Playboy, best friends and a road trip. ‘Miss March’ has all the elements to be hilarious, but could very easily venture into the realm of stupid parody comedy. The MUSE finds out what Trevor Moore and Zach Cregger, the directors and stars of the new comedy, have to say about making a movie that’s more than just gross-out funny.
MUSE: What were the biggest challenges and differences in shifting from sketch comedy to a full-length movie?
Trevor Moore: The writing process was probably the most different.’ When you’re doing a sketch, you take a subject, jump in there with your best eight or nine jokes, and get out.’ You don’t have to segue, you don’t have to care about character development.’ When you’re doing a movie, there’s a whole different dimension to think about, which is that the character has something that the audience can connect with and empathize with them.’ The character has to grow and learn something throughout the film, and that each scene isn’t just a tangent in order to get a laugh, but it actually pushes the story or character development in some way.’ You’re trying to make each scene as funny as possible but you’re also trying to advance the overall story.’ ‘ ‘
Zach Cregger: It wasn’t that big of a jump in production.’ We had more means, we could make more things happen that we wrote.’ Doing a TV show is like organizing a mob, doing a movie is like running a business.
MUSE: Why did you decide to direct and act and produce the whole thing?’
ZC: When we write something, we’re such sticklers about the delivery and the performance and the pacing, I don’t think we could have anyone else direct because we would be so difficult to direct.
MUSE: How long did it take from script to screen?
ZC: Fox came to us with the script which was written with us in mind called Playboys.’ They were like, ‘If you guys wanna rewrite this and direct it, you can do your thing.’ We weren’t really into the idea at first (there are tons of road trip sex comedies out there).’ But then we talked for a bit and treated it as a writing exercise.’ We threw out everything, changed every line and every joke.’ It was about two years from our pen and paper until now.’ And in that two years, we shot season three [of ‘Whitest Kids U Know’], so it wasn’t a full two years.
MUSE: You got to meet Hugh [Hefner]. You got to party in the house. What was that like?’
ZC: Well, we just got to fake party in the house.
TM: We originally did the movie without Playboy’s involvement, just because it’s always tough working with brands. We had Robert Wagner play Hugh. He’s the guy that played Number 2 in the Austin Powers movies. We shot that. When we were screening it though’hellip; it screened really well until the end when Wagner came on. Then people were just like, ‘What? That’s not Hugh.’ Everybody knows what Hugh looks like, and it just created a disconnect with the audience. So we somehow managed to get Hugh. He liked the script. Somebody told me that Hugh was actually nervous for filming. He was going over his lines over and over because it was the biggest speaking part he’s had in a movie.
MUSE: How would you describe this movie in two sentences?
ZC: I would say it’s kind of a dark comedy. It definitely has a point though. It’s really a dark comedy that pushes the limits disguised as a road trip movie.
TM: It’s a funny road trip comedy for people who are tired of road trip comedies.
MUSE: I love the line ‘It’s true love calling. It’s telling us to go the Playboy Mansion!’ I think that really captures the spirit of the film.’
TM: Yeah, we really wanted this film, unlike other road trip sex comedies, to have a point. It’s really about how these two guys put sex on a pedestal, but in opposite ways. Eugene is terrified of sex and it’s hurting his relationship because he’s scared to take it to that next level. Tucker is obsessed with sex. He has a girl that’s probably perfect for him, but he can’t accept it because he doesn’t feel he has enough notches on his belt. Hopefully, because we have it make a point about something, it gives you a little more freedom to make the jokes a little more extreme without making seem like it just exists to gross people out. It kind of grounds the craziness.
MUSE: Since you guys have broken into the movie game, do you think there’s a ‘Whitest Kids U Know’ movie in play?
ZC: Definitely, we’re finishing a script right now for a ‘Whitest Kids’ movie.’ That’s the next goal.
TM: So if people go see this movie, we can
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