Bringing Comedy to the Dance
Dance Flick Movie Trailer. When casting, the producers sought funny people who could dance, though not all were prepared for the kind of dancing the movie would feature. “Half of these people had never done anything like this,” says Rick Alvarez. “In fact, none of them had done anything like this in a movie.” Noted choreographer Dave Scott was brought onboard to get the cast in shape and devise the dance routines, an interesting choice since some of the movies being sent-up in “Dance Flick,” such as “Step Up 2,” “Stomp the Yard” and “You Got Served,” are movies Scott choreographed.
“It was kind of a double challenge for a choreographer, because not only are you choreographing scenes, but they have to do take-off on what you’ve done, as well as the work of other choreographers,” Scott explains. “It’s actually quite a compliment for Scott,” notes Shoshana Bush, “because he did such a good job on his movies, and we’re commenting on his good job. And now he gets to send-up the routines he created.” Doing a take-off of dance moves is not as simple as it might sound.
“When I got on the project,” says Scott, “I thought it was going to be, like, clowning the dancing, making fun of it – you know, horrible dancing, but it’s good dancing, with comedy thrown into it.”
“It was really important for the movie to have good dances and great dance movements,” Marlon Wayans says. “The dance in most of these movies that we’re sending-up is really good.” Adds Rick Alvarez, “That’s the difference between this movie just being a comedy and being a take-off of dance movies.”
The trick was how to make good dance funny. Scott watched all the original films, including his own, looking for places to inject the trademark Wayans humor. “Dave gave us a lot of insight into those movies and helped us find the punch lines,” says Alvarez. “He really set the tone for those scenes.”
“The great thing about Dave is that he’s very collaborative,” Damien says. “And he gets the joke. He gets the funny. He’s not one of those guys who’s making his own individual movie. He understands the joke. It’s one thing to do some really cool moves, but he was able to infuse comedy within the dance moves.”
Scott also credits his director with having a better-than-average understanding of dance. “Damien’s not a dancer, but he’s a huge fan of dance, so he has a lot to bring to the table that you wouldn’t, at first, expect,” he notes.
“He’ll go, ‘I want it to look like this, I want the feel of this film. I want the feel of that film.’ You can tell his knowledge isn’t just coming from the research he’s done. It’s because he has these different movies in his library already because he watches them. He’s an avid watcher of ‘So You Think You Can Dance,’ so he really likes different dance styles. My job, then, is to interpret what he wants from the dancers.”
The Wayans and Scott worked together to create the humor in the choreography. “They gave me all the parodies for the different movies to work on. I just did my research and they put the comic beats in,” he explains. “It was a great education for me because I know choreography, but they showed me how to put the comic beats into the dancing. It’s interesting, because what you think may be funny is funnier for a longer period of time depending on where the comic beat is in the routine. And that’s what they know best.”
The next challenge was to teach the actors how to do those funny moves, particularly since most didn’t have professional dance backgrounds. “In the casting process, a lot of the actors said they had dancing experience,” he laughs. “They lied.”
Brennan Hillard had some education and had taken a master class with Scott. Essence Atkins had some experience from previous work, but for the most part, the cast’s experience level was minimal.
“At my audition, Damien asked me, ‘Can you dance?’” recalls Chelsea Makela. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘I’m not going to lose this part because I said I couldn’t dance.’ So I answered him, ‘Of course I can dance!’”
Ross Thomas found himself unexpectedly surprised upon arrival at his audition. “I saw all these guys in the audition waiting room at Paramount with chains on, going, ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m Sinner 5, I’m D Boy 6’ – they all had these dance names. And I’m like, ‘Well, I’m Ross Thomas, and I gotta go in there in front of the Wayans and make a fool of myself right now.’”
“He wasn’t the best dancer we auditioned, but he was the funniest actor,” says Rick Alvarez. “So we brought him in, and he invested 120% in the dance sequences and it shows in the film.”
“Ross is a guy who probably has like 20 friends and they all told him that he’s dope. And then he walked outside,” says Scott. “But what Ross lacks in dance skills, he more than makes up for with his energy.”
“Damon could actually dance a little bit,” says Scott, “but he felt like he couldn’t, so he kind of made little noises when he was doing a move to accommodate what he thought he wasn’t doing right.”
Like any Wayans, he proved to be a quick study and an equally-quick improviser. “If you’d let him go and said, ‘Follow me,’ he’d do it his way. And what he thought was horrible actually looked good, and it worked for him because he’s funny. It was different, but it was funny. He could just mock me, follow me, and do what he thought I looked like and that’s where the comedy came in.”
