Atlanta natives Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, better known as the internet sketch comedy duo “BriTANick,” are having a huge month.
On April 3, their feature directorial debut, the stoner comedy “Pizza Movie,” hit Hulu and Disney+. This weekend, a film they penned called “Over Your Dead Body” hits theaters.
Directed by Lonely Island member Jorma Taccone, “Over Your Dead Body” is a remake of the 2021 Norwegian film “The Trip,” starring Samara Weaving and Jason Segel as a couple who goes on a serene cabin vacation while both secretly plotting to kill the other. The film played at the Atlanta Film Festival on April 23 and goes into wide release on April 24.
Ahead of the film’s release, Rough Draft Atlanta spoke with Kocher and McElhaney about their sketch background, their collaborative process, and the making of both films. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I just watched “The Trip,” the film that this is based on, yesterday. I’ve read interviews where you talk about loving that movie, but how did this materialize as a project for you two?
Nick Kocher: We were approached by XYZ [Films] about adapting it. We hadn’t heard of it until it was brought to us. I just watched the trailer at first, and I was immediately like, oh yeah – I’m very intrigued with this, curious where the story will go. Then when we watched the whole movie, it was great. We loved the structure, and were kind of like – we don’t want to change much about the structure. Which was great, because it makes our job easier. It was just fun to do our cover song version of it.
Brian McElhaney: It was originally supposed to just be a punch-up pass, and then we were like, well, there are a lot more little details that we felt we could start throwing in. They were like, just play around with it, see what you got. Then we ended up changing enough that we made it our own, but like Nick said, kept the structure, which we felt was really nice. Writing can sometimes be a really long and difficult process, and this one was actually kind of a really fun one, because everything was there for us. We didn’t have to reinvent the wheel, which can always take so much time when you write.
I was curious, because it hasn’t been a long time since that original movie came out. How do you decide what needs updating? For instance, changing a character from a soap opera director to a commercial director?
Kocher: We honestly didn’t really worry too much about it. We were just like, what would be fun to explore? I think in terms of the soap director to a commercial director – I mean, there are very few soap operas currently on the air, so we were like, this guy probably would be working more in the ad space. That was an arena where we wanted to push it further. I always love inside baseball Hollywood jokes, so we just put a lot more of those in there.
Yeah, my boyfriend works in production and after that opening sequence with the commercial shoot, he was like – well, I’m triggered.
McElhaney: That’s what Jorma [Taccone] said on set as we were shooting it. He was like, ”I’ve done these commercials before, and it’s no fun. Let me tell you, you guys have made me remember what that’s like, unfortunately.”
I know you guys also have “Pizza Movie” out now. I’m curious, from a writing mindset, how are you approaching the writing process for those things differently? When it’s an original concept like “Pizza Movie” versus something like this, does your mindset change?
McElhaney: There’s a pro and con for both. I mean, writing from scratch is great because it’s all yours, and it’s your idea and your characters, and the tone, the genre. The hard part is exactly that – you have to discover all of this for yourself. The process is just much longer, and it’s a little bit more arduous. You have so many infinite options to discover, and you don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong. I also think you’re a little more – I feel this way, at least – I’m a little more precious when it’s my idea from the beginning. That’s also kind of for better or worse. There’s a for betterness, because you really want to make it your own, and it’s your baby.
But the thing about doing “Over Your Dead Body” is, because it’s another idea, and then someone else is directing it, you can be a little more free with ideas and you can collaborate a little bit more. So you kind of move quicker, but it’s not your thing entirely at the end. And sometimes that’s actually a better way to write, because then you’re not just obsessing over every little detail, like with “Pizza Movie.” It makes something very unique in the end, but also we can kind of overwrite sometimes, if we’re not careful.
It’s interesting you bring up the tone. The original movie, it really made me think of the difference between – I don’t know if you guys have seen “Speak No Evil.”
Kocher: Yeah.
McElhaney: Sure, yeah.
Like the Danish and American versions of that movie, the original movie “The Trip” is a little bit darker, a little bit grimier, and the American version has a little bit of a lighter step, but still feels very punchy. But at the same, avoiding spoilers, there’s a point in this movie where some characters show up and something really nefarious feels like it’s about to happen. The comedy kind of dies out for a bit at that point, and it feels a little more serious. I’d love to hear you guys talk about melding those tones and finding that bridge.
Kocher: It’s an interesting thing from the screenwriting perspective, because I think the director is even more so in control of that. But we’ve always really enjoyed wildly changing tones. I think when you have a dramatic movie that makes people laugh, you laugh even harder in those moments. If you have a comedic movie that really makes you feel something, you feel it more, because you’re kind of more caught off guard. Obviously, some people don’t like crazy tonal shifts, and they’re difficult to do, and you can absolutely lose people if you’re not careful. But I think something that’s really important to us is surprise, and trying to surprise the audience and keep them on their toes. That change of tone can do that, if done correctly.
