If you're not from Los Angeles, Get Him to the Greek might just sound like your average road trip comedy. They have to get from London to California. Actually, The Greek is an outdoor arena in the hills just behind Griffith Park and the Observatory. Concerts have to end by 10:30 because of neighborhood curfews, but the acoustics and fresh air make it worth going home early.
That's the landmark destination for this spin-off from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Russell Brand reprises his role as Aldous Snow, the rock star who was dating Sarah Marshall. By now, Snow has relapsed into his drug addiction. Record company intern Aaron Green (Jonah Hill) has the idea of staging a comeback concert for Snow, so his boss (Sean Combs) assigns him to accompany Snow.
Sarah Marshall was the directorial debut for screenwriter Nicholas Stoller. He returned to direct the second chapter in Aldous Snow's legacy. He's stepped it up since the Hawaiian romantic comedy. Now Snow's rampage of debauchery flows in a quickly edited assault of party images from England to L.A. It could make the audience as uncomfortable as it makes Green, as he discovers the life of rock n' roll can be nauseating.
Discussing the film over the phone, Stoller said he found the following questions perceptive. He's been used to answering "What was it like to work with Sean Combs," probably since he cast the artist in the film. We analyzed the party scene, the editing style and unconventional leading men, because what else would you talk about with the director of Get Him to the Greek?
SuicideGirls: There's a rich cinematic history of spinoffs, like Billy Jack. Were you thinking about that when you designed this?
Nicholas Stoller: Oh really? I kept trying to find spinoffs and literally couldn't think of any, when we were thinking about this movie. Billy Jack was a spinoff of what movie?
SG: The Born Losers. He was a supporting character.
NS: Cool, okay. I literally could only think of Elektra that was a spinoff from Daredevil.
SG: Also Evan Almighty spun off of Bruce Almighty.
NS: Oh, that's true. Is that a spinoff? I guess that is a spinoff, not a sequel.
SG: And U.S. Marshals from The Fugitive.
NS: Right, U.S. Marshals. [Laughs]
SG: But Billy Jack was really successful so you're in good company.
NS: Okay, we've got one. One for four. We're going to up the odds.
SG: Was it a tough decision then?
NS: You know, it actually didn't start as a spin-off. Basically, at the Sarah Marshall table read, Jonah and Russell had really good chemistry and I thought, "That's a movie." Those two guys seemed like a movie to me. During the Sarah Marshall shoot I thought of this idea, pitched it to both of them and they thought it was a funny idea and they wanted to work together and thought this was different than other stuff they'd done. Then I wrote a few drafts of the script and Russell was actually playing a different rock star. It just seemed odd to me, so then we decided to make it a spin-off.
SG: Do you have another character who could spin off from this one?
NS: I think the concierge. I want to see what that guy's life is about. Played by a wonderful T.J. Miller.
SG: Are you worried about the spoiler coming out that they do get to the Greek?
NS: [Joking] I am a little bit. I am a little bit. I tried to keep it under wraps for as long as possible because it does kind of ruin the end. I did what I could, but in this age of the internet it's hard to keep that kind of secret. Certainly, it's like with a romantic comedy where you kind of know they're going to get together and it's the journey that's fun. Hopefully that's the same thing with this. People are surprised by the twists and turns of the journey.
SG: Is it tough to make a party look really gross and rough?
NS: Yeah. Definitely the movie is structured like a bender, so it's supposed to start really fun. I'm sure everyone has that friend who likes to party and you hang out with them one night and the first night's awesome. Then the next night he's like, "Let's do it again!" We wanted to certainly capture that. As it went along, I liked to try to make the parties grimmer and grimmer. In Vegas we definitely cheesed it up as much as we could. A lot of it was my costume designer, Leesa Evans, and it's subtle. You wouldn't really notice. It's kind of subconsciously that you're feeling grossed out. It's because the party guests are dressed cheesy. What's happening in the story is gross. The suite itself was Jan Roelfs, who's my production designer, who designed this kind of gross, kind of awesomely gross suite. Then starting in London, you intentionally kind of try to make it seem cool, like it's an episode of Entourage but with Jonah in it.
SG: You know, Entourage makes me uncomfortable too.
NS: Yeah, it makes me uncomfortable. I know, they know how to live it up, those guys.
