Secrets to Commercial Filmmaking With 'The Housemaid' Director Paul Feig

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0:44Matt Belloni:This episode of The Town is brought to you by The Madison, the new original series on Paramount+. It's Academy Award nominee Taylor Sheridan's most intimate story yet. A New York City family is uprooted to Montana after an unexpected tragedy. In the quiet majesty of the Madison Valley, they confront love and loss, discovering resilience and the transformative power of family, and the land that grounds them. Led by a powerhouse cast, Academy Award nominee Michelle Pfeiffer and Golden Globe nominee Kurt Russell. Don't miss The Madison, the highly anticipated new series streaming now. only on Paramount+.

1:19Matt Belloni:It is Friday, March 20th. The media covering Hollywood loves to analyze failures. Certainly do our share on the town. But there's less introspection about the outsized hits, even the out-of-nowhere blockbusters. The Housemaid, a thriller starring Sidney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried based on the book by Freedia McFadden that was made for about$35 million and released in December by Lionsgate. It's now grossed nearly$400 million worldwide. including 270 million outside the U.S. and Canada. Pretty incredible. Lionsgate's already announced the sequel, of course. So why and how did this happen? What lessons are there, if any, for filmmakers and producers or studio executives?

2:02Matt Belloni:That's what we're talking about today with the film's director, Paul Feig. If you don't know Paul, he's one of the smartest and savviest filmmakers in town, in addition to one of the best dressed. Lucas could take some notes. He's got a pretty high hit rate, including Bridesmaids, The Heat, Spy, A Simple Favor. He created the TV show Freaks and Geeks with Judd Apatow. He's directed a ton of classic TV shows. He's got a very specific process, and he is not afraid of explicitly directing from a commercial perspective. We're going to talk about the place for lower-budgeted movies and theaters, and what makes a comedy or thriller theatrical.

2:37Matt Belloni:The star question, much more. Today, it's how to make a low-budget blockbuster with Paul Fee. From the Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany, and this is The Town.

2:50Matt Belloni:Okay, we are here with Paul Feig, director, writer, producer. Am I missing anything? Bon vivant, cocktail enthusiast. Yes. Gin maker. There you go. You're a gin maker? Yes, I have my own brand of gin. Oh, you do? Ardingstall's brilliant London Dry Gin. Yeah, it's been my obsession for years. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. That's great. Yeah. Okay. So by the way, I saw you at the Oscars across the way. You were wearing a lovely pink suit. Were you there for the bridesmaids reunion? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Which was really cool. So I wanted to have you on because the housemate is a great Hollywood success story.

3:29Matt Belloni:I mean, the fact that this movie is going to do 400 million worldwide is kind of amazing. I mean, I would ask you if you're shocked, but I was looking back at some of the numbers for your other films and like bridesmaids almost 300 million dollars spy 235 the heat 230 a simple favor did 100 million worldwide you've done some streaming movies too and they're not all hits but you have seemed like you are uniquely able to take the lower budget movie and find a theatrical audience. And that is a goal. That is a needle in a haystack these days. So how did you do it? Why is this movie so successful?

4:15You know, I mean, it's all about a, the material you pick and be the people you put in it and see the experience you bring to an audience in a theater that you promise them and what you deliver to them. Well, let's talk about that because I am

4:30Matt Belloni:very interested in what makes a movie theatrical these days. And I think the industry is obsessed with what makes a movie theatrical. So what about The Housemaid made it not only theatrical, but a blockbuster? Because it was a true group experience. I mean, first of all, look, we had a book, a very popular book behind us. So kind of in that gone girl way, we had that. So that was a plus. But then it was, you know, I make all my movies as if they're comedies, you know, and definitely The Housemaid is one of my darker films. Sure, yeah. You know, because it's about abuse and everything else. So I engineer all these movies, even with the streaming ones I did.

5:10I do a lot of test screenings. So like starting five weeks into my director's cut, I do the first test screening with a recruited audience, not a friends and family audience. Yeah. You love test screenings. It's amazing.

5:22Matt Belloni:Most filmmakers cringe and hate them. I mean, look, I hate them when I'm in them, but if I don't do them, you're insane. And I really am anti friends and family screenings because they don't tell you anything and they will lead you down the wrong path. They're butt kissers. Yeah, exactly. So basically you're structuring it, making sure, always keeping the audience in mind, recording them, not only on audio, but on video. So I can actually, so a movie like this that doesn't have a laugh a minute, I'm watching to see, are they engaged? Are they sitting back? Are they just chewing on popcorn? You know, are they with me?

