This I Don’t Understand You interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
I Don’t Understand You is a destination romantic comedy (gone wrong) starring Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells. Dom and Cole are a married couple on a path towards adopting a baby. They go to Italy for their wedding anniversary, where things go awry.
Co-writers/directors Brian Crano and David Joseph Craig based much of the film’s story on their experience of becoming fathers, as well as having a trip to Italy go wrong.
LadyJenevia: Since I Don’t Understand You is a fusion of comedy and horror, what are some of the formative artists or works from those genres that inspired your creative approach to making this film?
Crano: I would say Silence of the Lambs is probably a perfect movie. It has nothing to do with our movie but it’s warped my brain. I saw that movie when I was like nine or something so… I like things that are genuinely scary but where the characters are also people that you believe in.
Craig: We also take a lot of reference from bonkers ’90s films where the industry used to give people tons and tons of money to do whatever they wanted to do. A big reference for me has always been Death Becomes Her. Robert Zemeckis is probably my film hero in a lot of ways, but specifically Death Becomes Her is a big number one in my book. Getting to do my won stairs stunt was a dream come true.
LadyJenevia: I love that. The morbid it go, the more I went, “Is this giving me notes of John Waters, or something like that?”
Both: Yes!
Craig: Also, I just recently got to see Pink Flamingos in the theatre with a bunch of people. It’s amazing.
LadyJenevia: How much room did you give your actors to improvise? Were there any lines or scenes you were more particular about keeping exactly the way that you wrote them?
Crano: The great thing about working with Andrew and Nick is they’re so good and you know that there’s a lot of mutual trust between the four of us. If they had a real strong instinct about something or anything they wanted to try, we were always happy to do it. We’re all telling the same story. It was very comfortable. If somebody had ideas, we would just try them out.
Craig: But they loved the script itself so they were really excited to shoot what we had. Of course you hire Nick and Andrew, you want them to play around with each other, too.
LadyJenevia: You did something else I really loved which was to include a mid credit scene that was not sequel bait but merely an organic continuation of the story you’ve already told. How did you decide to include that part of your story in that specific format?
Crano: That was something we played around with a lot. We had initially omitted the scene. There was a moment of the audience being like, “Well how did they get away with it? How did that work?” We tried different placements of it to give you just enough to let you know what happened.
Craig: We also set up so many moments that led to that. We just needed to give the audience some reprieve of what actually happened.
LadyJenevia: I’m actually fresh off of coming back from a trip of my own, which is why I sound like I have a cold. I couldn’t help but feel as though in watching this film, there was this element of almost satirising the bad reputation that Americans have as tourists. How much of what was playing into how you developed the story?
Craig: Thank you! That was on the forefront of our brains the whole time, the story of accommodation that we as Americans mostly think that we deserve when we’re travelling abroad rather than actually acclimatising to the place that we’re at and enjoying the difference. We thrived on that, that sort of idiosyncrasy that we as Americans tend to utilise.
Crano: It’s just so fun to put in. It’s so relatable in a way that you as a viewer, you’re like, “Yeah, I do that. I talk loud for no reason.”
Craig: “I speak seven times louder than I usually do because that’s how people will understand me.”
LadyJenevia: One quick final question, just to wrap everything up. Being that this is also a rom com and I love rom coms, would each of you like to recommend any of your favourite rom coms?
Crano: That’s a deep one. That’s a deep cut.
Craig: I’ll always recommend When Harry Met Sally but also, my sleep movie for the longest time was Never Been Kissed which, if you have seen it in a long time, holds up..
Crano: I would say The Proposal. I think it’s really underrated.
Craig: What’s yours?
LadyJenevia: I was just re-watching Lisa Frankenstein, which was my favourite film of last year.
Craig: That’s Zelda’s, right?
LadyJenevia: Yes, Zelda Williams.
Craig: I haven’t seen it yet. I need to see it.
LadyJenevia: The ways that your movie escalates… that movie escalates in a similar way, without giving away spoilers.
Craig: Thanks for the recommendation!
I Don’t Understand You is playing now in cinemas.
Watch my full I Don’t Understand You interviews with stars Nick Kroll, Andrew Rannells, and co-writers/directors Brian Crano and David Joseph Craig here:
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