Director gets the last laugh
Director Paul Feig likes his actors to take a no-nonsense approach
Paul Feig makes funny movies. He made 2011’s Bridesmaids, proving that gross-out humour wasn’t just for guys. He brought one of its stars, Melissa McCarthy, back in The Heat and Spy. He made the Ghostbusters reboot too.
Then he made A Simple Favor, which is also very funny. Except when it’s not. Which is often.
The screenplay, by Jessica Sharzer adapted from the novel by Darcey Bell, was sent to Feig ’s production company to see if he would come on as a producer. “Now, when we read the script we didn’t know if it was a comedy or a drama, because it’s so crazy,” he says. “I thought: I want to direct this.” So he did.
Anna Kendrick stars as Stephanie Smothers, a single mom with a YouTube channel where she makes crafts and food. But her life gets knocked sideways after she meets exotic Emily (Blake Lively) and her husband Sean (Crazy Rich Asians’ Henry Golding). And weirder still when Emily suddenly vanishes.
“It was the Stephanie character that drew me in,” says Feig. “She’s very similar to all my lead characters ... somebody who’s kind of awkward, who’s trying to figure out their place in the world. The character was funny to me.”
So was Kendrick. “I’ve been such a fan of Anna’s for so long. She’s just so charming. And knowing this role had to be this really lovable character ... it’s nice to bring along the baggage of past performances sometimes.” Especially since, as the film progresses, Stephanie gets a little less lovable.
A Simple Favor is certainly more thriller than comedy, but Feig says the secret to success in either genre is to take the material seriously. He remembers talking to Jason Statham, who plays a dimwitted agent in Spy. The British actor asked if the director wanted him to adopt a comic tone for the part. “I said, ‘Jason, play this like it’s the most serious movie you’ve ever made.’”
He did, and as a result stole every scene he was in.
If Feig sought out Kendrick for one key role, he was sought out by Lively for the other. “I’d heard that Blake had wanted to work with me on something and that she’d read the script and was interested,” he recalls. “I went and had coffee with her and we just hit it off immediately.”
Lively was struck by Feig ’s fashion sense — he prefers three-piece suits. “She fell in love with the way I dress. She said, ‘I want to dress like you!’” This in turn informed her wardrobe choices in the film, although her tearaway costumes are more Chippendale than movie director.
Hiring Golding as the husband started with a suggestion from Feig’s wife. “She’s a huge fan of those books,” he says of the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy. “She was like, you should look into that guy. So I called up (director) Jon Chu and said, ‘Hey, can this guy act?’ And he said: ‘You’ll love him.’ I’m just so happy he’s a movie star; literally as we’re talking he’s becoming a movie star.”
Dream team in hand, Feig was ready to roll.
“First and foremost, you have to treat the thriller genre with the respect it deserves,” he says. “Everybody in the movie ... has to play this dead serious. Comedies are serious.”
Thrillers, too.