Mindhole Blowers: 20 Facts About Bridesmaids That Might Make You Sh*t Your Pants
By Cindy Davis | Posted Under Seriously Random Lists | Comments (19)
I’m ever so snobby picky about comedy. In fact, until I saw Bridesmaids, the last comedy I liked was probably from the early 90s or made by John Hughes (or both). So, I have to give big props to Kristin Wiig and Annie Mumolo, with just one, little nitpick: Why must you perpetuate the foreign food/water = food poisoning myth? Sex and the City already played that card and though you took it to the next level, we could have done without it. But there’s no need to linger on that bathroom image long, because you two wrote a really funny script and all the actors clearly had a blast with the improv. Kristen’s timing, that awkward-mixed-with-pretty thing she has going and the quiet moments where every emotion showed on her face—all weaved through a background most women have experienced in some way or other—gave Bridesmaids the solid base from which all the funny could explode. Add in a couple of cute men and hysterically witty banter; I was utterly smitten.
- The opening sex scene between Annie (Kristin Wiig) and Ted (Jon Hamm) took a day to film and included direction to Hamm by Paul Feig (“The Office, Nurse Jackie”) to “pound Kristen harder.” There was alternate footage of Hamm being “really assholey” to Wiig; when that version was shown to “hipster friends,” they liked it but test audiences did not. Thus, it was decided to use “passive agressive” Hamm for the final version.
- Jon Hamm was once Ellie Kemper’s (Becca) high school drama teacher.
- It took months to get permission from each celebrity portrayed in Annie’s mom’s (Jill Clayburgh) caricatures; Kermit the Frog declined.
- Bridesmaids was Clayburgh’s last film. She died November 5, 2010.
- Because producer Judd Aptow didn’t want to tarnish Clayburgh’s memory, several dirty jokes were edited out of the film. Included in the DVD’s deleted scenes is footage of the actress explaining a “birdbath” (when a man pulls out his scrotum, forms a “cup” with the skin and fills it with beer so a woman can drink from it). When Wiig says she feels badly for making the actress say such things, Clayburgh replies that she “loves it.”
- Annie’s photograph of herself and Lillian was made from real childhood pictures of Kristen and Maya, with their heads merged onto other bodies.
- Among other it-really-happened scenes, co-writer Annie Mumolo drew from her own experience of driving a duct-taped broken down car up to valet parking at a country club engagement party.
- For her first appearance in the film, Melissa McCarthy wanted Megan to have a drink with the most fruit possible and modeled her character’s look on Food Network personality, Guy Fieri.
- Ben Falcone (Air Marshal Jon) is Melissa McCarthy’s (Megan) real-life husband. McCarthy is also cousin to actress, Jenny McCarthy. McCarthy was playing Tetris and watching an autopsy (televised) when Falcone proposed to her.
- During rehearsals, Paul Feig overheard Rose Byrne (Helen) speaking Thai and thought it was so good that he wrote out the engagement party speech scene to showcase her ability. When he gave Byrne the script and told her, “You’ll just say this in Thai,” she told him she didn’t speak the language—she was just making up words—and ended up having to say the words phonetically.
- Actor Chris O’Dowd (Nathan Rhodes) auditioned in an American accent, but everyone liked his Irish better. (Duh!)
- In the DVD commentary Kristen Wiig made it a point to say that the audience was not seeing her own hands during the baking (and many other close-up) shots. Because she was so busy, a hand stand-in was used for several scenes.
- When asked, “What were the actors’ favorite Craft Service item,” the answers were, “Veggies with peanut butter (Ellie), veggie chicken patties (Maya and Kristin) , chocolate Pop Tarts (Wendi) and flavored spa waters: cucumber and mint, tarragon and lemon (Melissa).”
- Helen’s stepdaughter was played by Paul Feig’s real life neighbor (Molly Buffington) and the cake-munching raccoons are the director’s own pets, “Sonny” and “Cher.”
- When Feig asked actress, Wendi McLendon-Covey (Rita) if she had any babysitting stories, she answered that she had once caught a kid shitting on a shag rug and trying to shovel it into the kitchen trash.
- Annie’s made-up boyfriend name was a tribute to “The Brady Bunch’s” Jan (who once pretended to have an imaginary boyfriend named George Glass).
- Kristen Wiig and Chris O’Dowd passed time playing “Would you rather…” Two questions Wiig and the director both remembered were, “Would you rather eat a dead cat or have a tooth growing out of your cheek?” and “Would you rather eat a sink full of bird shit or have a bird shit in your mouth every day for the rest of your life?”
- Kristen Wiig’s mother (white hair, pink shirt) is in the airplane scene, two rows up from Maya and Rose.
- The 13 year old girl who bantered with Annie in the jewelry store was played by (70s rocker) Peter Frampton’s daughter, Mia.
NSFW deleted scenes:
- The engagement party was filmed at the residence known as Wayne Manor Batman (1966).
- On the DVD commentary, Maya Rudolph (Lillian) said that a lot of people have asked her about asshole bleaching and she’s had to explain that it’s the skin (not hair) that is actually bleached.
- While filming the wedding scenes at the (Los Angeles County Arboretum) botanic gardens, director Paul Feig said he was “attacked by a killer peacock who locked eyes with and came after him.”
- In an extended scene of Megan and Air Marshal Jon with the hero sandwich, Megan slaps salami slices over Jon’s nipples and then eats them off.
- The film features a large amount of improv, with Wiig, Rudolph, McCarthy and McLendon-Covey all having done time at LA’s legendary The Groundlings theater.
Cindy Davis has never had her asshole bleached.
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Comments
Posted by: Marcela at October 4, 2011 3:12 PM
That is 10 minutes of brilliance. How could they go that long with such weird insults?!