Witherspoon Theater hosted a preview screening of Your Highness last week, followed by a live Q&A with the film’s director, David Gordon Green, and actor Danny McBride. Students were also invited to an autograph signing session in Wolf Plaza earlier that afternoon.
Both events drew large crowds as students clamored to meet the creative team behind the HBO series Eastbound and Down, and the 2009 comedy Pineapple Express.
The line for the screening eventually reached all the way down the Witherspoon lobby, along the sidewalk outside, and over to the Student Health Center. Only about half of the waiting students got into the screening, which filled up nearly an hour before show time.
The atmosphere was electric as the film ended and McBride and Green took the stage to answer the audience’s questions about everything from the making of the film to breaking into the movie business.
Technician was invited the following morning to interview McBride and Green, who offered some behind the scenes info on their new film, as well as their favorite comedies of all time and future career plans.
Technician: What do you want people to know about the movie?
Danny McBride: I want them to know it’s a really funny movie, but it also is bigger than that and I think it’s a big action/adventure romantic movie that also happens to be really funny.
David Gordon Green: You know, this comes from us having a passion for sorcery fantasy films and everything from Conan the Barbarian to even stuff like Harry Potter. You know, and this is a version of those films where you can see T&A and swear, you know – everything that all those films are lacking.
Technician: Does Your Highness make fun of the sword and sorcery genre or is it just a funny version of the genre?
DM: I think it’s just a funny version of the genre. When we started this we never really wanted to lampoon the genre or anything we really just wanted to make one of those films. When it came to everything from creature designs to the weapons that was something that we wanted to feel legit and not find jokes in that stuff. We really wanted it to be “of the caliber” of something you would expect from one of these films.
Technician: How did you give the film such an epic scope?
DGG: Yeah, the crew we put together for this movie, I mean it was a second unit director that had done those huge major big budget action movies so he helped show us how to put all that together. The designer we got from London built these massive sets and picked these landscapes that gave it an epic quality and we shot it in a way that tried to capture the beauty of the locations and the sets.
Technician: What are some of your favorite comedies?
DM: All of my movies are, of course, on that list (laughing). Outside of those films, everything from Bad News Bears to Goonies, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Annie Hall. I can’t get enough of comedy. I tend to gravitate towards comedies I grew up on while I was a kid. Those tend to be the ones that resonate the most.
DGG: I would say Blues Brothers is a big one for me, Gravy Train – it’s a 70s movie with Stacy Keach and Tracy Forrest, it makes me laugh my a** off I think that’s a really funny movie. Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski are two classics. Any time I need a quick fix I can put those movies in and fast-forward to what makes me giggle.
Technician: What projects are you working on next?
DM: I got a few things that are coming up this year. I’m the bad guy in Kung Fu Panda 2, so that will be out this spring and I had a film last summer called 30 Minutes or Less. David created and produced a cartoon show for MTV that’s going to come out this fall and I do a voice of a 500 pound lesbian so that will be a lot of fun. David and I have a production company called Rough House Pictures where it’s where we get a hold on good material and try to turn it into something we would want to get behind.
