Bad behaviour. Bad attitude. Bad example.
Danny (Paul Rudd) and Wheeler (Sean William Scott), two salesmen who trash a company truck on an energy drink-fueled bender. Upon their arrest, the court gives them a choice: do hard time or spend 150 service hours with a mentorship program called Sturdy Wings. After one day with the kids, however, jail doesn’t look half bad. Surrounded by annoying do-gooders, Danny struggles with his every neurotic impulse to guide Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) through the trials of becoming a man. Unfortunately, the guy just dumped by his girlfriend, Beth (Elizabeth Banks), has only sarcasm to offer a bashful 16-year-old obsessed with medieval role play.
Meanwhile, charming Wheeler tries to trade in an addiction to partying and women to assist a fifth grader named Ronnie (Bobb’e J. Thompson) in redirecting his foul-mouthed ways. It would probably help if Ronnie’s new mentor wasn’t an overgrown adolescent whose idea of quality time includes keggers in Venice Beach. Once Sturdy Wings’ ex-addict / ex-con director, Sweeny (Jane Lynch), gives them an ultimatum to shape up, Danny and Wheeler are forced to tailor their brand of immature wisdom to their kids. And if they can just make it through probation without getting thrown in jail, the world’s worst role models will prove that, sometimes, it takes a village idiot to raise a child.
About the Production
When producers Mary Parent and Scott Stuber were searching for the next film to add to their production company’s growing collection of comedy hits, including The Break-Up and You, Me and Dupree, they came upon a story that writers Timothy Dowling and William Blake Herron had crafted about two guys who refused to grow up until they were forced into taking care of a couple of boys who needed their unique brand of guidance. They optioned the project with producer Luke Greenfield, but it would have to wait until Paul Rudd; Rudd’s often writing partner, director David Wain; and Seann William Scott expressed interest in the film before it would take off.
The producers were long familiar with Scott and Rudd, as they had overseen the development of such Universal Pictures’ comedy hits as the American Pie series (with Scott) and The 40-Year-Old Virgin (with Rudd) during Stuber and Parent’s tenure as Universal’s heads of production. Parent notes, “The subject matter in Role Models was great and a perfect fit for these two actors. We find four disparate characters who are thrown together against their will and who would never have thought that the others could be a catalyst for the changes they go through.”
Stuber admits that what interested them in pursuing the film with Rudd and Scott was that the style of humor of both men couldn’t be more different, or more complementary. While Scott is known for playing characters with raunchy humor and outrageous antics, Rudd’s scene-stealing roles as the straight man with a very dry wit and acerbic attitude offered comic potential that meshed well with Scott’s.
The producer states, “When we were at Universal, Mary and I worked on the American Pie series with Seann and The 40-Year-Old Virgin with Paul; we were big fans of both. The script for this film presented one of those great pairings that we knew, right away, would work for the two of these guys. We felt there would be real comedic value in what they would bring to the story.”
After Rudd and Scott were committed to the film, the production team felt that they had found just the men to rework the script and adapt it to Rudd and Scott’s sensibilities and timing. Along with director Wain and his fellow The State comedy troupe performer, Ken Marino, Rudd would develop the story of two immature energy drink salesmen who are, by nature, complete opposites, and, by default, best friends. Danny is cynical and a premature curmudgeon, while Wheeler loves the ladies and partying…responsibilities be damned.
Rudd explains the steps: “I read the script, and it was a work in progress. I thought the idea was very funny and that there were some good jokes in it, but it was in the process of being written and rewritten. I thought of going different ways with the two characters, and then the producers asked if I wanted to write it. I had worked with David Wain and Ken Marino before, and I liked their humor. So, David came in to direct it, and David, Ken and I worked on the script together.”
The writing team developed the character of Danny as a man who is at a point in his life where he simply cracks, willing to openly berate a coffee shop barista on her company’s choice of names for drink sizes. “He just can’t deal with it anymore,” Rudd explains. “Just the general things you deal with every day annoy him. It’s to the point where he can’t even brush it off his back when people say `24/7′ or `ASAP’ or `110 percent.’ He’s pretentious and hates everybody, but really hates himself the most.”
Of her team’s choices, Parent explains, “We needed to discover these characters, and then tailor them to Seann and Paul. David Wain, Paul Rudd and Ken Marino had really fresh ideas for these characters and made them very real. They are idiosyncratic; they are eccentric. They’re specific, and, hopefully, they are memorable. We can all recognize elements of ourselves within all of the characters.”
