“We were very sensitive to the fact that we were guys writing a movie for women.” - Jon Lucas
Bad Momsfollows in the tradition of women’s comedies like Bridesmaids and Bad Teacher, where women are finally allowed to be as raunchy as men have been throughout the history of cinema. It comes from perhaps an unlikely source. Writer/directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore wrote The Hangover, which after a successful career as screenwriters turned them into highly sought after writer/directors.
It’s not exactly The Hangover with women though. When moms get into trouble, it’s not quite as destructive as the writers’ male-centric comedies. They don’t break any laws, don’t put any animals in danger, don’t get anyone kidnapped. They do trash a supermarket and throw cheap wine parties, but mostly they take spa days, brunches and midweek movies.
Mila Kunis plays Amy, an overworked mother who draws the line when the PTA leader (Christina Applegate) demands one more volunteer task for her. She quits overparenting her kids, makes them make their own breakfast and do their own homework, even tells her son not to become an entitled white man who thinks he’s special. This inspires negligent mom Carla (Kathryn Hahn) and put upon housewife Kiki (Kristen Bell) to join Amy in becoming bad moms.
I sat down with Lucas and Moore to discuss their latest movie. Since The Hangover, the guys wrote The Change-up and wrote and directed the college comedy 21 and Over and the short-lived TV series Mixology. Bad Moms is in theaters this weekend.
SuicideGirls: It seems like the bad behavior of these moms is just going to lunch, going to the movies and having a spa day. Have you guys mellowed since your other bad behavior comedies?
Jon Lucas: Oh man, that’s interesting. There’s no tigers. There’s no gunplay.
Scott Moore: Good question.
JL: We sat down when we started writing this and we talked to a lot of moms, our wives included, and asked them, “If you could do this, what would be your day?” A lot of the stuff from the movie is pulled from that. We want to have things that moms would relate to and we were very sensitive to the fact that we were guys writing a movie for women. We didn’t want to just give women guy-like desires like go to the strip club or do the things that you might see in a more guy-driven movie. It was remarkable how many moms, and Kristen Bell’s speech about “I want to go to the hospital and just be fed Jell-O,” the wishes of most moms were so small.
SM: It was surprising. One of the common answers when we talked to moms, like what would you do if you had a day off? They’d be like, “I would read a book.” That’s not really going to make a great movie.
JL: We need stuff like movie stuff.
SM: Then we started probing. They would want to get together with their friends and they would go drinking and they would want to go dancing. They would want to cut loose. So I think the supermarket scene and the mom party, that’s some of the stuff that’s pushing it they’ed really want to do.
JL: But it wouldn’t be going out and getting blasted and going to a nightclub. Dancing in your house, it’s more like fun safe dancing. Everyone’s having a good time. It was a learning experience.
SG: Do men really have such different fantasies, or is that just what Hollywood has been selling them? That men want to do outrageous, borderline criminal behaviors?
JL: I think young men probably do. I suppose the dad list would probably be a little more tame.
SM: Yeah, I have a buddy who on Father’s Day, what he asks of his family is he gets to go to a hotel and he watches movies and he does have a couple of beers. I think Moms and Dads are pretty similar when it comes down to it.
JL: It’s nice though because it just shows how little you have to do for someone to make them incredibly happy.
SG: You certainly didn’t invent it with The Hangover, and maybe I’ve seen a lot more Hangover knockoffs than you have, but in the last few years there has been a real movement in comedies towards celebrating bad behavior. Do you have any theories about why that is, or that it’s what The Hangover spawned?
JL: Oh, I wouldn’t say we spawned it. Since Animal House, there’s a long line of those movies. I think what we write and what we enjoy writing, both for ourselves and for audiences, we write fantasy, the stuff you don’t get to do. So most moms can’t behave like this or if they would, they might be in real trouble. The fun is you get to spend a couple bucks, go with your friends, have a cocktail and imagine what it would be like for two hours, an hour and a half. I don’t know why we always write things like that, but maybe growing up those are the movies I always loved where you went and you went into a world of things you couldn’t really do. Movies were a way to live a more exciting and dangerous second life.
SG: Is it maybe that the movies have exhausted all the things you can possibly do, and with Bad Moms it’s time to scale it back?
