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."
Gregory and Huyck can thank a certain show on The CW for the closeness and camaraderie of the cast.
Though it takes place in the Hamptons on the East End of Long Island, A Good Old Fashioned Orgy was actually shot in Wilmington, N.C., which allowed the cast to get very close during filming by virtue of being away from home. "Wilmington is where they shoot One Tree Hill," deadpanned Nick Kroll. "So every day was an adventure."
Will Forte is one kick-ass Donkey Kong player.
Former SNL cast member Will Forte has a small role in A Good Old Fashioned Orgy as one-half of a married couple not invited to the orgy (actress Lucy Punch plays his onscreen wife). Not that he minded the light shooting schedule. "I would be working like every third or fourth day, so on the off-days I would go to the Blue Post, which is this bar" -- the same bar used in Eastbound and Down as Kroll pointed out -- "and I played Donkey Kong the entire time. And I got really good at it. So good, that there was a guy who was a stand-in who was part of that Twin Galaxies group from King of Kong. I had him take a picture because I was proud of this score. I was a super geek. He sent it to the guys at Twin Galaxies. I was 29th [in the world]."
Don Johnson will steal shoes if you let him.
Don Johnson -- yes, that Don Johnson -- has one scene in A Good Old Fashioned Orgy as Sudeikis' onscreen dad, the owner (and subsequent seller) of the summertime animal house. "Don Johnson didn't even read the script," said Huyck. "He saw the title -- A Good Old Fashioned Orgy -- and he was like, 'I'm in!'" Once on the set, Johnson didn't want too much handling. "He showed up on the set, and he didn't really let us direct him. He comes in and goes, 'I know how this works. [...] I'm going to block the scene myself. I'll have the cow there; I go there.'" Johnson even had thoughts on his wardrobe. "'It's a pink shirt. I got this, and I want those shoes.' And he left with the shoes. He stole those shoes from our production!" A year later, Gregory was at a table reading for The Other Guys when he ran into Johnson. "I noticed he had these awesome sneakers on. I said, 'Really cool sneakers. Did you get those from a shoot?' And he was like, 'Yeah!' And I said, 'So, you stole the shoes from our shoot?' And he goes, 'Yeah!'" The moral of the story: "If you're making a movie with Don Johnson, in the budget, [write] 'shoes.'"
Gregory and Huyck don't have any hard feelings, however; he is Don Johnson.
Said an awed Huyck: "His hair: perfect, like a pile of caramel falling down his head."
Comparison between A Good Old Fashioned Orgy and The Big Chill is both expected and welcomed.
Before shooting, the cast got together to watch the seminal Lawrence Kasdan classic as a group, and a kitchen-set cast sing-along to Biz Markie toward the end of the film can certainly be viewed as a tribute. "Older white folks co-opted Motown music -- that was, like, their tunes," said Sudeikis. "And Gen-Xers have certainly done that with hip-hop. So that was a direct homage." Echoed Huyck: "I would say, it was a movie that we all loved, and there was something about it where it was about -- a funeral that they're all coming together for -- but it really is about a group of friends and how they've changed as adults. Ours is really similar, hopefully in some ways, other than its an orgy that brings them all together at the end."
Check out the poster for A Good Old Fashioned Orgy below. The film is scheduled to hit theaters in September.
