By Riley Coven
Earlier this week I was fortunate enough to take part in a conference call with Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day about their upcoming film, “Horrible Bosses 2,” which releases on November 26th across the country.
Emily Rudick: Does the movie have any kind of reference to your life getting to the point where you are now having any kind of horrible bosses that you’d like to maybe murder or kidnap?
Jason Bateman: I started acting so young I never had any traditional bosses but I’ve certainly worked for some prickly directors, movie stars, producers, studio heads but no real horrible stories that I can think of but my knees are bent, I’m waiting for a real son of a b***h to come my way. I’m prepped.
Charlie Day: This is Charlie Day.
Jason Bateman: Charlie, you don’t have to tell people ‘this is Charlie Day.’ Those honey pipes…
Charlie Day: Well I don’t have a good answer. I just wanted to say my name.
Hayden Wainers: I was just wondering have you ever been a horrible boss yourself?
Charlie Day: No, I don’t think so. I think we’re pretty fair guys, pretty nice guys. No one has filed any complaints yet that I know about.
Jason Bateman: I tossed my two year old into the car pretty quickly this morning. I think she’d probably tell you that I’m a real a**hole, but we were late for school g*******t.
Katrina Bell: “Horrible Bosses 2” has primarily been made due to the financial success of the film in the United States. Do you believe that this fact is reason enough for a sequel and why?
Jason Bateman: You get asked to do sequels, you’re exactly right, when it makes enough money to warrant it. It did really well overseas, which is not terribly common for a comedy so New Line and Warner Brothers wanted to do another one and we were certainly open to it because we had such a good time doing the first one and what we didn’t want to do is make a film that was not at least as good as the first film and we worked really really hard to attempt to do that and hopefully you’ll like it as much and hopefully more.
Charlie Day: Yeah, there’s the financial side of it where if a movie studio doesn’t make enough money on the first one then they’re not going to spend money to make the second one because it’s a business. And that’s their business, that’s not ours. Then there’s the creative side of it where, you’re right, does it make sense to do a second story and Jason and Jason and myself had a lot of lengthy conversations about what the second story could be and we weren’t going to do a movie if we couldn’t find a story that, for us, made sense. The business side, of course, that’s part of it, and creatively I think we got it to a place where it made sense for us to want to do it.
Kelly Mitchell: Since you’re all a funny cast, what’s the funniest thing that happened behind the scenes? Were there any pranks that went on?
Jason Bateman: I don’t know if there were any pranks, there was a lot of goofing around and making each other laugh, on camera, off camera, we were all chuckled out so we didn’t have to try to keep it light. Sometimes you’ll get practical jokes when there’s a necessity to kind of lighten the mood on set but we had to actually try to simmer things down and be serious to get some work done sometimes.
Charlie Day: Not a lot of whoopee cushions on that set. We wanted to make sure everyone gets home to their kids but you know, we had fun making it.
Felicio Alversa: Having your movie being so great with reviews and everything else, how do you expect viewers to react to the sequel?
Charlie Day: I’m hopeful that they’re really going to like it. I expect people to be skeptical and I hope that they’re pleasantly surprised.
Jason Bateman: I’m pretty fair about being objective and I really enjoyed the first one just as a viewer and I watched this one with that same perspective and I genuinely liked it even more than the first so I’m actually feeling kind of bullish so if people see it the way I see it they’re going to be very happy with this one so I’m feeling good.
Felicio Alversa: So do you think it’s going to be a lot more humorous than the first one?
Jason Bateman: It’s every bit as funny and the pace and the action and the way it looks and the plot twist, it’s a lot more than it needs to be I think.
Alejandra Martinez: It’s been about three years since the last film; I was just wondering what it was like to revisit these characters? How have things changed for them since the first movie?
Charlie Day: It was really fun for the three of us to get back together again because we enjoy each other’s company and we had such a great time making the first one. And as characters it’s a terrible thing for the three of these people to get back together again because they keep getting themselves into some serious trouble here.
Jonathan Diaz: You had such great chemistry in the first film, the second time around were things easier or did you feel a little bit of pressure to make things as good as the first?