JL: Right, maybe. There’s actually a lot of fantasies at play in Bad Moms. She does get rid of her dopey husband in exchange for an almost comically perfect guy at the school who’s a great dad and very good looking and all he wants to do is take care of her. I think there’s a lot of fantasies built into the movie besides taking a day and having a brunch.
SM: I think The Hangover, for what it’s worth, yes, it celebrated bad behavior. But if you look at the movie, you don’t see the bachelor party. You don’t see the bad behavior. The whole movie is what happens after that. It just feels like it’s this crazy bachelor party but it’s really all of the aftermath. I think in the same way, this movie, yes, there is some parties and the women get to have a really great time but I feel like the movie is about more than that. It’s about their journey and figuring out the pressures of being a mom and fighting against that and learning not to judge each other so much. That’s the core of the movie.
JL: I think the real fantasy, and I hope this would be true if this actually happened, we haven’t put this to a test with our kids, but I think the real fantasy of the movie is if moms did less or dads did less, that your kids would actually get better. I don’t know that that would work, but the dream is that you stop helicopter parenting and then your kids learn to stand on their own and they become better kids for it. I don’t know that it always works. I think most people in general that we’ve talked to about the movie, their response is, “I want to do less but I’m not sure that if I do less my kid isn’t going to fall off the cliff.” So I understand.
SG: I agree with you. I think it would encourage them to be more self-sufficient. You say moms couldn’t get away with what the Bad Moms do but what I’m saying is I think they could. If they just stopped going to every PTA meeting or doing their kids’ homework, their kids would have to learn to do it themselves.
JL: That’s probably true. The message of the movie is really simple as we wanted to have a very clean message. Doing less is okay and if you’re not sure whether you’re doing too much, you probably are. There are of course examples like the Carlas of the world who probably could stand to do a little more.
SM: In the end, she’s making lunch for her kid and going to the baseball game so I think there’s a balance. I agree with Jon. The wish fulfillment is maybe if I did less, my kids would actually turn out better. That would be amazing.
SG: Even outside the family, that you could tell your boss you’re not working any more than you’re being paid for.
JL: Yeah, there’s a lot of fantasy there.
SG: Well, I think in real life you have to do that to stop people from abusing you. If you’re only paying me for three days I’m only working three days.
JL: That was a common story in a lot of moms that I know who we spoke to before we started writing the movie. An enormous number of them have little kids and are starting to go back to work part time, but they all laughed. If you say part time work to a mom, they all laugh because they know part time is five days a week and full time is seven. In the fields they were in, everyone tips their hat to the idea of yeah, you’re part time, you only work here two days a week. But invariably they give you a workload that’s a five-day. That was one of the things that was important for us to put in. Amy works part time but she works harder than anyone else who works there because no one’s going to tell you to go home when you’re part time. If you’re someone who wants to do well at their job, invariably it leads to longer and longer hours.
SG: No, you have to be the advocate for yourself.
JL: And it’s hard because no one wants to say no to their boss. That’s the nature of work. You never want to be like, “I gotta go home because of this.” So you always end up pushing that stuff back a little bit.
SG: You must face that as screenwriters where they want more rewrites than they’ve paid for.
JL: Sure, and you have to have that call, but I understand the fear. You go, “Am I being difficult saying this is my line? I can’t do draft number 19. I only do 18 free drafts.” Then you get that tone on the other line and you’re like, “No, you didn’t pay me for that.”
SG: I guess that’s the sign that it’s good to leave that project, and then sometimes you get the response, “Of course we’ll pay for it” because it’s an honorable employer.
JL: Yeah, we just forgot to pay.
SG: Well, you have to ask for it. They’re not going to offer.
JL: No, they’re definitely not.
SG: Could the downside of Bad Moms be that truly negligent mothers take this as a license to go, “Yeah, I’m doing too much!”
JL: It did cross our minds. That’s why we included the Carla character, that there is such an idea of not every mom is probably overworked. There is a minority that probably could stand to do a little more but I think when we think of moms, all the moms in our lives, 100% of moms that we know and are friend with are all working too hard in my opinion. There are no lazy moms. There’s no moms who are phoning it in. They’re all killing themselves to be great parents.
SG: I believe you and realistically, the way the movie’s constructed it would make truly bad moms feel guilty.
SM: Right, right, right. Even though I’m cutting loose, you look at what Amy’s doing, what Kiki’s doing, what Carla’s doing, they would probably be, “Oh, so I’m supposed to be making lunch for my kids?”
