He’s directed some of the most popular comedies of the decade, including Bridesmaids and The Heat. He created Freaks and Geeks, for crying out loud. Now, the filmmaker behind the upcoming comedy Spy and the new Ghostbusters reboot has a new TV series called Other Space, and he’s about to take on his most important task of all: guest-starring on CraveOnline’s B-Movies Podcast with William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold!
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We sat down with Paul Feig at CraveOnline’s offices in Culver City to learn more about the long-gestating sci-fi comedy Other Space, and how it turned into a reunion for Mystery Science Theater 3000 co-stars Joel Hodgson and Trace Beaulieu. We also learned more about the Silence of the Lambs-themed sequel to The Heat, the unexpected controversies surrounding the all-female cast of Ghostbusters, and Paul Feig’s amazing, trademarked fashion sense.
What is the epic tale of Paul Feig’s first meeting with Spy co-star Jason Statham? You’ll find out when The B-Movies Podcast Presents: Paul Feig! Follow the show on Twitter at @BMoviesPodcast, follow your hosts at @WilliamBibbiani and @WitneySeibold, and follow Paul Feig and Other Space at @PaulFeig and @OtherSpace.
Check Out: ‘Ex Machina’ Director Alex Garland Talks A.I. and ‘Dredd 2’ on The B-Movies Podcast
You can subscribe to The B-Movies Podcast on iTunes for weekly episodes featuring movie news, reviews, commentary tracks and more exclusive interviews. And don’t forget to watch Other Space on Yahoo! Screen today!
The B-Movies Podcast Presents: Paul Feig – Episode Highlights
William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are the co-hosts of CraveOnline‘s B-Movies Podcast. Follow them on Twitter at @BMoviesPodcast.
The B-Movies Podcast Presents: Paul Feig - Episode Highlights
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Paul Feig on Casting the New Ghostbusters:
"June 15th, we start shooting. It’s coming up fast!"
"Look at that cast. That’s one of the funniest casts. I mean, men, women, who cares? It’s four funny people."
"It was the hardest thing ever to weed [the potential cast members] down. […] There was some lobbying but not much. Fortunately people kind of left me alone. It was just, I know so many talented, funny women that you just want to make sure… all these people are great, I’ve just got to find four distinct personalities who aren’t going to overlap with other one."
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Paul Feig on the Announcement of a Ghostbusters Spin-Off:
"That was a surprise. I had no idea."
"I totally get wanting to create a whole universe. That makes perfect sense for many different ways."
"Everyone acknowledges the announcement was a mistake. I think it was a leak that wasn’t fully formed."
"[The mistake was] the fact that it was announced, because Sony has been so supportive of this version, the minute I pitched it. They were after me to do a sequel, and again, I didn’t know how to do it so I kept turning it down. And then I finally said, ‘If I can do it this way…’ and they jumped on it."
"So I just think everybody gets excited about stuff, and I don’t know… All I can concentrate on is mine and that’s the only one I care about."
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Paul Feig on The Heat 2:
"I would love to do a horror movie. Ironically, Katie Dippold, we came up with an idea for Heat 2 that’s basically like a comedy version of Silence of the Lambs that is really funny."
"[But] Sandra doesn’t want to do another. She didn’t even read it. She just didn’t want to do another one of them. She’s got sequelitis. She had some crappy sequels."
"That’s the thing, [Speed 2] is not my fault! That’s what I was saying. We know what we’re doing!"
"I’m ready for anything because that script is so funny, and I know Melissa loved playing that character. You know, never say never."
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Paul Feig on the MST3K Reunion in Other Space:
“It was very much on purpose. When I wrote the thing back when, I definitely always heard Trace [Beaulieu]’s voice, because I’m such a Mystery Science fanatic. You know, I had Joel Hodgson and Trace on Freaks and Geeks. Joel played the disco salesman and then Trace was one of our teachers. But I kind of never dreamed they would actually agree to be on a sci-fi show. Yeah, when this kind of came to life, ‘Would you guys want to be on this?’ They both like jumped at it.”
“On the Blu-ray of The Heat I actually have Trace and Joel and J. Elvis Weinstein, the original Tom Servo, do Mystery Science. They just make fun of the movie, so you can listen to that. They’re back together again.”
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Paul Feig on Inventing 'Collar Balls':
“If you look at sci-fi from 100 years ago, they were predicting that we’d be flying now and there’d be cities floating in the sky. I like the idea that things don’t really evolve that fast. Microtechnology evolves very quickly, but macrotechnology does not at all. So it’s left to things that will evolve, and fashion will always evolve. So the idea, to me, it just sort of summed up like, to us a tie seems so normal. But then in a hundred years suddenly there was some shift where it all went away from that. Now everybody thinks collar balls are so great. It was a fun way to say, ‘Yeah, weird little things will change in the future.’”
“And it’s also a way to make a ‘Sorry I’m late, I had to wash my balls’ joke.’ So there you go. There’s always the classy element to it.”
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Paul Feig on Seasonal Arcs in Other Space:
“It’s funny because this is what we did on Freaks [and Geeks]. I will map out the whole season and then, as we get into it and start writing it and start seeing what the actors are doing, I like the freedom of going, ‘Oh! Let’s turn that. Let’s left turn that.’ So we always kind of know what we’re working towards, and we definitely have arc that we’re really excited about, but I’m willing to jettison those at any moment if another great idea comes out of something that we write before then. Because I think in television you can easily get stale when you just go like, ‘It’s this, and I’m not going to deviate from that,’ because then you’re not taking in the inspiration you’re getting from your actors and your storytellers.”
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Paul Feig on Zoic's VFX in Other Space:
“Everybody thought when I was going to do this, they thought, ‘Oh, you’re going to have some really cheesy stuff.’ No, I don’t want to do fucking cheesy stuff. I want this to look like a real sci-fi show.”
“There’s some awesome stuff coming up. There’s some really good stuff coming up. They’re just great. They did it for the budget we were on.”
“[The ship]'s got a big weird nose on it. That’s the problem. I really designed it so you would see this is kind of a shitty ship, and the rest were these cool ones, but we didn’t have the budget. So you’ll see in sort of establishing shots of the space station, you’ll see much cooler ships but they’re very small. Know that you’re supposed to know, as you study the show, that they are on a shitty ship.”
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Paul Feig on Jason Statham's Comedy Chops:
"Jason Statham is going to be the surprise of the summer. He is so funny."
"He is a lovely, lovely guy. I have been a giant fan of his forever, my wife is too. We’ve watched every single movie he’s done. I love him, I told him, he said, ‘Oh, you didn’t watch this one?’ I was like, ‘Oh yeah.’ He said, ‘That was terrible! Why’d you watch that?!’"
"I’ll tell you which one off-air."
"He was so happy doing comedy. He was nervous right before he started. He got a little nervous, because I get it. He’s kind of making fun of his persona, which could be deadly, especially in the wrong hands."
"He didn’t know me, so I could have easily gone and had him so he gets hit in the balls in a wide angle shot. He’s like, ‘Bwah!’ I said, ‘Jason, you are going to love what we do.’ And then he just trusted us. He says some of the most insane things in this movie, and he plays it dead serious."
"He is one of my favorite people on the planet. I love that guy. If I could do movies with him for the next 20 years, I would."
