When he isn't writing or directing, the continually busy and multitasking Adam McKay is producing, and this year alone has seen his hands on a number of films including "The Campaign," "The Dictator," "Casa De Mi Padre," "Bachelorette" and "Tim And Eric's Billion Dollar Movie." They all range from big studio summer movies to smaller scale indies, but none of those are as intimate or personal as "Fully Loaded." McKay teamed with Jeremy Piven to executive produce the picture, and as it hits VOD this week, we chatted with the filmmaker about what drew him to the project.
Written by and starring Paula Killen and Lisa Orkin (who based it on their play from Uprights Citizens Brigade), and directed by Shira Piven, "Fully Loaded" chronicles one night on the town with two single moms, whose journey for a hook up finds them comedically reflecting on their lives, past relationships, children and more. Even in this post-"Bridesmaids" world, female-driven stories are still rare on the cinematic landscape, and that proved to be the hook for McKay.
"I went and saw the show at the Upright Citizen's Brigade, and it was just compelling as hell," McKay said. "I was literally engaged every second. And Shira had been playing with the idea of doing a film. She'd shot some kind of small, experimental stuff. And I walked out and I was like 'That's a movie.' I was engaged for every second, and what I liked about it is, it's original."
And while Killen and Orkin were likely thrilled to have a chance to develop their piece into a movie, McKay hints they may have just needed a bit of encouragement first. "With [some] indie films, you can see repetition with some of these festival films. There's a lot of coming-of-age stories, there's a lot of revolting against suburban life — which, by the way, a fine pursuit — but a lot of movies can fall into certain categories," McKay reflected. "But I'm like, 'I've never seen a movie of this.' If you shot a whole movie with two single Moms, with some mysterious crazy night behind them — it kind of never occurred to them. [I said to them] 'I'm telling you, that's a movie.' And what's nice about it, is that it's affordable. You can actually shoot it for a price. I kind of just pushed them on it, and they started playing with writing the scripts."
Though brief and breezy, the story finds the women swapping stories, and thus there are more characters populating the narrative than you might imagine. Dweezil Zappa, Dave Koechner, Ana Gasteyer, Danny Pudi, Mark Boone Jr. and even Jesus Lizard frontman David Yow pop their heads in, and while they likely were more than happy to assist, we can only imagine that the enthusiasm McKay shares about the script was infectious.
"This is one of the freshest scripts I've seen around town, it's like nothing else. And to me that's what indie film is for, is for doing original material," McKay stated. "And why do something that's trying to pretend to be like a Hollywood movie? Take advantage of the fact that you're indie. And I felt like, I don't know if I've seen a script that does that this much. And the more that Shira and Paula and Lisa dug into the script, the more they started feel like, 'This is cinematic, this could be a really great-looking movie.' And at that point we were off to the races."
Told from a perspective we don't see very often, McKay believes "Fully Loaded" has everything a viewer looking for something fresh will be happy to find. "If you ever wanted to listen in to the conversation on two sexy single moms, and hear what they really talk about, this is the movie to watch," he said. "If you like a really original strong movie, with a strong voice, you can't go wrong with this. This to me is why there's indie film."
"Fully Loaded" is now available on demand on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play, Xbox, PSN, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, AT&T U-Verse, Verizon FiOS, Cablevision, Cox, Charter, and more.
