Tammy, Melissa McCarthy’s newest feature, opens today, and though it promises to be as hilarious as most of her other output in recent years, this one’s alittle special: it’s been a labor of love for years, a creation of Melissa herself and her husband, writer/director/actor Ben Falcone. Drawing on their own histories and the people they’ve known, they worked to get the very best people in the very best places for this gentle, bizarre road trip pic, and the cast is more than impressive. Joining Melissa herself are the likes of Susan Sarandon, Kathy Bates, Sandra Oh, Gary Cole, Dan Aykroyd, Allison Janney, Mark Duplass and Toni Collette.
Se Fija! was there for a panel with just some of those talented people, including Sarandon, Bates, Duplass and of course Melissa and Ben themselves. They were clearly a bunch of people who enjoyed each other’s company and loved making this movie, and here are just a few audio clips from the event…
First: there have been some strange stories about how Ben Falcone came up with the idea for this movie in the first place. Did it really come to him in a dream?
Some pretty strange things happen along Tammy’s journey with her mom…like giving mouth-to-mouth to a deer she accidentally hit with her car. Was that something that Melissa came up with?
The whole movie, in one way, is kind of a love letter to the good people of Illinois, where both McCarthy and Falcone grew up…
L-r: Sarah Baker, Nat Faxon, Gary Cole, Susan Sarandon, Ben Falcone, Melissa McCarthy, Kathy Bates and Mark Duplass
©2014 Angela María Ortíz S.
And though the husband and wife have worked together before, never on something as big, complicated and risky as a feature films. Was Melissa worried about Tammy’s effect on their relationship, or their careers, or both?
Screenwriter/Producer Melissa McCarthy
and director Ben Falcone with fans at Tammy premiere
Eric Charbonneau/Invision for Warner Bros./AP Images
Speaking of all that, Melissa and Ben got two film legends in their film. How did they get Susan Sarandon get involved in this project?
How to Get Susan Sarandon in your movie
Gary Cole, of Veep, The Good Wife, and The Brady Bunch Movie, has a pretty hot and heavy romantic encounter with Sarandon. What was that like for him?
And what made you think of approaching Kathy Bates? For a comedy, no less?
Bates is amazing in Tammy, as she is in everything. She seems to have the ability to take the most normal dialogue and make every word into something special. How do you do that, Kathy Bates?
Tammy is available on thousands of screens nationwide right now, it’s a slightly weird but very welcome relief from all the robots, aliens, and explosions on just about every other silver screen this summer.
