5 Things We Learned About Making a Great Comedy From Spy Director Paul Feig

Photo By Dennis Van Tine / ABACAUSA.COM

Earlier this week Paul Feig stopped by SiriusXM’s “Bennington” to talk with Ron Bennington and Gail Bennington about his new movie “Spy” which hits theaters this Friday.  Feig talked about working with Melissa McCartney and why they have such a great working actor-director partnership, the return of strong women to the big screen, and why “chick flicks” aren’t good movies (and why his movies aren’t “chick flicks”).  Paul also shared some of his secrets to a successful action-comedy movie, and we took careful notes.  We chose five things we learned about how to make a great action comedy movie to share.

1.  The Director Has To Guard The Tone of the Movie

“Directing comedy your one main goal is to be the guardian of the tone- of keeping one tone.  And the problem with so many comedies I see over and over again is they’re on one tone, and to get a joke, they go over and they switch tones.  But as an audience member then you’re like, ‘oh well I don’t know what’s happening now’ all bets are off.”

2.  Make Sure to Keep the Action Real, But Not Mayhem

“It was really important to me to make sure the action was real but not mayhem. I’m a big Jackie Chan fan, I’m a big Hong Kong film fan, and so what’s so fun about those is, you’re laughing because you’re like, “oh oh my god she almost got killed, oh how’s she gonna block that, oh…..  You know those Jackie Chan things, especially some of the great ones like Drunken Master II, you’re just like, ‘oh my god I can’t believe they’re doing that.’ That’s the kind of comedy I want out of those action scenes.”

3.  Action Heros Don’t Have to Try to Be Funny

“It’s because comedy does well with characters who are overconfident, at least as foils against our kind of every person.  If you get an action star and say ‘just play this dead serious.’ But I’ve seen some who you can see are trying to be funny, and you’re like ‘oooh don’t….don’t.'”

“Half the time with an action movie you love it because you’re laughing already, but [Jason] Statham, when he first came to rehearsal he was like, ‘I’m not supposed to try to be funny right?’  I was like ‘no, do your thing,’ and the minute he did, he just read through the script and I was like, that’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.”

4.  Let Funny People Try What They Want to Try

“There was a bunch of roles where they were like, ‘well you’re just going to get local hires from Budapest.’ And I was like ‘no, I’m going to bring people in.’ That part had no jokes in it. I was like ‘oh this would be cool if Zac [Woods] does it, cause I love Zac.’  Suddenly he’s doing his dying scene, he was like ‘can I try something?’  I said ‘please.’  It’s always my favorite thing when a funny person asks me.  And so he did this thing. As he’s dying he’s like flipping her off and continuing to flip her off and it gets this giant laugh.  So you’re like, ‘this could have been a completely functional moment, now turned into comedy’ and we just had that all the way down the line with all of the people we used.”

5.  Physical Comedy Needs Logic

Blake Edwards was really a hero of mine, and then Howard Hawkes cause of Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday and then obviously Woody Allen was a big influence.  I loved Edwards because he was so good with the physical comedy.  All I care about with a physical comedy is, that a physical comedy joke has to have logic to it.  We’ve seen a million times– walking towards the camera. . .oh they fall down. Well why’d they fall down? Did they trip over something that was set up?  Versus, Peter Sellers… talking, spins a globe, as he’s talking he goes to lean on the globe and it goes out from under him, that’s funny, and you get why that happened.

Feig shared so many great stories, including one about how got mistaken for an extra when he showed up to direct an episode of Mad Men, but you’ll have to listen to the entire interview to hear that one.  You also don’t want to miss Paul’s take on adults wanting to be kids again, and why he will never understand it.  You can hear the entire interview on SiriusXM On Demand, search under “Bennington.”

You can hear “Bennington” with hosts Ron Bennington and Gail Bennington daily on SiriusXM’s Raw Dog Comedy Hits 99 from noon to 3pm et.

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