MARTY SCHOUSBOE TALKS NEVER CHANGE!
"Aged out of high school movies"
Daniel John
What was your path into directing. What first drew you toward telling stories?
My siblings and my cousins used to love putting on plays for our families at get-togethers and then we got into the local children’s theater. That’s where it all really started. It was just a lot of fun to put on a show for people and make them laugh. I first got the taste making videos in sixth grade over at Michael Malarkey’s house, who also wrote the music for this movie. He would make horror movies on VHS and my humble beginnings were in front of the camera getting slaughtered. It wasn’t until high school when I was gifted the cheapest mini-DV camera they had at Best Buy that I got to shoot and edit myself.
What are some movies that have had a biggest influence on you be it in comedy or otherwise?
I really love 'Dazed and Confused', 'Nashville', 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail', 'Detroit Rock City', 'Anchorman', 'MacGruber', 'Happy Gilmore', 'Big Daddy', 'Can’t Hardly Wait', those were big inspirations for 'Never Change!'. Things I loved as a teenager and still do. My brother introduced me to most of the comedy stuff that helped form my sense of humor. Flying Circus, The Marx Brothers, Bill Hicks, Stan Freeberg, Adam Sandler. There are two movies that probably had the biggest impacts on me, 'Dead Alive' and 'Wet Hot American Summer'. They both broke my brain for how you can do anything you want in a movie. You can make a wild, weird, funny movie that is still full of heart somehow. I’ve indulged on the “Wet Hot”-side of things, but I haven’t taken a crack at 'Dead Alive' yet. I also love 'The Birdcage', 'Election', 'Barcelona', 'Tremors', 'Big Trouble in Little China', 'Galaxy Quest', 'Blazing Saddles', 'Young Frankenstein', 'The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou', 'Tootsie', 'The Blues Brothers', 'HotRod', 'Something Wild', 'City of God', 'Tampopo', 'L’auberge Espanole', 'Punch-Drunk Love', 'Living in Oblivion', 'The Castle', 'The Lives of Others', 'In Bruges', 'The Wedding Singer', 'Tommy Boy', 'First Blood', 'Terminator 2', 'Police Story', 'Cinema Paradiso', 'Amadeus', 'Undercover Brother', 'Gladiator', 'Bad Taste', 'When Harry Met Sally', 'The Rock', 'Office Space', 'Casino Royale', 'The Goonies', 'Kung Fu Hustle', 'Superbad', 'Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure', 'Duck Soup', 'Noises Off!', 'The Big Lebowski', 'Super Troopers', 'Lost City of Z', 'Paper Moon', 'Yi Yi', 'Good Morning', 'BASEketball', 'The General', 'Wild Tales', 'Kentucky Fried Movie', 'Mary and Max', 'Life of Brian', 'Tropic Thunder', 'Before Sunrise', 'The Chorus', 'American Movie', 'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum', 'Singin’ in the Rain', and 'Hot Shots! Part Deux'.
That's quite a list of titles...
So many more! There are too many to list! Now I’ve got a lot of movies to rewatch.
The premise of 'Never Change!' is a wonderfully absurd one. Former students now in their thirties have to return to high school after a tornado cut their 2008 graduation short. Was there much debate over what disastrous event would stop their graduation before you landed on a tornado?
I really think it was the first thing thought of. We’re, me and co-writer John Reynolds, both from the American Midwest and had to do tornado drills in school growing up! They’re scary and devastating and can change your life!
It’s a legal technicality that brings this group of thirty-year-olds back to high school, would you also say that, almost in a meta sense, the same allowed you to make a real high school throwback-comedy without necessarily even starting to pretend you’re in tune with what high schoolers are like in 2026?
That is exactly it. We felt like we found the perfect high-concept-comedy-idea loophole for us to make the goofy high school-comedy that we would want to make with some of our favorite comedians. We also didn’t want to make a generational comedy pitting young against old. We were working on the script for another project when John came over and was bemoaning the fact that we’ve aged out of high school movies and never got to make ours. We figured out a silly way to make that happen and actually tried to pitch this as a TV show first before Hulu asked us to consider it as a movie instead.
If you returned to your graduating class what dynamics would you find yourself in again?
A lot of people have countless horror stories from high school, and sure, so do I, but I also had a lot of fun. I was in a lot of honors classes that I mostly found interesting, acted in a lot of plays, and in my senior year I did an independent study course and made a feature film, so I think I’d be pretty excited!
It’s really a fantastic group of talent you’ve assembled, with actors like Sofia Black-D'Elia, Johnny Knoxville and Topher Grace, to name a few. Actors we know can carry comedic-performances at a very high level! How quickly did everyone find their seat in the classroom once they were on set together?
They say that the key to good directing is good casting, and we got the best people. I’ve known a lot of these performers for fifteen years. There are a lot of old friendships on screen in 'Never Change!' and I really think that helped the newbies feel a part of it all very quickly. And as a director, I try to establish a focused, collaborative atmosphere and I think that helps free people up. John Reynolds also wrote the dang thing and is truly one of the funniest people on the planet so his performance and script really helped everyone find their desk, to continue the analogy.
Comedy is peculiar, because so many things have to go right. What seems funny in a script doesn’t always work in performance, and moments that would not at all be funny on page will be if the vibe is right. Not to mention you can have the most crazy stuff happen and it still won’t land unless it is actually connected to something that comes off as authentic and sincere. It’s a big question... but how do you really get comedy right?
Be funny.
