About The Production
“The whole reason for making this kind of movie is to have some fun,” says producer Lorne Michaels, who likens “Hot Rod” to a good Road Runner cartoon. “It’s a sort of uniquely American kind of comedy, because most other cultures would try to sneak something worthwhile into the mix.

“I’m a big fan of physical comedy,” he adds. “As a writer you spend forever getting the exact word, the perfect humorous dialogue, and then somebody runs into a wall and you’re laughing twice as hard.”

The reason physical comedy is so universal, according to “Hot Rod” director Akiva Schaffer, is that “everybody carries an awkward 12-year-old around inside of them. When it peeks out every now and then, we’re ashamed and embarrassed. This movie celebrates that lameness…that awkwardness. The characters are locked into it. In fact, Rod doesn’t even know enough to be ashamed,” he quips. This unique vision of prolonged adolescence came to movie theaters via “Saturday Night Live” with a detour through “South Park,” explains producer John Goldwyn. “When I was still an executive at Paramount, Jimmy Miller (the noted comedy talent manager) brought this project to Lorne Michaels for Will Ferrell. He actually brought in Will and Pam Brady (writer-producer of “South Park,” “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut” and “Team America: World Police”), who wrote the script, to pitch this idea. We bought it, because we immediately saw its potential as a great comedy vehicle.”

While Brady was working on the script, Ferrell’s star quickly rose and, by the time “Hot Rod” was ready, the actor was so booked up that he graciously stepped aside to allow the project to move forward, Goldwyn continues. “We considered a number of actors and directors, but when Andy Samberg, who was in his first season on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ read it, he went to Lorne and said, ‘I love this script and I really want to do it.’”

Michaels seized the opportunity, got the studio onboard, and he and Goldwyn (who was by now partnered with Michaels) offered Samberg his first starring role. “It was in 2005, just before the ‘SNL’ video ‘Lazy Sunday’ exploded on the Internet. So, Lorne and I went to Paramount and said, ‘How about Andy Samberg for ‘Hot Rod?’ They were all for it. They already knew all about Andy and Akiva Schaffer (one of Samberg’s partners in The Lonely Island comedy trio along with Jorma Taccone) and the phenomenon of how their video, a rap pastiche, became a viral phenomenon. Everyone was intrigued about how something that came from ‘SNL’ then took off on the Internet. Hollywood suddenly had to have Andy Samberg.

“Andy came back and said, ‘I really want to make it but if I’m going to do it, I want Akiva to direct and Jorma to be in it with me,’” Goldwyn continues. He said, ‘If I’m gonna put myself out there, I want put to myself out there with these guys.”

Samberg, Schaffer and Taccone have been friends since junior high school in Berkeley, California. After graduating high school, they attended different universities – Samberg went to NYU, Schaffer to UCSC to study filmmaking and Taccone to UCLA. Degrees in hand, the trio reconvened in Berkeley, screened each others’ student films and found that they were still very much in sync. So they decided to throw in their lot together, to move to L.A. and pursue their dream of creating their own particular style of comedy. Their moniker derived from the apartment they shared, which they called “The Lonely Island.”

“Jorma once brought home a DVD of Tennessee Williams’ ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,’” Samberg recalls. “Akiva and I thought that was the funniest thing Jorma’s much more a theater type than we are.” Schaffer was so amused by the film’s plot that he wrote a faux Tennessee Williams play called “The Lonely Island.” When the three young men sat on their balcony they developed a theatrical catchphrase: “Just sitting here at the Lonely Island, watching the sea of traffic roll by.”

“We said it in that Paul Newman, ‘Cat-on-a-Hot-Tin– Roof’-way,” Samberg points out. “Later, when we had to choose what we were going to call our Website, we were like, hey…The Lonely Island.”

Soon thereafter, one of the gigs the trio landed was as part of the writing team for MTV’s music awards show. It was here that they met and worked with Jimmy Fallon and senior “SNL” producers Mike Schoemaker and Steve Higgins. The trio wrote the “Batman” and “Star Wars” spoofs that Fallon performed in the show.

“I got a call from Jimmy,” producer Lorne Michaels recalls. “He said that these three guys he was working with were really funny and that I should look at them for ‘SNL’… so I did.”

Samberg and Taccone went to New York to audition. (Schaffer, who doesn’t consider himself an actor, chose to have a meeting with Michaels instead). “I actually auditioned twice,” Samberg says. “Most people who get hired at ‘SNL’ are from improv backgrounds, so they have characters and impressions ready to go. I didn’t, but Akiva and Jorma helped me out. We wrote my audition in a couple of days. I went in thinking, if they don’t laugh they don’t laugh. So I just went in and goofed around. Supposedly I seemed very relaxed in the audition and that worked to my advantage, though it was a surprise to me, since I threw up before the audition,” Samberg admits.

Samberg joined the cast, while Schaffer and Taccone became members of the “SNL” writing team. “Andy is obviously funny, but he’s also charming and has warmth,” Michaels notes. “And when a new voice happens in comedy, everybody seems to know it all at once and there they were.”

