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WR: Jonathan was very nice, because a lot of times a director will take the script away from a writer, where Jon & I were very collaborative.

SR: Yeah, you guys sat together and re-wrote it.

WR: I feel like Seth is very fortunate, because every movie you’ve ever worked on, you’ve had a lot of creative input, because you’ve been a producer as well.

SR: For the most part, not for every single movie.

WR: But for most writers, that’s not how it works. So Jon was really awesome in making it a collaborative effort. Most of the changes had to do less with the overall arc, and more with the individual scenes – just pushing the conflict or dramatic elements a little bit further. Just getting to know the characters a little bit better. … I mean [Seth & producer Evan Goldberg] pushed me really hard … being friends they knew that they could push me.

SR: Yeah, me and Evan are not an easy audience for scripts. We are really hard on the material and with every scene go, “Why is this in here? Why is this in here? Why is this line here? Why the fuck is he doing this? Who would do that?” (banging the table with each question).

WR: When it came time to shoot every scene, the day or a few before we would go over the scene, and those guys would push me and raise all those questions, and I would just re-write the scenes as we were shooting.

SR: Which actors hate (laughs).

WR: But our actors really liked it. For me, I thought it was so great, because the scene I am most proud of is with Joe and [Anna Kendrick] where she calls him out and goes, “Your mother’s got a husband who can’t talk to her and a son who won’t talk to her,” and that I wrote literally two hours before I shot the scene –

SR: Because we were screaming at him that it sounded like bullshit advice (both laugh). “What fucking therapist would say this?!” (laughs)

WR: They were pushing me really hard. I was just working on the scene and we shot it without the approval of the studio. I knew when I wrote that, it was an awesome…

SR: (rolls eyes) Approval of the studio (laughs).

Did you find the script cathartic to write at all?

WR: Yeah, 100%. The way Adam is throughout the movie, having so much trouble talking about how he is feeling, that was very much how I was. We just joked about things, never sitting around talking about what my feelings were and how painful it was at times. Being able to write about it and process it all; and in the process of writing to talk about it with Seth and Evan, that really enabled to get a lot of it out of my system. I think there is this tendency when you go through a situation like that where you just want to run away… and that was very much my initial reaction. After I had my surgery and rehabilitated, I just wanted to get back to my normal life. Actually having to sit down and write this movie, I found that there was so much that I wanted to get and out and say. Even though the movie is fiction, that emotion is very true to how I felt.

In the movie, it is clear, however, that the second best catharsis besides friendship was medicinal marijuana.

SR: (laughs) It helps the character.

WR: Yeah, that’s real. [Seth] was my pusher. He really does have a prescription.

SR: I do, and I’m fine (laughs).

WR: Weed was really the most helpful thing going through that for me, because I had so much pain in my back that it was the only way I could sleep through the night … without Seth holding me (both laugh).

Are you guys working on any scripts right now?

SR: Yeah, the same exact group of people that made this movie – Will is writing the script, Jon is supposed to direct, and me and Evan are producing.

WR: It’s loosely inspired by a vacation I took with my grandmother when I was 14. It was just my grandmother and I, we went to Jamaica and somehow, accidentally ended up at a couples resort, and my grandmother had just developed Alzheimer’s and no one knew it so I lost her. She took a tour bus into Kingston, which is the murder capital of the world.

SR: And you have to find her! (laughs)

WR: I know, it sounds hilarious.

SR: That’s our next “comedy.” (both laugh)

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