A little while back, Jon Hamm appeared, over video chat, during a segment of Amy Poehler’s podcast. He was behind the scenes on a film shoot, wearing a white tuxedo and climbing into a hot air balloon. I think most viewers were like, “Just what is he filming?” It’s nice to finally have an answer . . .
ZOEY: What is interesting about your story is that now I finally know what he was doing on the phone, while we were in the hot air balloon. Because I didn’t, and I was a little perplexed because we were in close quarters and he was on the phone, and I was like, “I wonder who this could be.” And it turns out it was Amy Poehler — which I get.
David, there’s a distinctly absurdist, almost vaudevillian tone that your films tend to inhabit. How would you unpack your comedic sensibility?
DAVID: It’s hard to do that. I don’t feel like I’m in a very good place to dissect it — and I certainly don’t do it when I’m creating the work; I’m not trying to put labels on it, or guardrails. When I’m writing with Ken Marino, we’re just basically trying to write what we find funny and what makes sense in our brains — and let others put a definition on that voice. But I recognize that there’s a certain consistency, which I like . . . words like “absurdist,” and there’s antecedents and there’s a genre that it fits into. But I’ve seen some critics write up things that define it better than I could.
Zoey, is it an interesting experience, having starred in rom-coms that “play it straight,” to now do a project like this which sort of deconstructs the genre and stitches it back together with an absurdist bent?
ZOEY: Yeah, I love it. I mean, this is the kind of movie that I love to watch — and I’m probably more familiar with than rom-coms. It also explores all different genres’ tropes in a way that I find hilarious.
DAVID: I remember when we were doing our movie They Came Together, which is a very specific tear-down of the rom-com genre, and Paul Rudd was like, “I’ve starred in a lot of these — like, the real version of this. I don’t know if I can ever do it again” . . . It turns out, he’s fine.
David, you’ve worked with both Jon Hamm and John Slattery before. How did you pitch Jon and John on this one?
DAVID: We wrote the script with the hopes that they would do it . . . but didn’t wanna present it until we had a finished script. And so, I actually called Jon Hamm and I said, “This is a little weird, but we have this movie.” And at the time the title was I’ll Take the Hamm. “Essentially, you’re you, as you, as a character in it . . . and really hope you might be interested in doing it!” The same thing with John Slattery. Then, after that sort of scary conversation, it was very simple sending it over and both of them saying, “Yeah, I’m in.” It was pretty cool.
Your frequent collaborator Joe Lo Truglio plays a gangster in Gail Daughtry. He’s most famous as Det. Boyle on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. And there’s a scene in this film where a random person on the street recognizes him while you’re shooting and says, “Charles Boyle!” And you didn’t cut it. How freeing is it to have the kind of flexible film reality where you don’t have to axe that scene?
Yeah. The only rule is “Does it feel right to us? Does it feel funny?” I mean, one of my favourite moments in anything is in our movie The Ten, where a character is saying a line, f***s it up, gets frustrated with himself, and then starts over and says it again. And we just left it in. [Laughs]
Zoey, not to say that you went full Method on this and just lived that Gail Daughtry life 24/7 . . . but what is it like inhabiting the mindset of a character in this skewed, absurdist world?
DAVID: She would not let us call her “Zoey” on set . . .
ZOEY: I still am going by “Gail.” Until the movie comes out, I’m Gail. No, I don’t know . . . she’s very optimistic and lovely, and it was a really fun character to get to play. There’s a lot of absurd things that are happening around me, but I’m, for all intents and purposes, the straight man of the movie — so, I just tried to play it as straight [as possible].
DAVID: I just think one of the hardest things probably for you and for the crew was that Gail the character is a half an inch shorter than you are in real life. So, that involved a lot of camera trickery and costume stuff, and then of course just a different mindset on your part . . .
On the topic of height-related camera trickery, that’s what they did on Lord of the Rings, for the hobbits . . . and weirdly, this film also has a sort of quest narrative at its core.
DAVID: Yeah, we take this very silly idea and then turn it into this epic journey/quest across this whimsical version of L.A. — almost like Wizard of Oz, in a way.
This very much has the feel of a run-and-gun production. What was the shooting schedule?
ZOEY: We shot it in 21 days. Very quick shoot. And we were fortunate enough to get to shoot it here in Los Angeles, which is my hometown. I’m very L.A. proud, and I am desperate, alongside many others, to bring film back to L.A., for a lot of different reasons. Getting to make this little movie here was really very special to me.
DAVID: It’s incredible that, when we first were putting it together, even though it literally all takes place in iconic L.A. places, the first question [from financiers] is, “OK, so where other than L.A. should we shoot this? Anywhere but L.A.”
ZOEY: That’s always what the first piece of the puzzle is: “Where are we shooting this? Because we can’t shoot it in L.A. [for financial reasons].”
DAVID: That’s a conversation I hope to invert from now on.
When you’re doing an absurdist piece, does the key to pulling it off lay in not “winking” — not acknowledging the absurdity?
DAVID: Yeah, that goes back to how they brilliantly did that in Airplane!. The more absurd the situation, the more you just have everyone and everything play it as real as you possibly can . . . which makes it all the funnier.
After hearing about the legendary “whip curl” hairstyle throughout the film, Gail finally dons the ’do at her wedding. Zoey, when you saw yourself in the mirror, did you think, “Hey, maybe this is my thing now?”
ZOEY: Absolutely. It’s a stunning hairdo that I can’t wait to see take over the world. It’s bound to happen. [Laughs]
DAVID: One of our producers was convinced on set . . . He’s just like, “People are gonna start really [doing this].”
As much as you don’t need to ascribe a “meaning” to a wacky endeavour like this, beneath all the antics, this really feels like a story about friendship, about people being there for each other . . .
DAVID: I one hundred per cent agree. And by the way, I feel like all movies that are real and personal like ours is, and made by a cohesive group of people that are like-minded, the meaning is there no matter what — because the themes and things we think about bubble up through the jokes and the comedy and the story. And so, yes, friendship and going for what you believe in and being there for each other . . . there’s a lot of themes. And there’s themes about fame and celebrity. There’s a lot that’s said under the surface, but it was not the primary driver of why we made the movie — which I think is good.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, in theatres
MEMORABLE ROLES:
The daughter of Back to the Future star Lea Thompson and Pretty in Pink director Howard Deutch, Zoey Deutch has been making her own mark on Hollywood over the past decade, showing impressive range with roles across such films as Netflix hits Set It Up and Voicemails for Isabelle, Clint Eastwood’s courtroom thriller Juror #2, horror comedy Zombieland: Double Tap, and Texas auteur Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!! and Nouvelle Vague. Director David Wain, meanwhile, got his start with ’90s sketch troupe The State on MTV, alongside pals Joe Lo Truglio (who co-stars in Gail Daughtry) and Ken Marino (who co-wrote and co-stars in Gail Daughtry). Beyond Gail, he’s helmed such pics as Wet Hot American Summer, Role Models, They Came Together and TV’s Childrens Hospital.
CURRENT GIG:
Cult comedy legend David Wain helms another flick that’s absurd, edgy and sweet all at once. It’s the tale of Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch), a Kansas hairdresser about to marry her high school sweetheart Tom (Michael Cassidy). Alas, when Jennifer Aniston comes to town for a book signing and Tom cashes in his “celebrity sex pass,” Gail heads for Hollywood to find and bed her own celeb crush, Jon Hamm. Aiding her are an array of unlikely companions . . . including Hamm’s old Mad Men co-star, John Slattery.