Why Uncool Is Cool: An Interview with Paul Feig

Popshifter: I was going to ask you about that. What did you want to say about it?

Paul Feig: I think it’s different, but you never know. You don’t want to turn into Joe Jackson where every album is like, “Oh God, that’s nothing like what I wanted to hear from him!”

Popshifter: (laughs)

Joe Jackson’s Look Sharp album

Paul Feig: This is a young adult, Sci Fi fantasy book that’s funny. Hopefully, the first in a series of books.

Popshifter: That sounds great!

Paul Feig: Yeah, I’m really proud of it, but who knows if fans of Freaks and Geeks will like it or not. But I’m really happy with it.

Everything I do is sort of the same, in that it’s an outsider who’s trying to find a place in the world. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I always want it to be in a high school setting.

Both my movies were that way. The setting is different, or the tone is different, and I think that throws people off. People don’t quite know how to get their head around it. What I find in general is that people have a hard time getting used to the fact that something exists.

Popshifter: (laughs)

Paul Feig: And the movie I made, Unaccompanied Minors—which is a family film—I just wanted to do something kind of John Hughes-like. There was all this kind of. . . “excitement” is far too cool a word, but kind of like “speculation” on Ain’t It Cool News, like they heard I was doing this, like, “Oh, is he going to be the next John Hughes?” And they they thought I was going to do something in the tone of The Breakfast Club.

But that was not the project I signed on to and that was not the project the studio would have greenlit. They wanted this big romp and I thought, “Oh, that could be fun!” Because I’m a fan of old John Landis movies. And clearly I just got killed by the critics. People went in thinking it was going to be like Freaks and Geeks and it wasn’t.

So now, what I mean when I say, “People have to get used to something existing. . . ” Now it’s been on cable—at Christmas time—and a lot of people are like, “Oh, I saw that! And it’s really fun and I liked it.” Once you’re past the thing of “expectations,” that it’s going to be one thing and once it exists and you’re at peace with the fact that, “Oh, yeah, he made that movie and it’s not like Freaks and Geeks—it’s just this big, dumb kids’ comedy—then you kind of relax into it and go, “Oh!” You know, you just kind of judge it on those merits.

“PC Load Letter? What the fuck does that mean?”

Popshifter: I kind of felt like that with Office Space, because that was hyped, like, “Oh, it’s the guy who does Beavis and Butthead.”

Paul Feig: Right, exactly!

Popshifter: But I mean, it’s not even remotely the same.

Paul Feig: Yeah, and they were all upset about it. And now it’s this big cult hit. And not that Unaccompanied Minors is a cult hit, but once you’re past the whole (laughs), “How dare you!?” stuff—

Popshifter: “How dare you sully the reputation of. . . ?”

Paul Feig: But you never want to squander that.

I mean, I used to get really mad at guys like Joe Jackson because, “You have this thing you do that I love and everybody loves and now you’re just. . . ” You know, if he was sincerely doing what he wanted to do, that’s fine. But some artists do stuff where, you know, I think Rivers Cuomo sometimes goes this way: “Oh, well you like that? Well, fuck you for liking that.”

Popshifter: (laughs)

Click to read more from Paul Feig on. . .

Directing Freaks and Geeks
Directing Arrested Development
His obsessive knowledge of laugh tracks
More on laugh tracks, plus the “comedy of innocence”
Dealing with Internet jerks
The outsider, plus embarrassing fanboy encounters
“If it’s fun, it’s fun.”
Music of today vs. music of yesterday
The Hollywood version of funny
What’s cool and uncool
Listening to “the notes”
Where television is today
The fallout from Unaccompanied Minors
His new show Kath and Kim and his upcoming book

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15