5:57Matt Belloni:I've heard that you use infrared goggles to watch the audience. Is that true? Well, not me. Personally, you do not. You're not standing there with a head apparatus on, like scoping people out. Like like an ant or a bug. Exactly. No, we let the cameras do that. We just set them up at the front. We get, you know, get the whole theater, including myself and my editor, which is always terrifying to see us watch a movie. But, you know, so it's that. So by the time we lock picture, you know, we've gone through a million different things. I'm like, let's trade that out. That's too slow. That joke doesn't work.

6:28That moment is not building correctly. we know we have a movie that works for about 90 % of most audiences, at least to get a response. So then that in turn will key the word of mouth that we need of people go, oh my gosh, you have to go. That's really fun. So we kind of rely on that outside of having the great cast and the great script.

6:50Matt Belloni:I mean, it's very methodical and dare I say data driven to do that. I mean, there are filmmakers that will listen to this and be like, well, Oh, that's antithetical to the art of moviemaking. Yes, exactly. You know, and I, you get accused of that all the time, but at the same time, I'm not making independent films. I'm not making art films. I'm making commercial movie. Look, I want them to be great. I don't want them to be, you know, just product. But at the same time, I, I, look, I, I was in movie jail once, Matt. So, uh, you were, where was that? The mid, the mid two thousands. Yes, exactly.

7:26After a little movie, what got you put there? It was a movie called Unaccompanied Minors, which was for Warner Brothers. Yeah, it was a Christmas movie. It was kind of my way, my first studio film. So like, I'm just going to take a chance. I thought the material was really fun. And it just, when it didn't work, you're like, oh shoot. And look, I went through test screenings on that, but I made a lot of mistakes on that movie too. My biggest mistake that I did on that film was somehow thinking that the marketing department was my enemy when I was in post-production. So I was like, don't send them anything.

7:56I don't want them to have dailies. I don't want them to see any of our cuts until I say it's ready. And that's the dumbest thing in the world you can do. They don't get invested. And then you're cutting yourself off. Now I, I literally, after that, it was just like, I want my dailies to go directly from the set to the marketing department. Right. Cause I want them to see it all. Cause they'll start cutting stuff. And then as they're cutting stuff, I go, that's a really good idea. I never would have thought to make that joke, like editing room joke.

8:22Matt Belloni:They have very commercial instincts in the marketing group. So if you're fighting against, and I lecture to film students all the time is like, if you're going to make a studio film, love the politics. Don't like just hold on to your, you know, your baby and not let me see it. So you learned a lesson having been in director jail. And when you had success with Bridesmaids, you said, okay, let's, let's hone in on this and let's figure out what works and doesn't work in every moment of a film. Yeah. Because also it's really, it's great to have a movie that works for an audience. You know, it's really fun.

8:55There's that scene at the end of that one of those movies they made about hitchcock i think the one with anthony hopkins and it's for psycho and he's in the back watching through the door and as people are screaming during the shower scene he's dancing around in the lobby that i mean that's exactly how you feel when you have a movie and it's just an audience is buying everything that you're doing so it's it's fun and then you get a hit and then you got to keep making movies right exactly and i

9:19Matt Belloni:and i also read that you pull women you specifically pull women because you make a lot of female centric movies and you trust your instincts, but you also want the female instinct on a movie and you will literally pull women and say, what do you like about this? And what do you not? Yeah. Well, I mean, all the way through the process, you know, the actors, actors that I hire, I tell them all, please call me on anything. And my, my producing partner, Laura Fisher is amazing at that. And my former producing partner, Jesse Henderson was great at that. And then I, anybody, you know, on the set who's female, basically it's like, just call me.

9:53I'm still a guy you know i make movies about women but i'm still a dude i'm still gonna like pitch something that they're like we wouldn't do that but i'm not like well just do it it's like oh good tell me

10:02Matt Belloni:what you would do how we make this more honest right and in the movie i know spoilers but there's a a kelly clarkson song that is used in the movie and your instinct was to use the bob seger song from risky business and your polling suggested no younger women are into kelly clarkson yeah it was just like all the women working on this project the studio everything like what is your celebration song and kelly parkson kind of went to the top which is exactly how we got um hold on for bridesmaids uh no way yeah we knew we had this scene about like helen was gonna hire a famous group but it was like what's so we literally pulled all the women on the set like what is your song and it just came back hold on so it's like cool i never heard hold on before that well Well, I am a Gen X male and I love Hold On as well.

