JORMA TACCONE and WILL FORTE INTERVIEW

MakingOf: The movie looks awesome! Not like a regular SNL movie, which is cool.

(WILL): Thank you.

(JORMA): That was intentional, that was intentional.

MO: Yeah, I want to start with the DP, Brandon Trost. What was your collaboration process with him to make it look rad?

(JORMA): He’s fantastic. Well, we shot on red, I don’t know if anyone cares about the nerdy side of this. Um, but uh, it looked better than a lot of red footage that I’ve seen, but we were super concerned about trying to get that kind of 80’s, late 80’s early 90’s action kind of vibe. So that’s why every single time you see an exterior, there’s a wet down, like it looks like it’s just rained. In every single interior, it’s completely smoked out, which you know, works quite well for a lovemaking scene [laughs]. But, like, literally anytime you’re inside, there’s smoke everywhere. So, um, if you go back and watch any kind of “Lethal Weapon” or anything like that, you’re like “how is there smoke in a parking lot?” [laughs]

MO: So that was my next question, the 80’s references and just like, what was your process together, just writing the script and figuring out, there’s a suit up scene, gotta throw that in there, there’s the assembly of the team. What was your process of doing that research?

(WILL): The research was just living life in the 80’s. Uh, we were such huge fans of 80’s action movies and kind of, knew all the clichés and structures.

(JORMA): And I think there’s like a language, like if you grew up in that era, you know exactly, kind of what’s coming next; you set up the crime in the beginning, like you have to go find your hero, he’s obviously a reluctant hero. The only difference in our movie is god knows why they went to find this guy. [laughs] Someone clearly under qualified. 

(WILL): I think a lot of people are gonna expect that it’s the sketch, over and over and over again for 90 minutes and it’s way different than that.

(JORMA): We threw out the sketch entirely.

(WILL): In a positive way I believe.

(JORMA): There’s a slight nod to the sketch, at one point I think. But we really wanted to go for…it’s just entirely its own thing.

(WILL): You don’t have to have seen the sketch to understand the movie.

MO: When do know that this is a great sketch that you’re involved with?

(JORMA): People tend to know that when we’re writing a bad sketch that I’m going to love, when it’s like, 5 o’clock in the morning and I’m laughing hysterically. There’s a tone in my voice that I hit where Andy (Samberg) or Akiva (Schaffer), when I’m writing with those guys, those are my two comedy partner guys, uh, they know that the sketch is going to fail. And it’s probably going to be my favorite sketch. And then I would say that like, some of my favorite sketches on the show that maybe don’t get a lot of love are Kristin Wiig’s “Thomas” character. It’s a character named Trina and she does “Thomas, ooh Thomas” (imitating Kristin Wiig). And then these guys have a sketch called, it’s “Clancy T. Bachleratt and Jackie Snad” and they sing country songs about spaceships, jars of beer, todlers and…

(WILL): Model T Cars.

(JORMA): Model T Cars. Uh, so I tend to like stuff that is like that.

(WILL): (singing) Driving down the road in my Model T Car, got a jar of beer…I don’t know…spaceship!