SG: But I can relate to that gross, sad party that's trying to be cool.
NS: Totally. I'm really glad to hear we captured that. We were really trying to capture it. We shot so many fake parties in this movie. Jonah and Russell would show up to set and I'd be like, "All right, so we're doing another fake party." If I never have to shoot another fake party again, I'd be happy. I don't know how they do it on Entourage. The actors have to yell over music that's not playing. All these extras are dancing but there's no music and it smells like a gym and no one's drunk so it's not fun.
SG: Have you had any rough party experiences as a Hollywood player?
NS: Nothing like what Jonah's character goes through. It really isn't like the music industry, especially in the comedy area of Hollywood. In comedy I'm surrounded by a bunch of other comedy nerds. I just really don't have any. I don't have the crazy party story. I wish I did. That's why I made the movie. I wanted to experience it, even if it was totally fake.
SG: You don't have to confess to a bender, but don't people in Hollywood go out desperately looking for something to happen?
NS: I'll say this is kind of a funny party story. It's not really a party story but Rodney Rothman, who's my producer, and I when we cast Sean Combs, he took us out to his studios which was pretty exciting for us. So basically, we met Sean Combs at Nobu which was pretty thrilling as you can imagine, two Jews get to meet and hang out with Sean Combs. We left our cars there and went with him. He was like, "Come with me in my car." So we went with him in his car to his recording studio. We enter the recording studio and it's like every famous rapper on earth is just there hanging out. So it's like Will.I.Am is there, Busta Rhymes is there, it was crazy. We're there, the hours are ticking by, I go up to Sean, and I don't know him that well yet so I don't want to disrespect him or anything, but I also am getting very tired because it is a Tuesday night. So Rodney and I go up to him and are like, "Hey, are we going to go soon." He's like, "I'm going to show you another recording studio." So we get into his car and I call this like a soft kidnapping, because now we were just with him and he wouldn't let us go home. So we went to another recording studio. By this point it's two in the morning which for me is pretty late. We get there and finally, I just had to say to him, "I think we just have to go home." He wanted to take us to a third recording studio. So anyway, that's something of a party story. It was very exciting. I heard "Boom Boom Pow" before it came out. That's my coolest moment, hearing "Boom Boom Pow."
SG: Do you see audiences embracing alternative looking guys like Jonah, like Seth Rogen and Jason Segel?
NS: Yeah, I think so. Honestly, I think most comedians don't look like Brad Pitt. They're kind of more everyman. I think that there's a long history of that. Even look at When Harry Met Sally, Billy Crystal is a good looking guy but he's an everyman. I think same with Segel or Jonah or Seth.
SG: But they're still leading men, not just clowns.
NS: Yeah, I think so. I think they can be romantic leading men. You have two different groups of actors. You have the super good looking supermen like Brad Pitt or George Clooney or that kind. Then you also have more everyman, who I actually think are good looking, they're just more the everyman like Tom Hanks or Jason Segal. I think that's always been that way.
SG: Is it possible to have that without a double standard, so alternative women can have leading roles too?
NS: Yeah, I think so. I think that that totally exists as well. I think actually there are obviously very pretty actresses who are very famous but I think sometimes if you're almost too pretty, it kind of can prevent you from being acceptable to an audience. Then that prevents you from being a movie star. I think obviously Jennifer Aniston is quite pretty but she also has kind of an everygirl quality on screen that appeals to audiences.
SG: Could there ever be a Suicide Girl leading lady?
NS: It's going to happen. We'll figure it out.
SG: How did you come up with the aggressive editing style of Greek?
NS: I think with a romantic comedy, especially with Sarah Marshall, you can kind of wander around a little bit. The story can drift a little bit. You can kind of just hang out with this character or these characters in Hawaii or whatever. I think with a road trip comedy that you're just driving, driving, driving, you have to keep it driving. You have to keep that kind of narrative push going. You have to keep it going forward basically. As soon as you stop for a second, I would feel the story kind of sag. Also, it was intentional, it's a rock n' roll comedy so I wanted to have a lot of short scenes. So I'm sure there's way more scenes than in Sarah Marshall and they're much shorter because they're constantly moving locations. They're constantly on the road going city to city. I also wanted to try, unlike with Sarah Marshall, just because the story called for it, to try a little bit more inventive visual stuff like the absinthe montage, try to kind of get in the head of what it's like to never stop partying. Or like the montage in London where they're passing out or getting drunk and what that's like, try to capture that.