10:49Matt Belloni:Well, there you go. It's universal, really. So I want to talk a little bit. So just to put a button on Housemaid, there is a twist in the movie. And it is a twist that I think is very central to the appeal of this movie, where it's sort of the man you thought he was is not the man. And is that a, is that something that in your mind, when you read this, you thought, okay, that is theatrical. That is something that you can, you can hook an audience and build around to make a piece of material feel theatrical for the communal experience. I thought it was a really going to be a really big part of it.

11:29But what I loved about the book and the script was that I realized it gave me the chance to make an audience root for everything in the first hour that they should not be rooting for in the second. But I knew it was also a struggle. That was dangerous because if you fool them too much, you don't want them to go fuck you to you. You want them to go fuck you to the character and then can enjoy the retribution that happens to him. And so definitely felt like that was going to be fun. And also I knew I almost had two different movies because the first hour is this kind of like, you know, standard in a great way.

12:08You know, interloper comes in the house. Oh, my goodness. There's sexual tension and the wife's crazy. So I knew I kind of had this kind of potboiler melodrama up front that then was luring everybody in in kind of a way that an audience is used to. And then you just pull the rug. and then I know, oh good, now they're going to have fun. But look, here's the thing, Matt, though. The scariest thing about this movie was it's a movie about abuse, you know? Yeah. So I'm trying to get a reaction and I want to get, you know, a fun reaction out of an audience and make a movie fun at the end of the day.

12:40So new, we could go for it melodramatically the first hour. When we start to learn the real backstory of the wife, that is dead serious. Like you do not take any fun with that. You make that, and then, you know, then the fun is now we so want to kill that guy right let's just have a great time just torturing the shit out of him um do you think bridesmaids would get greenlit today by a big studio i've talked to people who were involved and there's been a lot of uh talk about it might only go to streaming right uh which i was like oh god i was really horrified

13:18Matt Belloni:by that yeah and we're just not in that era i mean apatow had some juice at the time and kristin wig was hot off snl in a way that i don't think the snl people have that same kind of juice today um i agree with you i think it'd be really difficult yeah it's but it's funny because all that feedback i got was sort of right after the pandemic when everybody when everybody was trying to launch their streaming service yeah which i call the dark ages right because suddenly like you just couldn't anything that was in the world of what I do. I couldn't get into a theatrical thing, you know, and it carried over.

13:53I mean, you know, I made a movie for for two movies for for Amazon, Jackpot and another simple favor that both tested huge and played huge with audiences. But we just you know, they they went to streaming. Here's an interesting story for you, though, Matt, is when we you know, I kind of learned my lesson on Jackpot because we just let the reviewers kind of review it off of links and stuff. And so they shit all over it. So I said, with, with another simple favor, like we have to have all the reviewers have to watch it in a theater. You know, we'll recruit audiences, not fake audiences, just like word of mouth audiences.

14:28Real people. Yeah, exactly. And so, so in the run-up to coming out, we were like 85 % on Rotten Tomatoes. Then what happens is we got released on streaming the whole second round of critics who watched it at home came in and shit all over it and knocked us down to a 60 % and we lost our certified fresh rating. Okay. And you go like, cause they're not having the experience. And the problem with the movies that I make is that you have to have other people around, I think to let you know, it's okay to have fun in it, you know, because they present as dramas sort of, I mean, you know, if they're loose, a sense of the form, but if you're home, you're like, Oh, like there's nothing worse than they think, Oh, I'm laughing at this because I'm not supposed to because it's bad.

15:13It's like, no, anything you're laughing at, I want you to laugh at.

15:17Matt Belloni:Yeah, no, I saw A Simple Favor in the theater and it was exactly that. I would not have had the same experience at home. Yeah, no, totally. So it's, you know, it's the line you walk when you're, it's why studios always classically want to do comedies are comedies, dramas are dramas, no mixed genre. And now everything great is mixed genre. But do you need that mixed genre to get a movie to theaters? What is the market right now for a straight comedy in theaters? It's tough. It's tough. I think you need the mixed genre. And honestly, almost in the way that we're not even telling them it's supposed to be fun, you know, like that's why horror movie by so many of these horror movies.

15:53I mean, you know, weapons is the classic example. And I love that movie. It was my favorite movie last year because that did exactly what I like to do, which is you come in. Oh my God, it's going to be so scary. And then is it just, you start going like, Oh, I think this is really fun and whacked out. And by the end you're like, okay, that was just nuts and great, a great time. Right. What about the star question? Where do you fall on stars and the theatricality? I always want to have people in my movies that people know. They don't need to be the biggest stars in the world. I just need to make sure, A, they're really great.

