For Samberg, movie’s story bears repeating
Actor and producer says ‘Palm Springs’ puts ‘really fun’ twist on timeloop concept
“Palm Springs” (R) is available to stream on Hulu starting Friday, July 10.
Even before we all got stuck at home, it was starting to feel as if we were in a time loop of timeloop movies and television shows. Netflix’s ballyhooed “Russian Doll” series and two (two!) “Happy Death Day” horror films in as many years are a few recent examples of the “Groundhog Day” concept becoming its own genre.
Add to that the news that “Palm Springs,” a comedy in which Andy Samberg and some unlucky acquaintances relive the same wedding party day after day after day, broke the sales record for an independently produced feature at the last Sundance Film Festival in January. (While it was initially reported that the film broke that figure by 69 cents, it was later revealed that Hulu and theatrical distributor Neon actually ponied up $22 million for the rights to the film, substantially more than the festival’s previous $17.5 million sales record paid for “Birth of a Nation” by Fox Searchlight in 2016.)
Samberg produced “Palm Springs,” available to stream on Hulu starting Friday, July 10, through the Lonely Island company he runs with his friends Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, whom he met in junior high school in Berkeley. He insists that they weren’t jumping on a temporally circular bandwagon when they developed Andy Siara’s original script. The film was directed by the writer’s fellow American Film Institute alum, Max Barbakow.
“I read the script, and it was really fun,” Samberg, 41, recalls by phone from the home in Los Angeles he shares with his wife, Northern California musician Joanna Newsom, and their 2yearold daughter. “It had a lot of twists and turns that I was not expecting, and I really liked the fact that it kind of started where similar movies would end. It builds on the idea of a timeloop movie.
“At the time we signed onto this, we really weren’t aware of how many there were going to be,” he continues. “In my mind, it was really just ‘Groundhog Day’ and ‘Edge of Tomorrow.’ As more came out over the past few years, I felt some anguish about it. But we kept reshaping and rethinking it and making sure that this could exist in its own space in this new genre.”
In “Palm Springs,” Samberg plays Nyles, who wakes up every morning in a hotel with a girlfriend he doesn’t like. She’s a friend’s bridesmaid, and he spends his endless day(s) cracking wise and drinking himself into oblivion. Until one evening he gets to know the sister of the bride, Sarah (Cristin Milioti, who got stuck in another inspired comic scifi concept in the “USS Callister” episode of “Black Mirror”), and inadvertently brings her into the time loop, too.
Their subsequent misadventures make for one of the year’s best romantic comedies, rolled in with some pretty weird, existential growth.
“I loved playing someone who had truly given up,” says Samberg. “I found it very relaxing. Anytime you tell me that I can be in something while floating in a pool and drinking beer half the time, I’m gonna be interested.”
Samberg certainly seemed in need of some R&R, even if it was on set. Since breaking through on “Saturday Night Live,” he has made what feels like an endless loop of satirical music videos (plus a whole movie, “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping,” and the Netflix special “The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience,” which spoofs former Oakland A’s Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire) with Lonely Island, and has been headlining the NBC sitcom “Brooklyn NineNine,” which is soon to enter its eighth season.
“But on a deeper level, I also really liked the idea of being so removed from your life that you’ve almost forgotten who you even are. I think there’s a little bit of that that a lot of people can relate to,” he says. “This may be arch and metaphorical, but I liked what it was saying about the ins and outs of being alive, and especially about being an adult and how that has changed.”
There are a few regrets associated with his latest project, though. The economics of filmmaking in Southern California forced most of “Palm Springs” to be filmed in Santa Clarita and Palmdale, suburbs north of Los Angeles.
“We couldn’t afford to put an entire crew up in Palm Springs,” he says. “It was probably the thing I was the most upset about making the movie. I was dreaming of living in a Palm Springs house with my family while shooting.”
Samberg also wishes that the original plan to release “Palm Springs” in theaters by Neon, the distribution arm of the Alamo Drafthouse organization that put out the Oscarwinning South Korean film “Parasite,” could have happened. He’s happy, though, with Neon’s promotional commitment, as well as that of Hulu, which was recently taken over by Disney, to stream such a wacky adult farce.
Otherwise, he’s come to terms with the COVID19 pandemic’s slowdown of a redhot career that has recently included voicing a character on Netflix’s “Dark Crystal” show and narrating an episode of the streaming service’s hit comedy “Never Have I Ever.”
“I’ve been in more Zoom meetings than I ever really cared to, but I’ll take it,” he says.“I’m glad that I have meetings to be in.”
Especially with his old buddies. After attending Willard Junior High and Berkeley High together, Samberg and Schaffer went to UC Santa Cruz, while Taccone went to UCLA. After college, the trio reunited in a small L.A. apartment. That apartment’s nickname became the title of their comedy group, and their work there led to “SNL” gigs for all three, along with such classic music video satires as “Dick in a Box” and “I’m on a Boat,” both of which they performed live during the San Francisco comedy and music festival Clusterfest in 2018.
Samberg says growing up in the Bay Area has influenced Lonely Island’s comedy all the way.
“The musical stuff we’ve done was inspired by the time we were growing up in the Bay. The culture, all of the hiphop and R&B, obviously rubbed off on our work and influenced everything we did,” he says. “And we definitely have a tone that I equate with the Bay, which is not punching down, y’know? Making the jokes about ourselves a lot more, not being too thirsty or ambitious at the cost of other things.”
So, now that “Palm Springs” is completed, when will Samberg’s hometown get any love? He tells The Chronicle it’s definitely “another dream to shoot something up there.”
“We’d love to,” Samberg affirms. “No plans immediately, but if anyone out there wants to make a movie about the Bay, hit us up!”