By Alexa Di Benedetto, News Correspondent
“Project X” is the story of three seemingly-anonymous high school seniors whose attempt to throw a good party results in chaos. Filmed in the style of a home-video, the movie is rife with drugs, alcohol, naked girls and flamethrowers – yes, flamethrowers – and is a warning to parents and police everywhere. Produced by Todd Phillips, director of “The Hangover,” and based on a story by “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” screenwriter Michael Bacall, “Project X” is rated R and comes to theaters March 2.
The News met with the film’s lead actors, Thomas Mann, who plays the anxiety-ridden birthday boy, Oliver Cooper, the vivacious party organizer, and Jonathan Daniel Brown, the quiet nerd who goes along for the ride.
Huntington News: What was the scene you guys had the most fun with?
Thomas Mann: There was this one moment after the cops come and leave for the first time. Everyone’s hushed and they’re all crowded in the back yard. Then I come out and I’m like, “Till the break of dawn!” And the crowd just erupts. That was just electric and amazing. The energy in the place was incredible.
Jonathan Daniel Brown: My favorite moment is probably everything post-ecstasy. That’s when the movie starts building toward its climax. I think in the beginning of the movie people are like, “Oh, well this can’t get any crazier,” and then it just goes to like ultra-insane town.
Oliver Cooper: I love the part with the Taser. One of my favorite scenes we shot is toward the end with me and the neighbor. He says something like, “You burned my tree, you owe me a tree,” or something, and in response I went [expletive] crazy on him. That was so much fun to shoot. I love that stuff. I love just pounding some Red Bull and going apeshit with the lines.
TM: Yeah, I felt like an action star shooting that stuff at the end.
OC: I was so [expletive] tired at the end.
HN: Did you guys get worn out at any point?
OC: It was a five-week-long party. I was so tired. By the end I was hating all of the extras. I was just like, “Dammit, these people are back.” Towards the end I was showing up with baggy eyes. We’d been shooting all day for five weeks, 5 p.m. to 6 a.m.
JD: My sleep schedule still hasn’t recovered, I still go to bed at 3 or 4 a.m. every night, it’s not healthy. You know, I have this massive FOMO after “Project X” – “Fear of Missing Out.”
HN: What were you guys doing before the film?
JD: Crying.
OC: A whole lot of nothing. I was trying to pursue … stand-up [comedy]. I was pursuing something, I don’t know.
TM: I had done one movie earlier that year, and then I was just auditioning and this came along.
OC: Yeah, like nine auditions later. It was a game. It was a two-month period of hell, the audition process. Each one would be more exciting, but then there would be three weeks of nothing, and you’d think it was dead, and then they’d call you back. It was an emotional roller coaster. One week I auditioned five days, maybe two times in a day.
TM: And then the final day they had the three of us come in.
OC: We met with Joel Silver, who’s like the king of action. He’s one of the producers, he did “Lethal Weapon” and “The Matrix.” It was funny meeting him, because they didn’t officially tell us we got the parts, but they knew.
JD: They were pretty much like, “Just sit on this couch for 45 minutes and awkwardly get to know each other.”
OC: In the end he said, “How would you like to be in the next Warner Bros. movie?”
TM: It was like something out of a movie.
OC: Well, the Lakers were in the NBA finals that year and he had court-side seats, and he was trying to rush us out. And I walked out and I guess I was playing this whole confident thing, and I said, “Hey Joel, I heard you’re going to the Lakers game, if you need somebody to go with…” [points at himself]. And he just gave me a totally dead silence. He ignored me like no other. I don’t think I’ve talked to him since!
JB: Joel was very nice to me.
OC: I think before people see the movie there are [going to be] a lot of comparisons to “Superbad … a lot of it is the Jewish thing too, I think.
JD: There’s only one Jew in “Superbad.”
OC: Jonah Hill, Seth Rogan.
JD: Seth Rogan wasn’t one of the kids though.
OC: But he is a Jew.
JD: Well anyway, there’s no comparison…. In the test-screenings they actually asked people something like, “Nudity: Too much, not enough, or just right?” And I think most of the women polled actually said they were okay with it. I don’t know, that’s interesting to me, because if there was a scene with 20 random dicks in a pool, I’d be like, ugh, oh God.
OC: I guess toplessness has always been a little less provocative. If there were a bunch of vaginas in the movie, that would have been a problem.
TM: Well, there was that one girl peeing.
JD: Yeah, and she’s peeing for real.
HN: The documentary style also sets the movie apart. The way it’s filmed makes it much more realistic.
TM: And the comedy is different too, it’s not so polished.
OC: I like comedy, and this movie – you couldn’t really do it like that. Comedy doesn’t play well in a documentary, it’s not cut like that. You can’t do a punchline, and if you [do] it’ll feel forced.
TM: Also, any familiar face would’ve affected it.
JD: This genre could never work with major celebrities.
TM: [Director Nima Nourizadeh] just wanted it to feel as authentic as possible, so there were a lot of us just hanging out. That’s how we prepared for our roles – just hanging out and getting to know each other.
HN: Were there any parts of the movie you felt uncomfortable filming?
TM: The dancing was really uncomfortable. We couldn’t play music when we were doing some of the dancing scenes because there was dialogue, and so we had what was called a thump track playing, but it was basically silence. It was the weirdest thing!
HN: How was it working with the extras? There were obviously a lot of very pretty women in the film.
JB: Some of the extras took their partying very seriously. Some of them were fired for sneaking in booze or bringing drugs to the set. But some of them were very serious. There was this one extra, this girl who did the most explicit grinding I’ve ever seen. She bent over, thrust herself into me and slapped herself. Crazy moves.
TM: Yeah, the extras would throw parties on the weekends. One of them got clever enough to start handing out flyers.
JB: I saw that girl at one of those parties on the weekend and she was like, “Hey, do you remember me?” and I said, “Yeah, you’re the girl who does the really crazy grinding,” and she was like, “You know what? I’m an actress, and that was for the scene.” And she walked off like I’d offended her.
