Arts
March 4
The Daily recently sat down with Trevor Moore and Zach Cregger of the popular New York City-based sketch comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U' Know (WKUK) to discuss their film, "Miss March," scheduled to release on March 13. The movie's plot centers around Eugene (played by Cregger), who wakes up in a hospital to find that he has been in a 4-year coma since prom night. His sex-crazed best friend Tucker (Moore) reveals that Eugene's virginal girlfriend is now the centerfold for Playboy. The film follows the two on an outrageous road trip to the Playboy Mansion to try to win back Eugene's girlfriend's heart and integrity. In expected WKUK humor, characters such as Horsedick.MPEG, a mega-star rapper, enrich the comedic experience.
Lorrayne Shen: What was the biggest jump from sketch comedy to making a feature-length movie?
Trevor Moore: The writing process was probably the most different … When you're doing a sketch, sketch is really the perfect medium for comedy because you take a subject, jump in with your best eight or nine jokes and leave. You don't have to segue; you don't have to really care about character development or anything. So, when you're doing a movie, there's this whole different dimension to think about — which is, you know, people are going to spend 90 minutes with these characters, [and] they have to like them. So you have to make sure that these characters have something [where] the audience can empathize with them, that the characters grow throughout the film and that each scene isn't just a tangent to get a laugh out of the audience — that it actually pushes forward the story or it pushes character development in some way.
LS: If you were Playboy centerfolds, what would you include in your bio?
Zach Cregger: That I made a movie about Playboy and it was really weird. I like pizza.
TM: I'm one of the only Playboy centerfolds to be male.
LS: Tell me about the dynamic when meeting Hugh [Hefner] and being in the house.
TM: It was cool. It was fun. We originally tried to do the movie without Playboy's involvement because when you're dealing with a company as iconic as that, you don't know how serious they will be about protecting their image. We had Robert Wagner playing Hefner, and he did an awesome job, but when we showed it at a test screening, the movie did great until the end when Wagner would come out, and there was just a disconnect with the audience. Hefner is an icon in his own right.
ZC: You could hear the whole audience be like, "What?"
TM: So we went to Playboy sort of with our tail between our legs, and they showed it to Hefner, and luckily he not only liked the movie but wanted to be in it. And he didn't really have any notes. He only had one question: "I notice you say a girl's ‘busted.' What does that mean?" and we're like, "Oh, it means she's not pretty." And he's like, "And kids will know what that'll mean?" And we're like, "… I think so." And he was like, "Alright, I'm fine with it!" And that was his only note. He was really cool; I mean, we had Sarah Jean Underwood, she was Playmate of the Year 2007, and she toured with us for a week and she was telling us Hef was really nervous about doing the movie and the whole day before was really going through his lines. It's the biggest speaking role he's had in a movie; there's a whole scene in the end that's crucial. It's kind of cool because he's like an 82-year-old guy — doesn't need to do this movie, you know. He's doing fine, financially. He really just did it to help us out. He came and was prepared and was really awesome.
LS: How would you guys describe "Miss March?"
ZC: It's a dark, disgusting movie that pushes itself as far as it can and disguises itself as a funny road trip movie — at least I hope.
TM: [It's] a little different because we kind of actually wanted it to have a point and be about something. The original script that Fox gave us was about these two douche-y frat guys that just wanted to get laid. So we kind of changed them. The idea was that both of them had the same problem: They both put sex on a pedestal. But they have the problem from opposite sides of the spectrum. Eugene is terrified of sex and it's hurting his relationship because he can't take it to the next level. Tucker is obsessed with sex and what he believes is the Playboy image, and he has a girl that is probably perfect for him but he can't accept it because he doesn't think he's lived enough, that he has enough notches on his belt. So it's two opposite views on sex that are rooted in the same problem and those two characters finding a middle ground in the movie. Hopefully, because of that, we can take the jokes farther, a little more gross, a little more extreme, and the movie is not just an excuse to gross people out. Hopefully it grounds a lot of the crazy stuff.
LS: Is there a WKUK movie in play?
ZC: Yea, definitely. We're finishing a script for a WKUK movie. And that's really the reason that the other guys aren't in this movie. We kind of want to keep that brand sacred, and we didn't want people to think that this was a WKUK movie. Because that will have more of a feel of the show, that it's crazy and anything can happen, whereas this is more grounded in this movie.
TM: So if people go see this movie, maybe we can make a WKUK movie.
ZC: That should be the tagline. If you want a WKUK movie, you gotta suffer through this one.
LS: Does anyone in your group serve as a sounding board, to say, "This can't work?" How does the writing process work?
TM: I don't think there's any subject that's too sensitive as long as the spirit is right, as long as it's not malicious. A lot of time we'll talk about a lot of sensitive things, but a lot of times it comes with a sort of child-like wonder, a sort of innocence. And we tried to bring some of that into the movie. An example would be the Tucker character, who probably does the worst stuff of everybody. I mean, he stabs his girlfriend and watches a girl die and doesn't tell anybody. But you still sort of like him because he's oblivious to it all. He's in his 20s but he's still like a kid. The guy who's doing the worst stuff has to be the most innocent character.
LS: I have an obscene amount of comedy troupes in my school, like twelve. What advice do you have for getting into the business?
TM: Destroy and sabotage the other eleven troupes. There should only be one troupe.
ZC: Yeah, we killed people. You have to kill people. And blow people!
TM: Machiavelli.