What sold Seann William Scott on the comedy was the camaraderie that develops between Danny and Wheeler over the course of their journey into mental adulthood. “My character has a really interesting relationship with Paul’s character, Danny,” Scott says. “It’s not the typical `best buddies’ kind of friendship. They don’t pal around; they butt heads, but, ultimately, there is a friendship there.”
Scott looked forward to shooting with director Wain for the first time and commends, “Working with David was incredible. He makes it really comfortable to try something new. You have room to make a mistake. And, maybe, one of those mistakes isn’t actually a mistake. It’s actually a great moment.”
The producers were duly impressed to see the extent to which Scott had grown as a comic actor since his early days of American Pie. His high-energy style matched well with Rudd’s acerbic riffs. “Sean knew when Paul was going to throw a curveball at him and was ready for it,” Stuber says. “Some of the best moments, frankly, are those moments in the movie where they just kept going. They found a really good rhythm for their jokes.”
The filmmaker behind the darkly comic The Ten and the cult classic Wet Hot American Summer, director David Wain, had worked with Paul Rudd before. He explains of his interest in becoming part of the Role Models team: “When I got involved with this project as a director, Paul had done a draft of the script, and then Paul, Ken Marino and I started working on it. Having worked on other features in the past and being good friends, we really have a certain comedic shorthand. It was a lot of fun to collaborate in this way.”
Of the challenges this comedy would bring, Wain continues, “A lot of what I’ve done in the past is to take some kind of genre and tweak it or subvert it or add a layer of something absurdist to it. This is a different kind of movie, and it’s more grounded in a believable reality than, say, Wet Hot American Summer or Stella or some of the other things I’ve done.”
Wain expounds upon the casting of Scott and Rudd in the lead roles: “Paul and Seann are great together. They have different comedic images to the public, very different comedic sensibilities and are playing very different characters. When they come together, there is this slight disconnect on screen that is really amazing.” With the leads set, the production team would begin the search for a collection of misfits that included an exasperated girlfriend, an oversexed counselor with a cocaine laden past and two young misfits who would help our heroes grow up…painfully so.
Casting the Comedy
For the roles of Augie and Ronnie, the two boys who are chosen as most compatible for the new mentors, the filmmakers cast two adept young performers: Christopher Mintz-Plasse of Superbad as Augie and newcomer Bobb’e J. Thompson as Ronnie.
Mintz-Plasse’s Augie is a lonely, awkward high-school kid whose guidance counselor signs him up with the Sturdy Wings program in the hopes that he can meet a mentor to tutor him on the way to becoming a man. What he gets, however, is the bitter, disaffected Danny who, initially, has next to no interest in getting to know his new little brother.
Wain says, “We all saw Chris in Superbad and thought `Oh my God, who is that kid? He is unbelievable.’ Then you hear all these stories of how they found him on MySpace, and you think that he may be a fluke, that he was playing himself. But he is a really great actor with lots of skills. He came in and created a completely different character and knocked it out of the park.”
Thompson’s Ronnie is a brash fifth grader who talks more trash and thinks he can party harder than Wheeler. He also takes great delight in harassing Danny, accusing him of being Ben Affleck (or a character from one of his movies) at every step. “Bobb’e is just filled with so much charisma, and he is so funny on- and off-screen. Every time the camera rolls, he does something different, and he will blow you away each time.”
Playing the female leads in Role Models are two comic actors who happened to co-star with Paul Rudd in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Elizabeth Banks and Jane Lynch. Lynch (Rudd’s sex-hungry electronics store boss in Virgin) was cast to play Sweeny, the former addict and founder of Sturdy Wings who is responsible for overseeing the mentorship of Danny and Wheeler. Banks (Steve Carell’s endlessly adventurous date in Virgin) came on board to play Danny’s weary girlfriend, Beth, the attorney who barters the deal to spare the errant salesmen jail time.
Though Sweeny’s Sturdy Wings is intended to serve as a guidance center for youth who need a big brother or sister to help mentor them, Danny and Wheeler do their fair share of growing up with their charges. The writers conceived the character of Sweeny for Jane Lynch and realized that if she weren’t interested in accepting the job, they would have to rewrite the character. Fortunately, their gamble paid off.
Lynch liked what was written for her and saw the raw comedy in the character. She laughs, “Sweeny misuses words. She gets her metaphors all goofed up and isn’t always linear in her thinking. Sometimes, she’s all over the place, and that, of course, drives Danny nuts because he’s so smart and logical. Here’s this woman with this power that she’s created for herself, and he has to put up with it and listen to her.” Too, she was glad to be a part of another R-rated comedy with some old friends. “When you try to keep within PG, you certainly don’t get the good stuff, the gold, when you’ve got those constraints around yourself. You can’t really let go.”
