As he should be. The Bridesmaids director rang up Movieline from London on Friday afternoon where he's busy writing what he called "Dumb Jock," the romantic comedy that could star Jon Hamm and Melissa McCarthy. "I'm very excited about that project," he said. "I'm writing with them in mind, and it's just a love story that I've always wanted to write, that I think will be really funny, but will play much more real than most quote-unquote romantic comedies. Fingers crossed, I get them to do it."
Feig took some time away from that highly anticipated project to discuss the success of Bridesmaids, how Hollywood will react to its record-breaking box office, and just what he'd be looking for from Bridesmaids 2.
So, what are you doing to celebrate becoming the biggest Judd Apatow production ever at the box office?
I'm still kinda buried at work right now, but I'm just really, really happy. It's kinda what I secretly hoped would happen. The funny thing was, pretty much from the moment we wrapped and started editing, Judd would always -- joking, but serious -- refer to this as his most successful film. It was really exciting that it actually turned out to be that.
Were you expecting Bridesmaids to connect with audiences the way it has?
I was feeling good about it, and, I think it was the moment we did the first real test screening of the two-hour-twenty-minute version in Woodland Hills -- it was still pretty rough, and it just went through the roof. I think it was that moment when I definitely knew we had something that could take off, but then you just never know if people are going to show up. My last movie was not as good as this, but Unaccompanied Minors scored in the high 90s when we'd test it, so you could also look at that and go, "Well, it's going to be a huge hit!" But then it all depends on how it gets marketed, and if it gets people interested. The hard thing is getting people to come to the theater to see something, no matter if it's good or not. Sometimes we have to worry, "Well, we have it, let's just hope people show up." Universal did a great job marketing it and getting it out there.
They did. Plus, Bridesmaids became the rallying point for the "women can be funny!" movement. Now that it's a success, how do you think Hollywood studios will react?
Well, I'm thrilled because this is what I'd really hope would happen, and what I had a lot of angst about all through the project. Like, "Oh, God, if I screw this up and it doesn't do well, it will probably be used as a referendum against doing a movie like this." So, I'm thrilled, and I hope a lot more get made. My only fear is that the takeaway from this for other people isn't, "They did it gross and dirty, so let's be ten times as gross and ten times as dirty and we'll have ten times as big of a hit." The takeaway needs to be -- because of Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo's great script -- the story. It's a very engaging real story that we fought very hard in the rewriting process to make sure tracked emotional; that we were telling a very real story in the heart of a sometimes very big comedy. So, what I don't want is a bunch of other women's movies get greenlit, and they don't get done correctly, and then people go, "Bridesmaids was just a fluke!" and they go back to not making movies with women. I really want this to be the seed that sprouts into a very lucrative and successful female-movie market. There should never be again where comedy is looked at like, "Oh, you can't do that because that skews toward women." I hope the outcome of this is for people to make the funniest, most emotionally moving comedies they can, and it doesn't matter if men or women are starring in it. And there'll be no more filter of like, "But it can't be women!"
This all goes back to when Judd and I did Freaks and Geeks. We've always been very much in sync about stories have to be very real, very emotional and then you build the comedy up from there. You build it on the character and out of behavior, and you don't build it on set pieces and the crazy jokes, and then go, "Oh, we gotta get a story to hang it on." I'm really excited that Judd and I's first re-teaming since then did this well, and was so critically embraced, for the most part.
Why do you think Bridesmaids struck such a chord? Have mainstream audiences gotten smarter since Freaks and Geeks?
Because comedy has changed in the last five years. Part of it is what Judd ushered in with all his movies, bringing back that same ethos that we did on Freaks and Geeks into films. It's also I think -- this is completely non-scientific and just my opinion -- but I think the Internet and YouTube helped usher in my favorite kind of comedy, which is behavioral. All the videos that go viral are very behavior, because a lot of it is real-life stuff that people are watching; funny, weird behavioral things that happen to real people that then get passed around. I think people have gotten in the past five or six years much less tolerant of "jokes." And they're really demanding that humor come out of an honest place.
It's very funny. When The Office first came on, people had a hard time embracing it, because of the documentary style and because of the slightly more naturalistic feel of it; The Office was very behavioral and real. And then suddenly people just started to get into it. I remember when it first started, people would go, "Oh, I can't watch it, the camera is moving all over the place; it feels weird." And now no one thinks about that -- again, because that's all you see on YouTube. It's all people capturing stuff with cellphones and handheld cameras. People like that fly-on-the-wall quality. Even though I didn't shoot Bridesmaids that way, that's the style of acting, writing, and performance in our portrayal of the world we're showing.
Look, it could all change next year -- somebody could put out a big over-the-top comedy, and suddenly that makes a gazillion dollars, and people go, "Oh, we like that again! We're tired of the behavioral stuff." I hope they don't do that, because I'm not good with that other stuff [laughs].
It might not change that quick. Bridesmaids will even pass Sex and the City this weekend as the biggest female-fronted R-rated comedy ever. In your wildest dreams, did you ever think that was possible?
No. I'm hugely blown away by that fact. I didn't even know it was pending until that article came out in The Hollywood Reporter the other day. I just assumed Sex and the City had made like $250 million domestically. I'm very competitive in that way, I'm always looking at what record we can beat, but it wasn't even on my radar, because I didn't think we had a shot at it. I'm dancing in the streets about that one.
You mention your competitive fire; it has to be vindicating for you to finally have a hit after the commercial failures of Unaccompanied Minors and Freaks and Geeks.
I'm thrilled. It's really exciting. And it got me out of movie jail, which I at least had one foot in. You're proud of all your babies that you make, but I'm a realist and I know the business. If you make babies and they don't make money, people don't want to make more babies with you. So, at least I get a few more shots. It's what you hope for going into this business, unless you're a cool indie guy who is like, "I don't care what people think of my movie, I just want to make what I want to make." Which is a cool way to face things, but I think most people going into the business go, "I really want to make stuff that is creatively and critically satisfying, but that also does really well." This is the best of all worlds. At the end of the day, successful box office just means that more people saw what you did and liked it, and that to me is the most important thing. That a lot of people saw it and liked it.
When that phenomenon happens in Hollywood it seems like a sequel has to follow. Would you do a Bridesmaids 2?
It's not officially been moved toward, but I'd be very open to it. It would just have to be as good or better than this one. What you don't want to do is the one that ruins the memory of the first one. But nothing would make me happier if we could make another one with this amazing cast, and people go, "That's awesome!" If it's as good or as better than the first one, that would be fantastic. Because everything around it was great -- the cast, the people behind the scenes, the stories we're telling, the fact that we get to do movies for and with hugely talented women. What could be better than that? It would be great to carry that on, but, again, it has to be high quality.
So, record box office success, a possible sequel; seriously, how do you celebrate all this?
I drink heavily. No. I'm so used to having things go wrong in my career, the whole time I was like, "OK, it's going to completely fall in the toilet tomorrow." Like, suddenly, "It made zero dollars! It's out of all the theaters!" For me, I was kinda going -- as things were going really well -- "I'll celebrate when we hit $150 million." It could all fall apart, but if we hit that this weekend, there's definitely going to be a moment where I go, "Let's order a really nice bottle of champagne."
Bridesmaids is now at $153 million and counting. Hopefully Paul enjoyed that champagne.