Much R-rated criminal hilarity and male bonding ensue, and it couldn't come soon enough for McBride, whose high-stakes writing-starring effort Your Highness performed miserably last spring despite the credentials of director David Gordon Green and co-stars James Franco and Natalie Portman. 30 Minutes or Less also arrives between sessions of McBride's cult-favorite HBO series Eastbound and Down, which will close out its run with forthcoming third season. Movieline caught up with McBride recently to talk over his 30 Minutes future, his Your Highness past and what his earliest character might be up to 10 years after his debut in Green's All the Real Girls.
You know, when I saw this, I wasn't sure what to think about Dwayne. He's a bad guy, but he's... not? Sort of? What appealed to you about him?
I got the script sent to me, and I really liked the idea that it is a buddy comedy, but it explores the buddy comedy from both sides of the moral compass. There's the good guys and the bad guys, and you see the dynamic between the friendships on both sides. I thought it was interesting. Comedically, I thought it would be interesting for audiences, too. Usually you'd just be following Jesse and Aziz's characters, and the bad guys would juts kind of show up when they need to and be evil, and that's that. I like that even amongst the bad guys, Nick's character kind of has more of a conscience about what they're doing. It just opens up the villain role in a couple of places where you can dip and dive.
If we look at this as a double buddy comedy, how does it affect you and Nick to not really know at any given time what Jesse and Aziz were up to in their scenes?
It is tricky, because on a lot of our days, Nick and I would work, and Jesse and Aziz were off, and vice-versa. So the movie just becomes what we're trying to do to us, you know what I mean? That's what's so cool about watching the finished product: It's awesome to see what Jesse and Aziz were doing the whole time. "Oh, so when you're sitting in the van, that's what was happening before that." That was interesting. I think Aziz and I share maybe three seconds of screen time. Even when Jesse was there, it was only a few minutes that we really shared onscreen with him. It was very much so for Nick and I that we focused on it as just these guys' story and that's that.
Were you ever bitter that you couldn't work more with Aziz?
I love Aziz, so I would obviously love to have as much working time as I could. This was like our Heat -- this was De Niro and Pacino, barely meeting in a café. There'll be rumors as to if we were even there on each other's day of coverage.
Exactly! Of course Ruben has cited Heat -- especially its bank robbery -- as an influence for this film. Was that influence apparent on the set?
It was. I'm a big fan of Ruben's work. I remember hearing the idea for Zombieland and thinking, "Oh, that's interesting. I thought Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg and Nick Frost kind of cracked the comedic version of the zombie movie [with Shaun of the Dead]. But then you see Ruben's version of it, and it's totally different and fresh and works great. And so I knew right away that Ruben was going to be capable of blending action and comedy in this film together, which is a tricky thing to do. But with this script, when I first met with him, his points of reference were things like Dog Day Afternoon, Heat, The French Connection -- and that, to me, was a really cool angle to be taking on this sort of story.
How does one act while receiving a lap dance?
I get really weird with any shit that is sexual like that. Like, I have a wife, and she hates me doing this kind of stuff. She doesn't dig it at all. It's also just awkward: You don't know this person, the whole crew is standing around watching you, you just gave your wedding ring to the prop guy, and you're just like, "Why am I doing this?" So I feel like it's always a little awkward. But you've got to do what you've got to do. At the end of the day it's not really torture or anything. But even kissing scenes, I'm always nervous the day before. I'm like, [whispers to self] "Oh, fuck, I've got to kiss this girl in front of all these people."
I guess I'm curious how you did it? How long did it take?
I just sat there and let the scene unfold. I think they covered that whole lap dance in the morning, and then you're on to the rest of the day.
Is there anything erotic about it at all in the moment? I mean, it's a real lap dance!
I'm sure there are people [for whom] it is, but for me, no. It feels like work, and it feels fucking super awkward. [Laughs]
Were you disappointed by the reception for Your Highness?
You know, when you're making a movie, you're making what you think is original, and what you want to see. And obviously you hope that the rest of the world will also see what you're trying to do. But honestly, at the end of the day, when you're working in a studio and doing this, there are so many things that are out of your hand. When the movie comes out is out of your hand. How they market it is out of your hand. And it's out of your hand if the audience is going to show up on the day that it goes. Obviously David and I hoped more people would get into that film. But I think we made what we wanted to make, and I feel like that movie will be around. People can find it on their own. It'll just be up to ourselves to dig ourselves out of the hole. [Laughs] Getting people to trust us to make something else.
How do you regroup from something like that?
Luckily, 30 Minutes or Less is here, and then we have things like Eastbound, which is back in production. But yeah, it's a humongous learning experience for sure. It's crazy. The craziest thing about that movie was when it's out, and then you still have to be on the road for another two weeks selling the movie overseas when you know it just farted and fell on its face in America. It's just this thing of keeping a smile on -- keep moving, keep doing it.
But the other thing that was really helpful in dealing with that film was that I was going through it with David Green, who's one of my oldest friends. You're there to give each other pep talks on the days when it fucking stings a little bit and pull each other out. I mean, for us, I remember my first year of film school; we're shooting videos on these Super-VHS cameras, and there's just these two dudes who wanted to make these crazy movies. So there is a level of feeling like we accomplished something even if financially we didn't accomplish what everybody was anticipating or hoping. At the end of the day, we're just two dudes from the South who convinced a studio to make a really fucked-up, dirty, filthy and insane movie, and we got away with it.
Is this what you guys wanted? The studio movies, the mainstream stuff? Or is this kind of what you do to have opportunities for more freedom on smaller stuff?
You know, I never really imagined that we would have mainstream success. Even being considered for things that are out there for mainstream audiences to consume, it's navigating new waters that we never really had a plan for. I was second-unit director on George Washington, and creatively, it was so satisfying doing films like that and All the Real Girls and The Foot-Fist Way that we thought, "If we can keep doing thing like this the rest of our lives, we'll be completely happy." Then, as you start finding success and you get offered bigger opportunities and stuff, none of us knew how to navigate that. You're just kind of coming in and doing what you think is going to work.
But I think the lesson I've really learned from it is that if you want to take the chances and make the risky movies and things that you're not worried about a big audience responding to or not, you just make things with a budget that is responsible for that kind of thing. David and I, with Your Highness, never set out to make something that a mass audience would embrace. For us, when you make the choice to make things that are vulgar and that push the levels of decency, you're definitely going to isolate a large portion of people who are out there. So if you want to make those sorts of comedies, you're going to have to be responsible with the budget you're biting off for that.
Do you ever think about where your older characters are these days? Say, Bust-Ass, speaking of All the Real Girls?
Bust-Ass? You mean Tracy? [Laughs]
Of course! So sorry.
I haven't thought about Bust-Ass for a long time, but there was a retrospective of David's career at the Egyptian about a year ago, and I went to see that. It was the first time I'd went to see All the Real Girls in a long time, and it really kind of fucked me up for a few days, because... I don't know. Everything was so cool and new and simple to us then, you know? We were operating outside of any expectations, and we really felt like we were breaking new ground for ourselves personally. I love that film. I love what David has done with it. That was my first time doing anything in front of a camera and getting to know what that feeling is even like. It's just nuts after all these years, I can watch that and I'll see scenes and remember what was happening on the set that day -- memories that I haven't thought about since then. When I watched, it made me feel like, "Yeah, maybe I should visit some of these old movies every now and then" -- to kind of get back in that mindset of when there were no expectations on things, and you were doing it because you wanted to do it.