HOT TUB TIME MACHINE opens Friday, and I must encourage you to check it out as it’s the best hot tub themed time traveling comedy I think I’ve ever seen.
But seriously, the movie is much better than its green band trailers suggest, and it’s definitely worth a spin come Friday as it doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is quite a welcome change from the usually stone-faced time travel genre the past few decades or so. Is it a classic like BACK TO THE FUTURE or BILL AND TED? Well, sadly I do not have an aquatic time machine to travel ten years forward and find out, but I think it definitely has a shot.
I was out in Lake Tahoe last week to interview the stars, and you’ve been reading a few of my interviews throughout the week so far. Today I’ve got my final installment with three of the four main stars who you’ll recognize immediately from their various TV enterprises, Clark Duke (Greek), Craig Robinson (The Office) and Rob Corddry (The Daily Show). They had a lot to say about the 80s, time travel and Craig’s pale skinny ass. Read on.
Craig, how fun was it to be able to sing in the film?
Craig Robinson: It was great, when I found out I was going to do it, I was like great, OK
Rob Corddry: How do you top Fergie?
CR: My band, Nasty Delicious played behind me and that’s what really made it.
I heard you’re a big Morris Day and The Time fan.
CR: Huge. I was expecting some Jungle Love and not Jesse’s Girl
CR: That’s what we were gonna do, but we wanted to surprise you.
Clark Duke: You can do the dance right? [starts dancing] CR: [stares] Uh, I think you nailed it.
What do you guys say is the single greatest thing to come out of the 80s?
CD: Me.
RC: Clark Duke. When were you born?
CD: ’85. Right in the middle. I bullseyed the decade.
RC: The best thing to come out of the 80s? MTV, they’ve really made a mark
CD: Scarface, the work of Brian DePalma in general.
RC: The A-Team.
CR: Voltron!
Who’s more off the wall in real life, Chevy Chase or Crispin Glover?
CR: What a great question.
RC: Depends on what you mean by off the wall. They’re two different kinds of off the wall.
CD: It’s like saying, what’s more dangerous, a flamethrower or a bazooka?
CR: I’m stumped! The way Crispin played the character Phil? Present day Phil? Like scary, creepy scary. He was a whole different person on set. Clearly a testament to him as an actor. So method.
CD: Chevy was more intimidating to me because I wanted him to like me. Did he?
RC: He really took a shine to Clark. CD: He would crank call me all the time. [whips out iPhone] What’s that say? [phone reads “Chevy Chase”] What’s that say?
RC: Call him! CD: I can’t bother Chevy!
So which ones of you were like “hell yeah, the ‘80s!” and which were like “shit I’m old, I remember the 80s.”
RC: I’m realizing how old I am because I’m meeting so many people who were born in the 80s which is crazy. I was going through puberty and he [Clark] wasn’t alive. So you felt old making this movie?
RC: Yeah, because we drank a lot, and I really can’t handle my hangover.
Speaking of hangovers, do you guys welcome the comparisons that this movie is drawing to The Hangover?
RC: If it sells tickets, I don’t care if people are saying it’s like Schindler’s List. [Laughter] We heard that the gunpoint blowjob scene was added in later? How did that come about?
CR: Rob just wanted to give me a blowjob on camera.
RC: Yeah, it was just a weird excuse for me to do it…A version of that was in an earlier, earlier draft and then it disappeared, and then they brought it back in reshoots.
So the scene afterward where you wake up with soap on your face, did you think there was any way the MPAA was going to let that through?
CD: I think all that stuff is fine, the MPAA is mainly concerned about violence and language and stuff like that. Any kind of sex thing is fine.
CR: What soap are you talking about?
RC: Craig is a method actor. [Laughter]
CR: Seven times I had to…
RC: He resets very quickly.
Clark, you just came in here from the Kick-Ass premiere. You’ve got two big movies in a month, what’s that like for you, exciting?
CD: I would say my lifelong dream coming true is pretty exciting, yeah. [Laughter] It’s surreal, we shot them so far apart, we had no idea that they’d both be out with like three weeks of each other.
RC: It’s going really well for you, how are you going to blow it? [Laughter]
CD: I’ll be outside the Viper Room and uh… But yeah, it’s really exciting, because both are different films. One’s like this action superhero movie and the other’s a big studio comedy.
CR: I saw a trailer for that, it’s got that little girl. RC: It’s probably the greatest movie trailer of all time.
CR: You ever hear of a little something called….Hot Tub Time Machine? [Laughter]
Rob, did you have any trepidation about showing so much of yourself in this movie?
RC: You know, hindsight is 20/20. No, I had no reservations about it until I actually saw the movie. Then I was like yeah, I probably should have thought about that before doing it. [Laughter]
CD: The only mistake you made was you were flexing your ass, then it turns into that t-shape.
RC: Not on purpose! I was flexing my ass and it turned into an old man ass.
No butt double involved then?
RC: Actually Craig was my butt double.
CR: I’ve always had a pale skinny ass [Laughter]
Did any of you guys know each other before this?
CR: I think we were all in like the same place before, maybe a parade? But we never actually connected.
Did John [Cusack] get involved first?
RC: Craig and I were kind of dancing around it like wondering what the other one was going to do. We didn’t even know each other, but we share a publicist, and we both jumped on at the same time. Then came you, and Cusack was last. Then it became like a big thing.
CD: It became like a big movie, a big deal. Did you guys get a lot of free reign with improve?
RC: Yeah, probably too much actually.
Was there so much footage shot because of the improv that we could see like another hour and a half of Hot Tub Time Machine?
CD: There was an entire subplot with me and a love interest that got cut. That girl who I go up to at the party and ask about how I get in touch with her. She was in like four more scenes where I met her and she’s trying to get with me the whole thing. There’s one scene where me and [Steve] Pink wrote it the night before and shot it the next day where I find her in the future where she had old make-up on. That’ll be on the DVD.
What about you guys?
CR: Yeah, we did other songs, we did a whole thing with a video game.
RC: I actually think a lot of the good stuff we shot is actually in the movie. [Laughter] You really want that! I can’t think of anything I’m missing.
CD: Yeah it was weird because my story with the girl, you removed it, and it didn’t really actually seem like anything was missing at did it? [Laughter]
We were talking with Steve about a possible sequel, and he said something along the lines of Bill and Ted with different time periods? Where would you like to see your characters go?
CR: Hot Tub Time Machine Cincinnati.
Yeah, Cincinnati was brought up in the film and never really explained. Is that why?
CD: We’re planting seeds…
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