippe Petit did for James Marsh’s incredible Man on Wire.

Reich’s ability to inspire is made more impressive by how serious and concerning the film’s subject matter is. The United States’ widening income gap is damaging our economy’s health more than anything else, and we as a country need to rectify this quickly. The first step in doing this is to become knowledgeable about how we got to this point, and Inequality of All is a powerful tool in this education.

The graphics employed to illustrate the dismal state of the economy are stylistic and engaging, aided greatly by Reich’s textured voice. The film’s most resonant graphic—cleverly superimposing the economy’s rollercoaster rises and dips over an image of the Golden Gate Bridge—is powerful and surprisingly emotional. Kornbluth spends a little too much time drawing parallels between Reich’s personal life and the US middle-class, but nevertheless, the documentary ultimately achieves its main goal of making us care.

RATING: 7.9

Prince Avalanche

Set in 1988 Texas one year after a devastating forest fire, David Gordon Green’s Prince Avalanche follows two road maintenance workers (Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch) as they form a bond through shared loneliness and displacement. Though the plot doesn’t go anywhere particularly interesting, it’s pleasantly minimalist and the characters grow on you nicely. Considerably more artful than his recent studio works (Your Highness, Pineapple Express), Prince Avalanche carries genuine emotional gravity, though there are still plenty of laughs throughout.

Green lets loose creatively in Prince Avalanche, casting Rudd and Hirsch in character types they don’t typically play (Rudd is bitter and stern, Hirsch is the off-beat comic relief). He gives them lots of room to work, fitting in quirky character moments and extended, humorously idiotic dialog about nothing in particular. They fuss and fight over the most mundane of issues (Rudd yells at Hirsch for writing in his vintage comic books), and their squabbles quickly escalate toward the end of the film in a battle over who will be crowned ‘king of the stupids’.

Hirsch is hilarious, playing the role of buffoon without ego—he scrunches his chubby face as he strains to articulate even the simplest thought, and eventually spews out words even dumber than his dopey mug. Rudd doesn’t offer anything particularly noteworthy, though he sets up Hirsch like a pro.

Green uses splashes of primary colors throughout the movie (the duo’s clothes, yellow road paint) that really pop on the muted landscape. Explosions in the Sky provide the film’s understated, ethereal score, which lends itself perfectly to the peaceful setting. A haunting scene involving Rudd interacting with an elderly woman searching the burned remains of her home sticks out like a sore thumb (in a good way) and gives the film a unique shape that distinguishes it even more from Green’s studio work.

RATING: 7.2

The festival is in a state of transition. Much of the international press is beginning to leave the city, and as the weekend nears, they are replaced with more general audience members looking to enjoy the scene. Nearly all of the films have now played at least once, meaning the press has gotten what they came for, and there are now more films in screen circulation for the general public to see. As the press events begin to wane, I find myself making the transition myself; though I plan to stay for the entirety of Berlinale, as there are still several films I want to see. There are no longer any screenings that are press only, and the theaters are taking on a more organic feel with the presence of general movie goers filling the seats around me.

I’m one of those guys that has to have a snack with a movie. I’m not sorry about this–for any of you who cannot stand the popcorn crunchers or mid-show pop-openers. And of course, I never buy from the theater concessions, choosing, rather, to collect my goods from the grocery store on the bottom floor of the neighboring mall. I’ll never forget the time I managed to sneak a whole 16 inch pizza into Rocky Balboa. Europe is ideal for bringing food into theaters because everyone carries a backpack with them where ever they go, so no one questions its presence. During the press screenings I always felt out of place with a Coke and a Mounds bar because I was one of the only one indulging. I’m sorry, but a movie isn’t a movie without snacks–especially ones you sneak in.