16:27And I always check to make sure they're good to work with because I don't want to go through a bad experience with anybody. Who do you call? How do you find that out? You call around.

16:34Matt Belloni:you call around you call around oh yeah oh yeah me anytime okay man you're my new source yeah but i also cross-check though because sometimes somebody will tell you somebody's an asshole right and then you'll call somebody else and find out the person who told them you they were an asshole is actually the asshole right well and i'm not a good source because people act differently around media people i know that's how it is as a director too people sometimes uh you know put their best foot forward for me but matt of course they do that because you're the king of hollywood So, oh, stop. They better be nice to you.

17:02Matt Belloni:I also think the product market fit is a big deal because as much as stars and actors like to defy expectations and do things maybe a little bit outside the bounds. If the audience wants to see a particular star in a particular type of movie. Yeah, I think that can be super additive. and there that's you know we've talked about this before people like sydney sweeney in this kind of movie they don't like her as a boxer where she's unrecognizable in a you know small indie movie this is how they want to see her yeah very much so and it's also but also it depends on what time what period we're in you know because you know there was a lot of these kind of movies being made in the 90s yeah and then they just went away because what happens with all these genres is a genre gets big and then a bunch of bad ones come out and it kills the genre so the genre's dead for 10 or 20 years and then you come back with it so i mean so much of the response we were getting from people loving the housemate was like it's like one of those 90s thrillers it's like you know single white female and what lies beneath sleeping with the enemy yeah totally and and i like but that's fun because i like i like maximalist kind of storytelling yeah these are the Friday night movies, you take your significant other too.

18:25Matt Belloni:Those have sort of gone away as people don't just go to the movies on Friday night. They have to know what they want to see to get tickets in advance. Yeah. So what was really exciting about this was going online and seeing all these videos that these groups of young women were making, they were going to the theater, they're taking blankets with them. Who knew that people watch with blankets now, but because of the the new kind of seating that's more comfortable. They can really cozy in there. So you see them, they're doing videos of themselves, getting all these snacks and mixing, mixing different kinds of sodas together and then going in and sitting under these blankets, having fun, filming each other, watching the movie, reacting to stuff.

19:04And it's fantastic. That's how you get people back into movie theaters. And then Sydney Sweeney was brilliant because she started reposting on her feed all of these videos. So all these young women were saying, oh my God, look how fun that is. And it just became this this thing of like having this is the fun night out to have with your friends. And, you know, that's how we get people back in the theaters.

19:24Matt Belloni:Do you monitor web comments and Internet chatter as closely as you do the screening process? It would seem to me like you would probably take a lot of that stuff in. Yeah, yeah. I'm very, very into feedback. You know, it's again, I'm a commercial filmmaker. And if you don't listen and it's very tempting, you know, because you get all this great stuff. and you hit one woman like doing a, you know, doing a review. It's like worst movie ever saw. You're like, ah, fuck you. But you go past that and you just start to feel like, wow, there's something happening here. But I got to really credit the Lionsgate marketing team because they did so many brilliant stunts.

20:00We did this one stunt at the Grove that went everywhere where we gave out plates, these breakable plates. And I made an announcement beginning like, you know, you can scream when, you know, scream when Nina screams. And then when when Millie says, I fucking love gravy, everybody break your plates. And so we had this crazy screen. They filmed it all with night vision of all these people breaking plates, screaming, having the greatest time. And this stuff went everywhere. And I, you know, growing up in the 70s, I remember I think it was when a stranger calls seeing the for the first time an ad where they filmed the audience and these people like gasping and all this stuff.

20:35And I was like that that makes me want to see that movie. Right. So I was like, can we bring that back? And they were so great about that. And then they just did a great internet campaign too.

21:11Matt Belloni:Season 4, Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC or stream anytime on AMC+. This episode is brought to you by TaxAct. Like an expert coach, TaxAct offers step-by-step guidance and guaranteed accuracy when filing taxes. Get tips along the way, add expert assist to talk to tax experts, and let our experts do your taxes for you with expert full service. TaxAct helps you find the deductions and credits you deserve so you can get them over with. visit taxact.com to learn more conditions apply see taxact.com for details when people say to you i would like to make the kinds of movies that you make and i would like them to be in theaters what advice do you give to filmmakers the biggest advice i give is because it's all about picking the project you know whether you're going to write it you have an idea that you love whatever it is.