eight months pass...
three weeks pass...
I've got your back on this. I just realized I had previously said:
This movie is awful, but I laughed a bunch. People seem apoplectic about this fairly harmless thing (which isn't particularly cynical, and is rarely cruel - just dumb), when surely it's a GOOD thing that a studio threw down for a wide-release film that cost $6m and isn't based on a friggin' videogame/superhero or an '80s reboot. Anyway, yeah - it's worth the price of admission for the Rusty Cundieff skit. Lots of fun.
― Walter Galt, Tuesday, January 29, 2013 11:31 PM (9 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
and
(Griffin Dunne) seems to be doing alright. It was nice to see him in one of the last Girls episodes.
His skit is by far the weirdest in the movie, and certainly the most tonally different. It looks great (though there is an extended shot of Emma Stone that might be more out of focus than anything I've ever seen in a major movie. Like, maybe she just dropped in for a single take and bailed).
He's a veteran of the sketch anthology movie, too, having appeared in Amazon Women on the Moon (which this movie most closely resembles) in '87.
― Walter Galt, Thursday, January 31, 2013 2:56 PM (9 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― Walter Galt, Monday, 4 November 2013 16:11 (ten years ago) link
one month passes...
wiki on this is p revealing
Development
Wessler first came up with the idea for an outrageous comedy made up of several short films in the early 2000s. "It's like Funny or Die, only if you could go crazy," judged Farrelly, "because with Funny or Die, there are certain limits. And we just wanted to do that kind of short and go much further than that." Charlie Wessler affirmed that he "wanted to make a Kentucky Fried Movie for the modern age".[5]
Wessler then recruited three pairs of directors—Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Peter and Bobby Farrelly, and David and Jerry Zucker—to sign on to write and direct one-third of the project each. He then began working out a deal with a studio for the project, but the project did not stick. "They ended up calling me about a month after we started negotiating the deal and said 'we can't do it' because they had political pressure to not make R-rated movies that were marketed to teenagers," claimed Wessler. He then went to multiple other studios, but, according to Wessler, "no one could understand what [he] was trying to do".[6]
In 2009, Peter Farrelly and producer John Penotti took their pitch—along with about 60 scripts for the vignettes—to Relativity Media. At that meeting, Wessler, Penotti, and Farrelly presented one short that they already had shot, starring Kate Winslet as a woman going on a blind date with a seemingly successful and handsome Hugh Jackman. "They just looked at me and said, 'Go for it,'" Wessler told The Hollywood Reporter. "It takes a lot of balls to make something that is not conventional." Relativity funded a mere $6 million for the film, but no other studio would sign on. "Other potential backers", Farrelly revealed, "didn't believe it could happen—a movie with Kate Winslet for $6 million?"[6]
The film officially began shooting in March 2010, but due to its large cast, producer/director Farrelly told Entertainment Weekly that "This movie was made over four years, and they just had to wait for a year or two years for different actors. They would shoot for a week, and shut down for several months. Same thing with the directors. It was the type of movie you could come back to." Shortly before principal photography, writers Parker, Stone, and David and Jerry Zucker backed out of the project.[7]
The film ended up with 13 directors and 19 writers tied to it, each one co-writing and directing different segments of the sixteen different storylines.[8] Farrelly directed the parts of the movie with Halle Berry and Kate Winslet.[6][7][9]
Casting and filming
Wessler spent years recruiting actors for the film. Many turned down the project because they were asked to work for scale. "Most agents would avoid me because they knew what I wanted to do—what agent wants to book their big client in a no pay, $800-a-day, two-day shoot?" he said. "The truth is, I had a lot of friends who were in this movie. And if they didn't say yes, this movie wouldn't have gotten made." In the end, most of the actors were willing to take part because the film only required a few days of their time and often allowed them to play a character outside of their wheelhouse.[6]
Hugh Jackman was the first actor Wessler cast. He met the star at a wedding and then called him some time later and pitched him the short. Jackman read the script and agreed to be a part of the film. "He called me back I think 24 hours later and said, 'Yeah I wanna do this,' which I think is, quite frankly, incredibly ballsy. Because you could be made a fool of, or you could look silly, and there will be people who say, 'That's crazy; he should never have done it.'"[6]
After talking to the multiple agents of Kate Winslet, she eventually agreed to take part. The Winslet-Jackman sketch was shot shortly after, and became the reel to attract other A-list stars.[6]
John Hodgman, who plays opposite Justin Long in one sketch, signed on with no knowledge of the project. Long, Hodgman's co-star in the long-running series of Apple's commercials, asked him what the project was, and he then signed on, without still knowing too much. Hodgman said, "I got an e-mail from Justin that said, 'I'm going to be dressing up as Robin again. Do you want to dress up as the Penguin?' And I said yes. Without even realizing cameras would be involved, or that it would be a movie."[6]
Others were not so affable. In fact, some stars hedged: Richard Gere, a friend of Wessler's, said yes—but also said he would not be available for more than a year. So Wessler waited him out, convinced his sketch was good. Gere eventually called Wessler and told him he was free to shoot, on just a couple of conditions: They had to do it in four days, and they needed to relocate the shoot from Los Angeles to New York.[6]
"They clearly wanted out!" judged Farrelly. "But we wouldn't let them. The strategy was simple: 'Wait for them. Shoot when they want to shoot. Guilt them to death.' It didn't work on everyone." Colin Farrell initially agreed to be in the Butler leprechaun sketch—as Butler's brother, also a leprechaun—but then he backed out and Gerard Butler did the sketch by himself. Farrelly said that when he approached George Clooney about playing himself in a sketch (the gag was that Clooney is bad at picking up women), Clooney told him "No fucking way."[6] There were to be two sketches written and directed by Bob Odenkirk; one that starred Anton Yelchin as a necrophiliac who worked at a morgue and had sex with the dead female bodies that was shown at a test screening of the film, and another starring Julianne Moore and Tony Shalhoub as a married couple being interviewed by a detective about their missing daughter. Both sketches were cut out of the final film.[10] Producer John Penotti said that the sketches would be seen on the DVD and Blu-ray Disc releases of the film.[6]
Because the filmmakers worked around the stars' schedules, the filming of the whole movie took several years. While so many A-list actors were on board, most were not completely aware of what other sketches would be included in the film, which features 13 vignettes tied together by a story of a mad screenwriter (Dennis Quaid) pitching ideas to a movie producer (Greg Kinnear). Penotti said many of the actors did not ask many questions about what else was going on in the film. "They were attracted to their script, and as long as that tickled their funnybone, that was enough," he revealed.[6][11]
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Wednesday, 4 December 2013 19:07 (ten years ago) link