Now that I am back with the general audience, I am home again. I don’t have to take three minutes to quietly open my soda–which is exceptionally pressurized after bouncing around in my bag. I can pop that baby open and go to town. Same goes with the candy bar wrapper. After all, going to a movie should be an event. Even if you are hitting three or four screenings a day, this is a time to kick back, have fun, and get lost in a story for a couple of hours. I think if anyone forgets this side of cinema they are really missing out.

Prince Avalanche

I like going into a movie not knowing much about it. Knowing too much sets expectations, and you can fall victim to distracting yourself during a film waiting to see if your predictions prove true or false. For this reason, I will usually follow the recommendations of friends more than I will a review. Sometimes, however, I don’t always manage to steer clear of a review or trailer if my anticipation is too hot to handle. I am, after all, only human.

Because Prince Avalanche was one of the films in which the press was combined with a general audience, I decided it would be a good idea to show up to the theater earlier than usual to ensure a good seat–and by good seat, I mean a good place in line. I showed up to the Berlinale Palast about fifty minutes before showtime, and a thick line was already forming. The group beside me had apparently partied too hard the night before, and weren’t feeling sociable, so I pulled out my phone and decided to entertain myself by reading the reviews of my colleagues. In this process, I stumbled upon a review of Prince Avalanche from Sundance, and decided to break my rule and give it a look.

As usual, it set an expectation. However, I found that the critic in this case was very off base. He declared the film to be a serious role for funny man Paul Rudd, and noted that the pacing was incredibly slow, since much of it is just the two main characters out in the woods. My perception proved otherwise.

Prince Avalanche tells the story of two men, Lance and Alvin. Lance is the little brother of Alvin’s girlfriend, which is the only reason Alvin hired him to help repair the forest roads in a fire scarred region of Texas. The two have nothing in common; Alvin prefers solitude and self-reflection where Lance craves social scenes and partying. The film plays along the usual lines of a buddy film, where the two characters eventually find fulfillment in the character aspects of their foil. It is a bumpy road, but the two reach it ultimately and the ending is very satisfying.

For those Paul Rudd fans out there who have read reviews like I did, and are upset that he will not be providing his usual antics, forget it. Prince Avalanche is hilarious. At times the humor is subtle, but you will find it there none the less. Writer and director David Gordon Green said his script for the 90 minute film was only sixty pages long, meaning he left plenty of room for improvisation of the actors, which is one of Rudd’s strong points. The banter is wonderful between Alvin and Lance, and I couldn’t help but watch the film and, at times, see the characters as children in adult bodies. Not that the humor is childish, it is quite the opposite; rather, the speech pattern is simple and poignant. Rudd commented that he felt the dialog was similar to that of a foreign film, but spoken natively in English. (It should be noted that Prince Avalanche is a remake of an Icelandic film called Either Way.) The film is engaging and keeps a solid pace. With only four characters in the entire film, the actors do a great job to carry the weight for the full 90 minutes.

Apart from the press conference for Prince Avalanche I also made it to a Talent Campus presentation on crafting emotion in screenwriting, in which David Gordon Green was a part of the panel. He gave some interesting introspect on his script for Prince Avalanche, as well as his writing process in general. According to Green, his first task is creating a cohesive story, with a solid arch and a beginning, middle, and end. This first draft story might be bland and hyper-straightforward, but he says that once he has this in place, it gives him freedom to get as weird or offbeat as he wants. Green stated that too often writers will try and write all the quirkiness into the very first draft of a script, and try to make this quirkiness an integral part of the story and characters. He warns against this, as it can create serious challenges in telling the initial story. “Once you have your solid script, your solid story,” he says, “you will never lose it, and that frees you to wander later as far as you want.” Using this process also allows Green to get the actors involved to develop their own characters, which leads to some really unique and entertaining performances.

Greens methods definitely play out in this excellent addition to his work as a fairly prominent director and screenwriter. Green noted that he managed to keep his efforts on this film largely unknown to Hollywood and the press. It was just “friends going out into the woods and making a movie.” This privacy freed Green of expectations and gave him true creative license to do what he wanted, away from external eyes. Prince Avalanche is a fresh, fun comedy that carries a solid message and story at the heart of it. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and I hope it achieves fairly wide distribution as I think it offers something for everyone.

