Casa de mi Padre is extremely confident in the comedy it brings to the table. A large part of that is the script and the talent on hand. That’s why I’m thankful that I had the opportunity to sit down with director Matt Piedmont and writer Andrew Steele. During the interview we talked about physical comedy, the difficulty of acting while trying to remember lines in a foreign language, wardrobes and much more.
I’m curious how this project came about. How early did Will Ferrell come on board?
Andrew Steele: This totally comes out of his brain. He wanted to do a Spanish-speaking movie. That was something that he had wanted to do. I hadn’t even known about it before. He brought me out on Funny or Die and that was the first I’d heard of it. But he had had it in his mind a couple of years before that, so going back five years probably. And studios weren’t interested. They’re not interested in subtitled movies, generally. They just thought the idea was a little too loony for them. But when I came out he said, ‘I have this idea. Do you have any interest?’ And my first answer was, ‘absolutely not.’ But then I started driving around Los Angeles and thinking about it and thought of all the crazy stuff that we could get away with, with the idea. That started to spur me on and Will didn’t put any constraints on what the script was going to be. He just wanted to this Spanish movie, so I just went off and wrote something for about two months and sent it to him. He said, ‘this is the next movie I’m doing.’ It was a great process for me and as I finished the script I immediately sent it to Matt hope he would want to be a part of it. So the three of us working together on the script, that was the final piece we needed.
With the film in Spanish, it hampered his [Will Ferrell’s] ability to ad-lib, but did it enhance the physical comedy?
AS: Yeah, we were very restrainful in the joke department but Matt can tell you how it was directing that process, but I can tell you not speaking Spanish made it very hard for him physically too because all of his energy was spent memorizing these lines. People won’t understand this, but just having him light a cigarette in scene. In English, that takes nothing but he’s thinking about this language and he has to also remember to light a cigarette. It’s like someone who has never played piano, playing left and right hand and trying to figure that out. I think it was really difficult.
Matt Piedmont: It’s such a challenge and such an amazing performance by Will overall. I think if people realize that it was kind of brilliant – even with the language – comprehending it in English, but you know how Spanish flips around sometimes and the emphasis is in different spots, so when does he make the choice to nod in the middle of the sentence? You wouldn’t do that in English so he had to kind of figure all those things out and when you watch it, it’s effortless, so it’s really kind of a miracle of a performance on his end.
He talked about how he had cue cards ready to go for a lot of the scenes, but only used them for two or three scenes.
AS: I don’t think he used them. Maybe one long one.
MP: Yeah, when he [Andrew] wrote like a 40-page speech.
AS: Yeah, I was trying to torture him. [laughs]
MP: It was torture and he was just sweating and we had them ready, but I don’t even think he used them on that day.
AS: Yeah, I think we had them ready but he would go with his translator in the morning in the car and they would go over the scenes for that day. It was a very laborious and painful process for him.
I’m curious how the script ended up looking. Did you hand him a script with translations already on the page?
AS: Yeah, it was written in English then I sat down with a translator and we went line by line through it to make sure we were on the same page, humor-wise and tone-wise. And then the final script, especially for Will, was the dual script all the way through…300 and something pages.
MP: A phonebook…
AS: …the sides looked like a script. [both laugh]
There is a very specific look to the wardrobes. How did you settle on the ones you have?
MP: I think it is more of an overall look and what we like, so even though there are Escalades, modern stuff, it’s more trying to go for a timeless feel. To match everyone and have it be a big, epic film in our minds and there are choices made, color palettes, to match different different things. We made the choice to have Gael [Garcia Bernal] be in white, instead of the bad guy being black. So it was more of an overall look to where it all balances out and it doesn’t feel hodge-podge. I don’t really know if people notice that stuff, but overall all of it was conscious decisions but – I don’t want to say the word retro, because I hate the word retro – I like the word timeless or a vintage, a lived-in feel on all areas, including the wardrobe.
AS: And then in general we sort of stayed in the ranchero, sort of those earthy tones. A lot of ranch-driven soap operas, so these are the sort of colors. We didn’t want to go with flamboyant soap stuff. There is a little of that, there definitely is, because we like melodrama, but it wasn’t a flowering of crazy colors. There is many Mexican cinema that is very colorful, but we sort of toned it down a bit.
