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Interview with Nick Stoller

Editorial Review

Editorial Review

Nick Stoller cut his teeth working as a writer on Judd Apatow's TV series Undeclared, before going on to co-write the script for Jim Carrey vehicle Fun With Dick and Jane. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is his first feature as a director, and he will follow this with another Judd Apatow-produced movie, Five-Year Engagement, where he'll again work with Forgetting Sarah Marshall writer/leading man, Jason Segel. Stoller's most recent writing project, Yes Man, is in production with Jim Carrey starring.

Q. Your association with Judd Apatow began on Undeclared. That show didn't take off at the time, but it is similar to the humor you're doing now. Ever wondered why it's taken until now?
NS: You know, I have no idea. We are doing the same comedy style that we did then, except we can show penises now! I guess with the show, we had the good fortune to have our premiere date on 9/11 so that certainly threw a wrench in the whole process, and then we finally did premiere weeks after that. Fox just took us off the air every three weeks, because of baseball or whatever, and so we never really had a chance. Every time we showed, though, we'd get a few more viewers. And after seeing movies like Superbad and Knocked Up, people have rediscovered it on DVD.

Q. Was the humor a little ahead of its time?
NS: It was a little bit, in that it was a single camera comedy, which for some reason really confused the American public at that time. Now, it's popular with The Office and with 30 Rock and those kinds of comedies. It's a successful format now but at the time it wasn't.

Q. Was Judd always very nurturing?
NS: Yes. He's like a rich fertilizing soil! We all grow under and in his comedy greenhouse! He's an incredible man to work for and he's very loyal, and also very lazy! He doesn't want to meet new people so the combination of those elements means he wants to work with us.

Q. And you were writing partners on Fun With Dick & Jane …
NS: That was a true co-writing experience. We were partners on that. He was to all intents and purposes my boss but we were partners and it was a great experience. We wrote the script with Jim Carrey after we'd written the drafts on it and Jim's the funniest man ever, just going into the script with him was super fun.

Q. Did you already harbor ambitions as a director?
NS: No, and I didn't want to do this film! I didn't want to do it. I fought it the whole time! No, seriously, I've dreamed of directing since I was a kid. I didn't think it would happen quite so fast. It was such a great movie to do, this kind of romantic, bittersweet comedy. I said to Judd that if Jason got through the writing process would he let me be the director and he said yes. I thought I'd have to direct Fart College 3 and things like that. But no, I got a real film.

Q. Being a first-time director, were you intimidated by Judd watching over your shoulder?
NS: No. As you put it, he's a very nurturing person. Also, his whole concept behind producing is you show up the first day, he gets a massage and then he gives me his cell phone number and throws away the battery of the phone. So it becomes chaotic, but it's the best way to learn. He cannot be a better presence. He runs his movies like a TV show. Each of his movies is a different TV episode, albeit on a much bigger budget, so he's involved in the writing and casting and all of that. But he also gives you some room to run with the show yourself.

Q. How does the improvisation process work with the script?
NS: It's a collaboration, definitely. As a comedy director I'm not being hired for my visual flair and I'm not bringing The Bourne Supremacy style to it; I'm not about to create a world like Children Of Men. What I'm bringing to it is comedy, comedy writing. We hammer and hammer the script, so that if we just shot the script it would be funny. But we then do improv with Rodney Rothman, who is the Executive Producer, and who is super funny. He was the youngest head writer of Letterman. He was on set throwing out jokes to us. Some of the funniest jokes in the movie are his. He'd throw out jokes and I'd throw out jokes and we'd go back to improvs. At one point we shot 2 million feet of film; we got sent bottles of Dom Perignon from Kodak!

Q. And you managed to keep the penis theme running through Judd's movies …
NS: Yes, that seems to be true. There has been a penis in his last few films. Not in Drillbit Taylor, but in Superbad there are drawings of a penis and in Walk Hard there is an actual penis. I think there was a lot of talk of penises in Knocked Up. In Drillbit, people get kicked in the balls so I guess there's a penis in that. There's a penis in everything!

Q. Was there ever going to be female nudity in this film, or is that just not funny in the same way?
NS: No. Why? It's not necessary when you've got penises. Why do you need female nudity? I have a theory about any kind of sex and nudity. Obviously Jason's nudity is kind of relaxed and absurd, but sex and nudity together, well laughing is such a primal act, and sex is a primal act, that if you have boobs in a comedy you don't know whether to laugh or masturbate! It gets complicated. As a little kid I'd watch Kentucky Fried Movie and I'd be laughing. Then, when I was 12, I'd go masturbate!

Q. What's the secret to Judd Apatow's comedy?
NS: You have to be sure that it's not just a string of gags. That there's still a story to it, that there's a heart to it, that there's an essential truth to it. All of these movies whether they be Talladega Nights or Knocked Up, there's an essential truth to an essential story that people care about. At the center of this movie there's a guy with a broken heart and a girl with a broken heart and I think audiences respond to that. If it were just a string of jokes within an hour or two people would be bored.

Q. Exactly, Sarah Marshall breaks the hero's heart, but we don't hateher,right?
NS: I'm glad you said that. It would be tedious to say if it was just 'the ex-girlfriend is a bitch' because that's never the case. Very rare circumstances, is that case. It always takes two to tango if a relationship of five years falls apart. Everyone's at fault and everyone's not at fault. Obviously in all my failed relationships all the girls are real bitches, but we have to get girls in the audience so we have to have Kristen Bell seem nice!

Q. The film's targeted towards males, but is there enough for women to enjoy?
NS: I think so. We just try to make a movie where everyone is imperfect like in life. Jason's character is not perfect, Sarah Marshall isn't perfect, and Rachel isn't. The closest to perfection is probably Russell Brand's character. He just doesn't care what anyone says. I think people don't do that, especially with female characters. Nothing annoys me more than a movie where the girls just don't get the laughs. They are just there as support for the guy. It's lazy and I actually find that offensive.

Q. Is it true that you met your wife through a Harvard writing class?
NS: No. She went to Harvard but we were in different years; we met a couple of years later. I met her through a group of friends of mine. We put on plays for each other, with the little bit of playwriting that we did.

Q. So your genesis as a writer started there?
NS: I've worked on comedy since I was a kid, but later I did the Harvard Lampoon, which was a kind of comedy magazine. A lot of The Simpsons characters came from this and after Harvard I did advertising for a year and then I started to write for TV, doing Undeclared. The first thing I ever wrote was Austin Powers animated series, which was to be on HBO. But then they decided not to do it. It was right before Austin Powers 2 and they thought it would over expose the brand.

Q. Do you think Forgetting Sarah Marshall star Russell Brand has a great future?
NS: He's a real star. He's like Johnny Depp, but as Johnny Depp dressed as Edward Scissorhands. He's a real actor. He takes direction incredibly well. He would do that kind of verbal spewing thing he does on stage and then he'd also do more withdrawn, like 'everyone here is crazy' thing and that is what gets the big laughs. He is, weirdly the only voice of reason in the movie.