"It's A Disaster" With Director Todd Berger

Hello there.

Todd Berger. Todd Berger, that's me.

I'm a renaissance man, really. I'm a man of many talents, a master of none. But I would primarily say I am a writer-director. I'm an actor being a distant third.

You did. You did. I played a photographer in an episode from season two. I also am currently in a Dairy Queen commercial that has become fairly ubiquitous, but I feel like they're showing every five minutes. So keep an eye out for that.

Well, so I had to drive about an hour and a half east of Los Angeles. I'm here in Los Angeles, and I had to drive about an hour and a half east because that's where the closest Dairy Queen actually was. And then the commercial was for chicken strips, like a chicken strip basket. And so the first couple times we did it, I would take a bite of the chicken strip and I would actually eat it. And then the assistant director came over after the first couple takes and said, you're going to want to start spitting that out into a spit bucket. And I was like, no, no, it's fine. I don't mind anything. No, I don't think you understand how many times you're going to have to eat these things. And I probably bit into and then chewed 100 chicken strips. I'm not exaggerating, 100 over the course of three or four hours. And I didn't want a chicken strip for a couple months.

Just all chicken. No, the Blizzard machine wasn't even working.

No, I was going to say, hey, can I get a Blizzard for the ride home? And they had shut down the actual restaurant for the day to shoot the commercial, and the Blizzard machine wasn't even on, and I was so sad.

No, that was James Franco, I believe is his name. That movie was called This Is the End, and that's actually a remake of my film. My film came out in April.

The remakes are coming a lot faster these days. So my film came out in April, and they already had a remake out by June. Kind of impressive.

And I believe there's already a remake. I think in August, there's a remake called The World's End. They remade This Is the End, which was a remake of It's a Disaster. But It's a Disaster in actuality was a remake of Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, which in itself was, I believe, a remake of something, some French movie.

Yeah. Like eventually it's all just going to be one movie out there. We're all going to be in it. It's going to be a great time.

Well, I mean, iPhones were an option, but we actually shot on the Arri Alexa, which is a very nice high-definition camera. We shot all in one house. We did not stay in the house, but we did, in lieu of trailers, we decided to rent the house across the street and have that be like the cast hangout house because we didn't have any money for the movie. And we quickly learned that the house across the street that we had rented here in Los Angeles was the house that Marvin Gaye had been murdered in in 1984. Yeah, so it was, I'm pretty sure, haunted by his ghost.

No, we never did, but Erinn Hayes, one of the actresses in the film who plays Emma, she is convinced she was impregnated with Marvin Gaye's ghost baby.

I'm not sure if she came to term or what happened with that, but she was fairly convinced that she was carrying a ghost baby. I haven't talked to her about it in a while, though.

It would. Marvin Gaye.

Oh, I didn't even think about that. That's a whole...

That's right. It's bispectral at that point, I think.

Well, it wasn't the Best Audience Award, because I'm sure the audience was great in all of the films, but we won Best Film given by the audience. I believe the Best Audience Award went to the audience for The Sapphires.

That audience was pretty great. I mean, our audience was okay, but that really was the best audience. So, I will give you that.

Oh, yeah. It's like Studio 54 in the 70s where you kind of have to stand outside with a velvet rope and you have to look people over. I don't want to say you're profiling. I'm not going to use that word. But there is a lot of like you, you, and you, you're in. If anyone looks like they're not going to be a good audience member, like they probably won't laugh. Or they might be like heavy breathers. You'll turn them away. You have to be very critical when it comes to picking your audience.

I live in Los Angeles. And there's a constant fear of earthquakes here. You know people are always talking about... A constant thing that you always say is, for instance, I was at a bar on Saturday night, and at this bar, it was like a mixology bar, and there was this giant, like, weird chandelier hanging right over our heads, and someone said, wow, I wouldn't want to be here in an earthquake. And that's a constant thing that people say all the time here in L.A. is, wow, I wouldn't want to be here in an earthquake. If you're in a crowded elevator, someone would be like, wow, I hope there's not an earthquake. And so when there is going to be an earthquake, we all assume we're going to be home. Like you assume you're going to be in bed or on your couch at home, there's a very good chance you'll be in your car, you'll be at the bank, you'll be at a dinner party. You don't know where you're going to be, and you don't know who you're going to be stuck with. So I love the idea of being somewhere unexpected during a horrible disaster, and that's when I came up with this idea of like a very uncomfortable couples brunch that you don't even want to go to in the first place. And then when you get there, it's the end of the world, and you're now stuck with these people maybe for the rest of your life.

