Heartbreak Hotel
AN EVENING WITH BEVERLY LUFF LINN A love story from the Greasy Strangler creator?
I Comedy may be subjective, but An Evening… objectively features the funniest scene of the year. In it, Aubrey Plaza’s Lulu Danger reacts to the sight of her ex, Beverly Luff Linn (Craig Robinson), swimming in a way that can only be described as orgasmic. “He was meant to swim like a dolphin,” writer/director Jim Hosking regales. “But it proved impossible to find a stunt double. So Aubrey reacted as scripted: like she was seeing this magical performance. In reality, she’s…” Well, that would be telling.
As you might expect from the deranged brain behind The Greasy Strangler, Beverly is a dead cert for being the year’s strangest piece of cinema.
After she’s fired from her husband’s coffee shop, Lulu spots a poster for ‘An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn’. The two evidently have history, so Lulu checks into the “poor man’s Overlook” to orchestrate a rendezvous with her ex, who communicates solely in guttural grunts. But Beverly’s partner Rodney Von Donkensteiger (Matt Berry) and Colin (Jemaine Clement) – a stranger with his heart set on Lulu – form a fantastically awkward love quadrangle as Beverly’s mysterious act looms.
And if that sounds like a radical departure from grease-soaked serial killers and cartoonish ultraviolence, that was the intention. “I was getting tired of speaking about gross-out films, it’s not really my thing,” admits Hosking, who
wrote Beverly long before Strangler stained his CV. “I wanted to make something sincere and emotional, but also keep the comedy I like – another world with idiosyncratic characters.”
Despite the presence of established actors, Beverly features plenty of oddball supporting players, including some familiar faces. “I find a lot of casting too conventional,” Hosking smiles. “The first scene Jemaine filmed was with Sam [Dissanayake, Greasy’s tourist]. It feels like a car crash when you start filming, but I like the sense of impeding bedlam.”
Up next, Hosking is working on a live action Adult Swim cop show set on a tropical island, while his next feature will be “like a kids’ film, but quite a weird one”. From Hosking, we’d expect nothing less.