JL: One of my favorite lines is when Carla at the end is giving the speech, “You give your kids salad. You go to your kids’ birthdays.” That’s a joke that if you’re an actual bad mom, you probably would not understand why that’s funny. If you’re not laughing at that joke, you should maybe take stock about your parents.
SG: Did you also want to speak out about white male entitlement, which has gotten out of control?
JL: That speech to the kid. I enjoyed writing that. We enjoyed that scene. It’s something you can’t really say to your kids. My kids are very young so I don’t know if they’re entitled yet. I’m really trying to raise them not entitled. You just see that thing of, “I’m special.” And you’re like, well, you are because you’re a wonderful person but you’re one of hundreds of millions of people. You’re going to have to work for stuff. I think that’s a fear of every parent in a country, in a society that’s doing as well as ours. Am I raising a spoiled child. I wan to love him but I also want him to be able to stand on his own.
SG: Did you have special insight into it since you’ve done some movies that may have been popular with young white dudes?
SM: Maybe a little bit but I think what Jon’s saying, a lot of it just came from our experiences. I have that concern. Most of it was us watching our wives and talking to other moms but a lot of the parenting is what you’re doing. It’s so easy to take care of your kid and do things that he wants and you want him to be happy. But always catering to him and making him happy and giving him what he wants is not necessarily creating a good human being.
JL: I feel like every generation, parents are closer to their kids. I didn’t really know my grandparents but the stories you hear are like no talking at the dinner table. It was a very top down organization. There was not a lot of hugging and love. In that way, I think it’s really improved but the fear with that is oh God, we’re going to raise these kids that don’t have any backbone, that don’t have any mettle.
SM: We’re not by any means experts about parenting. This movie is not pushing any sort of agenda. We don’t know. All we’re saying is it can get a little stressful sometimes and maybe just take a step back.
JL: If there’s any real message it’s that we have no idea what we’re doing.
SM: Yes, as many little messages as I got along the way, the big one is that making mistakes is okay too. If it doesn’t work, you tried and move on to something else.
JL: My wife and I got a dog before we had kids to see how good we’d be at it. I’d be like, “No one tells you how to have a dog?” Then my wife’s like, “Do you think anyone tells you how to have a kid?” I’m like oh boy, if we can’t handle a pooch...
SM: That first day when you bring a baby home from the hospital is one of the scariest days of my life because you realize nobody gave you an instruction manual. You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing.
JL: You can’t believe the nurses are going to just give you the baby. They’re like, “Here’s your baby.” You’re like, “You’ve got to come home with me. You know what you’re doing.”
SM: There is a chance you’re going to kill the baby. They tell you if it doesn’t sleep right, if it sleeps on its stomach, rolls over, it may suffocate, you’re like, “Oh my God! I’m going to kill this kid.” It’s very scary.
SM: Did you run every single thing in the script by your wives?
JL: Oh yeah, they read a bunch of drafts.
SM: Draft after draft and they would often be like, “This is not something a mom would say. This joke is not funny or it would be funnier if you attacked it this way.”
JL: Also, Suzanne Todd, our producer, is a mother of three and she’s a great mom. Obviously our entire cast, all six of our leads are all moms. We knew if we tried to put something in there that wasn’t right, the moms would tell us right away.
SM: And a lot of the stuff that went in was stuff from the cast or from Suzanne that they would pitch, like a joke or a moment. We’d be like, “That’s awesome. We’re going to use them.”
SM: Were there any major set pieces that a mom suggested?
JL: Yes, the bathroom scene which people seem to like. That whole discussion, I can’t say who it’s about. It’s funny, you would think a guy came up with it because it’s a penis joke basically. Something fell through and we needed a spot there. We turned to Suzanne during production, you have a table full of six moms, you’re drinking some wine, what are you actually scared about before you’re going out on the town? What’s the fear. She said, “Honestly, this is what we talk about.” I remember being like, why did you not tell us this a month ago? This is great stuff! I think the great joy in writing this was we would often pull things back. More often than not, I feel like the moms would be like, “No, no, no, it’s way grosser than that.” We had an instinct, it felt too male if it was gross. The moms were all like, “Oh, you haven’t even scratched the surface. You don’t even know.”
