Paul Feig on Bridesmaids Nerves, Gross-Out Gags, and the Possibility of Bridesmaids 2

And that's what's at the core of the dress shop scene; as everyone starts puking in their couture, Wiig is trying to hold it together and sort of failing miserably.

Everything is normal when something terrible is going on, then as we continued to work it we defined also that it's a showdown between Kristen and Rose, but it's basically showing Annie's character, why she's held back. She won't admit that she's wrong, she won't take responsibility for her actions. So she doesn't have any money so she takes them all to a cheap restaurant and it backfires, but she doesn't want to admit that she's wrong in front of Helen so for us, then, it's the comedy of what if the evidence in front of her is so overwhelming that she can't deny it and yet she still keeps denying it, or trying to invent different reasons why it wasn't her fault. So within all the gross-out, we are actually advancing the story and you learn a lot about Kristen's character, but in a funny and outrageous way.

Absolutely. And by the end of that scene, I was dying.

Good! It's a funny touchstone. I don't know, I could be wrong but it seems like the people calling us out on it more are the male critics. That's not across the board, there's definitely some women who have called it out. But I just love watching it because I haven't heard women laugh like that at something... there are plenty of women who are horrified by it, but the ones who are laughing -- it's just the kind of laughing that makes you so happy. Like, this person really can't believe they're seeing what they're seeing.

If I may venture a guess, perhaps it's just that there are barf people and there are non-barf people in the world.

There totally are. There are shit people and there are non-shit people! There's nothing I like better than a good fart or shit joke. My wife is just horrified, she's always like, "Stop doing those! Stop putting those in stuff!" They're funny! They're humanizing. As long as you do it in a quote-unquote classy way.

Tell me about your working relationship with Judd. How do you get around the misconception that anything Judd touches is "a Judd Apatow movie" even when he's not the director?

You know what, Judd is one of my oldest friends. We used to do stand-up together. We did Freaks and Geeks together. He deserves every bit of kudos he gets, he's a brilliant producer and storyteller, he knows how to be able to look at the big picture and say, "Here's what's missing -- here's what you need." And I've always been good with then carrying it out. What I would say about Freaks and Geeks is I wouldn't have been able to do it without Judd and he couldn't have done it without me. That's how I feel about this movie too, and us in general; we have our own stuff that we do, and I think we do quite well when we're on our own. But I don't get hung up on that stuff. I just know that Judd makes what I do better, and I don't have an ego about it beyond that. At the end of the day if you want to entertain people, you've got to take your ego out of the equation.

The big problem is that when you're working in this business and people who are in charge, you don't trust or you don't trust their taste, or your taste and their taste are out of sync -- then it's a nightmare because they're dictating stuff to you and they're in a powerful position to get it and you have to fight not to get it. I just need to work with people that I trust implicitly and know that we have such a similar sense of humor and taste that it's just going to make everything better. And at the end of the day, I just want a movie that's great, that people are going to love and laugh at and be affected by, and also have an emotional journey.

Who are the people that you do trust implicitly to work with?

I feel like there's really only a couple of people in Hollywood that I trust that much. One is Judd and one is Greg Daniels from The Office. Because we all are in comedy and we all subscribe to the same theory which is that the comedy doesn't mean anything if the emotional core is not right, so you have to tell a very real story and in a real way. Then you can put the comedy on top of it, or the comedy is going to come out of it because you put funny people in it and now you care about these people and you can play with their foibles, you can play with their mistakes, you can play with their insecurities, and the comedy is very human.

The story could conceivably go on, since you set up this rich cast of characters. What do you say to Bridesmaids 2?

You know what, we're open to anything. At the end of the day it's just about, can we get a great story and not sully the memory of the first one. [Laughs] There's nothing worse than the sequel that's a letdown from the first movie. But these characters are so strong and they're our friends now; I'm wide open to it. To get to work with this group again -- what could be better than that?

Bridesmaids is in theaters Friday.

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