anderswolleck

Unaccompanied Minors will hopefully be released later this year. It stars Wilmer Valderrama, Lewis Black and Tyler James Williams. It is directed by Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig. It's about all those kids that have to fly back and forth to spend time with each of their divorced parents. A major airport is hit with a snowstorm at Christmastime so all flights have been shut down. But of course there are all these unsupervised kids there. The airport officials throw all the kids in one room with one put upon airport official to watch them [played by Valderrama]. Certain younger children were able to make it to a hotel with a bunch of adults. Some of the kids stuck in the Unaccompanied Minors room escape to make sure the kids at the hotel have a real Christmas.

After years of interviewing Paul Feig over the phone I finally got a chance to meet him in person when Warner Bros invited me to the set of Unaccompanied Minors in Salt Lake City Utah. Strangely enough the production was substituting an airport with the large nondescript rooms of a sports stadium. I was there on a very special day because they were shooting a giant food fight that the kid characters have. You haven't lived until you've seen professional movie prop people tell dozens of sugar crazed kids "Please do not throw boxes of crackers. These can actually hurt someone. There is plenty of other food to throw." Feig, dressed very neatly in a full suit, supervised the action safely behind a monitor. In between shots he would very nimbly step over disgusting crushed candy and donuts to address some questions the young actors had.

Daniel Robert Epstein: Were you depressed after your last film, I Am David, came out and didn't do well at all?

Paul Feig: Oh my God, it was so depressing. I put about three years of my life into that movie. It was an experiment for me to more dramatic.

DRE: It was that weird release that Lionsgate was trying out.

PF: Yeah, what happened was is that Artisan bought it and they were way into it. Then the day that they announced that Artisan had bought my movie, the front page of Variety was "Lionsgate Buys Artisan" and that the head of Artisan who was a big fan of the film was leaving. I was just like, "Oh no." Lionsgate just had no interest at all. They did Saw and Saw II but I Am David is this uplifting family film. They could not have cared less so they just tried to cash in on Jim Caviezel. So they made the poster look like Passion of the Christ and had Caviezel gigantic on it. Jim was great in it but he was only in the film for about ten minutes. It wasn't even released in New York and LA so we couldn't even submit ourselves for any awards. People were asking me "When's your movie coming out?" "It came out." "I didn't see it." "It wasn't here; it was in the middle of the country." I was finally hit with the feeling of "I spent three years of my life and my movie just bombed!" When you see the list of how much every movie makes every weekend and you're at $750 per screen on your opening weekend you realize "This is about as bad as it gets."

DRE: Did you go right into Unaccompanied Minors?

PF: No, I started to do more TV directing and I was doing a lot of Arrested Development, The Office and I did an episode of Weeds.

DRE: I love Weeds.

PF: It's a great show and a really fun one to work on.

DRE: It's very unique.

PF: Yeah, it's really found its voice. They wanted me to do more but I wasn't able to because I was directing a pilot for NBC. I wasn't sure exactly what to do in the movie world but my goal was always to make movies. But then Unaccompanied Minors came out of nowhere in October of last year. I was working on The Office and I got a call. "They're sending this script that they think you'll be into." When I read it, I was like, "I dig the idea. I'd like to rewrite it." I did a big rewrite in two and a half weeks. I holed myself up and changed a lot of stuff. Then they liked it so much they greenlit it right at the end of the year. It was a real whirlwind.

DRE: How was rewriting the script?

PF: It was fun. I had a great time because I knew I was going to get to make it. So it was like "What is all the stuff I wanted to do on film?" I basically put all that in and then made it work with the story. It turned out great. .

DRE: [Unaccompanied Minors producer] Lauren [Shuler-Donner] has said that she really loved Freaks and Geeks. It seems like that show got you this movie.

PF: Oh totally.

DRE: After all the trouble you've had, what's it like for someone to have that much confidence in you?

PF: It's really nice. I had kind of said to my agent, "I always heard that studio movies were a tough thing." But after all the tough experiences I had on I Am David and then I didn't get the pay off of a real release. I felt that now I was willing to put up with whatever it takes if I can just get a movie to go out with a studio behind it. So I told him to go after a studio film. Of course there's no guarantee that a movie's going to come out. Any artist's goal is that you want your stuff to be seen by the most amounts of people. Also I'm not going to make something that I don't like. It came down to doing something that I liked and had the best chance of being seen by the widest audience.

DRE: Jim Jarmusch said something like "Movies don't really work unless someone's watching."

PF: Yeah it's the tree falling in the forest. I didn't want to keep making really expensive party tapes like, "hey, everybody come out and watch my tape." I've got plenty of those; let's make something that people see.

DRE: With a name like Feig I assumed you were Jewish.

PF: I'm half.

DRE: Were you raised a Christian or Jewish?

PF: A Christian Scientist. I had the quintessential Jewish grandmother but my father had converted to Christian Science. They couldn't have gotten someone from central casting that was more Jewish than my grandmother.

DRE: How do all of those things play into making a Christmas movies?

