A Good Old Fashioned Orgy Brings Group Sex, Laughs to Tribeca

Before the star-studded North American premiere of A Good Old Fashioned Orgy at the Tribeca Film Festival on Friday night, director of programming David Kwok summed up the vibe in the theater thusly: "I can't think of a better way to celebrate the Royal Wedding." Considering the film features two orgies, discussions about "pegging" and multiple shots of co-star Tyler Labine's naked ass, he wasn't kidding.

Written and co-directed by former Late Show with David Letterman writers Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck, A Good Old Fashioned Orgy is basically a raunchy summer sex comedy version of The Big Chill. Seven 30-something friends -- the charmer (Jason Sudeikis), the sidekick (Labine), the nebbish (Nick Kroll), the self-doubter (Martin Starr), the fixer (Lake Bell), the wallflower (Lindsay Sloane), the girlfriend (Angela Sarafyan) and the lonely heart (Michelle Borth) -- spend what might be their last summer partying together at a beach house in the Hamptons, and decide to go out with a bang. Literally. With a planned Labor Day orgy. Nothing like a bunch of swapped bodily fluids between friends.

Naturally, things don't go quite to plan: old relationships are revealed, friendships are tested, and a real estate agent (Leslie Bibb) threatens to not only sell the summer house before Labor Day, but also steal the heart of group leader Eric (Sudeikis).

Featuring enough gross-out jokes and nudity to suit the frattiest of frat guys, and enough heart to suit the adult versions of those same frat guys, A Good Old Fashioned Orgy is a perfectly light R-rated summer nostalgia comedy -- which is great, since the film is set for release in September, when summer nostalgia is at peak levels.

After the North American premiere at the SVA Theatre in Chelsea on Friday, the comedy nerd dream cast stuck around for a Q&A session with directors Gregory and Huyck. Here are some highlights from the evening.

Even movie stars have trouble finding seats.

With the middle of the theater roped off for the cast, crew and their friends, seating was at a priority. (Not that ropes stopped some of the more pushy Tribeca attendees from trying to weasel their way into the reserved seats; stay classy, dummies!) In fact, even some stars had trouble finding a place. Before the show, David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer) was looking for an usher in "the white shirt" to get a spot, while Orgy director Peter Huyck's mother was stopped from entering the reserved section before explaining who she was. It didn't get much better once the lights went down, when stars Sudeikis and Labine were left standing at the outset. Shouted the seatless Labine during the opening credits: "I'm in the fucking movie!" Eventually, he found a seat.

Directors do, too.

Dressed in a brash plaid suit, Huyck took the stage at the end of the screening with co-director Alex Gregory and revealed he, too, had difficulty sitting down. "Did anyone see us at the start? Someone said there was a seat for us. 'Who's that asshole in the plaid suit going across an entire row?' No seats. No one saved me a seat."

Selling the cast on a script titled A Good Old Fashioned Orgy was as difficult as you might imagine.

"When I got the script and I saw the title, I was like: a.) no, I'm not going to do a movie about an orgy, and b.) who would want to see me in a movie about an orgy?" said actress Lindsay Sloane before being shouted down by the cast and audience that yes, they would want to see her in something like that. Following a few "awws," Sloan continued: "Sitting down with Pete and Alex, it was more a conversation about the beautiful story about these friends and this love affair, and it just happens to culminate in a major sexual experience. It's more about this journey of all of them, and I really loved that aspect of it, and feel like there's someone in the movie that everyone can relate to," she said. "Especially during the fucking."

In fact, selling anyone on A Good Old Fashioned Orgy was quite the task.

Gregory and Huyck said the film took 14 years to premiere. "We started writing it in 1997 when we were about to turn 30," said Gregory. "I think everyone in the cast was in high school when we started writing it. Keep in mind that in 1997, American Pie hadn't happened yet; Judd [Apatow] was our boss at The Larry Sanders Show. Wedding Crashers, Old School had not happened yet. What we got from most people [back then] was that R-rated comedies don't make money because you can't get teenagers to go see them. The one caveat was, 'Well, if you make this college students, we'd make it.' We were like, 'College students, there's no obstacle. You just get really drunk and have an orgy and it's like a five-minute short.'"

Though Vince Vaughn was interested in making it. Sorta.

"There was a moment when Vince Vaughn was attached," said Gregory. "He really was! There is a Details magazine from August of 2001 where Vince Vaughn says his next movie is A Good Old Fashioned Orgy. In print. He was like 'I'm going to do this movie [now], I'm going to give this script to the director, and then we are going to make this movie.' And it was Todd Phillips, it was Old School, and we never heard from him again." Despite the disappointment, Vaughn did suggest that Huyck and Gregory make the script more personal, something that spurred them to add many flourishes. "It evolved over time. I think it got better. We must have done like nine drafts."

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