It was interesting because everyone has brought their own kind of different take. Everyone has their own approach to acting. And, you know, I just tried to acclimate to what they were used to. And, you know, Julia, for instance, would kind of, you know, want to bring me aside before we were to shoot and be like, let's talk about the scene. America Ferrera really likes to get into her character, and she plays a chemistry teacher in the movie. And America accidentally enrolled in a four-year college to get a degree in educational studies and then spent two years teaching chemistry at inner city schools just to know what it was like. All in research for this movie.

Yeah, and she then actually went to a dentist's office and asked them to douse her with low levels of radiation just so she could feel what it would be like. And I thought that was a lot of dedication. Whereas David just kind of showed up and did what I told him.

Yeah, she went to Burning Man for two weeks. She changed her name to Star Moon, which doesn't even make sense to me. I don't understand what a star moon is. But she went to Burning Man for two or three weeks. She set up a little commune out there and was on, I think, Special K, Ecstasy, all of them. I would get a lot of strange text messages from her at all hours of the night.

Well, I did do a documentary a few years ago. I'm from New Orleans, and I did a documentary about the first Mardi Gras after Katrina, the hurricane, if you remember that.

And parts of it are serious, you know, because it's about the destruction of a major American city, but it's also, it has a lot of funny parts in it because it's about the spirit of New Orleans and the can-do spirit that the city had in order to put Mardi Gras on. But there are some touching parts in it. And that was probably a big inspiration for me as well, for It's a Disaster, growing up in a city where hurricanes were constantly rolling up and threatening to destroy us all.

I do, you know? You're like a war correspondent in a way. Yeah, I'm like Brad Pitt in World War Z. I just like to go from one hot zone to the next.

I guess I really just, you know, I grew up loving like screwball comedies like the Marx Brothers and things like that, where the humor came not only from, you know, jokes, but from like awkward looks into the camera and awkward moments and awkward silences. And then I really like Christopher Guest movies, Waiting for Guffman, and the awkwardness of satire more than I ever liked Adam Sandler movies or movies where people fell down the stairs. So I just try to take that kind of screwball, but low-key screwball approach, if that makes any sense, and bring that to the film. Because that's how I live my life every day. Like, I give a lot of people, I roll my eyes a lot and then look to a camera that's not really there. And people are always like, what are you looking at? And I'm like, what? And they're like, I just said something, and then you looked over and rolled your eyes. Who are you rolling your eyes at? And I'm like, I wasn't looking at anyone.

Well, you could probably look into changing your name. I think you can do it at the Department of Motor Vehicles. But if you just want to be someone like Todd Berger, which is me, you know I would say I once interviewed Matthew McConaughey in Austin, Texas when I used to work for the student television station and he was at a movie premiere and I was on the other side I was working for the student television station and I asked him, Matthew what advice would you give to young filmmakers and he said two things first he said one day at a time, big picture in mind and then he said you gotta pick a direction, north, south, east or west and then you gotta give yourself five, six lanes to swerve. So I think that sums up my philosophy on becoming an artist right there.

Oh yeah.

Well, you know, I'm always looking for people who are just committed, people who want to make something good versus people who just want to be famous, people who want to delve into the role. I'm always looking for hot, young, sexy, good-looking people. Because we would rather see that on screen. And as for writing a part for you, I mean, I haven't specifically written a part for you, but there is a script that I have that you could probably be a good fit for. It's about kind of this young adventurer, like kind of Indiana Jones type that my friend Blaise would play. But then there's his brother. It's kind of this like screw up loser who, you know, doesn't know what to do with his life. May or may not have some sort of Asperger's. We don't know.

So I could send you that.

You actually, we suspect there might be something wrong with him because he actually rarely ever wears pants. Even when it's set in Detroit in January.

And he's never, never wearing pants.

Well, you know, that's a character choice, really, that I'm going to let the actor explore. I'm going to expect the actor to do a lot, a lot of research. Really diving in. The way that, you know, what's his face? Daniel Day-Lewis kind of would really spend months and months getting into the role. I'm going to expect that it plays this part to Daniel Day-Lewis, this role.

Oh, sure. I'll give you that off air.

No, people can see it wherever movies are available. You can get it on Netflix, on iTunes, On Demand, on Amazon, your local library. That's not even a joke. You can actually go to your library and find it. Really, wherever movies are available. In hotels. I think it's in hotel rooms right now.

Yes we'll do it again. All again one day. Thank you.