Congrats on the strong premiere!
I've just been told that ever since it came out Thursday at midnight, I became a giant asshole. All my friends have told me. [Laughs.] It was like Jekyll and Hyde. I don't know what happened.
Does the success get into your head? Do you think, "Well, I'm done with comedies, it's time to write my The English Patient now?" Or is box-office success more... just validating?
Absolutely. We've been writing movies since 2007 together, Jonathan and I. It's funny because the last script that we wrote, horrible Bosses was the first to actually go into production. It's weird how things work. The stars have to align in order to get a movie made. Fortunately, this was fast-tracked because of the success of The Hangover and the rebirth of the R-rated comedy. We were just fortunate enough and in a good position with New Line where they wanted to use us.
Is the R-rated comedy your preferred domain?
Oh, absolutely. There are the type of jokes that you pitch in the room that then you know you'll have to sort of soften. Fortunately, with R-rated comedies, the first joke that comes to your head, you can generally put to the page. Very freeing in that way.
The history of your involvement with Horrible Bosses is interesting. It's also confusing remembering who was hired when and which actors were signed on, and so forth. Can you simplify the tale for us?
Well, here's how it went down: In 2005, Michael Markowitz sold the original Horrible Bosses script. It was quite different; it was slightly darker in tone and it went through a bunch of different writers and actors. The Hangover breathed new life into it and made New Line excited about it again, enough to have a roundtable with a bunch of comedy writers to pitch jokes and ideas. We were brought into that since we had a previous relationship with New Line for The $40,000 Man and Burt Wonderstone. We were hired for the new draft, and we spent about a month and a half on it. Obviously the fundamental premise remained, where the three guys want to kill their horrible bosses.
Who had been cast by the time you signed on?
No one had been signed on when we wrote it. Not even a director. Seth Gordon signed on very shortly after we turned in our draft, and that's when they started sending out the script to all these A-list actors. We didn't know that any of these offers would stick. It was incredibly shocking that we'd gotten this caliber of cast, and obviously very exciting.
I'm particularly interested in the fact that you tweaked lines on set and tailored them to the actors' voices. With Jennifer Aniston, did you make her more raunchy as you went along? The line she has about pleasuring herself to Penn Badgley was a scream.
Actually, no. The Penn Badgley line was there from the beginning with our draft. We actually thought we might have to tone it down as far as how much raunch was in her dialogue. We didn't think she'd necessarily be comfortable. But she was absolutely all for it -- she did not hold back at all. That was refreshing.
There was a minor blogger skirmish over the fact that her character says "faggot" in the movie. I take it you felt that was just a necessary way to establish her.
Here's the thing: What we needed to do was maintain the likability of our three guys. We didn't want them to be too crass or misogynistic, though clearly there is misogyny there. Generally our three guys are likable enough that whatever inappropriate things they say, you're willing to let it fly. But with the bosses, you can have them say whatever you want because we're trying to get across that they're horrible, terrible people. The dialogue has to fit with that personality type.
Did you have a favorite character to write for?
I mean, Bobby Pellitt was up there, Colin Farrell's character. He is truly the wild card of the three bosses. He's not only a terrible, selfish person, but he's also very stupid. And stupidity is always fun to write.
I hear there was a different ending to the movie originally. Care to share?
In Michael Markowitz's draft, the character Motherfucker Jones, who was originally named Cocksucker Jones [laughs], he was actually more a killer type. A real badass. Dave Harken [Kevin Spacey] gets gunned down by Motherfucker Jones, or at the time, Cocksucker Jones. He happens to walk in at the bar where Motherfucker is staying, and there's a confrontation. And he shoots him. So it's very different. But what Michael Markowitz managed to accomplish was a very universal theme where everyone has had a terrible boss at some point, and has had to deal with that person in some way. It's either grinning and bearing it or quitting. Not many people kill their bosses, and we probably wouldn't endorse that. It was just a lot of fun to change it up.
I read that you were frustrated at first watching some of the actors ad-lib during shooting. Is it difficult not to be precious about your own material?
Yeah. Obviously at first when you've written something and haven't gotten anything produced yet, it's easy to think that the lines that you write are the best and the funniest. And that there's no way they could be funnier. But then the lines are voiced by incredibly talented actors and you sort of see how much better it could all be, whether by sticking to the page or varying. These guys are experts in ad-libbing. Seth Gordon was smart enough to do multiple takes of each scene where they sort of play it straight according to script and then let them have fun and go off on tangents. You catch a couple tangents in the movie, but I think he did a great job of sort of splitting the difference between fun ad-libbing and keeping the story on track.
