Christopher Mintz-Plasse Talks About Working With Dave Franco On ‘Neighbors’ And Viral Videos
As the weather gets warmer, we grow closer to seeing the newest film releases in the form of blockbuster hopefuls. Between now and August is usually the time frame when studios break out their best blockbuster material in action and comedy. While there’s a plethora of action films coming up to consider, there’s one comedy film that is setting itself up to be a major hit. Universal Studios is breaking out of the pack with what’s arguably the best comedy of the season with Neighbors.
As a comedy, it has all the ingredients one needs to succeed. On paper, Neighbors production has an impressive team. It’s directed by Nicholas Stoller, who’s responsible for past hits Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek, and produced by the unstoppable comedic duo of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Surprisingly, it’s matched with a group of talented players that spend most of their time on-screen impressively one upping each other, which makes for an authentic raucous comedy we have all come to expect from a film that has Rogen’s stamp of approval.
In Neighbors, Mac (Seth Rogen) and Kelly Radner’s (Rose Byrne) world is turned upside down when a college fraternity moves next door to the new parents and their infant daughter. The Delta Psi Beta brothers are lead by Teddy Sanders (Zac Efron), Pete (Dave Franco) and Scoonie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), who are determined to make something of their last semester of college by planning a series of epic parties in hopes to live in Greek history. What starts out as an awkward meet and greet between the neighbors quickly escalates to an ultimately hilarious turf war.
The Inquisitr’s Niki Cruz sat down with Christopher Mintz-Plasse to discuss his collaborations with Neighbors co-star Dave Franco, and a certain running gag in the new comedy.
THE INQUISITR: Neighbors is hilarious.
CHRISTOPHER MINTZ-PLASSE: When did you see it?
I saw it three days ago and the energy at the screening was great. Everyone was pretty pumped up about it.
You know what, it’s pretty funny — besides playing my character like a huge idiot it might be the closest to myself because in between takes we were doing what you saw on set. We were just f—ing around and making jokes and hanging out in our trailers.
This is the kind of movie where any research for it would be pretty fun. Did you go to any frat houses?
My brother was in a frat and there’s a creed that we say in the movie where the whole frat is chanting something, and I believe we ripped that off from my brother’s fraternity.
If you were in a fraternity, what kind of role do you think you would have?
Man, I would be the terrified guy. Frats are really nice and it’s a brotherhood, so I do understand, but the fact that they drink all day is kind of scary. Actually, no I don’t want people to be like, “Oh we don’t drink all day!” but it’s a party. It would take a lot out of me. I’m frail!
And then there’s the hazing.
Yeah! Then there’s the hazing. You don’t deserve friendship after hazing. I want to have a nice conversation and then realize if I should be your friend or not.
Well aside from that, you, Dave Franco, Zac Efron and Jarrod Carmichael captured the brotherhood of a fraternity.
Awesome. We definitely hung out a lot before the movie because we wanted to make that real.
I know you and Dave are close, so how was it integrating Zac Efron into that natural back and forth?
It was nice. I’ve known Zac. I met him years ago and he was a sweetheart. Dave, Zac and I realized we were doing this movie together so then we went out for a couple of nights and had some drinks, and got to know each other. He’s a super, charming, funny, and down to earth guy. People obviously see Zac and the paparazzi is chasing him and everything.
People see the image.
Yeah. I’ve never been on a movie set where there were more paparazzi around. I would always walk out of a car and people would just be waiting and I would be like, “Sorry guys I’m not Zac!” I’ve never understood that world. It’s a really intense world for him. It can take a toll on someone but he really handles it well. He’s a very smart guy about it.
I heard you were involved in a promotional college tour for Neighbors. Is that still happening?
It was Dave Franco, Jarrod Carmichael, and I. We went on a crazy trip. Dave and I kept on saying how insane it was.
Did you guys know what you were getting into?
We had no idea! We had thought, “Okay Dave has been in a few movies and I’ve been in a couple. It’s going to be easy, maybe a couple of hundred people.” There were lines like it was Zac Efron there. It was insane! Dave and I kept on saying, “What would happen if real actors came?” It was really fun.
Was improv encouraged on the set? Seth Rogen has a background in it.
Oh absolutely. The script was written by Brendan O’Brien and Andrew J. Cohen, but they love having options in the editing room. The director Nick Stoller is a comedy writer.
Yeah, he’s half responsible for The Muppets.
