“We brought her in for an audition because she was friends with Kristen and Annie, and we were having trouble casting that role. “I had never met her before in my life,” he laughs. It’s quite astonishing, then, that Feig didn’t actually know who she was before he met her at a table read. Nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as sister of the groom Megan in Bridesmaids, since then McCarthy’s become one of the highest paid actresses in the world. James in Gilmore Girls -it was Bridesmaids that truly pushed Melissa McCarthy into the mainstream.
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Though she was relatively famous before Bridesmaids-perhaps most recognizable for her TV roles including as Sookie St. Women should have the right to create and star in terrible comedies just as much as men… It’s the equivalent of the idea that women in various forms of employment automatically have to be that much better than their male counterparts. The fact that they are allowed to exist and stand or fall on their own merits is crucial. Not every one of those projects is gold and nor should they have to be. But the reality is, it did.įeig is demure when we bring up how much the movie changed the film world, but he concedes that it did help to prove to studio execs that female-led films can make money. Feig explains that female writer friends who were pitching ideas for female casts at the time Bridesmaids was being made were all told across the board, “We have to wait and see how Bridesmaids does.” That is a whole lot of pressure for one movie-the idea that Feig’s comedy would influence the cinematic landscape for an entire gender. It should just have been a funny comedy starring funny people.” It was like ‘Wow, if this is subversive, that’s kind of a sad indictment of the industry that we’re in.’ It was annoyingly subversive. “It just made me mad because the whole subversive thing was, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s a movie starring women.’ And it was like, ‘Really?’ It was 2009 or 2010 at the time we were making it. “But everybody kept talking to us like it was!” he says.
Certainly Feig never considered the movie to be subversive at the time. While the movie itself remains fresh, funny, and sweet, that it was considered quite so daring just 10 years ago is a bit of a shock now. When we tell him we can’t quite believe it’s been 10 years he laughs, “You can’t? Imagine how I feel!” Feig is in Belfast and into week four of his fantasy adaptation The School for Good and Evil (based on the book). release was May 13, 2011), Den of Geek is chatting with director Paul Feig via Zoom. And it shines just as strong today.Ī week ahead of Bridesmaids’ 10th birthday (its original U.S. From a script written by Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig (who also stars), featuring a wedding where romance is in no way the focus of the movie, and starring a host of funny women, a smattering of gross-out humor, and some of the most honest and empathetic depictions of female friendship around, Bridesmaids was a beacon. Ten years on, it seems both like yesterday when the film came out and also a whole era away: a time when women headlining a comedy movie was somehow strange, “chick flicks” were accepted to be a lesser form of cinema, and The Hangover was considered the pinnacle of hilarity.
Quotes on other posters included proclamations like, “Chick flicks don’t have to suck!” (Movieline) and “Better Than The Hangover!” (Cosmopolitan). It might as well have continued “comes a comedy starring… women!” While the producer in question, Judd Apatow, had nearly created his own subgenre of modern coming-of-age comedies featuring male friendships (regardless of the age his characters were ‘coming of’), a credible, genuinely funny, ensemble laugher starring all women was virtually unheard of.
“From the producer of Superbad, Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin” headlines the 2011 poster for Bridesmaids.