On Tuesday night The cast of Ghost Team gathered for an exclusive early screening of the film at the Metrograph in New York.
Directed by Oliver Irving and co-written by Irving and Peter Warren, Ghost Team is an independent comedy about a man with a fascination for the paranormal, who is determined find ghosts with his rag-tag team of misfits. The film stars comedic heavy-weights like Amy Sedaris, Jon Heder and Justin Long as well as David Krumholtz, Tom Schiller and Joel Marsh Garland. The entire cast came out for the early screening as well as esteemed director Baz Luhrmann, showing his support. We caught up with director Irving, as well as some of the cast to get an inside look into what Just Long describes as a “Scooby Doo-esque, home-grown mystery involving a potentially supernatural element.”
If you’d like to watch the interview courtesy of our videographer Martin Nunez-Bonilla check it out below.
Jon Heder
Can you tell us a little about your character in the film?
Luis is who I play and he is the hero of our story, he’s just a hapless guy who lives his life day in and day out doing the same thing and is sick of the humdrum doldrums of life and he wants something more and he wants to be a ghost hunter like he wants to find existence of paranormal entities. Him and his friend kind of put together a team and he finds an opportunity and he grabs it and he wants to make the most of it, but he’s a little in over his head.
What was your favorite part about filming the movie?
My favorite part was really the whole thing, but really shooting at the farm. We were at this farm for like 2 weeks hanging out in the freezing cold with all the cast and we were just like a bunch of kids hanging out at scout camp, you know telling stories and dancing and playing music and playing our butts off. I loved it.
What was it like working with Oliver?
Oliver’s great. When you have an independent director like him who’s still brand new – he’s got a few films under his sleeve – but there’s so much passion there and he has a great vision and it’s very nice when you have someone who this is very personal to because a lot of it is based off of him as a child.
What was your favorite scene from the movie?
I haven’t seen it yet, but shooting – I think there’s us running through the woods and there’s a scene where I tell Justin to dodge a tree and went Oh no a tree! And he went right along with it.
Can you talk about the chemistry on set with the cast?
It was great. You always hope to work with good people because hopefully if you’re friends off of set then you can use that chemistry. Even though we don’t play friends in the beginning – because we get along very well off set, it makes it easier to yell at each other without getting offended and getting upset at one another.
Oliver Irving
Can you talk about working with the cast?
Yeah the cast was amazing! Perfect people for the film and their parts. They were such a pleasure to work with. They came in and they worked in fairly arduous conditions here and there. It was cold and it was like having a kind of family together on a camp or something. All of them were pros that was the best thing. Amy is fantastic, so fun, so great to work with. Justin is such a professional. He really committed to the character. David Krumholtz is exceptional, he was so fun to work with.
What was the inspiration behind the film?
The writer and I – Peter Warren – firstly I tried something that was really funny and so I knew this location that would be really great to shoot in and the idea flowed about ghost hunting from my own childhood pre-occupation with ghostbusters and ghost-hunting and such things. As we were writing it that’s when the themes and underlying message kind of came through. It’s very very funny and quite scary I hope, but also it’s about why people have this yearning for something more in their lives- why people need something to distract them, whether it’s a hobby or whether it’s looking for ghosts.
What was your favorite scene?
There’s a scene where Justin is leading them through the stables and they’re trying to find Amy who’s also missing and everyone’s playing off each other and it’s a really fun scene.
What was the hardest part about filming this movie?
The hardest part was we had a very very tight schedule. So we just had to keep moving and keep moving. I planned it a certain way so we could be flexible and adaptable and again that’s a testament to the actors who were able to move quickly and adapt and improvise and roll with the punches and that kind of kept the energy up on set, but it was a very tight schedule so that was tough.
Justin Long
Can you talk about working with the cast
It was such a small budget movie that if you’re not all chilling and getting along, it’s going to be problematic.
What was your favorite scene?
I liked the group scenes when we were all in a scene together because we had so much fun off-camera at night, such a great comradery that when we got to work together we improvised a lot. I loved working with Amy, I’ve always wanted to work with Amy Sedaris.
What was it like working with the director?
*In an English accent* Oliver is great. I kept breaking into a bad British accent. For a fun Scooby Doo type comedy he would reference Stanley Kubrick a lot, in a very serious way. He was very stylized and not what you’d expect from a movie like this, but also was able to have fun and let us play around.
Joel Marsh Garland
What was your favorite part about filming?
The people. Like Amy and John are hilarious people – Justin, David, it’s a great group. Most of my stuff is with tom Schiller and he’s hilarious so it’s just a good group to come into and watch them work and work with them.