SG: Did you know what you were going to use as you shot it, or did you figure it out in editing?
NS: I way overshoot and there's a lot of cut scenes that will be on the DVD that are actually quite good, funny scenes. You kind of learn something new on every movie, or you learn a lot of things on every movie, that when you have a movie called Get Him to the Greek, anything that doesn't have to do with getting him to the Greek, you just cut. There's a fair number of scenes that I very quickly learned, and this is true I think of cutting any movie, a bunch of scenes drop out very quickly. Then you're kind of fine tuning the movie for the rest of the post process.
SG: Does that become the Nicholas Stoller style moving forward?
NS: I'm not sure if I have a style. I would just say that the story maybe calls for that kind of quick cutting and cutting to the joke. I will say that we do try, and this is true of Sarah Marshall and also with Greek and I'd also say Superbad is like this or Knocked Up, which is that we want to have a lot of jokes. We want the audience to be laughing every 30 seconds or every minute. So to achieve that, you do have to cut a lot. So my editor and I, we'll test the movie and do the laugh track. We'll actually record the laugh track when we test the movie so you can play the laugh track with the movie. Obviously not everything needs to get a laugh, but when you're swinging for a joke and it doesn't get a laugh, then we'll switch it out for another joke or we'll edit the scene.
SG: Do you see a third phase of the Apatow wave? First you guys were underdogs, then you were hitmakers and now maybe you can settle into a third thing?
NS: Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Usually those kinds of labels are placed on it from the outside. From the inside, it's kind of like whatever we think is the next interesting or challenging thing to do. I think it kind of comes from that. Greek seemed, after Sarah Marshall which I love and loved making and was very exciting, this seemed like a different kind of challenge: to do something where you're following two guys on the road. So it kind of came from that. This is a challenge, it's a different story to tell but it also has the kind of emotional heart that we're trying to tell this balls out rock comedy but with heart and a center to it that's kind of emotional. That's what I'm interested in is delivering hard comedy that has heart but I think the story might change or what seems interesting might change.
Get Him to the Greek opens June 4.
That's the landmark destination for this spin-off from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Russell Brand reprises his role as Aldous Snow, the rock star who was dating Sarah Marshall. By now, Snow has relapsed into his drug addiction. Record company intern Aaron Green (Jonah Hill) has the idea of staging a comeback concert for Snow, so his boss (Sean Combs) assigns him to accompany Snow.
Sarah Marshall was the directorial debut for screenwriter Nicholas Stoller. He returned to direct the second chapter in Aldous Snow's legacy. He's stepped it up since the Hawaiian romantic comedy. Now Snow's rampage of debauchery flows in a quickly edited assault of party images from England to L.A. It could make the audience as uncomfortable as it makes Green, as he discovers the life of rock n' roll can be nauseating.
Discussing the film over the phone, Stoller said he found the following questions perceptive. He's been used to answering "What was it like to work with Sean Combs," probably since he cast the artist in the film. We analyzed the party scene, the editing style and unconventional leading men, because what else would you talk about with the director of Get Him to the Greek?
SuicideGirls: There's a rich cinematic history of spinoffs, like Billy Jack. Were you thinking about that when you designed this?
Nicholas Stoller: Oh really? I kept trying to find spinoffs and literally couldn't think of any, when we were thinking about this movie. Billy Jack was a spinoff of what movie?
SG: The Born Losers. He was a supporting character.
NS: Cool, okay. I literally could only think of Elektra that was a spinoff from Daredevil.
SG: Also Evan Almighty spun off of Bruce Almighty.
NS: Oh, that's true. Is that a spinoff? I guess that is a spinoff, not a sequel.
SG: And U.S. Marshals from The Fugitive.
NS: Right, U.S. Marshals. [Laughs]
SG: But Billy Jack was really successful so you're in good company.
NS: Okay, we've got one. One for four. We're going to up the odds.
SG: Was it a tough decision then?