To get the actors up to speed, Scott and his assistant, Kristi Crader, put them through a week or two of intensive “Millennium Class” boot camp. “We had two weeks of pre-production, and we danced our tushies off,” recalls Shoshana Bush. “He worked us hard. We actually had to change a lot of it last minute and he kept his cool. He just came in and worked his magic.” “We kept calling him ‘Dancing Jesus,’ because he does miracles,” Damon Jr. says of his teacher. “He made people who suck at dancing look like they can actually dance.”
Keeping The Brothers Laughing
Working with the Wayans family is like a comic’s paradise. The combination of backgrounds in outlandish humor, sketch comedy, improv and some good old fashioned bad taste make for a film set like no other. “I was like, ‘You mean, I get to come to work every day and have fun? This is a dream,’” recalls Shoshana Bush.
“I just kept coming every day hoping that we’d have to shoot more things,” adds Christina Murphy. “I remember one day I wasn’t getting any laughs, and it was because we were all laughed out. I mean, you come to the set, and it’s so hard to keep a straight face. They kept telling me, ‘Lock it up, lock it up, Murphy.’ It was just too much fun there. I actually asked them to tell me they’d fire me if I didn’t lock it up, just so we could get a scene done.”
The cast also found that their contributions and suggestions were always welcome. “It was an awesome experience,” says Essence Atkins. “It’s fun to come to work and know that you can just be creative, and you can be free, and you can improve and bring suggestions.” Director Damien Dante Wayans not only permitted such suggestions but encouraged them. “He was always great, in terms of filtering and taking in what we thought would work, but also encouraging us to be outrageous, to go the extra mile for the comedy, as long as we maintained the story he wanted to tell,” she says.
“They really wanted to help you find that laugh in your character,” adds Chelsea Makela. “When you’re working on a character that has no boundaries,” notes Brennan Hillard, “it’s great, because I could do whatever I wanted and they trusted me to do whatever I thought would bring out the joke.”
“I’d always do two takes for Damien and then I could do one take for me,” notes Damon Jr. Damien himself also found the family atmosphere supportive for his first time directing a feature film. “I couldn’t have asked God for anything better,” he says. “I had around me some of the funniest minds in the world, some of the sweetest individuals in the world. They’re caretakers, they’re there for me when I need to pick up that phone – ‘Hey, uncle, where should I go with this scene?’”
Years of watching the previous generation at work proved invaluable for Damien. “It’s not only what they’ve instilled in me, but I’ve been able to watch them do their thing and take from what they did well and avoid what they maybe didn’t do so well.”
Having all of that experience looking over his shoulder may have been extra pressure on the young director, but he handled it well, says his uncle Marlon. “Having the guys on the set is definitely a great way to gauge whether the comedy is either going or not going,” says Damien. “But I like to think of myself as a pretty good gauge of what’s funny and what’s not funny. I’m not a big believer in checking the gate or moving on to the next take if you don’t got the funny.”
Behind it all, of course, was Keenen Ivory Wayans, often referred to as the godfather of the Wayans family. “He’s so wise,” brother Marlon says. “Ivory can tell you about anything you want to know, from business to life. He’s not our dad, but he’s kind of like our dad. And his taste is impeccable. When it comes to knowing what’s appropriate, he’s brilliant. We call him ‘the puzzle master’ because he could take something, break it up into a 150 different pieces, and then put it together little by little the way he sees fit. The guy is a brilliant at it.”
Keenen’s instincts are never wasted, even on the younger set. “He’s definitely the godfather of take-offs,” Damon Jr. says. “He knows the formula. I’m all ears when he talks.”
Damien was particularly keen to absorb Keenen’s experience. “We’d call him ‘the ghost whisperer’ on set. He’d come in and whisper in your ear, ‘Okay, it looks good,’ and then he’d leave.”
The best feedback any Wayans could give, of course, was the one thing that follows them everywhere: laughter. “The gold standard is when you hear Damien yell ‘Cut!’ and you hear laughter in the background,” Damon Jr. says. “You want to make people laugh who are really funny, because then you know the masses will laugh even harder.”
The ultimate compliment,” adds Ross Thomas, “after you’d finish a scene, was to hear them cracking up over at video village (the monitors where the director and producers view takes). The sound guys would say, ‘Hey, you’re messing up the sound, guys…We can hear you laughing!’ Being able to make the Wayans brothers laugh is the ultimate compliment on your work as an actor and a comedian.”