Jason Sudeikis: We certainly felt a pressure amongst ourselves and then on behalf of fans of the movie but that pressure gets released the second you start working and the harder you work the looser you get and we just have a good time making each other laugh and trying to have the thing make sense.
Jason Bateman: And it would be pressure packed if we were doing the same material. I don’t think we could do that first film, I don’t think we would be able to repeat the performance in that film again but this is all new material so we haven’t seen it done before so basically we get a nice clean shot at it.
Shea Frasier: Do you find that you love acting in comedies such as ‘Horrible Bosses 2’ or do you prefer a different genre of film or TV and are you looking to experiment in a different genre?
Jason Sudeikis: It all feels the same. We’re lucky to get to do any of it, much less all of it. No complaints over here.
Charlie Day: I haven’t met a lot of actors that really strongly prefer one thing or the other. Most actors are lucky to get to do it so it’s fun to do any of it. And in terms of exploring other things, yeah, you always want to try other things too.
Jason Sudeikis: Yeah, what do you got?
Riley Coven: You changed directors for the second movie and I was wondering what changes Sean Anders brought to the project, if any, and how was working with him?
Jason Sudeikis: It was great. Him and his writing partner John Morris are two of the best scriptwriters in Hollywood right now. They did a great job of rewriting “We’re the Millers” and it was like having two more writers on set with us and then there’s a whole chunk in the middle where it almost looks like a gosh darn Steven Soderbergh film that he had in his head. And then even the stuff of us starting the business, all the visual elements to it that feel like a Fincher movie, it’s like something right out of “Fight Club.”
Charlie Day: He walks a really good line of not completing reinventing it so that you don’t know what movie you’re watching and yet when it makes sense for the film to get a little more stylized he put a little more style into the second one and it fits the story. So I think he did a really good job that way.
Samantha Bandino: Is there anything creepy or different that your characters got to do in the sequel that became a part of it?
Jason Sudeikis: Yeah, every scene together. Which is a crazy notion that I couldn’t have enjoyed more. But the first movie we spent the first thirty minutes in each of our own little movie with our own horrible boss and in this one it’s just right off the bat all three sitting next to each other on a couch. That’s my answer.
Jason Bateman: We also got to do a little bit of green screen work which is when they shoot something in front of a big green piece of fabric that lets them put a different background in later so that was kind of an interesting part of the filmmaking process we didn’t do on the first one. More usually relegated to the big effects movies so that was neat to see that part of the process.
Charlie Day: And then we got to have a fourth…
Jason Sudeikis: Musketeer?
Charlie Day: Musketeer, in Chris Pine, for much of the movie and he brought a lot to it.
Jason Bateman: Brought a lot of hotness.
Charlie Day: He brought the looks.
Alan Fry: Alan, over from the Harvard Crimson here…
Charlie Day: Gotta drop the Harvard, you gotta drop it.
Jason Bateman: Yeah, I know your type!
Alan: In this movie you expanded the cast, like you said brought in Chris Pine for the most of the movie, Christoph Waltz, Kevin Spacey, Jonathan Banks, Keegan-Michael Key. What was it like working with all these guys?
Jason Bateman: It’s pretty cool, this is a big silly commercial studio comedy and when you can class it up with some Oscar winners, it becomes a really nice balanced cocktail I think. You know, everyone loves a properly mixed cocktail, am I right Harvard? So it was really cool to work with all those different people, everyone seemed to really understand what we were making and it made for a good time.
Jason Sudeikis: It’s really flattering to make the first one and have it exist and then when you’re making the second one to have people say, “Oh yeah, I want to be a part of that,” and so it’s so great of you to mention Keegan and Jonathan Banks, who was in one of my favorite movies of all time, “Beverly Hills Cop,” so to be in a movie with him is awesome and I’ve known Keegan forever, there’s a lot of Second City people in this movie and you love the fact that they want to come on board.
Charlie Day: Especially for a sequel where sometimes a sequel can lack the quote unquote, prestige, of the first movie and to get actors of that caliber and actresses is great.
