The directors behind the newest comedy talk creativity.
Marc Silverstein and Abby Kohn, hailing from previous works How To Be Single and Never Been Kissed, deliver their first romantic, feature-film comedy. The Knockturnal caught up with them to talk about their latest film: “I Feel Pretty”, starring Amy Schumer.
Interview below.
The Knockturnal: What does it take to create a comedy style film?
Abby Kohn: I mean, you know, it’s so funny – when we write, I don’t even know that we always set out to write like this is going to be a comedy. It’s just that is the natural way that we envision stories. And that’s the natural way they come out. Right?
Marc Silverstein: Yeah, for sure.
Abby Kohn: I mean, there are premises that we’ve written that I guess you can take and write in a totally dramatic tone. But I think that’s just the way that stories occur to us –
Marc Silverstein: They’re comedic.
Abby Kohn: They’re comedic. Yeah. So I don’t know. I think a lot of times for us it is letting the tone that we love and the tone that we enjoy be, you know?
The Knockturnal: Did you envision Schumer for the main role?
Marc Silverstein: I mean, not initially, we didn’t have anyone in mind, really, when we wrote it. But as soon as we were done, yes, she was kind of the only person we thought that could do it. So we were very excited when she agreed to do it.
Abby Kohn: Once we had finished and started making lists of who could possibly – anyone we spoke to, she’s the first name on the list.
The Knockturnal: Renee has self-awareness issues, but did you intend for I Feel Pretty to address relationships and mental illness?
Abby Kohn: Right, right.
Marc Silverstein: I mean I feel like, not overtly but I do feel like the way the sort of pressure society puts people under in terms of standards of beauty and social media making people feel in terms of how people have to present themselves to the world, makes people feel a little crazy. So I do feel like, while we’re not making a comment on any sort of mental illness, I do feel like there is sort of an epidemic of sorts out there where you do feel like the pressure can make you crack.
Abby: It’s not realistic. It’s not attainable. This ideal that people have that they can be this airbrushed person – it’s not even real, you know. So I think that can be crazy-making.
The Knockturnal: Could you talk about the difficult aspects of making the film, if there were any?
Marc Silverstein: I mean, I think the difficult aspects of this film were just generic to making films. Which is just time – you never have enough time.
Abby Kohn: Right. You always want more days. You always want, you know, more takes. You always want it to be a sunny day when it’s not – you know, all those things that you don’t have control over.
Marc Silverstein: Right. Other than that, like, creatively, it was a very smooth production. We were all on the same page and Amy was so good in the role that it was not – we never felt like any of that making of the movie, creatively, was difficult at all.
The Knockturnal: So it all really just came to you.
Marc Silverstein: It really did. I mean, there were days where I’d go in thinking “ugh, this scene is gonna be really tough” but I never went home feeling like we didn’t get it. So that was really-
Abby Kohn: But it was tough in the way that like filmmaking is just, you know-
Marc Silverstein: A slog.
Abby Kohn: Yeah. It is long hours, and a lot of pressure. And then a lot of also just mental pressure of trying to keep all these creative balls in your head, and then trying to manage – as a director, you’re kind of the leader of this big crew of people and trying to manage all of the departments and the personalities and the expectations. But I think that is true for every movie.
The Knockturnal: Tell me about your individual creative processes and how you compliment each other.
Marc Silverstein: Good question, I feel like personality-wise I’m a little bit more lazy, and Abby is very focused and driven. So we definitely compliment each other in that way. And then I chill her out a little bit and she drives me forward in a good way, for sure. I think we both have a very specific kind of movie we like that matches, and then we have different movies that she likes that I don’t like and that I like that she doesn’t like, but we sort of bring that flavor to the things we do and so it’s always sort of a push-pull. Whatever it is, the process by which we pull and push each other creates this other thing that I think is – ends up working out. But however that process works, how we end up landing on ideas that we’re gonna do and how we end up writing those ideas and breaking those stories and making that work for whatever reason, through that process ends up being good.
Abby Kohn: And through the years that we’ve worked together, we really do have a – if I write something, Mark knows how that should sound. He knows exactly the cadence of that line; he knows where the joke should hit. Like, it’s just obvious to him. You know, maybe not to everybody. But within us, it is. So, I think we just have a shared creative experience that is always there thats a baseline for anything else, you know. And that makes it very easy. Between us we understand like this movie – we know the line between a good rom com and a bad. Like he knows exactly which ones I think are over the line, and which ones are within the good realm. Other people could see all of those as the same. We don’t. And I think we have that shared creative, I guess, vision.
