Nicholas Stoller on "Get Him to the Greek"

MakingOf: Did you know while you were filming, were you thinking to yourself 'Man, I know that I can take Aldous Snow somewhere else,' or was that something that came along after the reactions and after you had screened it and the film was finished and you thought 'You know what, maybe...'

(Nicholas Stoller): It was, you know honestly it was when Russell walked into audition, when Russell Brand walked into the audition and just, was so funny, I was like 'This guy is a movie star,' it was an instant feeling.  He's just so funny, he has a very different comic energy than most people, he's very good looking, you know, so there's all those things.

But it was during the first table read I was like 'Jonah and Russell, that's an amazing comedy team.  I want to watch that movie.'  And then during the shoot I thought of this idea and pitched it to them and they both liked the idea, and then set it up and after we kind of...as I was writing drafts of it in post production, and after we had wrapped Sarah Marshall I realized it was strange for Russell to play a different character and so we just made it a spin-off.

MO: But in making it a spinoff Jonah's character shifted because I had read that you felt that it couldn't run the course of a movie, in playing the same guy.  So was he part of molding and shaping what he thought this new character was going to be?

(NS):Yeah he certainly was, and I really everyone to be a collaborator in the movie, and so yeah Jonah certainly pitched ideas, Russell pitched ideas, and I wanted their ideas.  But also the story demanded a certain kind of guy and, actually the character he's playing is closest to Jonah, he's like a sweet guy who has a girlfriend, who doesn’t say the F word every other second.

But Russell, you know, I have no experience with addiction or anything like that, and a lot of the movie has to do with that.  Russell really brought a lot of his, kind of, nothing factual, but a lot of his personal, kind of emotional experiences to the part.  I would interview him and ask him lots of questions about 'What would cause you to fall off the wagon?, How would you treat someone if you were jonesing?, What would you do to get drugs?,' and that kind of stuff.

MO:What other research went into the project before you started production?

(NS):I read a lot of books about rock.  I'm a big music fan, so there's, you know, but I read this book "The Dirt," which I highly recommend, all about Motley Crue. It's the best book.  Scary book, scary book (laughs).  None of that is in the movie, because that would be a horror movie.  But I watched a lot of documentaries and rock movies, 24 Hour Party People.  I watched "Trainspotting," "Sid and Nancy," you know just, there's a documentary called "Digg" that Jonah had recommended.  So yeah, so kind of a lot of research."

MO:Do you find that a lot of scenes from your work end up being improv'd?

(NS):Yeah, I mean, improv, to me, is an essential part of comedy with the way that I do it.  Were trying to get a big laugh every 30 seconds, and to do that you need to have a lot of jokes and you need to have a lot of options.  I've certainly worked on movies where they only shot the script, or they shot the script with like one joke, one additional joke.  And then you have nothing to cut to if that joke doesn't work when you're testing the movie.  So we do a lot of improv, we also do something that comes from sitcom writing where I'll yell out a joke, I'll think of a joke or a line and I'll yell it out.

MO:Is there anything stylistically that you think stands out in your movies as, when you watch it you think 'That's me.'

(NS): Visually I think "Sarah Marshall" and "Greek" are pretty different, but that's intentional.  "Sarah Marshall" is about people sitting and talking at a resort so it's pretty static, and that's intentional, you know, it's a romantic comedy.  With "Greek" it's about trying to get this guy from London to New York to Vegas to LA, and they're constantly on the run.  There's also, I wanted to capture what it's like to be drunk and what it's like to be high and so there's some really fast paced montages.  So there's a different rhythm to it.  To me the story demands that, you know I don't think I have like a specific, it's not like Paul Greengrass who shoots everything handheld.  I don't have that visual style.  I think the one thing that hopefully will come across in this and "Sarah Marshall" is that I try to do a hard comedy that you get a lot of laughs, but then you actually, there's kind of a heart to it and an emotional aspect to it that I think hopefully will surprise people (laughs).  I'm not afraid of people feeling.

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