Paul Feig with Maya Rudolph
Paul Feig has enjoyed huge box office success this summer with his comedy Bridesmaids - which is out on DVD & Blu-Ray this week.
I caught up with the filmmaker to talk about how he got involved with the movie, working with a cast full of women and what lies ahead.
- Bridesmaids is about to be released on DVD so for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie can you tell me a little bit about it?
It’s a funny relatable story about a woman going through a very bad time in her life and at that very moment she is asked to be the maid of honour at her best friends wedding and how that makes her life fall apart.
- The movie was written by Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig so how did you get involved with the project? And what was it about the script that made you wanted to direct this movie?
Judd Apatow, who is an old friend of mine, brought this script to may attention back in 2007, he had just done Knocked Up in which Kristen Wiig had that small part; he had told her that she should write her own vehicle for her own film. So she and Annie wrote this script and he sent it to me and I went to a table read of it.
I just really liked it and thought that it was a great way to showcase her but I also loved that it was about all these women and I have always loved working with women - there are just so many funny actresses.
It just seemed like a great opportunity to make the kind of movie that just doesn’t normally get made - there are so few comedies that star very funny women in good roles - so it just felt right.
But that was back in 2007 and I was going to get involved and the project sort of went away for a while - but I always kept my eye on it because I love Kristen and I have worked with her before. And then it just popped up at the beginning of last year, Judd called up and said that it was going to go and he wanted me to do it.
We all got together and worked the script very hard and developed it even harder - the girls wrote a lot of new stuff. I was really excited about it and it couldn’t have worked out any better.
- Bridesmaids has been such a huge hit - there is clearly an audience out there - so why don’t we see more female driven comedies?
I don’t know (laughs) but I hope that is cured now. I think there was just a feeling that women wouldn’t go to see a movie like that and I think that it was a misguided thought, but Hollywood has their theories about things.
Now there are a bunch in development the only fear is…. I have read a few of the scripts and they are not very good so the fear is they only take away… that is the scary thing that the take away from this is get a bunch of women and have them do really gross things and swear a lot and that is not what Bridesmaids was about.
I get very insulted when people call it a gross out movie because it’s like no there is only one scene that has some stuff in it - the only reason that that scene is funny is not because there is shitting and vomiting it’s because the way these women are dealing with it.
At first everyone if pretending that it is not happening and then everyone is suffering with it and the comedy is Kristen saying ‘everything is fine’ and you see everything is not fine.
Our litmus test in the movie was ‘is it real?’ ’would women really do this?’ ’would people really do this?’ and that is why the movie works - all the funny stuff going on is the icing on the cake.
But at the core is this friendship between these two women and this one woman going through a terrible and relatable period in her life, we can all relate to the down times when we don’t have money and we can’t make things right. That is what really seems to make it work for everybody whether they realise that or not.
- You have brought up that scene in the bridal store and I wondered how that scene came about - was it originally in the script or was it something that you developed with Kristen?
That was something that got developed, here was always a scene in the dress store, but it was more about this argument between Helen and Annie about the dress and also to show that she didn’t have any money and the wedding was getting too expensive.
It had a very funny fantasy sequence where Kristen’s character things that she looks so good in the dress that she had this fantasy about all these men fighting over her - it was fun but it was totally not going to fit in the film.
We also felt that we needed a big funny scene there and it was Judd who came up with the idea of everyone getting food poisoning.
I was like ‘that’s really funny’ I think the girls where a little horrified when they first heard this but, again, this is not just about everyone vomiting all over the place it was a great way to illustrate that you have screwed up, you have no money and that is why you forced everyone to go to this cheap restaurant that you tried to pass off as a good place.
She screwed up so that is one strike against her with Lillian but also it’s a great way to show a side of her character that won’t back down and she can’t admit when she is wrong - she is so caught up in this Helen fight that she will not admit to her that the restaurant gave then food poisoning. And that was a fun way to illustrate a very real point.
- The film brings together a brilliant cast with great performances from Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy in particular so can you talk me through the casting process?
It’s the nice thing of having Judd produce this movie because his name kind of gives us the scope not to cast A-list stars - all we cared about was casting who was going to be funniest in the role.
So we had Kristen, obviously, all of the time but then we just started bringing in all the funny women that we knew and that we didn’t know, that the casting director had brought it, and we did a lot of improv in the auditions.
What we do is write up scenes that aren’t in the film for the auditions because we wanted to get the feel of the characters - so we would write up these big dialogue conversations between somebody and them; so they had three pages of dialogue to really show who they are.
We would tell them that they didn’t have to stick to the script they could make it whatever they want; we didn’t want word for word readings. So then we would kind of get a feel for them and then we would always do an improv scene at the end of the audition so we could see what their skills were in that regard.
By the time we had got the cast together they were full formed characters who we then started re-writing to - writing to their voices and who they are; Chris O’Dowd is the perfect example because that part was never written to be Irish.
He came in, I had been a big fan of his from the I.T. Crowd, and he came in doing an American accent and I was like ‘You can do you Irish accent’ and it was so great - and the chemistry between him and Kristen was so big that we were like ‘he’s going to be an Irish cop and we are going to start writing to that’. So we really built it organically.
