Director SHAWN LEVY (Night at the Museum) teams up with comedy stars Steve Carell (The Office, Little Miss Sunshine) and Tina Fey (30 Rock, Baby Mama) on his new movie, action-comedy DATE NIGHT.
My Movie Mundo chats to Levy about talent wish-lists, working with Carell and Fey, and strange car crashes.
Director Shawn Levy on the Date Night set with Steve Carell
MMM: What attracted you to Date Night? And why did you think Steve Carell and Tina Fey would make such a good everyday married couple?
Levy: I think of Date Night as the movie that’s about what happens once the kids are in bed, or once you leave the kids behind. I wanted to really make a movie about the things that are on my mind as someone who’s married and has kids.
I wanted the movie to be funny and have action but I wanted it to feel very grounded and relatable and real. Steve and Tina, in addition to having two of the sharpest comic minds around today, are always realistic and grounded. They’re funny, but not at the expense of naturalism, and that was a combination I thought worked well for this movie.
MMM: Did you take advantage of Steve and Tina’s improv skills while you were shooting?
Levy: The way we did the movie was that we spent 6 to 7 months going through drafts of the screenplay, sharing it with Steve and Tina, and getting their input. So we filmed a script that all of us had contributed our voices and stories to.
We pretty much did 3 or 4 takes as scripted, and then I generally asked if anyone had anything new, anything on their mind. Generally they did, so we’d do a few additional takes, pretty much every scene.
I think there’s no scene in the finished movie that doesn’t have some improv. No one ever made great comedy through being rigid and tight so it was a very fluid set, a very collaborative process. And I just went through all the versions and cherry-picked the funniest bits for the movie.
Carell and Tina Fey attracted Mila Kunis and James Franco to Date Night
MMM: As well as the film’s stars, you’ve got quite a cast… Mark Ruffalo, Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, James Franco, to mention a few. How did you get all those guys on board?
Levy: When we first started working together we had a dinner. I remember sitting around with an early draft of the script, saying ‘wouldn’t it be cool to have someone like Wahlberg to play Holbrooke; someone like James Franco to play Taste?’ It was sort of pipe-dream ruminations.
I just decided to call the person and take a shot, as I did on the Night at the Museum movies. Maybe they’re going to say no, but maybe they say yes. And on this one we got very lucky because they almost all said yes.
I credit in large measure the fact that pretty much everyone else who acted in the movie is a huge fan of Tina and Steve; and talent wants to work with talent. I love it that around every corner is a surprise for the Fosters [Carell and Fey’s characters], and also for us as an audience with the casting.
MMM: Which was the most fun scene to shoot?
Levy: I’ll go with stripper pole because that was an interesting day. We didn’t do it that many times and the question came up about who we wanted to hire to choreograph it.
The three of us pow-wowed and decided against a choreographer and in favour of winging it so the actors would be as awkward as the characters.
So we played the song that Cee-Lo from Gnarls Barkley recorded for us and Tina and Steve started doing their thing.
Levy enjoyed seeing his stars wing it in the pole-dancing scene
MMM: Do you think the concept of date nights for married couples is more popular in the States than in Europe?
Levy: It is a bit more of a used term in the US; it’s a familiar concept there. I think as we’ve been travelling around Europe, it’s not only not popular here, it’s almost anathema to the European sensibility!
The whole idea of scheduling romantic connection time is so anti-European. It flies in the face of all the ideals of spontaneity and passion.
But we were developing the film for many months and the Obamas came in to office and people started referring to the Obamas’ date night and that was like a gift as suddenly it became even more prominent in the American psyche.
MMM: Is it true that the film’s car crash scene is based on your own experience?
Levy: Yes, in a much less traumatic version. When I was working on the script initially I wanted a car sequence that we hadn’t seen in a movie before.
I suddenly remembered that when I was 16, the day after I got my licence, I went to the library and was parking there and clipped the car parked next to me.
So I backed up to get out of the way, but the car was coming with me. So I went forward to get away from it but was pulling the car. I went forward back, forward back, and was baffled as to why I couldn’t extricate the car.
Carell and cabbie J B Smoove in the crash scene inspired by Levy's youth
Then I got out of the car and saw that somehow, through some freak of bumper height and physics, I had jacked the entire other car on to the ass-end of mine. So the idea of weirdly conjoined bumpers came from that experience.
DATE NIGHT IS OUT ON DVD NOW
By film journalist Jan Gilbert
