by Lorien Faulkner on March 5, 2009

Fallout, Left 4 Dead, Miss March, Monty Python, Trevor Moore, Whitest Kids U' Know, Zack Cregger

It was a long drive to Norman, with Ellen talking non-stop in the passenger seat of my car. We were on our way to interview Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore – the stars of the upcoming film, Miss March and their popular sketch show, The Whitest Kids U’ Know on IFC. It was getting late and our interview was scheduled to begin right when I should have been at home watching American Idol.

“So, you think these guys are gonna be pervs, or what?” Ellen asked.

“I don’t know, maybe.” I replied.

“What if they don’t like us? I bet they’re tired of questions by now.”

“Yeah, probably. The Oklahoman is going right before us, I bet they’ll be really tired of questions after that…”

“Can we stop at Target?”

“Why?”

“I need some blush.”

“No.”

“Look, these guys will notice if I don’t wear any make-up. They were surrounded by Playboy Bunnies in this movie, for Pete’s sake… come on, just stop for a minute.”

“No.”

“I’ll buy you a power drink.”

“Fine.”

An hour later, we pulled up to our destination. Ellen was fully blushed and ready to go and was pulling a pair of pink bunny ears out of her purse as we stood outside the door, ready to introduce ourselves. “Really?!” I whispered. She nodded and put her hand on the door. “Let’s do this thing,” she said dramatically. We walked in to find, well, nothing. Wrong room. I laughed out loud, wondering if she had been planning that all day. We stood in silence for a moment, then saw someone emerge from the door right next to the one we had just opened. When we saw the OPubCo tag swinging, we knew were in the right place. “Let’s do this thing,” I laughed. “Again.”

We stepped inside and found that this was, indeed, the right room. We shook hands quickly with Zach Cregger, who informed us that we would be only interviewing him tonight. Trevor was in the next room, feeling rather ill. (It must’ve been the previous interview.) “I guess we won’t need the extra chair then,” I said, moving one out to make more room. Ellen looked at her watch and said, “American Idol’s on, quick! Let’s do this thing!”

E: So if you could summarize this movie up in one word, what would it be?

Z: In one word? Filthy.

E: Filthy? So are your moms going to be watching this movie?

Z: No, no. My mom’s not going to be watching this movie!

E: What about Trevor’s mom?

Z: Absolutely not. No, no. We were both raised pretty conservative.

E: So where then does your raunchy hilarity come from?

Z: Probably because we were raised conservatively.

Z: You know, I always thought it was the slingshot effect, you know?

E: Like preacher’s kids?

Z: That’s so weird because, in the church I grew up in, the preacher’s kids were the most goody two-shoes – picture perfect …

Z: On the outside anyway.

Z: Now they’re all married themselves and some of them are preachers. It’s kinda gross.

E: I was a preacher’s kid, so I’ve got a little experience myself. So tell me about the background of this movie. Where did the idea come from and how did you put it together?

Z: Believe it not, the idea … somebody wrote a script for Trevor and I and gave it to FOX. Basically going to FOX and asking FOX to ask us to re-write the script. FOX said sure, they brought the script to us and asked “do you guys want to rewrite this?” And at first we, at first I didn’t want to do it at all, because I don’t think there’s a shortage of road-trip sex comedies out there.

E: Right.

Z: But we thought about it for a bit, we went back and forth and we decided to take it on as a writing exercise, basically. So, if we can take something in the genre and put our stamp on it and push it as hard as we could and make it something that we could like … that was the goal, basically.

Z: We did that in a few ways, we pushed some of the jokes pretty far. We also made the Eugene character, basically, not the normal protagonist of a normal sex comedy. To us, you know, the two horny guys trying to get laid is not entertaining. Somebody that thinks that sex is sacred and should only be enjoyed in marriage, well I would like to see what happens to that guy in that situation. So that was the basic idea.

Z: When we kinda got those two characters down we were like “Well OK, we can do this.”

E: So would you say that’s the one thing that separates this movie from your average teen-sex movie?

Z: Well, I think that’s one of them. I think there’s two prime differences, I think that’s it’s about the realistic, healthy ways of looking at sex. It’s about, like, Eugene put sex up on a pedastel and it’s unhealthy and … here’s Trevor!

E: Trevor!

T: How are you?

E: Fine, how are you sir?

T: Pretty good, you guys already took my chair?

<<scrambling for a chair for Trevor>>

Z: Make him sit on the floor.

Z: Feeling better?

T: Yeah, a little.

Ellen intros us and the magazine and tells Trevor that we’re a video-game magazine.

T: Oh, cool. Awesome. What were you guys talking about?

E: We were talking about your comedy versus the average teen-sex movie.

T: Oh. You don’t want to talk about Left 4 Dead or anything?

E: No

Z: No

<<Lorien breaks in from the green room>>

L: Wait a second, we could totally talk about Left 4 Dead!

T: You wanna talk about L4D for a little bit?

E: Go for it. Go for it.

T: I hate Boomers. Man!

L: Playing them, though. I think playing them is the most fun.

T: Boomers? They’re slow! I don’t like them.

L: Yeah, they’re slow but you puke on them and they’re purple, and the horde …

T: Yeah. I like being the Tank, but that’s so rare.

L: Yeah. So you guys are connected on the bus?

T: No, we’re not, which sucks.

L: That sucks big time.

Z: We have the game on the bus, but not connected to Live.

T: That and Call of Duty 5 have kept us pretty busy. We’ve got Deadspace, but haven’t had a chance to play it yet. I got it the same day I got L4D, and I just haven’t gotten around to opening it since I’ve been playing L4D everyday.

L: I think that’s a good call. I mean, Deadspace is not bad, but it’s not multiplayer.

L: OK, I’m leaving.