[Laughs] Oh yeah he’s just throwing Kermit jokes out there. Wrong movie, dude! But yeah Seth and his partner Evan Goldberg were there so you had people on set just constantly giving you other lines and new options so it’s really hard to fail in this kind of movie.
So whose idea was it to have all of those favorable jokes about your character’s d-ck size then? They were very complimentary [Laughs]
They were very complimentary! [Laughs] That’s why I did the movie! They had that in the original script but Seth and Evan did some punch ups on that. They like their d-ck jokes.
You must have had a really fun time going back and forth about that too.
Yeah there’s about eight scenes that got cut. So now there’s one scene where you see “it.”
Just for clarification, this is the mold of the penis we’re talking about.
Yeah the actual mold! It’s huge and disgusting. I don’t think people laugh at that moment, because they’re caught off guard. What was your reaction when you saw it?
I was pretty surprised and had the natural reaction of, “holy c–p, what is happening right now?”
Yeah, they went there, but if you talk about a giant d-ck you have to show it at least once.
As far as limitations go, I know there’s absolutely none between the work that you and Dave Franco do, especially with the Funny or Die series You’re So Hot.
Yeah we just shot a third You’re So Hot video. We might have pushed the boundaries a little too far on this one. [Laughs]
I can only imagine considering the first and second videos.
Yeah the second one we kiss each other and then throw up on each other so we take it a step further than that. It’s going to be a surprise.
It’ll be a viral hit. It’s very much your 2 Girls 1 Cup.
Yeah it very much is, just dirtier!
Funny or Die has been this awesome through line in your career from the PSAs to the LG series you did with Dave. Can you talk a bit about the relationship you have with the site?
It actually started with Dave. He had done a few videos before You’re So Hot. We went there and we made this video and they loved it. Then we did the “It’s all possible: LG” campaign, and we all became very close. I think it’s great to have your own outlet to do those creative projects. Directors and producers are seeing that Dave and I work together and have a great chemistry and that’s also good. I bet they wanted to hire us in Neighbors based on what they saw between us in those videos. Doing stuff like that can lead to much bigger and better things.
Obviously, being in films like Kick-Ass and Neighbors is a huge help in terms of visibility, but by creating your own material, does that lessen the pressure of Hollywood dictating your career?
As an actor there’s always fear that you’re not going to get the next movie because it’s not like a 9 to 5 job. You shoot a movie for two to three months and then you’re kind of in this limbo. After Superbad I could have gotten trapped at a young age in stupid nerd stereotype type of movies, but Seth pulled me aside and gave me advice. It was my first movie and I didn’t know the world at all. He said, “Don’t do anymore high school movies. Don’t do any nerdy characters specific to that.”After Seth’s advice I was really specific in what I wanted to do and the people I wanted to work with. I wanted to work with people that I respected like Paul Rudd in Role Models or Matthew Vaughn in Kick-Ass, so I got very lucky.
That must have been great to have someone like Seth Rogen in your corner, as I’m sure he had Judd Apatow in his.
Yeah. I remember I was doing my first talk show for Jimmy Kimmel and I was terrified. Judd had called me and talked to me for about thirty minutes about what goes on [Laughs] because I had no idea what to talk about! He just walked me through it. It was awesome.
It must be weird to do a talk show because you go in there with the expectation of hitting these talking points.
It is weird. You go on and you expect to just talk, but it’s a structure on these talk shows, which also stresses you out. Dave and I talk about this all the time because two or three weeks before the talk show you’re like, “Oh sh-t I have to start thinking of stories,” and then you start living your life like, “Oh is this a cool story? Should I go here? Is that going to lead to something cool?” You start worrying about what’s going to happen but luckily we go on these wild press tours and have things to talk about.
And then on the other side of that, you have to worry about the bad pegs that will go viral from those talk shows.
Yeah the internet will try to take anything bad that you say and turn it into something.
Aside from Neighbors, people wanted to know about Kick-Ass 3 and if that’s happening.
I don’t think it’s going to happen. Not a lot of people saw the second one. The first one did well or at least enough to get a sequel, and then the second one–
I liked the second one! You had really great dark material in the second one.
Thank you! I had a blast doing it. I actually got an acting coach for it, but I don’t see another one happening at this point.
What’s next for you?
I have How To Train Your Dragon 2 coming out in June and then there’s a couple of options. I have a few meetings next week with some directors so hopefully something happens.
Neighbors hits theaters on May 9.