Maya we cast because we are big fans, but she is also good friends with Kristen and we wanted to make sure we had that best friend chemistry.
We cast Rose Byrne because I was very afraid of that role of Helen becoming too arched, we have seen those roles a million times before where she is the bitch, it doesn’t feel real. We saw a lot of comediennes and comic actresses for that role but always played to arch when they would do it.
Rose had just done Get Him To The Greek for Judd’s company, she was so funny in that, and we like lets have her play the part because she is a great actress and she can ground it and yet make it sympathetic.
Then Melissa was just someone who came in and read at the end of the process, we were casting for a long time, and it was Kristen who said ‘my friend Melissa is hilarious and people always queue up to see her when she performs’ and she came in and she just blew us all away.
We had seen some incredibly funny women for this role but her take on it was just so different anybody else that it was kind of a no-brainer.
- And it is a very collaborative move so how did you find working with Kristen and the rest of the girls?
I loved it! I have worked with so many women in may career and so many of my friends have been girls and women, all the funniest girls were my friends in high school.
I had a great time and they couldn’t have been nicer - there was a real camaraderie on the set; since most of them are improv performers it is hard to get divaish when you come from that world because you are so dependant on your fellow cast members. So there wasn’t a competition at all - if anything it was about trying to make each other laugh - which is great for us.
- As I say the film has been a huge success so has it done as well as you expected or better?
It did a little better than I thought it would (laughs), I mean you never go into a movie thinking it’s not going to do well, I remember thinking, from a numbers point of view, if this movie could make $100million that would be fantastic - that would have been a validation that these movies work and women want to see this movies.
I think that it definitely surpassed my expectations quite a bit but I could not be more thrilled. I did feel a lot of pressure going into this one because I didn’t want to be the guy who screwed it up for women I didn’t want people to say ’see women can’t carry a movie’ or ’people won’t show up for this type of film’. So it was really exciting that this movie did well because it just a validation for so many funny women that I know.
- Finally what’s next for you?
I am developing a project for Melissa, a love story, that I am just finishing writing, and we are hoping to shoot this coming summer.
Bridesmaids is out on DVD & Blu-Ray now
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Paul Feig has enjoyed huge box office success this summer with his comedy Bridesmaids - which is out on DVD & Blu-Ray this week.
I caught up with the filmmaker to talk about how he got involved with the movie, working with a cast full of women and what lies ahead.
- Bridesmaids is about to be released on DVD so for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie can you tell me a little bit about it?
It’s a funny relatable story about a woman going through a very bad time in her life and at that very moment she is asked to be the maid of honour at her best friends wedding and how that makes her life fall apart.
- The movie was written by Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig so how did you get involved with the project? And what was it about the script that made you wanted to direct this movie?
Judd Apatow, who is an old friend of mine, brought this script to may attention back in 2007, he had just done Knocked Up in which Kristen Wiig had that small part; he had told her that she should write her own vehicle for her own film. So she and Annie wrote this script and he sent it to me and I went to a table read of it.
I just really liked it and thought that it was a great way to showcase her but I also loved that it was about all these women and I have always loved working with women - there are just so many funny actresses.
It just seemed like a great opportunity to make the kind of movie that just doesn’t normally get made - there are so few comedies that star very funny women in good roles - so it just felt right.
But that was back in 2007 and I was going to get involved and the project sort of went away for a while - but I always kept my eye on it because I love Kristen and I have worked with her before. And then it just popped up at the beginning of last year, Judd called up and said that it was going to go and he wanted me to do it.
We all got together and worked the script very hard and developed it even harder - the girls wrote a lot of new stuff. I was really excited about it and it couldn’t have worked out any better.
- Bridesmaids has been such a huge hit - there is clearly an audience out there - so why don’t we see more female driven comedies?
I don’t know (laughs) but I hope that is cured now. I think there was just a feeling that women wouldn’t go to see a movie like that and I think that it was a misguided thought, but Hollywood has their theories about things.
Now there are a bunch in development the only fear is…. I have read a few of the scripts and they are not very good so the fear is they only take away… that is the scary thing that the take away from this is get a bunch of women and have them do really gross things and swear a lot and that is not what Bridesmaids was about.
I get very insulted when people call it a gross out movie because it’s like no there is only one scene that has some stuff in it - the only reason that that scene is funny is not because there is shitting and vomiting it’s because the way these women are dealing with it.
At first everyone if pretending that it is not happening and then everyone is suffering with it and the comedy is Kristen saying ‘everything is fine’ and you see everything is not fine.
Our litmus test in the movie was ‘is it real?’ ’would women really do this?’ ’would people really do this?’ and that is why the movie works - all the funny stuff going on is the icing on the cake.
But at the core is this friendship between these two women and this one woman going through a terrible and relatable period in her life, we can all relate to the down times when we don’t have money and we can’t make things right. That is what really seems to make it work for everybody whether they realise that or not.
- You have brought up that scene in the bridal store and I wondered how that scene came about - was it originally in the script or was it something that you developed with Kristen?
Tagged in Bridesmaids Paul Feig