McElhaney: In all of our comedy, we like having something dramatic beneath it. We often talk about having a truth at the core of our sketches, or a movie having a relationship that’s real even though we’re going off into places that might be absurd, or might be a little more wild and violent. It’s finding times where, if you play into a tone for a while that’s more fun and carefree, reminding people there’s something real behind it, or there’s something dark behind this. We like, like Nick said, tonally shifting to remind people, this isn’t just super fun and wild right now. This is really intense and really serious. And then, once that’s over, going back to the fun can hopefully, if done right, make both tones elevate themselves.
Jorma is the director – how did he factor into the construction of the film? I know the original director, Tommy Wirkola, is also a producer. I’m curious about how all those different facets factored in.
Kocher: Yeah, it was great. Tommy Wirkola, who did the original, was just kind of a cheerleader, and was like, “Do your own thing. I don’t care. I’ve made my version of the movie, go do your own thing.”
Yorma was great to work with. He’s been a massive influence on us, from “The Lonely Island,” and we both came from sketch. We didn’t overlap at “SNL,” but we both worked there. We worked together great, and we had a really great shorthand. We had a draft of the script before he came on, and he had his notes, and we incorporated those. Those ranged from tiny bits of punch up to – there were a couple of scenes that we had changed that were completely different from the original, but he was like, “I actually think this thing in the original works better. Let’s go back to a version of that.” Then there was other stuff where he was like, “Alright, the place where we’re going to shoot this in Finland, the scene location needs to change, like the geography. It was stuff like that, where we had no idea, because we weren’t seeing the location. You just kind of have to go, “Yeah – got it.” When we directed “Pizza Movie,” we understood a lot of those choices way more. We were like, oh right – there are significant limitations at this budget level.
McElhaney: He was on set in Finland, and we would get texts at like, 2 a.m. being like, “The boat house doesn’t make sense to get here in the third act! We have to find another way!” It was like, “Oh sh*t – what do we do?”
He and Jason [Segel], once Jason got on board, they were collaborating a lot and really going through it. He’d be like, “We were talking about this monologue guys, and we think it’s almost there, but it can change in this way. What do you think?” It was really nice, because they were on the same wavelength. We all were trying to make it make sense for all of us. He’s a super collaborator, as most people who have been through “SNL” are, because you have to be there.
Now that you’ve directed “Pizza Movie,” how will that change how you write, having had that experience?
McElhaney: You definitely know one, what’s possible, and what’s not possible. I think before you direct a movie, you kind of just go, it’s whatever! Anything! Even as we were making “Pizza Movie,” we learned like, oh, this is how you can block a scene to make it take half as much time to shoot. Or when you originally write … you’re like – we’ll add a flashback to this location really quick. That’ll be a fun scene! Little things like that. You just don’t know, that is a whole company move.
Kocher: For that one little joke, that’s six hours of your time. So is that worth it? It’s also interesting, because anytime you’re writing for pay, they tell you don’t worry about the budget. Just write your version of the script. I actually don’t think that’s helpful, because you’re gonna have to change it at some point. I think it’s much better to really know the limitations going in, so you can write to that.
How do you think that having a sketch background has influenced your writing?
Kocher: Well, I think it’s very apparent with “Pizza Movie,” our sketch background, because the movie is, in many ways, a series of sketches. I think for a stoner drug comedy, that is very much what you want. You’re watching that more to laugh and have fun. We gave it an emotional throughline, and we did work very hard on that and having that be there, but I don’t think it’s the priority with a movie like that.
With other movies that we’ve written … the sketch influence, you will not see as much, because they’re more grounded … but for “Pizza Movie,” what we loved about this movie is that it was a movie that we could write and we could really let us our leashes off, and just go crazy.
McElhaney: Most like good films, you start with a character or a concept, and then you follow it. You just see it unfold. What is the causation of this to this to this, until the end of the story. With “Pizza Movie,” we had all these drug trip ideas before we knew the character. We had these sketches, and kind of built a movie around that. Which, like Nick said, I think works for this movie.
The ending of “Over Your Dead Body” is very similar to the European film. But I found the added commentary about streaming very funny, in light of the fact that the original movie was on Netflix.
Kocher: That’s been brought up by a couple interviewers to us. We expected the movie to be on streaming. Everything’s on streaming! So, when we wrote that joke, we thought it would be self-deprecating. Not like [laughs], sh*tting on our other film.
McElhaney: Yeah, it’s almost like we’re making fun of “Pizza Movie,” a little bit. The movies are connected that way.