You're 25 years old, and you and your writing partner have a world of projects coming up, including Burt Wonderstone, starring Steve Carell, a Vacation remake in planning stages, a movie called Of All the Things, not to mention your own acting work. Do you feel like an anomaly within your age bracket?
I obviously feel very blessed to be involved with these incredible projects. It just comes to show that once you sell something, it opens you to a world of possibilities. That goes out to everyone who's working on any script out there and feels like it's impossible to break it -- or rather, make it. It takes a lot of persistence and luck in terms of getting your script to the right people. Fortunately, when Jonathan and I sold $40,000 Man, it set us up on this great trajectory.
Burt Wonderstone, about a jaded ex-magician, and Of All The Things, a movie based on a documentary of a long-retired musician returning to fame in the Philippines, both have washed-up protagonists in the lead. The $40,000 Man covered similar ground. Is there an attraction to this character type?
I think so. I think we must be. It's the universal story of someone who's having to hit rock bottom and having to work their way up; everyone's experienced that in some lesser degree.
Do you relate to the comeback element in any way?
Oh, absolutely. The success of Freaks and Geeks sort of launched all these people on these paths that didn't necessarily ignite immediately after the show. I think it took a long time to catch on to how brilliant the show was. I was fortunate enough to get a pilot every year, but not all of those shows picked up. I was definitely out of people's minds for a good while just because of how difficult it is to land a TV gig that actually stays on the air.
When you watch a movie like Bridesmaids, does the air of working on a Feig/Apatow production come back to you? Does that movie bring back memories?
Well, yes, in the sense that a lot of [the story] comes from pain! And suffering! In the funniest possible way. With Freaks and Geeks, it was the cringe factor added to the humor that made it so spectacular. The fact that you're dealing with real situations -- and sometimes situations like that are so difficult to bear unless you have a sense of humor about it. Like, Kristen Wiig's character in Bridesmaids, she was a sad woman in the first half of that movie. You feel for her. But in her suffering, you laugh! That's an ongoing thing with that type of comedy. It is a type of comedy, one that I love. It deals with real-life situations and also the absurdity of them, if that makes any sense.
Freaks and Geeks is a rare cult phenomenon where the fans ended up getting more than they'd even hoped. The box set is still incredible. Have the DVDs helped end that chapter of your life, or do people still bemoan its early cancellation to you?
No, I definitely get people saying the show shouldn't have been canceled still. It's a great thing to know that people appreciated the show when at the time, no one knew what it was. It's very satisfying to know that it has this half-life. It certainly helped me land other jobs. Hart Hanson, the creator of Bones, was a huge fan of Freaks and Geeks, and I'm sure that had something to do with my casting -- and in Kitchen Confidential and Waiting and Rapturepalooza, the movie I just shot up in Canada. The fans that matter, the ones who are clever and appreciate good, smart comedy -- those are the fans who came from that show. Those are the best people to have your side.
People like to imagine that you guys still have birthday parties and barbecues together. Any truth to this alumni association fantasy?
Despite the fact that I haven't seen a lot of these cast members in a long time, I did the Paleyfest with the casts of Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. It was like going back in time, like immediately going back to the same relationships we had 12 years ago. There wasn't a skipped beat in how we talked with each other. There was certainly a family mentality.
What's your favorite work by a Freaks and Geeks alum? Like 127 Hours or Linda Cardellini's ER run, etc.
Probably Knocked Up. I just loved that movie and how it managed to take such a simple concept and somehow give it a brand-new perspective from the eyes of a very normal stoner twentysomething dude who's the last person you'd expect to take on such a responsibility. I thought he managed to keep the elements of heart and comedy there. That movie is probably my favorite of any of Judd's. Bridesmaids is right up there because I love Paul and I love seeing a cast of women doing things people previously thought only women could do.
The news of your Vacation remake is interesting -- and a little unsettling!
When my friends found out about it, they'd very seriously take me aside and say, "Don't screw this up." It's kind of like Photoshopping someone's family album, in a way. You have to be careful not to destroy their fondest memories. But frankly, I don't think the sequels were all that great. [Laughs.] As long as we keep the thing you love about the first movie, the relatability of a family road trip and the lovable father figure of Chevy Chase, [except] now it's Rusty taking his kids to Walley World. I think you see your own similarities to your habits in him. You relate to the father. And the mother as well. I think we wrote a relatively funny script. I think it has a chance to be reborn for a new generation.
[Photos: Getty images]