NS: You know, it actually didn't start as a spin-off. Basically, at the Sarah Marshall table read, Jonah and Russell had really good chemistry and I thought, "That's a movie." Those two guys seemed like a movie to me. During the Sarah Marshall shoot I thought of this idea, pitched it to both of them and they thought it was a funny idea and they wanted to work together and thought this was different than other stuff they'd done. Then I wrote a few drafts of the script and Russell was actually playing a different rock star. It just seemed odd to me, so then we decided to make it a spin-off.
SG: Do you have another character who could spin off from this one?
NS: I think the concierge. I want to see what that guy's life is about. Played by a wonderful T.J. Miller.
SG: Are you worried about the spoiler coming out that they do get to the Greek?
NS: [Joking] I am a little bit. I am a little bit. I tried to keep it under wraps for as long as possible because it does kind of ruin the end. I did what I could, but in this age of the internet it's hard to keep that kind of secret. Certainly, it's like with a romantic comedy where you kind of know they're going to get together and it's the journey that's fun. Hopefully that's the same thing with this. People are surprised by the twists and turns of the journey.
SG: Is it tough to make a party look really gross and rough?
NS: Yeah. Definitely the movie is structured like a bender, so it's supposed to start really fun. I'm sure everyone has that friend who likes to party and you hang out with them one night and the first night's awesome. Then the next night he's like, "Let's do it again!" We wanted to certainly capture that. As it went along, I liked to try to make the parties grimmer and grimmer. In Vegas we definitely cheesed it up as much as we could. A lot of it was my costume designer, Leesa Evans, and it's subtle. You wouldn't really notice. It's kind of subconsciously that you're feeling grossed out. It's because the party guests are dressed cheesy. What's happening in the story is gross. The suite itself was Jan Roelfs, who's my production designer, who designed this kind of gross, kind of awesomely gross suite. Then starting in London, you intentionally kind of try to make it seem cool, like it's an episode of Entourage but with Jonah in it.
SG: You know, Entourage makes me uncomfortable too.
NS: Yeah, it makes me uncomfortable. I know, they know how to live it up, those guys.
SG: But I can relate to that gross, sad party that's trying to be cool.
NS: Totally. I'm really glad to hear we captured that. We were really trying to capture it. We shot so many fake parties in this movie. Jonah and Russell would show up to set and I'd be like, "All right, so we're doing another fake party." If I never have to shoot another fake party again, I'd be happy. I don't know how they do it on Entourage. The actors have to yell over music that's not playing. All these extras are dancing but there's no music and it smells like a gym and no one's drunk so it's not fun.
SG: Have you had any rough party experiences as a Hollywood player?
NS: Nothing like what Jonah's character goes through. It really isn't like the music industry, especially in the comedy area of Hollywood. In comedy I'm surrounded by a bunch of other comedy nerds. I just really don't have any. I don't have the crazy party story. I wish I did. That's why I made the movie. I wanted to experience it, even if it was totally fake.
SG: You don't have to confess to a bender, but don't people in Hollywood go out desperately looking for something to happen?
NS: I'll say this is kind of a funny party story. It's not really a party story but Rodney Rothman, who's my producer, and I when we cast Sean Combs, he took us out to his studios which was pretty exciting for us. So basically, we met Sean Combs at Nobu which was pretty thrilling as you can imagine, two Jews get to meet and hang out with Sean Combs. We left our cars there and went with him. He was like, "Come with me in my car." So we went with him in his car to his recording studio. We enter the recording studio and it's like every famous rapper on earth is just there hanging out. So it's like Will.I.Am is there, Busta Rhymes is there, it was crazy. We're there, the hours are ticking by, I go up to Sean, and I don't know him that well yet so I don't want to disrespect him or anything, but I also am getting very tired because it is a Tuesday night. So Rodney and I go up to him and are like, "Hey, are we going to go soon." He's like, "I'm going to show you another recording studio." So we get into his car and I call this like a soft kidnapping, because now we were just with him and he wouldn't let us go home. So we went to another recording studio. By this point it's two in the morning which for me is pretty late. We get there and finally, I just had to say to him, "I think we just have to go home." He wanted to take us to a third recording studio. So anyway, that's something of a party story. It was very exciting. I heard "Boom Boom Pow" before it came out. That's my coolest moment, hearing "Boom Boom Pow."
