An Asshole on My Elbow

Last Pictures’ latest film is entitled Asshole and is about one. But who is the asshole and whose asshole is it?

It started with Bryan Gaynor, whose asshole was so itchy and uncomfortable that he asked his doctor about it. There was no solution really, no state-of-the-art ass hair trimmer or sudden influx of bidets in the United States, so he was out of luck and not happy about it.

Bryan isn’t truly an asshole, but flirts with it occasionally, and when he’s angry and in physical pain, he tends to transform like the Hulk. But instead of truly berating his doctor, he wrote a screenplay about someone who could do it for him.

The script was very funny but also contained an emotional pain beneath its surface. It revealed a character who delivers caustic and insulting dialogue rat-a-tat-tat, but is really just trying to protect himself – to build a wall. In the course of one visit to the doctor, he meets his match and maybe, finds redemption.

I loved the script immediately, even if Bryan didn’t. It was unpolished and somewhat rambling, sure, but the emotional core was there and the rest could be tightened. I suggested to him that I direct it. It was a strange proposition, Bryan and I are both writers, both directors. We have written together, we have directed together, but one of us hasn’t directed something the other wrote. He agreed, sort of, probably thinking the film would never be made anyway.

I don’t know if Bryan saw the film in his head but I knew I did. There was something vintage about it, something old-school and textured. It was a Woody Allen comedy dressed in Vincent Gallo’s leather jacket and greasy hair. It was a mean film, a loud film – one that wouldn’t shut up or let go of you until it finally exhausts itself and finishes. It was a sketch that ran too long and a film that didn’t have enough scenes. In the course of ten or so pages we meet someone we hate and then come to love him. We hate him because he treats people terribly and we love him because he really doesn’t hate anyone but himself.

The performance needed to be nothing less than a tour de force. But who is the force? There was no point in making the film until we found him. So it languished. It languished for quite some time. We came close to recruiting a cast member from the much beloved cancelled series “Undeclared.” He even read for us, too. But he didn’t like toilet humor. His humor was cleaner, more sly than bombastic. He thought the bits about the asshole should be removed. Well – politely – fuck that.

A few months later Bryan and I were on set with a comedian named Gavin McInnes, who, frankly, knocked our socks right off. He and another comedian, Derrick Beckles, were sitting in front of a green screen as newscasters riffing about a cross-country road race involving famous rappers that hadn’t occurred yet. We watched them improv consistently – and absolutely hilariously – with little direction and no script, for almost four hours.

It was an incredible thing to watch.

Gavin, who looked the part, spent his time off camera making fun of Bryan and I, our clothes, and pretty much everything we said. We knew we had our Asshole.

Gavin is the co-founder of Vice Magazine, just about the best and most influential comedy and culture magazine of the last fifteen years. He is a comedy icon, but mostly among comedians because he, ya know, doesn’t star in his own sitcom on CBS.

We contacted him and he responded. We held a reading. He did the script once through straight then proceeded to make it his own. To make it funnier. He took the words on the page and skewered them, ripped them up and put them back together again into a twisted, sickeningly funny barrage of dialogue. He sat across the table from Ray Chow (who wonderfully plays our Dr. Wong), and directed his total energy toward him. Barely glancing at the script, Gavin looked at him, challenged him, yelled at him, offended him.

He told us he’d do the film and all he needed was a few cue cards for the subjects he would cover.

A month and a half later, we were on set. DP Matt Mitchell was gelling the windows of the Westchester doctor’s office and Gavin was an hour late. He called and said he was just getting into character so he wasn’t sorry. It didn’t matter.

When he arrived, he hadn’t read the script since our meeting. I started on Ray’s angle for the first section of the script to let Gavin get up to speed. When we turned around, he jumped out of the gate like a horse at the Belmont. He was fiery and alive. He was mean. But four takes in he had run out of steam. I quickly realized the delicate nature of an improvisational film, one that required multiple takes with comparable levels of energy. If Gavin came up with something phenomenal one take, the next he might say it again but with far less gusto. It would sound stale, as if his riffs only had a shelf life as long as they remained in his head.

For it to be funny it must be fresh. Repeat, for it to be funny it must be fresh.

You don’t really direct someone like Gavin. You get out of his way. You shape what he is doing, you trap it between the four corners of the frame. But you don’t tell him how to be funny.

I directed this film by managing the takes – by giving Gavin enough time to get up to speed but not allowing him to run out of it. The film is basically a ten minute conversation, so I divided it into sections and emotional beats that the actors could focus on during one single take.

The film is so goddamn funny and I hope you all enjoy it. It’s an unapologetically dirty comedy with an emotionally true darkness sewn through it. I can’t wait to unleash the truly Great comedic performance Gavin McInnes gave us.