“What we like about Will Ferrell is exactly what I think made Lorne and Paramount feel we could do this movie,” says Schaffer. “And that is that Will comes from a very positive place, it’s fun and fun-loving. It doesn’t come from bitterness or mean spiritedness. The three of us come from a similar place, and I think that’s why it felt like a good fit. Rod’s character is relentlessly positive and optimistic,” he adds.

“John and I felt very strongly that Akiva had the sort of guiding intelligence to be able to direct this movie,” affirms Michaels.

Adds Goldwyn: “We felt that the guys have a very specific voice and a very specific style, so if we were going to bet on this generation’s star, we wanted to have that star’s director. Akiva had already done several shorts for ‘SNL’ and before that he had done music videos. So we thought it was a very good idea, and were glad he responded so positively to the ‘Hot Rod’ script.”

In tailoring the script to Samberg’s talents, Schaffer and Taccone were respectful of Brady’s original story. “All we did,” says Schaffer , “is take a really good script and just kind of Samberg-ize it.”

Brady says it was her good fortune that her script wound up with the Lonely Island troupe. “I went to New York to meet Andy and we wound up having hamburgers together — the most important hamburger lunch I’ve ever had. It was the greatest first meeting ever. I was already a huge fan of his and the Lonely Island guys. Their stuff is great. Andy has great balance — emotional and physical balance.

“It’s a wonderful miracle that these guys got onboard and that Lorne got behind them, because that tends to get things done. I actually have a brass plaque at the entrance of my house that says ‘With Lorne Michaels behind you there is nothing you can’t do,’” Brady laughs.

The Lonely Island trio decided to cast fellow “SNL” cast member Bill Hader as Dave, one of Rod’s stunt team. “I heard him doing this crazy voice one day and knew immediately that it would be awesome for the character,” says Schaffer. “From that moment we saw Bill in the part.”

Another “SNL”-er, Chris Parnell, who co-starred with Samberg in the “Lazy Sunday” video, was also cast in the film. “I play Barry Pasternack, the owner and the lead DJ of this AM radio station, KNER,” says Parnell. “He’s bet all of the station’s last bit of money on this event, the climactic scene in which Rod performs his big jump to try and raise the money for his stepdad’s medical procedure. He’s a real believer in AM radio.”

In this respect, says Goldwyn, “Hot Rod” is a first — possibly the first all-“SNL” picture. “This was the first time that exclusively ‘SNL’ talent was hired to make a movie, with a regular cast member as the star, a guy who is exclusively an ‘SNL’ director and a writer from the show. So, we had to figure out a way to get the movie made within the show’s hiatus. The guys had to go back to the show in September. Fortunately, they were working on the kind of deadline they had become used to in the TV world. We were all very focused. As soon as Paramount gave us the OK, we were in Vancouver shooting. And we made sure Akiva had experienced people around him who would, on the one hand, make the film look as good as possible and on the other, support his vision and get the best out of him and Andy and Jorma. We’re really happy with the results.”

Academy Award® winner Sissy Spacek and Ian McShane were the trio’s first choice to play Rod’s mother and stepfather, Marie and Frank Powell. “We wanted someone to play Frank who wasn’t traditionally known as a comedian, someone with acting chops who could be genuinely scary and intimidating in the role,” Schaffer explains. “We’re huge fans of ‘Deadwood,’ particularly Ian’s character Al Swearengen. So we sent the script to him, he read it and immediately said yes. He totally got it, and it was a pleasure to work with him.”

“Sissy is an amazing actress and to get her to be in a movie that’s so silly, we just had to hope she was in the mood for something different,” says Samberg. “We got very lucky. She was a joy and she was hilarious.”

“Sissy and Ian played husband and wife in ‘Nine Lives’ but they weren’t in the same scenes, so they never actually met until this movie,” Michaels notes. “They’re just incredible together. We didn’t want the movie to be all of one color, and I think that Ian and Sissy bring a real power to the movie, in the same way that Brian Dennehy did in a movie like ‘Tommy Boy.’”

Similarly, Isla Fisher was the first name that came up for the role of Denise. “We had all liked her in ‘Wedding Crashers,’” says Samberg. “She really brightened things up on set, and it was nice to have a female presence on the team.”

After executive producer Jill Messick saw Danny McBride’s film “The Foot Fist Way” at Sundance, she brought a copy of it for Andy, Akiva and Jorma to screen. “We just loved the hell out of it,” Samberg enthuses. “So we invited Danny to a table-read and he was fantastic. We really hit it off, and even though the character was originally written for a much older actor, we refashioned it for Danny. He’s the kind of dude who makes you smile and giggle…he’s just fun to watch.”

3. Making It Look Real
The mechanics of making a film that progresses on from one stunt to another, raising the stakes and picking up speed all the way to the climactic “big jump,” required a top-notch stunt coordinator...