PF: [laughs] I'm not anti-Christmas. To me Christmas is about being with your family and friends. That's sort of the message of this movie. Making plans with your family and making family where you don't have it. In the movie these are mostly kids of divorce so they feel like their families are damaged. Now they are coming together to bring Christmas to the entire airport. That's the Christmas theme to me.

DRE: I just watched you film a few scenes and you were shooting the scene with two cameras at the same time. Have you always done that?

PF: All the time. If I could run three cameras at a time I would because it's so much about spontaneity. I like to improvise on set so if you only have one camera then you can miss something when two or more people are improvising.

DRE: I can see doing that on many of the shows you've worked on. The Office is almost like a Lars Von Trier movie where every character is doing their own thing and then you point the camera at them when they have a line.

PF: Yeah, both The Office and Arrested Development have a lot of handheld camera so I did that style for a year and a half. There's a part of me that keeps saying, "Ok, I hope I can readjust my head to dolly shots and tripods and all that." But it's fine. I love being able to jump between the two worlds. Doing the mockumentary style is a blast because it's so loose and you can so improvise and be aggressive on the fly.

DRE: Did you use two cameras for Freaks and Geeks?

PF: We did always try to run two cameras. That was because when you're working with kids you don't have as much time so you have to maximize the time you have and again to make sure we could capture the spontaneity. For Unaccompanied Minors it is harder to use two cameras because you have to adjust the lights for each one.

DRE: You're using a lot of great improvisers in the movie, even for the small parts like Rob Corddry, Rob Riggle and Cedric Yarbrough. Do you cast improvisers like that because you saw them improvise in something else?

PF: I'm a super fan of so many people so when I've got a movie I just want to get those people in. There are some people I found who I know, like The Kids in the Hall guys, I know them. But I got to know them because I am a huge fan of theirs and I used the Mystery Science Theatre guys on Freaks and Geeks because I was a huge fan. I know those guys are funny. To me these guys are the comedy royalty of our day so I want to work with them. The old comedy royalty are all working right now so I'm not interested in them. Also when you see someone that's so recognizable that can take you out of the movie. You just want to be able to go, "I know that guy" as opposed to "Hey, there's Jim Carrey with a one line part, how weird."

DRE: I just saw this silly movie, Sleepover, and the only reason I bring it up is because it had Steve Carell as the neighborhood security guard. What made you think of Lewis Black for the character of the security guard in Unaccompanied Minors?

PF: I look at Lewis Black like I look at Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack. He's got his energy he's going to bring to it. I want him to do his thing in this role. I don't want to hire Lewis Black and have him play this really mellow, down to earth guy. I want Lewis Black to be Lewis Black. When we make more movies then it would be fun to have Lewis Black play a character he doesn't normally play. But for this I want to have everybody working at their full capacity.

DRE: Last time we spoke I asked you if you would ever work with any of the actors from Freaks and Geeks again. You said you would, but that you're not into it unless you have the perfect role.

PF: I want to make sure who I cast is perfect for the role. I love those guys but for Unaccompanied Minors I felt there were no perfect roles for them. I'm much more about finding the perfect person for the role and then I take it from there. I'm sort of trying to amass my ensemble now because I like bringing the same people in. But I also like working with new people so I walk the two worlds because there's nothing more exciting than finding someone to work with.

DRE: Besides being able to mix drama and comedy are one things you are best known for. Another thing is that you are able to make characters and situations seem so real. I know this is a dumb question, but what's the secret to that?

PF: It has nothing to do with the story. Stories can be as big and insane as possible. It's just how the characters treat it. The characters have to live and breathe the way that we live. When you are in a canoe going down a snowy hill, how would real people actually react? That's the difference. A lot of writers think that since the situations are crazy they should make the characters crazy too. There's no reality.

DRE: [laughs] I just visited the set of Broken Lizard's new movie, Beerfest. They signed a deal to develop comedy projects for Warner Bros. Would you be interested in something like that?

PF: This is my first project with Warner Bros. Like many filmmakers I'm always looking for a home to make movies. It all depends on how this works out and if they like me [laughs].

DRE: You've authored books, written and directed both television and movies and you've acted plenty. What's next, funny sculptures?

PF: Exactly. [laughs] More books. I'm writing a series of young adult comedies that are science fiction fantasy Little Brown.

DRE: What kind of science fiction?

PF: It's basically about a kid that goes to another world, but it's actually a world that's within our own. It's based on science and evolution and not like Harry Potter. There's not a lot of funny science fiction. My goal's always been to add some fun in that.

DRE: Are you directing anymore TV?

PF: I may. They want me to come back to The Office. I just have to see what's going on with the movies. Movies are my favorite thing to do so we'll see. But for now I'm staying out of TV.

DRE: It doesn't seem like you would be willing jump into the creative end of the TV again.

PF: Only if I had a great idea. After Freaks, I had a really weird time with TV development because people all thought they wanted a show from me until they actually saw what I wanted to do. If I have a burning passionate idea, then I'll go after it. But I like finite things. TV scares me because like the idea is to go on for ten years. That's too much! Movies end and then I can go on to another interesting thing.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck