Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm working on a script right about Civil War re-enactors who go back in time to the actual Civil War. It's kind of a big, crazy Back to the Future comedy. So, of course, it's the Civil War - I play the banjo. I was just having a conversation with one of the producers about some of the material and he was like, 'You know, we have to work in a scene where you play the banjo. And I was like I'll get behind that.
One of the biggest breaks we had actually, one of the biggest, the hardest I laughed on the movie [The Hangover] was the baby was just doing ridiculous things and making hilarious faces. But I'm sitting there and I'm supposed to be having this exchange with Zach [ Galifianakis] and the baby is like staring at me with these huge eyes and acting, and just making the most cerebral faces, and I could not keep it together.
When we were not shooting [The Hangover] we were sleeping, so pretty much every waking moment we spent together. And, you know, Bradley [Cooper], Zach [Galifianakis] and I were acquaintances before the movie started but we became good friends very quickly and spent so much time together that it was just inevitable we were either going to really hate each other or really like each other. Thank god it turned out to be the latter.
We played around and improvised a ton [in The Hangover], and I think it's hard to say at this point what's what. Gosh, I wouldn't even know how to take a stab at it. The script was so good that we really didn't need to improvise very much, but I think we just found a lot of moments on the set. It's really cool when you get onto the set of a movie and you start shooting the scenes and you start to actually incorporate the environment.
I was just fooling around with the piano and Todd [Phillips] was like, 'Hey there's a great spot in the movie [The Hangover] where we need a little bit of a breath in the narrative. You should write a song and stick it in there.' And I was like, 'Well, what should the song be about?' And he said, 'The tiger.' 'Oh, okay.' So I went off and I wrote this song. I came back and Todd and I tinkered with it a little more and then we shot it right then. It all happened in a day.
We did some camera tests blacking it out, we made a prosthetic with a gap in it, but that made me look like a donkey, so I vetoed that right away. And then I just finally called my dentist and said, 'You know, I've had this implant for 20 years. What's it involve in taking it out?' And he said, 'It's actually not that big a deal. We can do that.' So we took it out and I was toothless for three months, for the run of the movie [ The Hangover] .I take my job very seriously.
I went to Oberlin College, and they don't have a film major, but they do have what's called an individual major, where you can sort of pitch to a committee your own course study, and if they approve it, you have essentially just designed your own major. So Oberlin doesn't have a film major; they do have a film minor... And then my spring semester of my junior year, I went off to NYU film school as a visiting student - they have a program for kids from other schools to come in for a semester.