E: OK, great! Our game readers will really appreciate that.

E: On that note, your favorite games then?

T: Call of Duty 4

Z: Fallout 3 is up there. Grand Theft Auto IV…

T: The old GoldenEye.

Z: Yeah, that’s a good one.

T: It’s one of the greatest games ever. <<Lorien yells “That’s right!” from the green room>>

E: So what were your favorite scenes?

T: In the movie? My favorite scenes to shoot were the firetruck chase and the girl going out the window. Just because there’s such, there’s a lot to choreograph. On the firetruck scene you have all these stunt guys and we say “Alright, jump from there to the car!” and then they, like, do it. It’s crazy.

T: Then with the girl going out the window, that was a whole big to-do because we had to make this room – put a room on hydraulics – then there’s a guy with a lever that he would pull and it would actually make the whole room jump over and then we had stunt guys with ropes around her pulling her out the window to make sure her head doesn’t hit the window. So there was a lot going on there.

E: So, is your party bus anything like the party bus in the film?

Z: No, no.

T: No. Well, the inside, yeah.

E: Yeah?

T: Yeah, the inside is like, pretty similar. But, I mean, ours is just a lot of – for some reason on tour, we really like bad movies.

E: Such as?

Z: All of Van Damm’s stuff.

E: Excellent!

T: Like last night we were watching a 1999 <<incoherent>> movie. Every time we go through video stores and just try to find bad movies. We get more enjoyment out of those than we do, like, good movies. It’s fun to sit around and watch them.

E: So tell me about the whole experience with Hugh Hefner and the Playboy Bunnies. How did that affect you, being raised so conservatively?

Z: Not really, it’s really more of a plot device than something that was a part of our psyche.

E: So it wasn’t like your life’s ambition then?

T: No, no.

Z: No. I mean, I like Playboy, I respect Playboy but it wasn’t a big part of my childhood.

T: Yeah, I mean, I get that obsession with something, you know. Like for me it was more Star Wars than, like – I don’t think naked girls were on my radar until pretty late, probably.

Z: For me it was 15^th century literature. I was just obsessed with it.

T: Right, right. Like what?

Z: Uh, like <<laughing>> Well you know, I celebrate the entire catalog of the, uh …

T: … 15^th century …

Z: … all that shit.

E: Sounds like you had a fun childhood…

E: So the directing and acting, how was it different from the Whitest Kids U Know?

Z: It really wasn’t that much different, it was still about us working off each other. It was really more about the budget and the scale. Once it’s just you, the camera, and the actor, it’s about the same thing.

T: There’s a couple scenes, like the ending. Both characters go through a kind of reconciliation, they have their big, like, they learn something at the end of the movie. To me there is more importance put on the directing and acting than anything in the TV show, just because it has to be believable. You have to care about the characters. When we were each doing our scene like that, we would come up to the other person and say “Was that right? Does anything need to be done differently?” So I think it was a little more focused than on television. Wouldn’t you say?

Z: Yeah, I’d say so.

E: So tell me about Whitest Kids U Know, then.

Z: Well, it’s a sketch show, like Monty Python …

E: Without the crazy accents. Exactly.

T: Without the accents? Who said that?

E: It was on IMDB.

T: Oh, really?

Z: They said we were Monty Python without the accents? That’s high praise.

E: I’m assuming you two have watched every minute of Monty Python?

T: Oh yeah, Monty Python. That was – you know, I wasn’t allowed to watch Smurfs growing up, because there was magic in it. Very conservative background, but for some reason I could watch Monty Python. It’s completely inconsistent – because there’s some dirty stuff in there.

Z: Definitely.

T: So that’s what I could watch, and I became obsessed with it.

Z: What if your parents hadn’t let you watch Monty Python but they had let you watch Smurfs – you got obsessed with Smurfs. You’d be a totally different person right now.

E: My family was raised very conservatively, too, but that didn’t stop us from racing home on Wednesday night to watch The Simpsons as a family.

T: I could watch The Simpsons until that episode were Marge almost cheated on Homer, then I couldn’t watch The Simpsons anymore.

Z: That’s crazy, cause she didn’t even cheat!

T: I know. Hey, take it out on my parents.

E: So what’s the one questions you’re always hoping someone’s going to ask you?

T: Do you want a million dollars?

E: Well, do you? How would you feel about that?

Z: I don’t have that. I don’t have a question that I hope I get asked. If I want to talk about something I’ll just talk about it.

T: Honestly, I’ve always wanted to be asked “What question would you want to be asked?” So this is a big moment for me.

E: So I did it?

T: Yeah, you did it.

E: Excellent, another first!

E: So what about the question that you hope nobody asks?

T: Oh man, I never wanted this question!

<< giggles>>

Z: I don’t like it when someone just sits down and says “So tell me about the movie.” I’m like, watch the trailer.

T: I don’t know, I don’t have anything that I don’t want someone to ask me.

E: Well, that’s kinda boring. Thanks a lot. Thanks for nothing.

T: I know, sorry.

E: So let’s get back to your comic inspirations?

Z: The early Simpons, for sure. Python.

T: Python.

Z: Adam Sandler’s dirtiest CD’s were pretty informative…

E: I think we’re done here.

T: Goodbye, camera!

Goodbye, fair movie stars! There you have it. It turns out that these blooming artists are, strangely, just like the rest of us.  When you watch their favorite scenes in their upcoming film, you can appreciate the talent and thoughtful preparation that happened behind the scenes. When you see all those Playboy Bunnies, you’ll know that the guys weren’t really thinking about them, but were probably wondering when they could get back to their XBox.  When you play Left 4 Dead or watch Monty Python, you can feel just a little bit closer to the stars.

Check out Miss March in theaters Friday the 13th, and for the love of all things good and conservative, don’t take your mother.

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