Director David Wain on the set of Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, his latest feature comedy.
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The comedy Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass stars Zooey Deutch as a young woman whose husband-to-be has a fling with his celebrity crush, Jennifer Aniston.
“I had a celebrity free pass thing with my fiance,” she explains, “but he took it literally, so now I have to have sex with Jon Hamm to even the score and save my relationship.”
The movie is a ridiculous sendup of The Wizard of Oz. Instead of Dorothy Gale from Kansas, Gail Daughtry from Kansas travels to Los Angeles, picking up friends along the way while dodging trouble on her quest to bed actor Hamm, who plays along.
The film was directed and co-written by David Wain, who’s been making absurdist comedies with his friends for decades.
Ben Wang, Ken Marino, Zooey Deutch, John Slattery and Miles Gutierrez-Riley in a scene from Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass.
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As in all of Wain’s movies, this one is filled with dumb jokes and silly visual gags— like when Hamm’s Mad Men co-star John Slattery gets his foot slammed in a door 34 times.
“The idea of a comedy feature film that’s just a comedy, that isn’t also an action franchise or a horror movie or something else is, to me, shockingly and very sadly rare,” says Wain, who filmed the entire film in Los Angeles – something else that’s rare these days.
Wain worked on the screenplay for 10 years with one of his closest friends, Ken Marino. They started collaborating when they were film school students at New York University in the late 1980s.
Actor Joe Lo Truglio plays one of the bad guys in the new film — a sort of ‘flying monkey,’ to stretch the Oz metaphor. Lo Truglio, known for his roles in Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Reno 911!, has also known Wain since their undergraduate days, when they began honing their brand of humor.
“If it involves wordplay or slapstick or extending the joke and the bit in a little more,” says Lo Truglio, “it’s gonna be right in David’s wheelhouse.”
At NYU, Wain and 10 of his friends created and performed comedy skits as a troupe called The State. They became so successful, their show was picked up by MTV.
“We had such an incredible run in the ’90s, and we’re all very good friends,” says Lo Truglio, “so it’s so great to get the chance to work together and just be an idiot.”
In 2001, Wain got his friends together again for a goofy low-budget movie that’s become a cult classic: Wet Hot American Summer. It’s set in a raucous 1980s summer camp in the Poconos, with the camp counselors played by comedic actors including Paul Rudd, Bradley Cooper, Amy Poehler, and Elizabeth Banks.
Twenty-five years later, many in the cast are now household names. And Wain still hears compliments about the film. “People are like, ‘that movie is my litmus test for who I think is on my wavelength or who I think is cool or who I want to date, you know?'”
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Marguerite Moreau, who played Rudd’s girlfriend in Wet Hot American Summer, says people come up to tell her it’s their favorite movie of all time. “I still have things I quote from it, just as a fan,” she says. “All of it just seems hysterical.” Like many in the cast, Moreau is also in Wain’s newest film and says he’s very collaborative. “He’s always been very playful and excited by everyone’s ideas.”
Wain was born in 1969 and grew up in Cleveland, watching Saturday Night Live and obsessed with comedians Steve Martin, Woody Allen and Mel Brooks. As a 12-year-old, he did card tricks at kids’ birthday parties – his magician’s name was “Wain-o the Great.” As an older teen, Wain was a counselor at a Jewish summer camp in Maine.
“I just really always had a very special feeling about summer camp and how every day seems like a month and how your hormones are raging and the special experiences and special friendships,” he tells NPR. “I just was excited to use that as the backdrop for what was a very silly, absurd comedy in many ways, but also for my money, has a lot of warmth and truth under it.”
This summer, Wain is celebrating the 25th anniversary of Wet Hot American Summer. Part of that includes going on tour with the Middle Aged Dad Jam Band. He and his old college buddies and his longtime ensemble players do covers of ’70s and ’80s songs, with Wain on the drums.
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From his tricked-out garage in Los Angeles, where he rehearses and makes music videos with the band, Wain says his son will soon be roommates at NYU film school with the son of his old roommate Craig Wedren, who’s been composing scores for all of Wain’s movies.
And Wain says he plans to continue making music and comedy with his closest friends.
“I think when you’re in college and you find people that you connect with and you share a sensibility with, you’re like, ‘oh my God, let’s hold hands and just never let go. And let’s keep doing this forever,” he says. “If I’m going to go to work in the morning and do something that’s really hard and takes a lot of energy, why not do it with people that are your longtime friends, who are like family and who are the best in the biz? Why would you ever not do that?”
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