Producer Parent offers of the center’s leader: “Jane is so talented, and she brings her unique comedy to creating the role of Sweeny-a character who has obviously been through a lot in her life and thinks, `I used to be addicted to pills, and now I’m addicted to helping people.’ Sweeny takes all of that energy and channels it to a place of now wanting to do good and help people. But being almost overcommitted and overly passionate makes for a hilarious character.”
The filmmakers needed Danny’s girlfriend to be tough, emotional and very funny. She has had it with her complaining boyfriend and has reached the end of her rope. Just as she’s breaking up with Danny, Beth has to serve as the guys’ attorney to keep them out of prison. The producers and Wain found the intelligence and solid timing they were looking for in actor Elizabeth Banks, who has shown her versatility from comedies such as Wain’s Wet Hot American Summer and this past spring’s Definitely, Maybe to dramas such as Seabiscuit and this season’s W.
Banks opted to join the production (her second film with Bobb’e J. Thompson) because she was pleased to find that her director would stay true to his favorite genre. “David Wain is not capable of making a comedy that’s not R-rated,” she laughs. “We found a place, tonally, for our movie that is realistic and makes sense when you have 30- year-olds in it. We drop the F-bomb and talk about sex a lot, so I don’t know how we can be truthful to ourselves and not make an R-rated movie.”
Producer Stuber was happy to have Banks back in the Universal family. Of the film’s female lead, he notes, “Elizabeth is one of those rare women who is beautiful, smart and funny. If you can’t marry her, you must cast her in your movie. She always holds her own against great comedians and gives the jokes just as fast as she gets them. We were lucky to have her join the production.”
The filmmakers welcomed the opportunities to create and cast several unique supporting characters that came from director/performer Wain’s two decades of work with a comedy troupe. “The 11 of us in the comedy troupe The State have been working together for 20 years now,” explains Wain, “and from there have built a larger community of people that I have worked with many times over-like JOE LO TRUGLIO, A.D. MILES, Ken Marino and KERRI KENNEY-SILVER. I know they will always be hysterical, and everyone just has great chemistry.”
In addition to writing duties, Ken Marino plays Augie’s clueless step-dad, Jim; Kerri Kenney-Silver steps in as Augie’s out-of-touch mom, Lynette; A.D. Miles was brought on for the role of Martin, Sturdy Wings’ most helpful/annoying volunteer; NICOLE RANDALL JOHNSON was chosen to play Ronnie’s ferociously protective mother, Karen; and LOUIS CK cameos as the rent-a-cop who tries to rough up Danny and Wheeler outside a school in North Hollywood.
For the key actors in Augie’s medieval role-play world, Wain hired KEN JEONG (whose memorable turn as the unpleasant OB-GYN in Knocked Up earned raves) to play Augie’s archnemesis, King Argotron; Joe Lo Truglio as medieval dork Kuzzik; MATT WALSH as duplicitous nerd Davith of Glencracken; and ALLIE STAMLER as Augie’s first love, Esplen.
As writer/director Wain explains, he is always willing to invite new talent into this group. “I think it is a great way to build an evolving rep company,” he says. “I am thrilled that I can add people I haven’t worked with before, like Seann William Scott, Jane Lynch and Nicole Randall Johnson.”
With the cast locked, the filmmakers began placing the players into the universe in which Danny and Wheeler worked and played, as well as into the medieval world in which Augie strives to become king of a make-believe nation.
Shooting the Film
Role Models filmed in and around Los Angeles, from the keg party to which Wheeler takes the eager Ronnie and from Augie’s house, where Danny has a volatile (and improv’d) dinner in Venice Beach, to the school where Danny and Wheeler trash a statue of the mascot with their “Minotaur Mobile” in El Segundo.
Such additional locations as the Santa Monica airport, which housed the Minotaur energy drink’s corporate offices; Venice Beach’s Boys & Girls Club, which hosted the Sturdy Wings center; the Santa Clarita campgrounds; and Beth’s legal offices in downtown L.A. also served as settings for the production.
While there are always a number of challenges in shooting in busy metropolitan areas, production designer Steven Lineweaver knew that he had his work especially cut out for him when the screenplay called for the development of an alternate universe. Augie feels the most comfortable in the medieval world of Live Action Interactive Role playing Explorers; therefore, the scenes shot at LAIRE were the setting for multiple battle scenes, as well as for the climax of the film.
LAIRE is a fictional LARP (an acronym for Live Action Role Playing) group, in which the players assume Middle Ages identities and act as specific characters for the duration of game play. The game is a scenario written by the moderator, or Game Master. Alternatively, the LARP may be based on individual decisions made by the participants.
