They can take out the poppy seeds and heat it up. “I’ll have a low-fat sugar-free banana yogurt muffin,” she says, “but if they don’t have that, I’ll have half a poppy seed muffin. To prove his point, there’s a madly contrived flashback to one of their earliest dates for coffee. Molly sees Joel as “handsome but in a non-threatening way, vaguely but not overtly Jewish.” He sees Molly as the kind of cute, klutzy girl that can drive you a little bit crazy.
The entire movie is told over a boring dinner as they attempt to recreate their interminable, cliché-riddled story for another couple (TV veterans Bill Hader and Ellie Kemper). Rudd and Amy Poehler (the only bright spot on TV’s Parks and Recreation) play Joel and Molly. Starring: Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler and Bill Hader With They Came Together, Wain has managed to breathe new life into the tired romantic comedy genre.Written by: Michael Showalter and David Wain I'd be very much interested in changing up the genre and exploring things that don't have to be, you know, jokes." But he responded, immediately and enthusiastically, in the affirmative: "I really have. Despite the strength of the cast, pulling that off was a challenge Wain explained that he and his team were "very brutal in the editing process," cutting everything "that didn't get big laughs."īefore Wain had to return to the set of Adult Swim's Childrens Hospital, I fired off one last question: "Do you ever consider making something other than a comedy?" In retrospect, it might have been flippant to suggest that Wain abandon the genre he's been working in for his entire career. By spoofing the genre, They Came Together also manages to generate more laughs than any rom-com in recent memory. For They Came Together, Wain "begged" Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Christopher Meloni, and Michael Black - all of whom appeared in Wet Hot American Summer - to "reprise their roles from the stage reading they did at the 2012 San Francisco Sketch Fest for no money."įortunately, they agreed, and the results are just as potent. Like his idol, Woody Allen, Wain has worked with the same general rotation of people in each of his five films. And the lower budget movies - Wet Hot American Summer, The Ten, and They Came Together - had to be done so quickly that we had to mostly rely on what was on the page, allowing for improv where we could."
We also had the time and the money to improvise a lot.
When it comes to the sharp, natural-sounding dialogue of his films, Wain provided a detailed outline of how much is improvised: " Wanderlust, which we did in collaboration with Judd Apatow, had a lot more free improv and exploring on set because we were just trying out that philosophy of working. "The good romantic comedies are either hybrids of other genres, or they find a way to be fresh with the formula." When asked to name recent romantic comedies he does admire, Wain identified Knocked Up, 500 Days of Summer, The Proposal, and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist as quality outliers. "They're so hard to make now because the formula is so entrenched," said Wain. For the last decade, the romantic-comedy genre has rapidly deteriorated, producing almost nothing resembling the fare that Wain was raised on (and that They Came Together consciously emulates). Unfortunately, the gems Wain speaks so affectionately about are in the past.
"All the Woody Allen movies, The Graduate, When Harry Met Sally, John Hughes movies." "Showalter and I love the great romantic comedies," he said. "The reason we made this movie is because, in truth, we are big, big fans of the romantic comedy." He insisted that he and co-writer Michael Showalter are poking fun at the genre not out of disdain, but with reverence. They Came Together is no exception in fact, it may be Wain's crowning achievement.
From TV shows like The State and Stella, to movies like Wet Hot American Summer and Role Models, Wain has made a name for himself by writing and directing outlandish romps for more than 30 years. It's the kind of quick-witted response you'd expect from Wain, whose career has bounced from one comedic gem to the next. We looked at your Netflix queue, and we were like, 'What's his list of movies he's seen?' and then decided to make a spoof of that." Without a missing beat, Wain replied, "That's right.