Yeah! He’s been in a lot of things as himself. Is it true this is Conan O’Brien’s first movie role where he’s playing a character that isn’t himself? By the time we did the last close-up, it was like an hour-long take, getting reactions to everything. We had a transcriber there to take notes while they improvised stuff, and we’d get that in later coverage. So we’d shoot a wide shot and they’d improvise and we’d keep it purposefully long. Obviously when filming, you have to shoot coverage. They’d improvise a lot when it was just the three of them and find different paths. The great thing about working with the Please Don’t Destroy guys is they know each other so well and they have this kind of magic when they’re together. There was a lot of that, especially if you ask the handheld camera operators.
How much room did they leave themselves to improvise? The film was written by the Please Don’t Destroy guys, who also obviously star in it. “Especially now, it feels like people are turning on things that are clearly shot on a soundstage because it feels a little dead.”īriganti called up Variety to discuss the film’s most absurd moments, directing Conan O’Brien and why theatrical comedy movies might soon experience a “new boom.”
“There is something to shooting in the elements that gets you into the mindset and pushes you,” he says. Still, Briganti wouldn’t have made the buddy comedy, produced by Judd Apatow and now streaming on Peacock, any other way.
