Set Visit: Unaccompanied Minors

Intro / Quinn
Shephard / Gina
Mantegna / James
Tyler Christopher / Dyllan
Christopher / Wilmer
Valderrama

April
5, 2005: I woke up bright and
early eager to participate in my first set visit.
The anticipation of the unknown was nerve wrecking and
exhilarating at the same time. We
were in Salt Lake City, Utah

where the movie was being filmed, and were picked up along with the
other journalists in the lobby of our hotel at around 10:30 am.
The city itself was astonishingly beautiful.
The incredible mountains surrounding the city were
breathtaking and surreal. It
almost appeared to be a fake background or Hollywood set strategically placed for visual
effects. Before I continue onto illustrating the set visit itself,
here are some details about the movie.

The
film, UNACCOMPANIED
MINORS directed by Paul Feig (Freaks and Geeks) stars
Wilmer Valderrama (That 70’s show), Tyler James Williams
(Everybody hates Chris), Dyllan Christopher (Seabisuit), Bret Kelly
(Bad Santa), newcomers Gina Mantegna, Quinn Shephard, among many
other comedic actors. Originating
from a screenplay by Paul Feig and Kate Kondell (First Daughter),
the movie is produced by Lauren Shuler Donner (the X-Men franchise)
and Michael Aguilar (

Constantine

). The film’s opening date
has yet to be announced, although it will likely be in November of
2006.

As
for the plot of the movie, it takes place in a fictional airport on
Christmas Eve where 5 kids from divorced parents have been snowed in
at the airport while traveling from one parent to the other.
What happens when a bunch of kids are trapped together in one
place? The usual disorder,
chaos and a lot of adventure. The
kids ultimately team up against a disgruntled airport official in
the attempt to reunite with their families, and grow closer and
wiser from their experience. The
movie appears to be a heartwarming holiday story, a cross between
HOME ALONE and THE BREAKFAST CLUB.

We
arrive on the set inside the Delta center otherwise known as the
home of the NBA’s Utah Jazz. They
are shooting a chaotic scene in a holding room of the airport where
all the kids are trapped and going bonkers.
There are about a hundred other kids cast as extras running
around, crashing into one another and throwing food and garbage all
over the place. Definitely not
a scene you want to get caught in unless you want to get run over or
hit in the head. You can’t
imagine how much work goes into filming a scene until you have
witnessed it.

The
first interview was with director, Paul Feig distinguished in a
suit. He is a self proclaimed
nerd who obviously adores working with kids.
A grown up kid himself, he has a great appreciation for raw
talent and encourages improvisation. Feig
appears to be a cool, down to earth and easygoing director.
He had a lot of great insight on the film and actors.
Check out what he had to say.

Paul
Feig

What
was your inspiration to wear a suit everyday?

It’s
two things. First of
all, my dad wore a suit everyday of his life, an army shirt to the
warehouse and he always had a suit and tie on so to me that what you
wore to go to work. Plus
I do like that, walking around in suit.
And honestly I feel more comfortable running a staff dressed
like, I don’t know, like the boss.
Plus I think it shows respect for the actors and the crew and
everything. You know,
you guys are here helping me, the least I can do is dress for the
occasion.

And
you kids are saying, the one who talked about your father is that
you are just like him.

Oh
excellent. Oh yeah,
that’s why I think I like doing things about kids, maybe the
maturity level of maybe a sixteen year old.
I’m the one always pushing a fart jokes and they’re like
‘back off on those’. It’s
like what are we doing, making an are you a virgin film?
If I can do that tastefully and in a way that it’s natural
with a partner of life, that’s actually a lot of comedy in general
and everyone’s all filled with energy.
They’re two schools with such bad kid comedy because
they’re so over the top and so, trying to help with the kids
over-enunciating and everyone’s all filled with energy and that to
me is horrible because it’s not like real kids but for me if you
kind of create an absurd situation but then you put the kids in it,
they’re acting the way kids would act in the real situation, then
you’re great.

So
for me it’s just really staying away from that amped up kind of.
There’s nothing wrong the Nickelodeon, Disney kind of thing
but it’s just, I never think I’m making stuff for kids, I think
I’m making stuff about kids for adults that I think kids will
enjoy too. It’s a
comedy about kids; it’s not a kid’s comedy because I didn’t
want to dumb it down. I
think this stuff that I make, if I say it’s for kids it’s like
people think different, and it’s like oh well you can’t do this
because people will get that and you can’t do this because people
will get that. You know
kids will get it; they get a lot of stuff.
You know we’re not making some big heavy thing but lets
treat kids, I mean lets cast kids who look real and have real
personalities and have their own thing going on as opposed to
finding the models and saying be like this.

