the comic's comic

Fall TV previews 2011: Sneak a peek at NBC's "Up All Night" pilot

NBC kicked off the beginning of the end of Upfront Week today by presenting its new fall lineup of shows.

Here's a look at Up All Night, scheduled for 8 p.m. Wednesdays in Fall 2011. Starring Christina Applegate, Will Arnett, Maya Rudolph, and James Pumphrey. Arnett's a stay-at-home dad while Applegate's character works for Rudolph's character. Pumphrey plays Applegate's assistant. Written by SNL scribe Emily Spivey and executive produced by Lorne Michaels.

Roll the clips!

Matt Walsh talks about directing his new improvised movie, "High Road," plus other related UCB news

Matt Walsh is finishing up work on his first feature film as a director, the highly improvised movie, High Road.

So naturally, The Comic's Comic spoke to the UCB comedian about it on 4/20. Or was it just coincidental timing?

"It is interesting numerology," Walsh told me. "We're still finishing the movie. We're in the sound mix right now. A little color correct and we're done."

Audiences will get to see the finished product next weekend when the film premieres April 29 at the Newport Beach Film Festival. The film stars James Pumphrey as a man caught between his girlfriend (played by SNL's Abby Elliott), his band, and dealing his weed. The rest of the cast includes Rob Riggle, Lizzy Caplan, Joe LoTruglio, Rich Fulcher, Horatio Sanz, Dylan O'Brien, Zach Woods, Matt Jones, Ed Helms and Kyle Gass. Here's the "red-band" trailer (red-band = swearing and other things making this video NSFW)!

 

How did the making of High Road differ from the UCB's first film, Wild Girls Gone? "Good question. How is it different? I think we have better technology. We have better cameras now. This one was shot more like a documentary. We had d.p.'s who had shot documentaries...so the approach was more documentary-style."

For structure, did you write a full script, just an outline, or did you have the actors treat it with the UCB "game" approach? "We had roughly 65 scenes and each scene had a paragraph of plot and character count: Who's in the scene and when they come in. And then for the comedy's sake, we had game in each scene so characters could find what was funny in each moment that the players could play around in."

As you're finishing it now, how do you feel about using that process? "I'm very happy. I'm very fortunate to have a really talented, good-looking cast. They're all good on camera and they improvise dialogue that I never would have been able to write. And each character has their own certain voice and idiosyncrasy that they bring to it."

Did that process work the same as if you'd used a fully-written script?