SG: Do you see audiences embracing alternative looking guys like Jonah, like Seth Rogen and Jason Segel?
NS: Yeah, I think so. Honestly, I think most comedians don't look like Brad Pitt. They're kind of more everyman. I think that there's a long history of that. Even look at When Harry Met Sally, Billy Crystal is a good looking guy but he's an everyman. I think same with Segel or Jonah or Seth.
SG: But they're still leading men, not just clowns.
NS: Yeah, I think so. I think they can be romantic leading men. You have two different groups of actors. You have the super good looking supermen like Brad Pitt or George Clooney or that kind. Then you also have more everyman, who I actually think are good looking, they're just more the everyman like Tom Hanks or Jason Segal. I think that's always been that way.
SG: Is it possible to have that without a double standard, so alternative women can have leading roles too?
NS: Yeah, I think so. I think that that totally exists as well. I think actually there are obviously very pretty actresses who are very famous but I think sometimes if you're almost too pretty, it kind of can prevent you from being acceptable to an audience. Then that prevents you from being a movie star. I think obviously Jennifer Aniston is quite pretty but she also has kind of an everygirl quality on screen that appeals to audiences.
SG: Could there ever be a Suicide Girl leading lady?
NS: It's going to happen. We'll figure it out.
SG: How did you come up with the aggressive editing style of Greek?
NS: I think with a romantic comedy, especially with Sarah Marshall, you can kind of wander around a little bit. The story can drift a little bit. You can kind of just hang out with this character or these characters in Hawaii or whatever. I think with a road trip comedy that you're just driving, driving, driving, you have to keep it driving. You have to keep that kind of narrative push going. You have to keep it going forward basically. As soon as you stop for a second, I would feel the story kind of sag. Also, it was intentional, it's a rock n' roll comedy so I wanted to have a lot of short scenes. So I'm sure there's way more scenes than in Sarah Marshall and they're much shorter because they're constantly moving locations. They're constantly on the road going city to city. I also wanted to try, unlike with Sarah Marshall, just because the story called for it, to try a little bit more inventive visual stuff like the absinthe montage, try to kind of get in the head of what it's like to never stop partying. Or like the montage in London where they're passing out or getting drunk and what that's like, try to capture that.
SG: Did you know what you were going to use as you shot it, or did you figure it out in editing?
NS: I way overshoot and there's a lot of cut scenes that will be on the DVD that are actually quite good, funny scenes. You kind of learn something new on every movie, or you learn a lot of things on every movie, that when you have a movie called Get Him to the Greek, anything that doesn't have to do with getting him to the Greek, you just cut. There's a fair number of scenes that I very quickly learned, and this is true I think of cutting any movie, a bunch of scenes drop out very quickly. Then you're kind of fine tuning the movie for the rest of the post process.
SG: Does that become the Nicholas Stoller style moving forward?
NS: I'm not sure if I have a style. I would just say that the story maybe calls for that kind of quick cutting and cutting to the joke. I will say that we do try, and this is true of Sarah Marshall and also with Greek and I'd also say Superbad is like this or Knocked Up, which is that we want to have a lot of jokes. We want the audience to be laughing every 30 seconds or every minute. So to achieve that, you do have to cut a lot. So my editor and I, we'll test the movie and do the laugh track. We'll actually record the laugh track when we test the movie so you can play the laugh track with the movie. Obviously not everything needs to get a laugh, but when you're swinging for a joke and it doesn't get a laugh, then we'll switch it out for another joke or we'll edit the scene.
SG: Do you see a third phase of the Apatow wave? First you guys were underdogs, then you were hitmakers and now maybe you can settle into a third thing?
NS: Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Usually those kinds of labels are placed on it from the outside. From the inside, it's kind of like whatever we think is the next interesting or challenging thing to do. I think it kind of comes from that. Greek seemed, after Sarah Marshall which I love and loved making and was very exciting, this seemed like a different kind of challenge: to do something where you're following two guys on the road. So it kind of came from that. This is a challenge, it's a different story to tell but it also has the kind of emotional heart that we're trying to tell this balls out rock comedy but with heart and a center to it that's kind of emotional. That's what I'm interested in is delivering hard comedy that has heart but I think the story might change or what seems interesting might change.
Get Him to the Greek opens June 4.