That’s a voice we don’t always hear in party comedies.
No! It was a very interesting way to look at it. It started to become exciting to me when we realized no movie has really done that very much. Or when I realized no movie’s really shown the female freshman in college perspective that much, which was also exciting. As we were filming the scene where girls are smoking weed in their dorm room on the first day of college I realized I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in a movie. It’s such a quintessential moment, that I was very excited about that. It’s so obvious, but you never get to see it. The girls drive so much of the plot and the story in a way that has nothing to do with relationships or romance, in any way shape or form.
Their relationships are with each other, not romantic.
That to us was not within the world of our movie. It’s about friendship and camaraderie, relationships paternal and maternal, but it’s not a romantic movie.
You’re in a unique position where you’re spanning a lot of different jobs — do you feel like you’ve developed your voice into a new phase?
It’s very exciting, and I feel very happy that we’re able to try so many things. A lot of the stuff that I’m most excited about on a creative level, like “Preacher” and “Sausage Party,” I think we’ve been working on for the better part of the last ten years in one way or another. It’s not like it just suddenly happened one day. It’s been a long process to get these things going. It’s incredibly gratifying that we’re at the point where we’re able to get these things going and show them to people. It is very nice that we’re able to find new ways of expressing what we think is funny or interesting or dramatic.
We’ve looked for new mediums to do that as much as possible, we don’t want to be behind the curve on this stuff. As TV has become more exciting, it’s like “let’s do a TV show, let’s do a few TV shows!” I watch more TV than movies, so it’s become very exciting to get into that. Animated movies are something we’ve loved forever, so to do one of our own is so exciting. We’re always afraid that people are going make us stop working at any given moment, so as long as that doesn’t happen we’re going to take as many big swings as we can.
“Preacher” is a huge swing.
Very much so!
“Preacher,” the comic, comes across as Garth Ennis working out his beliefs in public. It’s very dated in a way. [The comic series features a Texas preacher who is unwillingly linked to a rogue celestial power; it dives into violence, feminism, and other big-picture cultural topics.] In the spirit of both staying ahead of the curve, and reassessing past stories and jokes, I’m curious about how you’re developing that material.
A lot of it is dated, and he would be the first to admit it, I think — a lot of it is kind of subversive for subversive’s sake without adding much to the conversation. Sometimes that’s great, and sometimes it seems like it might be a little reductive. So far the show does not push any major theological ideas. The characters have very different theologies, they discuss and argue about them and have conversations that are very blunt about it.
But it isn’t a show, I think, that has any agenda in that capacity. It really is about the characters and their dynamics, and those things we have not changed from the comics. I think part of the trick, one of the amazing things the writers are doing, is doing everything that happens in the comic in an unexpected way. So I think if you’re a fan of the comic, it will tick every box in your head, well most of them anyway, but for me there’s nothing that’s lost. I’m constantly happy with how much of the stuff they’re able to include and do it in a way that is completely unexpected. Which is the best you can hope for, as a fan, because it gives you what you want but in a new and exciting way.
“Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” opens on Friday, May 18th. “Preacher” debuts on AMC on Sunday, May 22nd.
