HEY, LET'S ALL PROMISE THAT IN TEN YEARS FROM TODAY WE'LL MEET AGAIN, AND WE'LL SEE WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE WE'VE BLOSSOMED INTO: And this summer marks the 10th anniversary of the release of Wet Hot American Summer, so David Wain, Joe Lo Truglio and Ken Marino did an interview with The AV Club.
[Bradley Cooper recently confessed to James Lipton that he missed his graduation ceremony from The Actor's Studio to film his sex scene with Michael Ian Black. Heh.]
All right, all right, I'll finally watch the damn thing (yes, I am lame and am apparently the winner of the Humiliation round for this movie.)
ReplyDeleteI love, love, love this movie.
ReplyDeleteNo, I win this round of Humiliation. I'd never even HEARD of this movie until this post.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's American, D'Arcy. :)
ReplyDeleteIt's a parody of a very narrow class of films -- summer camp films of the early/mid-1980s. And it's full of stars-in-training -- Cooper, Rudd, Poehler ...
SO good. Trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RByrRpURS5s
ReplyDeleteWow. That actually looks like it might be funny. And I love David Hyde Pierce. I might actually watch that sometime.
ReplyDeleteIt's really, really funny. David Hyde Pierce as the scientist next door to the camp is one of my favorite bits.
ReplyDelete"So are you a professor?"
(hangs head) "Associate professor."
"What does that mean?"
"Less than."
Love this movie. Reminds me of my overnight camp in the Poconos, and I think it was filmed nearby. Loved when Janeane Garofalo is calling the names out and they are all Jewish-sounding and then she clearly makes them up, David Ben-Gurionstein, etc. Sorry I can't remember the exact quote! But this is classic, especially the scene when they go to town and the training montage.
ReplyDeleteLeslie, which camp? I also went to camp in the Poconos, and totally recognized myself, my friends, and my camp in that movie.
ReplyDeleteStupid new computer - that was me.
ReplyDeleteI went to Pine Forest which was in Greeley. I looked up WHAS on imdb.com and it said it was filmed at Camp Towanda in Honesdale, which I'm pretty sure is very close to Greeley, I think you had to pass that town to get to Pine Forest.
ReplyDeleteI should say Pine Forest which IS in Greeley, PA. Still there, just celebrated their 80th summer in 2010.
ReplyDeleteI watched this for the first/second time over the weekend - I think because Dan S. mentioned it on Twitter last week. It was technically the second time I'd seen the film but the first time was a heavily edited version on Comedy Central, so this was the first time I'd seen the WHOLE movie.
ReplyDeleteI gave a mini-review on Twitter, but my overall impression was that I appreciated what it was doing in terms of reference that very narrow genre of summer camp films but I didn't really laugh that much at it. Like, I could see, "Oh, they're ticking that box, and making that allusion, and parodying that thing, and pointing up that trope," but it didn't make me giggle as much as I thought it should have.
I also think part of the problem is Michael Showalter. I don't know what it is but I don't find him a compelling lead at all - I watched another of his projects, "The Baxter", and it had me swearing at my television screen I disliked it so much.
My other slight quibble with WHAS - I can imagine many, many men (and even some women who are so inclined) finding much fantasy fodder in the BBQ-sauce smeared face of Elizabeth Banks.
I think a key test is the Rudd-Garofalo showdown scene. If you're not delirious with laughter during his tantrum -- as I was -- then the movie as a whole just isn't going to click with you. And that's okay.
ReplyDeleteNow that scene I really liked - I was impressed with how Rudd used every inch of his body to portray that character, particularly in that scene. And the great thing about that tantrum is that every bit of it has been built up to, subtly, by his work earlier in the movie.
ReplyDeleteIt gave me the tangent thought, "Paul Rudd has not always been in good movies (I Could Never Be Your Woman was putrid and The Oh in Ohio was even worse) but has Paul Rudd ever not been good in a movie?" I couldn't come up with a movie I've seen him in where he wasn't giving a good performance.
god, I love this movie. and Paul Rudd throwing a tantrum (and tables. and chairs) is by far the best part.
ReplyDelete