THE OVERNIGHT written and directed by Patrick Brice, with Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling, Jason Schwartzman and Judith Godrèche. Released by The Archive. 79 minutes. Opens Friday (June 26). For venues and times, see listing.
Adam Scott has a great pitch for his new film, The Overnight.
“A friend of mine described it as a horror movie where sex is the monster,” he says. It really is the perfect metaphor.
There are no actual monsters in The Overnight, mind you. And it’s not really a horror movie. It’s a comedy of squirming awkwardness and a drama of surprising depth, all wrapped up in the insecurities of its central couple.
Scott and Orange Is The New Black’s Taylor Schilling play Alex and Emily, new transplants to Los Angeles. On a trip to the playground with their young son, they meet another parent (Jason Schwartzman) who invites them to have dinner with him and his wife (Judith Godrèche).
“It was really a funny script,” Scott says. “We related to that couple, to Taylor’s and my characters. They’re at this place in their life where they feel like how they slot into the world is kind of set in stone, you know? They don’t know anybody in this new city, but they feel like they know who they are to each other. [And] that’s all turned completely upside down in the period of a few hours. I thought comedy was a really interesting delivery system for that.”
The Overnight spends a lot of time watching these four characters feeling one another out, testing each other’s boundaries. Those scenes have an underlying tension that makes them feel like long-form improvisation, so I ask how much freedom the actors had on the set.
“There are scenes where there’s no improvisation, and then there are scenes where there’s a bunch,” he says. “I like to improvise I think it’s just a healthy thing to do, to keep everything loose and fun. There are a lot of little bits kind of sprinkled throughout the movie. I think Patrick [director Brice] deployed it really smartly.”
You may have noticed I’m being kind of vague about the plot. This is intentional. Trust me, you don’t want to know too much about this movie going in. Scott, who produced the film with his wife, Naomi, says that’s been the trickiest part of selling it.
“There were a couple of [early] trailers that were cut,” he says. “You watch them and think, ‘Well, that just looks like an iTunes trailer of an okay indie festival comedy that you’d catch on VOD,’ and think, like, ‘Oh, yeah, that – all right.’
“The people who eventually cut the trailer that we used, they hinted at this MacGuffin that is really special, that you could only unlock and see if you went to actually see the movie: ‘There’s something interesting about this movie that we can’t show you right now, but if you come see it we promise we’ll let you know what it is.’”
You’re curious, right? He’s a pretty good salesman.
Adam Scott on The Overnight’s tight shoot:
Scott on other possible marketing strategies for the film:
Scott on trying to avoid being typecast:
See our review of the film here.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