The true gauge, of course, is if Keenen Ivory is losing it. “Everybody’s always trying to get him to laugh,” explains Rick Alvarez. “If you can make Keenen laugh, you’ve got something really funny on your hands. Then you know you’ve got something special.”
Damon Jr., the film’s star says, “It made me laugh – and I’m a hard laugh!” “Just come and have fun,” says director Damien Dante Wayans. “Find the funny, enjoy the ride, come have a blast, ‘cause the Wayans family’s bringing it. We all start on one page and we end on the same page – the funny page.”
The Wayans Family: The Next Generation
There have been few screen comedy families who have successfully passed the torch from one generation to the next as the Wayans family has. The Wayans brothers – Keenen Ivory, Shawn, Marlon and Damon – along with sister Kim, first burst onto the screen with 1988’s blaxploitation parody, “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka,” which led to their groundbreaking Fox comedy sketch series, “In Living Color.” The show not only brought the Wayans clan into the public consciousness, but also launched the careers of such other major stars as Jim Carrey, David Alan Grier, Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Lopez. Keenen also wrote and starred in the film “Hollywood Shuffle.”
The brothers have continued into the millennium with a string of successful theatrical comedies, including the “Scary Movie” horror spoofs, “White Chicks” (2004) and “Little Man” (2006). Additionally, Shawn and Marlon starred on the hit WB series “The Wayans Bros.” for five seasons (1995-1999).
The new decade has brought to light a new, and equally talented, Wayans generation, including Damon Wayans, Jr., Craig Wayans (son of Wayans sibling Deirdre) and Damien Dante Wayans (son of Wayans sibling Elvira Wayans), all of whom honed their skills writing and/or directing episodes of “My Wife and Kids,” as well as contributing material to the brothers’ recent feature films. Other Wayans offspring who have made contributions to “Dance Flick” include Dwayne Wayans, Jr., who co-composed some of the film’s music (with Erik Willis) and Michael Wayans, Damon Jr.’s brother, who appears briefly in the film.
When it came time for a new Wayans comedy, the brothers decided it was time to showcase the new generation. “We’re doing with them what my brother, Keenen, did with Shawn and myself with ‘I’m Gonna Git You Sucka,’” notes Marlon Wayans. “It’s kind of like we’re teaching these guys how to fish, but we ain’t going and getting them no fish – they’ve got to do it themselves. And stay out of my pond,” he laughs.
The film stars Damon Jr. and is executive produced by Craig Wayans, who also co-wrote the film with his uncles and with cousin Damien, who directed the movie. “We were talking about beginning the second generation movement, and we’ve written other movies, plus Damien and I worked together for three seasons on ‘My Wife and Kids,’” explains Craig Wayans. “So we said, ‘We want to present ourselves as the next generation.’” Adds Damon Jr., “We’re just trying to find our own niche, and this is the beginning.”
While most Wayans features have been directed by Keenen, when it came time to select a director for “Dance Flick,” the brothers decided to give Damien a shot. “He’s been around television and movie sets his whole life,” explains one of the film’s producers, Rick Alvarez. “He came up under the tutelage of his uncles, and the guys really wanted the next generation to have an opportunity; it was just time.”
Says Craig Wayans, “Being an actor himself, Damien is very good with actors and being part of the family, he gets their jokes. So, if you get jokes and you’re good with actors, you’re doing great. Some directors get too caught up in trying to get certain shots which don’t necessarily work in comedy, but he’s a great comedic director.”
The results have more than justified their expectations, say the elder Wayans. “It’s great to be able to extend a hand into this generation, to see how they’re coming up. It makes you proud, like a proud father, to watch your cubs,” says Marlon. “They’re like little brothers, they’re like my sons, they’re like my friends. To see them achieve, to go through this process, makes me smile.”
Dance Flick (2009)
Directed by: Damien Dante Wayans
Starring: Damon Wayans Jr., Craig Wayans, Shoshana Bush, Essence Atkins, Affion Crockett, Lauren Bowles, Chelsea Makela, Shawn Wayans, Ross Thomas, Christina Murphy, Amy Sedaris, Chris Elliott
Screenplay by: Keenen Ivory Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Damien Dante Wayans
Production Design by: Aaron Osborne
Cinematography by: Mark Irwin
Film Editing by: Scott Hill
Costume Design by: Judy L. Ruskin
Set Decoration by: Jennifer M. Gentile
Art Direction by: Erin Cochran
Music by: Dwayne Wayans, Erik D. Willis
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for crude and sexual content, and language.
Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: May 22, 2009
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