“We put in the whole firemen/Candice blowjob/horse dick/diarrhea stuff after the fact.”

~ Trevor Moore

By Rachel Nichols  |  Send to Friend

Trevor Moore and Zach Cregger play the leads in their first feature film, Miss March, a would-be road trip sex flick featuring the boys on a quest to enter the forbidden gates of the Playboy Mansion. They’re also two of The Whitest Kids You Know, a five man comedy troupe who’s IFC show is popular among college students and anyone with a wildly open-minded sense of humor. On their uninhibited show, their subject matter ranges from bestiality to their version of Abraham Lincoln's assassination. They almost never use outside actors, dressing themselves up as women (and animals, when necessary) and have created a singular kind of aggressive  comedic style, a laugh track for the Millennial Generation. Still, if any of this impresses Moore and Cregger, you wouldn't know it from their patented lack-of-caring attitude. The duo are laid back, to say the least, even if it’s obvious they’re promoting their first movie. They aren't so quick to spout off the usual calculated, PR-enhanced stock answers.

two.one.five: What were your first impressions of each other?

Trevor Moore: We pretty much started writing as soon as we met each other--

Zach Cregger: Intense sexual attraction.

TM: Yeah, well, now that you mention it.

two.one.five: Is there anything you won’t joke about, specific scenarios where you just won’t go?

ZC: It’s not like there’s any topic that’s off limits, it’s more about how you deal with it. We’ll talk about anything just as long as we try to be conscious not to do it from a malicious point of view.

TM: The spirit is more important than the topic.

two.one.five: When you were writing the film, did you find it difficult writing a character for a full-length feature as opposed to a sketch?

ZC: You have to know your characters much better because they’re on screen for so long. They have to be defined or they’re not going to be believable. So, for both of these characters, Eugene and Tucker, we had to know how much money they had in their bank account, what their family life was like growing up, what they like to eat, what they do in their free time. In a sketch it’s like, "this character is loud and silly," and that’s fine.

TM: The easy thing about the sketches is that you don’t really care if anyone likes the character. You come in and hit the seven or eight jokes you really wanted to hit on the topic and get out, and whatever, the character doesn’t exist anymore. But with the film, people are going to spend an hour and a half with both of them so you have to make sure people don’t hate them.

ZC: They’re both pretty hateable characters: Tucker [slides] his way through life, hurting people and not caring; and Eugene basically never does anything but complain.

TM: If you don’t ground them in some way or show a relatable side to them, it’s just "this guy's a prick," and "this guy's annoying."

two.one.five: Did you write the film knowing which character you were going to play?

ZC: We just kind of gravitated toward the roles that we play. From the beginning there was never really any debate about who was going to be who.

two.one.five: Was the film originally an idea for a sketch that was drawn out or did you think “let’s get super ambitious and do a movie”?

TM: Actually, Fox came to us with a script called "Playboys" that was written for Zach and [me]: The characters were named Zach and Trevor. We liked the idea, in which a guy goes into a coma and his girlfriend ends up in "Playboy," but we didn’t really like anything else, so we gutted the script and changed everything. We did a complete rewrite, changed the characters and instead of having both of them be these fratty guys who were trying to break into the White House--

ZC: There’s the sequel. Cindy becomes the president.

TM: We changed the characters to have them be more dynamic. One guy is very afraid of sex, puts sex up on a pedestal, in the way that he’s terrified of it and it's hurting his relationship. And, on the other end of the spectrum, we’ve got a guy who’s putting sex up on a pedestal in the sense that he’s obsessed with it and that’s hurting his relationship. So, it’s about these two opposite view points on sex and finding the middle ground for both characters. We made that what the movie is about, and then we put in the whole firemen/Candice blowjob/horse dick/diarrhea stuff after the fact.

two.one.five: How was working with Hugh Heffner?

TM: He’s a really nice old dude. He’s super sharp. He’s 80-some-years old but still quick. He came to the set really prepared and really open to poke fun at himself. Sarah Gene Underwood, who is the Playmate in the movie, was touring with us, and she was saying that the day before we shot, Heffner was going over his lines and was even nervous about getting it right because it was the most speaking lines he’s had in a cameo, so that’s kind of cool. He didn’t need to do this movie, he’s got plenty of money, it’s just a blip on his radar, but he took it seriously and did really, really well.

ZC: He has a lot of monkeys. He’ll still make sex jokes, too. He was going upstairs for a 20-minute break, and said "Zach how much time do I have?" and I said, "Twenty minutes" and he was like, "Time for a quickie."

two.one.five: So would you guys consider doing a 'Whitest Kids' movie?

TM: We’re working on it. But we can’t tell you what it’s about yet.

two.one.five: How was it to direct your first film? Is that something you want to do in the future?

TM: Directing is great. We would definitely want to direct the 'Whitest Kids' movie. But,  otherwise, I’d direct only if there were something that came along I was really invested in. Directing is a huge chunk of your life, two to three years to actually get involved. It’s something you have to be sure that you really want to spend a couple years doing.

ZC: I’m pretty much on the same page. It would have to be the right thing. In this business, you never know when the bottom is going to fall out. I just hope we get to make another film after this. I have my sights set on the 'Whitest Kids' movie and after that, who knows?

TM: I don’t know how interested I would be in directing if it was just for the paycheck. I don’t think I could ever direct something I wasn’t really passionate about

ZC: For me, it depends on the paycheck.

two.one.five:  What might you tell an inexperienced writer about developing their comedy?

TM: It sounds cliché, but just keep doing it. What we did was a monthly show -- we would write a new show every month in college. Then, when we got out of college, we started doing this weekly show at a club called Piano’s and in order to keep people coming back we’d write a new show every week, or try to. That forced us into comedy boot camp. We’d work our 9-5, five days a week, write all day Saturday, rehearse all day Sunday and then do the show Sunday night. We’d go back to work on Monday and then repeat. We did that for four years and gave all of our free time up to it. The more you do something, the better you get at it. There’s an old saying, 'treat what you want to do as your job and eventually it will become your job.'

ZC: For young comedians that want to write or make sketches, you can’t underestimate the value of performing live. That lets you know what you’re doing that’s working and what you’re doing that’s not working. If you put a video up on YouTube you can’t rely on the hits to tell you if it’s good or not, you can’t tell if people are laughing. But, if you perform live you know, it’s immediately obvious. For us, that’s been crucial.