That’s
where I think so much bad casting comes from.
They’re like I want her to look like Britney Spears so
let’s find the girl that’s like Britney Spears and then we’ll
make her say these lines that a guy in his forties wrote because he
thinks like ‘man if I were head of the hits back then I’d say
this’ or yeah well if I were this age back then.
It’s all this kind of righting the wrongs, so it’s fun
for me to come with something real.

Is
directing kids as difficult as like when they throw water on a
chicken?

No,
the thing is I think directing kids is only difficult when you
don’t cast the right kids. You
know, a scene like today where they have the kids going crazy, it
just hardens the accounting nightmare, you know you have a good idea
as the director team kind of telling the kids where to go, and
you’re like I want one kid over here and this one over there and
they kind of sort it out and it’s like you sit there with the
camera and wait. Directing
kids is not that tough because once again if you’re using the kids
I like to use, which are really smart kids, they’re just going to
figure out themselves and then you let them be themselves.

I’m
never about like ‘say this line like this’ unless it’s a very
specific joke but if a kid’s ever having trouble saying a line,
for me there’s something wrong with the line, it’s not something
wrong with the kid, not written in the kid’s voice, or this is the
way the kid talks. So
the only bad performances the kid comes from “say it just like
this”. So this kid has
to unnaturally kind of torture out this sentence but now he’s not
a kid anymore, he’s a guy in his thirties or forties funneling the
words of that person then it just all falls apart.

Are
you a grown up kid yourself?

Yeah,
I think my wife can attest to that.
Yeah, I just wanted to poke fun.
I just like their energy.
I think maybe our references are a little different because
it’s different times you grew up but I feel like we all kind of
have the same sense of humor so things that they suggest that they
think would be kind of funny and usually, 90% of the time
you’re like well that’s great, we’ll try it.

And
you have some of the greatest advisors in the world.
I’ve seen half of these guys at the Upright Citizens
Brigade Theatre. You
brought them in, I’m assuming, to improvise.

Yeah,
oh yeah. For me like I
hate to waste any role even though it’s like one line that I
always call the ‘they want that away’ line.
Roles which can easily populate the film but just knowing
people are really good in that with all the people with one or two
lines its’ like eh, you know, he’s got a local joke and I feel
bad because I’ve been acting for years so I was always the guy
trying to get those parts but at the same time, I don’t want to
waste any of those parts. I
just want people’s personalities to shine through.
I want people who are going to bring something extra.

You
know we’ve got Cedric Yarbrough from Reno 911 playing Charlie’s
dad. He literally got
one line but its like, Cedric’s great.
Even though he’s reacting, you just know as an audience
member, you trust the filmmaker because you go ‘well that guy’s
great, okay now I can relax’.
I don’t know, I feel like that just legitimizes everything
and like you say, then I can improvise.
You know, go ahead you guys, do what you want, we have three
other kids in the hall, Ruth McCoulah, Mark McKenny, and Brian
McDonald playing security guards who are guarding the kids when they
get locked away. And I
just wrote these scenes that we keep cutting back with them arguing
about like they’re playing Name That Tune with Christmas carols.

I
just say do what you want, you know we’ll just shoot a ton of it
and then we’ll pick and choose and then find it but that’s the
kind of goal you want. I
don’t want to waste a moment.
I want every moment to be funny.

You
brought a couple of actors from Arrested Development.

Yeah,
Jessica Walters plays sort of the irresponsible stewardess who’s
put in charge of Spencer’s little sister and she’s got the
nightmare girl with her Mary Lynn designer braces and stuff.
So Jessica’s great and we’ve got Tony Hale comes for this
quick little bit at the end where Santa’s handing out gifts to
everybody’s who’s by themselves and you know, it’s like Allan
Davy is like I’m 36 years old, Santa is like ‘hey you’re by
yourself’ and he’s like ‘okay’.
So once again Tony stays and Tony brings will bring this
extra fun energy to it.

Will
anyone ever cut Dave Brown’s hair?

He’s
like Sampson, if you cut his hair, his powers all go away.
He’s the crazy gas station attendant.
The first time you see him, he’s a chain saw artist.
He comes up with a chain saw and scares the crap out of
everyone.

You
talked about casting earlier. How
quickly can you cast now? Can
you look at someone in the first thirty seconds?
I’m sure you’ve got great gut instincts.

