By Jun Okada
Daily Bruin Contributor
Fraternity hijinks, a disorganized road trip in Dad’s
sedan, topless co-eds and a homemade sex video: this could be the
sure-fire formula to get college kids to shell out their $8 this
summer for DreamWorks’ newest comedy, “Road
Trip.”
At a recent press interview producer Ivan Reitman, director Todd
Phillips and the young stars of the film discussed the story behind
the college-oriented comedy.
“Road Trip” is about a college guy who cheats on his
high-school sweetheart and accidentally mails a videotape of the
event to her. As a result, he and three of his friends must take a
cross-country road trip before the tape ends up in her VCR.
Ivan Reitman, the veteran director and producer responsible for
such comedy classics as “Animal House,”
“Stripes” and “Ghostbusters,” spoke about
how “Road Trip” originated.
“I had always thought that ever since “˜Animal
House,’ the road trip sequence was a good idea, and
we’ve never seen it in a contemporary movie,” Reitman
said.
“We were really tired of all of these high school movies
of the last five years and I sort of wanted to go back to my own
college days,” he continued.
Reitman approached director Todd Phillips two years ago at the
Sundance Film Festival to do a road trip film. There, Phillips won
the Grand Jury Prize for his documentary, “Frat House,”
about the workings of American fraternity houses.
“I said, “˜Would you like to do more of a dramatic
feature’ and I pitched him the road trip idea and I told him
to give me reasons why four people would go on a road trip
together,” Reitman said.
Then it was up to Phillips and screenwriter Scott Armstrong to
come up with a story. Phillips maintains that the story development
process between himself, Armstrong and Reitman is what generated
the end result of a tale about four guys trying to retrieve an
illicit videotape from one of their girlfriends.
One cast member who helped inject the movie with a boost of
hilarity is comedy “It” boy, Tom Green. The story is
told in flashback by Green, whose bizarre Pepsi commercials and
self-titled MTV show have made him a household name almost
overnight.
Director Phillips knew that Green would be the perfect actor to
portray the nutty university tour guide who embellishes his story
with as many scenes of topless women as possible.
“I was doing a beer commercial in Canada and this P.A.
came up to me and he was like, “˜Dude, I brought in some tapes
of this guy who’s on public access up here, and he’s a
genius,'” said Phillips, who then offered Green the
part.
Rachel Blanchard, who plays the girlfriend to whom the illicit
videotape has been sent, agreed with Phillips about the impact of
Green’s presence on the set.
“Tom was really wonderful to watch because he’s
really, really funny and he would just go crazy and then they would
yell “˜Cut,” said Blanchard, who added that many of
Green’s antics had to be left on the cutting room floor.
“He’s really good at leaving you sort of speechless,
and you don’t quite know how to react.” she said of her
experience watching the lively antics of her costar.
The film’s resident “good-time boy” character,
played by Seann W. Scott noted, “You get a camera in front
Tom and all hell breaks loose!”
“Road Trip” is similar in theme to some of the
outrageous, over the top comedies that have become sleeper hits,
such as “American Pie.”
Blanchard, of TV’s “Clueless” and Scott, who
also played party animal Steve Stifler in “American
Pie,” seem to represent a trend in college-age comedies in
that the casting rarely involves big-name stars.
“I think what “˜American Pie’ did was that it
allowed studios to say, “˜OK, we don’t need to hire
stars, kids want to create their own stars.’ Kids want to go
to a theater and identify with these people,” Scott said.
From the looks of it, if “Road Trip” proves to be as
popular as “American Pie,” the young
“unknowns” of the film won’t be for long.
FILM: “Road Trip” opens in theaters nationwide this
Friday.