Director PAUL FEIG talks about working with stand-up comedians and directing improv on his new movie, BRIDESMAIDS, starring Kristen Wiig.
**BRIDESMAIDS is in UK cinemas from 24 June
MMM: How did you and the cast work on Bridesmaids – did you start with a basic framework in terms of the script and then improvise certain scenes?
Feig: The script has to be a very strong blueprint for an emotional story as well as for the comedy. Then you know you are going in to improvise but you never go into a scene saying, ‘hey, let’s see what happens.’ Here’s what we need out of the scene, here’s the scripted version that’s great anyway, now you guys play with it on top of that and make it your own. What that does is it gets you away from what a lot of comedies have, especially romantic comedies, which is very scripted and very written so it doesn’t feel in the moment. Even if they’re just tweaking the wording a little bit on already written lines, it just feels like people having a conversation and they can surprise each other and then you get that energy.
MMM: How usual is that as a working process?
Feig: It’s a form that Judd [Apatow, producer] started and brought to movies because it’s what we used to play around with on television on Freaks and Geeks, then he started playing with it on Undeclared and other pilots he did, and then he really brought it into the movie world. It’s one of the best ways to make movie comedy because again there’s a freshness and a surprise among the performers that goes into the audience.
MMM: Many of the cast have backgrounds in stand-up comedy, so how do you focus potentially competing energies on set?
Feig: That’s the great thing when you work with real comedy professionals – it has the illusion of chaos but it’s not. It’s like a dance, everyone knows what to do, everyone knows how to do timing, everyone knows when to back off, when to go forward.
My job is just to stay out of the way and not interfere with that natural rhythm because there’s nothing worse than a director that comes in and says, ‘oh, try this.’ It throws it off and all I do is sit back and say, ‘oh, maybe try this’, kind of adjust the ship as it’s going along. But it’s much easier than it seems, if you have the right people.
MMM: Weddings have long been an area ripe for drama and comedy. What attracted you to the wedding movie genre?
Feig: I think this works because most wedding movies are about the wedding and there’s not a lot you can tell about a wedding so you have to amp up all the emotions of everyone around it. This is very much a story about a woman going through a terrible time in her life and getting this duty of a maid of honour just throws it all off. It’s more that what the wedding does is bring a bunch of characters who wouldn’t normally be together together, and then it just pushes them, drives them forward in the story.
MMM: Any plans for a sequel?
Feig: There’s been no official talk of it. It would be a crime not to reassemble an amazing team like this but we would only do it if we could make it as good or better than the original, because there’s nothing worse than the sequel that lets everyone down. So we’ll see.