RATING: 8.6

Director David Gordon Green and lead actor Paul Rudd at a press conference.

COMING UP: As I mentioned, things are beginning to slow down a bit here at the 63rd Berlinale, but there are still plenty of films to see. Later this week is the screening of Dark Blood, the last–and never fully finished–film with River Pheonix. Also, a gold rush American western with a German spin.

As the argument goes, it is rare to find a film that is better than the novel it is based on. This is simply because the cinematic representation can never quite hold the writers imagination or match the depth and layered details found amongst the printed page. The Perks of Being a Wallflower directed by Stephen Chbosky however holds a defiant advantage in the fact that it was also written by Stephen Chbosky. As a coming-of-age tale the film owes its success to the dazzling reality of the situations as if stolen from the audience’s very own adolescence. It is in these subtle moments that the film comes alive, with the quiet realizations that everything happening on the screen is not just about Chbosky’s characters but all of us, as well.

Charlie (Logan Lerman), the character in question, is a young freshman starting his first year of high school and he narrates us through the story from his perspective partly involved, and partly detached up on the wall as a ‘wallflower’. Obviously a unique person, Charlie at the beginning of the story is something of an introvert without any friends outside his family. However this changes when he meets Sam (Emma Watson) and Patrick (Ezra Miller), two seniors who take an interest in him and show him an alternate life. For the first time ever, Charlie goes to parties, music shows, hangs out with people and most importantly feels noticed, as if he is participating more in life.

The problem with this film is reading a review or hearing about it from someone simply cannot do it justice. That is thanks to countless terrible high school and college set rom-coms, which tarnish the whole subject greatly. The Perks of Being a Wallflower however is different and so should be treated differently. It holds a perfect balance in between a film with no substance and of one entrenched too far in the wrong emotions, tackling deep life issues but with humour sprinkled in the right moments. Underpinning this all is the psychological elements that Charlie and the other characters face stemming from some past traumatic events, which is something that adds character depth. This appeals to a wide audience and is again a reason for the film’s success as many people can connect with the issues on screen, ranging from, paedophilia, domestic abuse, suicide, homophobia, sexual exploration and of course unrequited love. This all becomes obvious between the characters through subtle, shared moments much like in real life and to the audience through the use of dream-like flashbacks, which adds an element of surrealism.

Helping greatly in the film’s success is the outstanding acting talents that shine through the film. Logan Lerman playing Charlie pulled off the awkwardly unique freshman perfectly and set himself out boldly as a new face. Emma Watson playing Sam pushes herself in all the right directions away from previous roles to mature and expand into new realms of cinema. However the main credit must fall to Ezra Miller playing Patrick, very much a dark horse he appears to be doing everything right to progress in the acting world, and he is doing so at an alarming rate. All three of them, brilliantly casted, really do make the film what it is and watching from the audience, you can’t help but think that Logan, Emma and Ezra have been waiting for these roles.

Anyone who watches The Perks of Being a Wallflower without prior knowledge of the story is in for the emotional and strikingly real performance promised, something you will wish could be relived. And likewise anyone who is already a fan of the novel will be happy to see the characters they know and love in a different format, continuing on past the pages onto the screen, as if they truly do mean something.

Joel McHale will host the 26th Film Independent’s Spirit Awards show and the list of presenters for this year’s ceremony has been announced. Some good surprises are Will Arnett and Rainn Wilson.

See the full list of nominations

Here is the list of presenters:
Will Arnett
Jesse Eisenberg
Terrence Howard
Nicole Kidman
Diego Luna
Craig Robinson
Rainn Wilson
Paul Rudd
Mark Ruffalo
Zoe Saldana
Kerry Washington
Mia Wasikowska