David Wain saves the parody genre in They Came Together
The poster makes it look like another insipid schmaltzy romantic comedy — innocuous font choices surround a lovelorn couple as they gaze into each other’s eyes in a nondescript café. Before you fret that your favourite comedians have sold out and made a cookie-cutter rom-com however look a little closer to find all the hidden gags in They Came Together ’s promotional pin-up. Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler’s names for example are placed above the wrong person’s heads. The supposed critics’ quotes are all from Deadline and merely point to neutral facts about the shooting of the film. Then there’s a note at the bottom nodding to every movie fan’s favourite pretentious observation: “Please note: New York City plays such a central role in this story it’s almost like another character in the movie.”
These are all subversive choices to be sure but some of the humour is almost too dry. Take the film’s title for instance. Its double entendre meaning which suggests a mutual sexual climax makes it a remarkably ballsy choice for a summer movie. Calling during a break on set from the forthcoming sixth season of his Adult Swim television series Childrens Hospital co-writer and director David Wain says that no one was bothered by the ejaculation joke in the movie’s name.
“Oddly what was more of a concern was the thought that not enough people would get it or that it doesn’t scream ‘comedy’” he explains. “And in fact in some of the earlier test screenings… a lot of people did come into it assuming that it was a ‘regular’ romantic comedy and misread it so it was almost too late.”
Granted They Came Together does bear a striking resemblance to the standard brainless romantic comedy thanks to its by-the-numbers boy meets girl unlikely-couple-falls-in-love premise — Joel (Rudd) plays a big-business candy executive who’s tasked with shutting down Molly’s (Poehler) fledgling mom-and-pop candy shop. Naturally the two are magnetically drawn to one another despite their different backgrounds and Joel finally gets over his mean-spirited ex.
Sounds like a terrible date-night rom-com right? Like all great spoof movies the plot comes secondary to the barrage of jokes. “We wanted the storyline to have just enough there to keep you interested” Wain says chuckling. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing in your mind but we were wanting to keep it joke-heavy. I think the rule was pretty much every moment should be funny or building quickly to something funny.”
Thanks to that method They Came Together is Wain’s most densely comic film yet. Written with fellow The State / Stella alum Michael Showalter (their first feature-length co-writing venture since the beloved cult-classic Wet Hot American Summer ) the film crams laughs into its brisk 83-minute runtime brilliantly showcasing their anarchic sense of humour. There are sight gags filthy sex jokes jaw-dropping surprises and transcendently stupid scenes — you’ll never see a more dedicated (or long) “you can say that again” bit.
Wain and Showalter were financed by a studio to write They Came Together 10 years ago though the project ultimately fell into limbo. “You know I think at the time it was when those certain kind of parody movies were being made like Scary Movie and the imitators afterwards” Wain recalls. “One thing was that it was sort of a hard sell that a rom-com one would be worth doing because some studio people were saying it’s two different audiences. On the other hand the problem was that there was one in development called Romantic Comedy that actually never got made but sort of slowed down the momentum on ours.”
Thankfully the film finally made its way through production. Wain explains that they made it on “an extremely low micro-budget” that adjusting for inflation was actually cheaper to produce than Wet Hot American Summer .
“I think most comedies should be done for a low budget” says Wain. “In my experience the less money a movie costs to make has a relationship with how funny it is. The more money going into it somehow it gets harder to keep it light and fun. It’s my comfort zone to work with a lighter budget.”
To save costs the film was also shot on a tight schedule. Wain’s last film Wanderlust was built on constant loose improvisations (so much so that an entirely different cut of the film is available on the Blu-ray release) but They Came Together was kept much closer to its original script. “The budget was so low and the schedule was so fast that there was not an opportunity to say ‘Let’s try five different ways to do this moment’” he says. “We had to just trust that what we had on paper worked.”
Fortunately it worked like a charm and They Came Together is a near-perfect comedy. By skipping the weird topical references and awkward pop culture tie-ins that the Scary Movie clones like to cram down our throats Wain has brought some artistry back to the spoof genre.
In many ways it recalls the Zucker brothers’ classic 1980 parody film. “I do think that it’s interesting that Airplane! is considered by most to be an absolute classic and trailblazer and it hasn’t really been done [again]…” he says. “There haven’t been a lot of movies that have taken that idea for a next one.”
David Wain we’re begging you. Please make more of these.