Ferrell also talked about the translation into Spanish and how you were having some difficulties with the translator keeping it in the formal sense..
AS: Almost more the actors. Once the translator was on board with the joke, some of the actors would come up and say to me on the side, ‘you know this isn’t a good translation. I wouldn’t say it this way.’ Not in the case of Diego [Luna] or Gael. They were on board from the beginning. But Pedro [Armendáriz Jr.] is a much older actor and he has been speaking Spanish his entire life. Yeah, he said, ‘this translation is sh*t.’ [laughs]
That should be the quote on the cover. [everyone laughs] The film is quite violent at points, you have a R-rating. Was that from the beginning?
AS: I think the script said things like ‘blood bashed’ and Matt just sort of..
MP: Well, I’m a big fan of the [Sam] Peckinpah stuff and the old 70s movies, Taxi Driver, these movies that didn’t shy away from that and it’s almost balletic and time and poetic, not to get to pretentious. But that’s something that there was never consideration to tone it down. It was always in the script and I was always like, ‘of course we’re doing that.’ So we never gave it a second thought. It was designed that way from the outset.
There’s a lot of breaking of the fourth wall in the film, almost in the first minute. Can you talk about that?
AS: We had a comedy punch-up with our friends and people that we like in LA and everyone wanted to put a lot more in because it’s a comedy after all. But Matt and I are very restrained in a sense. We are tired of desperate comedy. We didn’t want it to feel desperate, like we needed a joke here, or we needed a joke here. We just did just the hutzpah of scenes playing out the way they do; we enjoy that. What you’re looking at is sort of a planned attack of a few of these here and there and from my perspective, I would even pull out a few of them still, but the audience does enjoy them.
MP: Yeah, we pulled out one where the boom mic came in to the shot, and Will’s having a moment, and it just lingered. It felt like a little too much.
AS: A little Mel Brooks-y.
MP: Yeah, so we pulled it out and we tried to be as judicious as possible even though we know it would probably be a big crowdpleaser, having the restraint not to.
AS: The crowd knows when to laugh there, which is great to have that. But too much of that, that little confusing balance, you’re not having fun with that anymore.
There’s a scene in the film where you can see the crew in the background. Did you get them involved or did you just go ahead and shoot it?
MP: It was all planned, the reflection in the glasses. It was actually extras. That shot was a play on Cool Hand Luke. I think they do into the same sunglasses of one of the patrol man, so it was kind of a duel thing. But that was in the script from day one. And that has to all be planned, how we can pull this off. I like when people get that too, because it’s not subtle at all, but it’s all kind of weird. There’s entire websites devoted to continuity errors, you know, ‘this is a mistake!’. And I go, ‘oh man, I didn’t even notice that!’ Then when you point it out you notice it. And even in our movie, there’s lot of intentional ones that people don’t even notice because you get wrapped up and you realize how your brain filters it.
You’re also kind of f*cking with people, because you’re having to read and so it may take another viewing…
MP: That’s another quote, ‘we’re kind of f*cking with people.’ [everyone laughs]
How difficult was it to get financing?
AS: We took it around to a few different people, but it was immediately apparent that NALA [Films] just liked the idea and there was some other companies that were interested for sure. But they seemed like they liked the idea and they were going to give us the complete freedom that we wanted, which is what happened. They really creatively backed out of the way and let us make the movie we really wanted to make. So it wasn’t that hard. Now, when you say, ‘was it easy to get financing?,’ no studio was going to do it. So, no. It’s not easy to get financing for weird ideas like these, but [NALA] just happened to be the perfect fit for us.
MP: And they got it and were great all through out and also [NALA Films Executive Producer Emilio Diez Barroso] goes back and forth between Mexico City; they embraced it. That was kind of cool too, that they pretty much got it on all the levels, so it was kind of neat.
So are all of you going to do a big, blow-out premiere in Mexico?
MP: Maybe, it opens in May I think on 500 screens. More screens than here.
AS: I’d love to do it. That would be fun, go down to Mexico City.
Casa de mi Padre opens on March 16th.