The Knockturnal: What was the atmosphere on set?
Marc Silverstein: It was really fun.
Abby Kohn: it was really fun. I mean, you know, there are moments of tension.
Marc Silverstein: Because you’re all trying to get stuff done really quickly.
Abby Kohn: Right. And, there’s you know, always an argument for we need to do this one more time. And there’s an argument for we’re not gonna get it any better than we got it. So there’s always gonna be moments of tension. And we’re both under a lot of pressure.
Marc Silverstein: Tension between us.
Abby Kohn: Yeah, tension between us – totally. So it wasn’t always smooth sailing but for the most part it was really fun. It was really fun working on something that we all kind of believed in the message it had to say, and we-
Marc Silverstein: Thought it was really funny.
Abby Kohn: Thought it was really funny, you know?
Marc Silverstein: And we had a bunch of – we had Amy, and then every day we had other people coming in that were really fun, and funny and got to hang out and there was always someone new coming in to work. That was fun.
The Knockturnal: So we’re talking laughs all around?
Marc Silverstein: There was a lot of laughs.
Abby Kohn: A lot. A lot of it.
Marc Silverstein: Yeah. Amy’s funny all the time. Like, not just when she’s on camera, so it’s definitely-
Abby Kohn: Right. Cracking up the crew.
Marc Silverstein: Yeah. It’s an entertaining set for sure.
The Knockturnal: How do you think your previous work reflects on the movie?
Marc Silverstein: I mean I think it’s all of our experiences have let up to doing this. For sure. We’ve seen – you know, we’ve written a handful of movies that have been made. And we’ve seen how certain scenes are shot and work how we saw them. And certain scenes that were shot and don’t work as we saw them. And so – and we’ve been on set for movies we’ve written and we’ve seen the sort of pitfalls. I think we were just extremely prepared to make this movie exactly how we wanted to make it. I think that part of the process was not difficult for us. We were not indecisive in terms of like, how it should be. So I think that’s a result of our shared experience thus far.
The Knockturnal: What is the main message to take from the film?
Abby Kohn: I mean, for us, I think the overall message is that you don’t really need to change anything. The idea that this radical self confidence can change your life without ever having to really change anything about how you look or who you are; while saying still we understand that this radical self-confidence isn’t easy. It’s hard. We’re bombarded with images and social media and we’ve all heard things as we’ve grown up that have shaped us that don’t always shape us in a great way and it’s not easy to toss all that out and just say “but I’m gonna believe in myself”. However, I think as a goal, believing that the confidence can change everything without having to change who you are is, I think, a great message.
The Knockturnal: That’s extremely commendable.
Abby Kohn: Yeah, I mean, I do think – that’s what we really try to show with Renee; that at the end of it all she got everything she wanted by being absolutely who she was. She didn’t change how she looked; she didn’t change how she acted; she didn’t change who she was; all she changed was believing that she could do it. That’s the only thing that changed. And she got everything, you know? So I like that as a goal and a message. For any of us. Not just women; not just people whose self-esteem was affected by their appearance, but everybody, you know?
The Knockturnal: Where did the idea for the premise originate?
Abby Kohn: I mean, it really just originated with an idea that I had that I pitched to Marc about a girl who believes that she has changed into this unbelievably beautiful woman but really, nothing has changed at all. And I kept saying to him – and he’s like “but when she looks in the mirror?” no, not when she looks in the mirror – it’s just nothing changed. And the more he realized what I was saying he’s like “oh, that could be really funny. A real twist on like, the big story”. And then we could take the tropes of those movies and really have fun with them and play with them. And then I think the whole idea of it started to gell for us.
The Knockturnal: I won’t deny, I tried looking for aesthetic changes. I enjoyed the subversion of the tropes.
Abby Kohn: Yeah. It’s funny, I mean it’s very subtle. But the changes that we did make to her – we made under her. She started the movie wearing more makeup, and then actually we stripped it down because when she feels like she’s so beautiful, she doesn’t need anything. She knows she looks good. Which is, I think, it’s the opposite of those kind of makeover movies where they, you know, feel like they have to do all the stuff to themselves. She feels like she has to do nothing to herself which is really another heart of that message.
The Knockturnal: How does it feel having your film on the big screen?
Abby Kohn: It is –
Marc Silverstein: It’s crazy.
Abby Kohn: It’s surreal. And scary. But really wonderful too. To know that a year ago we just had this script that we really wanted to make. And we were saying to people we’re not gonna sell it unless you let us make it. And we did it. That’s amazing.
I Feel Pretty releases April 20th.
