Take an anxious Seattle couple, drop them in a hipster-centric Los Angeles neighborhood for a night of alcohol, weed and some possible swinging, and you're left with one bizarre, yet charming hangover. That's essentially what "The Overnight" is, the new sex comedy from writer-director Patrick Brice that finds Taylor Schilling and Adam Scott's married couple caught up in a night of absurd, hilarious and revealing situations.
While taking their son to play in a local park, Schilling's Emily and Scott's Alex meet Jason Schwartzman's Kurt, your typical Silver Lake hipster artist. After inviting the couple over to his and his wife's (Judith Godrèche) swanky home for their kids' playdate, Emily and Alex are sucked into an all-night escapade that features everything from homemade porn videos to butthole paintings to full-frontal male nudity (yes, Scott and Schwartzman both flaunt prosthetic penises in the film). What could easily succumb to a cliché raunchy sex comedy dependent on puerile jokes soon flourishes into one of the most refreshing adult comedies in recent memory.
After "The Overnight" screened at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year, The Huffington Post sat down with stars Schilling and Godrèche to talk about filming the movie in less than two weeks and getting very up close and personal with each other.
There's a really refreshing sense of humor to this film that makes it so charming. Was that something that drew both of you to the project?
Judith Godrèche: I read it and it was the funniest thing I ever read. I did a lot of comedies in France and thought, "Wow, if everything was as funny and well written as that, I’d be working nonstop."
Taylor Schilling: Mark Duplass brought the movie to me. I read the script and it was a nutty script. [...] The raunchiness and rawness in the script, sort of taking that to a really honest and gritty sensibility and seeing how to braid those two things together. There’s also a real kindness to the film that makes it funnier. I think in a lot of comedies, like situational comedies, the humor is very reactionary, and this is more based in emotional situations that I think make it so funny.
How did you avoid playing into the usual tropes of the sex-comedy genre?
Schilling: For me that was so much in the direction. That wasn’t the culture on the set.
Godrèche: There was an ambiance. We all signed to do this indie film which was almost like a first film. So there was something special going on already, no rehearsal, no fittings. [...] I think [Brice] likes actors who are funny, but in a subtle way. As far as Adam [Scott] can go, he’s a super funny actor, he’s a very internal actor too. It’s almost contemplative in a way. There are super funny lines, but they are delicate at the same time. It’s so well written, it’s hard to make it goofy. It’s the awkwardness that is so well done. It’s not vulgar. It’s sexy, but it’s awkward.
Both of your characters get progressively drunker and more stoned throughout the movie. What was it like to act out those different stages of being increasingly intoxicated?
Schilling: I think because we were doing it in order, it was kind of brilliant. Our call time was like 6:00 p.m. and the wrap would be around 7:00 a.m.
Godrèche: We would get stoned just by being tired.
The chemistry between all four of you is so magnetic. Did you spend a lot of time together before shooting?
Schilling: I had lunch with Adam and we had a group dinner. I think sometimes chemistry just appears. It’s something really wonderful in a cast. It either kind of emerges or it doesn’t.
Godrèche: I remember it as a dream honestly. I was so tired. Everything is like that to me, including the last scene which was really like -- I was like, "I don’t know who I am anymore and I don’t care!" I was really taken by the moment in a very interesting way. I think this movie is so open-minded. It doesn’t tell exactly who you are at this moment in your life and maybe you don’t know either, and I kind of felt this.
Without spoiling anything, the last major scene with all four of you features some very bold sexual innuendos. By the time you filmed it were you all very comfortable together?
Schilling: We shot the whole thing in 11 days. That last scene -- Patrick [Brice] and I talked [about how] that scene might not even exist. We shot sequentially then we’d watch and see if that actually existed in the dynamic of the characters.
That's interesting because while watching it, it doesn’t feel like that scene will actually happen, but it plays very organically.
Godrèche: And it’s not like it’s announced, like "Here’s the big scene!" It comes so subtly and I think it’s charming, because the way it happens is pretty magical. I think [Patrick] is amazing and he has a way of capturing -- he’s always dancing with us, the camera’s movement was always moving with us. It’s romantic, actually. When I see that scene, I feel like I’m watching a romantic movie.
"The Overnight" is now playing.
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