LARP may have existed for at least a century, but it gained popularity during the `70s due to games such as “Dungeons & Dragons.” Many LARP games are medieval- or fantasy-themed, since many participants are Renaissance Faire or “Dungeons & Dragons” enthusiasts. These LARP games feature knights, castles, wizards, damsels, dragons and, of course, dungeons.
The days spent with LAIRE offered fertile ground for physical comedy among the cast: an unrealistic setting rife with over-the-top elements, such as bastardized Shakespearean-speak, lavish costumes and behind-the-scenes personal dramas among such denizens as King Argotron, Kuzzik and Davith of Glencracken. LAIRE is such a specific universe that it needed to be created with its own caste system, language, logic, rules and celebrity.
For Augie, Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s character, this is the only place in which he doesn’t feel like a weakling…and can carry a torch for the mythic princess Esplen. “Augie is a bit awkward in his own life, but when he goes to LAIRE events, he feels like he can really be himself. He belongs with these people; they get him,” says Mintz-Plasse. Lineweaver’s biggest task was re-creating a LAIRE event at Disney Ranch outside Los Angeles in Santa Clarita. For key sequences, he had to imagine the theatricality and insanity of these events.
This world was a fun yet daunting task for costume designer Molly Maginnis, who had to dress not only the stars in LAIRE costumes but also the other actors and numerous extras who fought and filled up the event, as types ranging from Roman foot soldiers to Samurai warriors. Parent commends, “Molly and her team did a great job making the costumes look homemade. If you take a good look at Augie’s breastplate, you will see that it is made out of crushed cans.”
Banks summarizes the experience of much of the cast: “It was amazing. I drove up to the set one day, and I saw all the background players. I really thought I had made a wrong turn into the Renaissance Faire. These guys are so committed. They have amazing costumes, jewels on their faces, tattoos, hats, crazy hair extensions. There was a woman with a giant butterfly on her face. You name it, and these guys have come up with it.”
When our heroes decide to help Augie fight the evildoers at LAIRE, they don homemade costumes that have little to do with the Middle Ages. “The new costumes were all about David,” says Parent. “I admittedly, at first, was a little like, `Really? You think?’ But it ends up being such a great part of the film, and it’s totally unexpected- something that Wheeler really brings to the table that pays off.”
Payoffs are one thing, but tight costumes and too much makeup are another. Scott endured multiple outfit changes to get the laughs in Role Models-the Minotaur mascot’s furry uniform, as well as his costume for the LAIRE event. “The costume was fun for the first day,” laughs Scott, “but those jeans…they were super tight.”
Scott wasn’t the only one who enjoyed the process-at first. Mintz-Plasse remembers, “I went in and was like, `This is gonna be awesome.’ Then you realize that you are going to wake up at 4:45 and go in the trailer and sit there for an hour and get cold makeup sprayed on your face and wigs glued on your hair. It didn’t end up being as fun as I thought it would be.”
What was enjoyable for the cast was the opportunity to work with legendary stunt coordinator JEFF IMADA, who has worked on such memorable action films as From Dusk Till Dawn, The Bourne Ultimatum and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. “Initially, I felt bad for Jeff,” recalls Mintz-Plasse. “He went from training Matt Damon in this $200 million movie to teaching Ken Jeong and me how to fight with foam swords in this comedy. He knows like 20 different styles of combat. It’s crazy.”
Rudd adds that they would work with Imada and DP Alsobrook to land just the right moves during LAIRE events throughout the course of production: “It was crazy that Jeff would come and work with us on this, but when David and I would talk about it, we really wanted to make the scenes like Braveheart or something big.”
Shooting wrapped, bandages applied after days of LAIRE shoots and nipples given a rest after numerous tweakings, the cast and crew said goodbye to Role Models’ filming, and Wain and editor Eric Kissack headed to the editing bay to assemble the footage.
Appropriately, our Sturdy Wings leader provides the parting words about her latest R-rated comedy: “I’ll tell you what audiences can’t expect,” deadpans Lynch. “Don’t expect big words. Don’t expect highfalutin concepts. Don’t expect the characters to do the right thing. Just sit back, relax and have a good time.”
Production notes provided by Universal Pictures.
Role Models
Starring: Seann William Scott, Paul Rudd, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jane Lynch, Elizabeth Banks, Nicole Randall Johnson
Directed by: David Wain
Screenplay by: W. Blake Herron, Timothy Dowling
Release Date: November 7, 2008
MPAA Rating: R for crude, sexual content, strong language and nudity.
Studio: Universal Pictures
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $67,294,270 (73.5%)
Foreign: $24,224,308 (26.5%)
Total: $91,518,578 (Worldwide)