Cool-NY.com – September 6th 2012

Immorality and Morality Fool Around Together in “Bachelorette”

What drew you to this project?
Kirsten: I haven’t done a comedy in a while and then this script came along. It’s rare that you get to play women like this, and it usually is female writers who create these kinds of roles. So for me it was an opportunity that I hadn’t had in a while and I wanted to do that.
Lizzy: It’s rare to find a movie that’s so honest, and also so funny. You don’t read a lot of scripts that the characters sound the way that these characters sound. That was very appealing. These are the types of movies I like to make.
Isla: And I hadn’t been in a drama for a while, so… A very dramatic movie. I didn’t know until I saw it that it was indeed a comedy [laughs].

Since you guys are close in age…
Isla: Ooh, I like that. Somebody comes out great in that.

How did you affect each other during the production?
Lizzy: Are you talking about our cycles?[laughs] We always menstruate in harmony, in three-part harmony. We massage each other’s low back while accessing Hera the goddess.
Kirsten: Oh my god. I think that answered it pretty well.
Lizzy: In this movie, we each had a very specific job to do, and so it helps that we have different vibes among the three of us.
Isla: Yeah. What’s great about the three of us working together is it’s very non-competitive. We basically played very different characters, we come from a different place comedicaly, so we’re all able to shine in our own specific ways.
Lizzy: There was room for all three of us to get to do our thing pretty much in every scene we had together.
Kirsten: Yeah, and that’s a testament to Leslye’s writing.
Isla: And the exceptional casting.

When I saw the movie, the thing that first struck me was how ballsy it is. Basically it’s one long coke joke and a lot of very dark themes.
Lizzy: It’s nice to do a ballsy movie when there are no balls in the cast.
Kirsten: There are things that draw you to each character. I love the fact that I could play a bitch. That’s such a fun thing to play. When do you get to play that? Girls always have to be sweet and nice and the nice sexy girlfriend. “She’s so cute.” I’m not in this movie.

As Kirsten mentioned, these characters can come across bitchy and maybe unlikeable.
Isla: Our job is to tell the story the way the screenwriter and the director want it told. You just have to commit and go for it. That’s our gig. If we’re going to be self-conscious and embarrassed, then don’t take those roles.
Kirsten: And, it all depends on your cast and the chemistry of who you put together. I really think we were a good combo and that’s what makes things come to life.
Lizzy: And the script is really well written. There are reasons that are explored why they are the way they are, why they’ve gone down these paths. So they’re not these rotten eggs of ladies, they’re damaged and flawed. There’s a reason why they behave in this way. To me, it makes them sympathetic characters. They just got messed up along the way.
Isla: I slightly disagree with the ladies on this. I think they’re awful people doing awful things. We’re terrible, we’re uneducated, we don’t care, we think the world owes us something, we’re classic middle-class, Peter Pan generation white kids. We’re bad to the bone. I think this movie is really interesting because we are unlikeable people. That’s what makes it different. This is an interesting social point that we are making in this film.

Recently there seem to be more female-centric comedies, and in the ‘30s you had Irene Dunne and Katharine Hepburn and all these great female comedians.
Lizzy: I think it’s cyclical. Right now we’re in the part of the cycle where they are making a lot of female-driven movies. But yeah, people forget the ‘30s and who those women were. The leading ladies in movies were unbelievably brassy and ballsy and tough.
Isla: It’s really only the ‘80s that there weren’t many female–
Lizzy: …taking their tops off…
Isla: It was from the ‘90s onwards that we had a resurgence…
Lizzy: Maybe the late ‘70s too. It’s when they started showing “Porky’s”…
Isla: ‘Cause you had Diane Keaton, you had all that great stuff. And then there was a gap. And then everybody came back. I find it interesting that people keep bringing up “Bridesmaids” because, to me, “Sex and the City” was huge. I thought there was a bunch of them, for a long time before.
Lizzy: I know. It’s really frustrating. You can have seven of those “guy movies” flop in a row and still continue making them, whereas a girl one they’ll stop for a couple years making them on a huge scale or making them without a huge name.
Kirsten: I feel like Parker Posey has been carrying that torch for a long time.
Lizzy: She should have been in our movie.
Kirsten: She should have been in our movie.

The film is based on Leslye’s play which was inspired by one of the seven deadly sins, gluttony. Commonly we think of gluttony as excessive eating, but it could be an excess of anything, like thinking too much or taking in too much information. In what ways do you deal with gluttony in everyday life?
Lizzy: Not well. We live in a culture of excess and instant gratification for everything, even like what you were saying, information. We’re gorging on information every minute of the day. I don’t know if, as a society, we’ve come up with a way to handle that well yet. It’s all so new, this amount of internet.

All of you have worked in entertainment, how would you like to see your career grow from this point on?
Kirsten: I’d be happy to retire [laughs]. I’ve been working since I was three years old.
Lizzy: Stop it.
Kirsten: I’m fine with doing one movie a year and I just only want to do things that I truly love and characters that I want to play, and always do it for myself first because that’s what’s most important.
Isla: Yeah, I’m getting close to a place of choosing a movie that I like rather than choosing a movie that I think other people will like. Which is hard to admit to.

If there is a “Bachelorette” sequel, what would you like to happen for your characters?
Lizzy: The movie moment is they get back together and they live happily ever after, but our movie tries to be way more realistic or even darker than realistic. And I think it would just implode.
Isla: I think if this movie works, my character will be played by Kristen Wiig. And Kirsten’s will be played by Cameron Diaz. And Lizzy’s character will be played by…
Lizzy: Susan Sarandon.