I was born in England - though both of my parents are American - and there's something about the 'Muppets' where they have this combination of English and American humor.
A big part of being in a relationship or marriage or whatever is you have to eventually compromise. Your life doesn't end up exactly the way you think it's going to, and if it's the right relationship, you might have to compromise what you're doing professionally.
But having said that, regardless to what reviews come out whatever, I like love the movie. I think it's great, and so people can think what they think about it, but I'm very happy with what we did. I'm really proud of whatever all the actors what we all kind of accomplished and so regardless of how well it does or whatever I'm very excited about it and I think we set out to do the thing and accomplished what we wanted to do. Our goal was met, so yeah.
And also, I'm most comfortable with like two people just sitting and talking about their feeling, you know, in a room with like two cameras and that's it. And I wanted to do something where there was like action and running and you know crowd scenes and big set pieces and certainly did a lot of that, so yeah.
The Lampoon was definitely quite formative. You know there's a crazy like kind of network of comedy writers from The Lampoon that are, that kind of you know like Seinfeld and The Simpsons and a lot of shows kind of had a lot of kind of Lampoon writers and so that was very formative. I mean, to me I got interested in comedy writing at an early like reading like Dave Barry.
I remember reading Dave Barry for the first time and being like oh my God I can't believe you can do this. Watching Mel Brooks and Monty Python and SNL and all that stuff really informed me as a writer and then at high school I started a satire magazine and the college like The Lampoon really introduced me to like you know a lot of very like-minded people who really wanted to like comedy was the center of their lives.
And writing comedy and it really taught me how to kind of like craft jokes, it sounds like weird but really focus on crafting jokes and trying to make the writing really sharp. At the same time I did improv comedy in college, and that helped with understanding the performance aspect of comedy, you know, because it's different when you improv something vs. when you write it and they're both kind of part of my process now.
And then afterwards I worked in advertising for a year which taught me about writing even when you don't want to (laughter) because there's never a moment that you want to write about an Erickson cell phone but you have to. And that's really important you know obviously for the...like if you really want to write, you have to write every day no matter how you feel or you know. And then, yeah, and then I ended up working in TV and then from TV into movies and then directing, so.
Every day is still exciting. I have like a very good system worked out with my editor. Some directors are in there every day, sitting there in the room with the editor. I lose perspective incredibly quickly, and so what I do is I watch...I come in the room and give very specific notes and then I go back to my house or in my office and I watch the dailies.
And I watch all the dailies and I grade the jokes or the moments, you know, on a scale from... so I know exactly what we have. And so I can then go into the editing room and be like "I want you to do this moment, this moment, this joke, that joke. I'd like to see 3 versions."
And then my editor really likes that because he's left alone to do what...to create those things instead of me breathing over his shoulder and I like it because I don't have to sit in the editing room all day. I get to watch just dailies.
I mean we certainly always shoot a lot of extra material, but our goal was to make kind of like a big kind of rock-and-roll road trip comedy that has heart and that has hopefully you feel bad for Russell and you feel bad for Aldeus and also I wanted to surprise people with some of the turns in the movie and I think when I watched it with audiences they certainly...the reactions made me think that we did and so all that I'm just very excited about it.
I love the romantic comedy genre. It's a genre rich with many of the best movies ever made and I try to treat it with the respect that Shakespeare treated it with.
I think people try to jam a lot of artificial plot devices into a lot of romantic comedies, and they don't treat it with the respect I believe it deserves.
Everyone forgets that what's fun about a romantic comedy is how these two people are going to fight with each other and how's that going to be funny.
I like digital because you can shoot for longer.
Sometimes a scene can elude you, and then, you also learn that the small moments are really what you're after. A big broad moment that gets the crew laughing, usually isn't going to translate to an audience.
Because also, sometimes things that are really funny on the day, when you look at them in post can feel too broad, you know? Sometimes not, but it's kind of weird how that can change.
And sometimes you're not noticing a little eye movement that's hilarious. So it all kind of gets figured out in post. And that guy you were watching was this guy Murray Miller, who's actually not an actor, he's a writer that Rodney and I are friends with. He's just crazily funny, especially when hitting on people.
I mean I certainly like when I'm like talking to people I'm like what did you think, what did you think, what did you think? You know that's always in the back of my head.
I'm pretty brutal about getting rid of stuff. There wasn't anything where I was like, "Oh, I miss that," because usually it's for a good reason.
I feel very creatively satisfied and lucky that I get to write for other people, but for something I direct, it has to be something I completely understand every facet of.
I like writing for other people. I love it. It's great because you write it and then you hand it off to someone else. But in terms of directing, anything I direct will be something I've written or re-written. I'm in no crazy rush to direct.
Yeah, it's an origin story. But you very quickly get into the origin and then it's off to the races. It is an origin story, certainly, but it's not like the movie ends and somebody stretches. It happens pretty quickly and I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to say about it, but I think when people see that first hint, they'll be pretty excited about it.
It's all in L.A. There might be some location shooting as well. I think it's pretty short. I heard it was like six to eight weeks, which is pretty short. But you don't have to do makeup or anything. There's no hair, there's no makeup, there's like one trailer for Jason and one for the actors who do cameos. It's quick. So that's what they're saying. I don't know if that will change.