It’s
amazing how fast you know, especially with kids.
Because what you do is you throw the net wide and say bring
in a million kids. And
every body that sees your film is like ‘yeah that person okay, I
can see that’. But
every time the right person walks in you’re like ‘forget it, all
those other people can just blow out of your mind’.
That’s how good it was with me too, with all the roles
really. You just have to
know and the biggest thing is going is the studio will go for it, or
can I talk the studio into it, or how am I going to talk the studio
into it? Fortunately, I
had the greatest thing happen on this, just when I was just gearing
up to kind of push through my cast, Time magazine out of nowhere did
this article about where like four Freaks and Geeks kids are now and
how they’re famous.

Can
you talk about casting Wilmer?

Yeah,
it was one of those roles where at first glance you go ‘okay, but
Wilmer contacted us and he and his manager got a hold of the script
and they loved this role. They
were like ‘we would love to play this role and at first we were
kind of like ‘Wilmer, who I’m reading in the papers and he’s
dating all these women, he’s going to be …9:18…but he came in
and he met with us at lunch and I was like ‘I’m not really
sure’ and he goes ‘I’d love to sit down with you and talk
about the role’ and by the time he was done I was like ‘he’s
the guy’. First of
all, it’s not the way you would expect to go with the role and
secondly, he just brings this whole kind of funny energy to it.

And
we ended up cutting out this whole thing where he was in love with
this flight attendant and he didn’t have the nerve to talk to her.
That was the only reason I was pulling back and was like
‘am I going to buy that Wilmer Valderrama is afraid to talk to a
flight attendant’? But
then we ended up cutting that part out because he became one of the
kids. …9:55…more
than the kids are, and so this worked out perfect.
He’s been great. He’s
another great improviser. We
pelted him with all this food and crap in the room the other day
because the kids were all throwing stuff.
Today he got dogpiled on by a bunch of kids.
He’s great. He’s
like Jason Friegler used to be on Freaks and Geeks used to be which
was, Jason would just like ‘I’ll do it’.
Will you stand in your underwear?
‘I’ll do it’. Will
you disco dance? ‘I’ll
do it’. So Wilmer was
like, ‘sure I’ll do it’. I
love that.

As
an actor obviously you travel a lot.
You traveled a lot when you’re an actor.
Is that where the idea came to you, is being in a lot of
airports and seeing a lot of people?

Well
actually, honestly this idea was brought to me.
It was a script that already existed.
It was a Miss America life story that they, Warner Bros had
developed through two sets of writers, and then they sent it to me
and I really liked the idea of the script had a lot of great
characters and the structure was kind of cool but then I wanted, (a)
I wanted to make it my own and (b) I really wanted to make a bigger
film. I wanted to make
it much more physical because I’ve always been dying to bring back
the John Lay of this, the Blake Edwards, big physical comedy and so
I thought this was the perfect one to do it with.

So
I did a very major rewrite on it and added all big, new chase down
the hill and this scene where the kids get caught in this big
luggage sorting machine, just a lot of the mayhem of running around
and more than anything we sold it.
I wanted to do that kind of thing and I feel like there’s
not a lot of that around now. I
kind of wanted to bring back a nod to the comedy I grew up with but
try to do it modern so the people watching an old movie like that
would feel like they were watching a new movie with this kind of
action in it.

It’s
got kind of a Breakfast Club feel to it.

Yeah
but the irony was it really started out being much more breakfast
clubby. By the time we
got into production it became more Animal House than Breakfast Club.
It’s like Animal House meets Home Alone if I may.
But The Breakfast Club element is still in there but it kind
of moves a lot faster than it used to.
We also kind of realized you know what, this is just kind of
a ride and we’re going to put the heart into the ride but I never
want to have processed, you know, it’s all action but doesn’t
mean anything. So at the
end of the day I want to try to move the audience and try to get
them interested. Because
I like being the guy, so even when I read this script, the ending
was sweet and I was like I love that.

Have
you looked at all at airlines or airports to kind of understand or
did you just kind of feel it out?

People
kind of felt it out; I mean a lot of it came from Miss America’s
life story, like the whole UN room.
Basically that story was about the kids getting taken to the
UN room and the nightmare it was and then being taken and having to
bunk with this stewardess. And
kind of that’s where it ended, but that to me kind of said it.
That set the whole mood of like, if that happened to me I
would want nothing more than to get out of there so then from there,
you can see the mayhem of what would happen if you get in the way
and the quote unquote bad guy is trying to stop you.

And
obviously we don’t know a ton about the movie until you make it.
So these kids are traveling, they’re stuck here so they
ship them in a room?

Yeah,
basically what it is, is when you’re flying and you’re an
unaccompanied minor, they do if something happened like this where
everything shuts down, they just put all the kids away into one room
because legally they have since these kids could get into trouble so
they have to lock them away. So
what happens is that’s fine for the airport to have kids stuck in
there, talk about my nightmare as a kid, to be stuck with all these
kids you don’t know and most of them want to beat you up and stuff
so then from there they escape and they get caught and they come
back and then they really escape and trying to rescue, Spence wants
to get to his sister because she was taken away to go to a hotel
that they miss the train for. So
they have to get to her because he knows she’s expecting Santa
Claus at 4:30AM so he has to get to her to get her a present and
save Christmas for her. So
they did that.

Is
it fun for you to direct stuff like The Office and Arrested
Development?

Oh
yeah, that’s a blast. I
mean, in some ways it’s almost like a vacation.
Shows like that are so great and the cast is so good that
literally you almost feel guilty collecting a pay check for it
because it’s so funny. I
just laugh all day and my only responsibility is to make sure I
capture it correctly so it’s as funny as it is on the set, but
shows like that are so much fun.
I mean The Office is just laughs because on top of everything
we do a lot of improv and come up with a lot of the stuff on the
spot like in the Halloween episode that I directed, the whole thing
where Dwight’s trying to talk Michael that he’s got the hood.
This big scene came out of it.
It wasn’t in the script and Greg Daniels was so great, he
had to do another scene just so they can have an extended homage
Star Wars scene. Nerds
rule. It was my people.

Have
you been allowing kids to improv?

Oh
yeah, the kids are really good at it.
You’re always kind of surprised, you never know if the kids
will be good at it or not, but they amazed me.
There were a couple of scenes where you could just hear the
A, B, and C and come in every time and do something differently.
That was so funny and Tyler; they’re all really good at it.
Tyler is an amazing kid.
He just kind of hits everything and he just kind of nails
everything. And then
Quinn just brings this fresh energy because she hasn’t done much
and she’s just like a force of nature running around.
And Dylan’s like me, just an awkward guy in the middle
trying to figure this all out.

Did
you meet Bret at the audition?

Right,
what happened Brett ended up, when we were casting, a tape came in
from Toronto, because we had casting directors all over the country
just auditioning people for this.
And Brett cam in from Bad Santa, and his audition was
hilarious. And so this
part was a little different because he’s more of a stoic kid, the
kind that doesn’t talk and all that and goes off on this journey
and discovers who he is his ridiculous journey to find a Christmas
tree. He had to wear a
snow mobile suit so he’s very hot during shoot.
I feel bad.

Has
it been gratifying to see Freaks and Geeks become so popular?

Yeah
it’s so cool. I mean
getting it out on DVD was the greatest thing for us because it was a
long time for sure we thought it was going to get out.
Yeah, but it’s just really heartening and it’s really
nice also just working with kids and you’re like ‘here, check
this out’ as opposed to before there was the DVD on TV shows, you
just had to say ‘oh I had a TV show and it’s good’.
‘Really’? ‘
yeah. So it’s
fantastic and the more people discover it the happier I am.

Speaking
of Geeks, did you enjoy watching movies like Revenge of the Nerds
back in the 80’s?

Kind
of. I actually, believe
it or not, I didn’t buy that movie as much as other people did
because that to me misrepresented, I thought it was really funny but
it also represented what was thought as the big archetype of the
nerd which, I don’t know, we were all nerds and none of us were
like that. I still think
it’s really funny and it kind of gets funnier as we get older but
at the same times that’s what I wanted to fight against which is
coke bottle glasses and snorting guys, so that’s one of the many
motivations of what Freaks and Geeks really was.
I knew a couple of guys who were super nerds even we didn’t
hang out with them because they were like clinical, you know.

But
as much as I can, you know sometimes you can’t, but I try to break
the stereotype and try to go a different way so at least, I think
you relate to it more as opposed to being the archetype.
All that’s funny but, I guess that’s what they’re like.
We all kind of know everybody; we all know all different
types of people whether we know them well or not so to introduce the
type of person you go ‘that’s weird, I don’t know anybody like
that’ almost feels kind of fake to me because when you really
break it down, there’s not that many different types of people.

Stay
tuned for interviews with the cast…