Alice Eve and Krysten Ritter Interview

It's not every day I get to sit down with two beautiful ladies and chit chat. Although my mother and sister would beg to differ, that hardly counts and is, frankly, a little weird. As part of the promotional tour for their new movie She's Out of My League, stars Alice Eve and Krysten Ritter stopped by Washington, DC to discuss what it was like working with a first time director, what they had playing on their iPods during shooting and what guys need to do to find their 10. They're two of the nicest girls I've ever met and yes, the interview began with Alice asking me if I wanted to do tequila shots. This is the unedited transcript.

Alice: You want to do tequila shots?

Let’s do it.

Krysten: I’d do it in a heartbeat.

Krysten: We’ve been touring incessantly and we haven’t been sleeping either. They give us about five hours off at night.

Alice: You can see how George Clooney ends up having those weird comebacks can’t you? Because he’s on it all the time.

Krysten: I can see now why people get hospitalized for exhaustion.

Alice: Totally.

[Both laugh]

Have either of you ever dated someone you’d consider out of your league or a guy that others would consider that you were out of his league?

Krysten: I’ve dated people who others have thought that maybe I was out of his league, but I didn’t think so and now I’m currently dating somebody who is out of my league. [Alice and her boyfriend] are on equal footing. They’re both really hot.

Alice: I think he’s out of my league. He’s cleverer than me.

So you’re both dating someone you’d both consider out of your league. That’s interesting. Is that something that drew you two to the movie, to live through the characters?

Alice: No because we both have to date down in the movie. [Laughs]

Krysten: Well, we both audition when things are around and they come to you and you audition for them. Hopefully you book them and they work with your schedule. That’s pretty much how the process was.

For this movie, you were working with a first time director and Jay Baruchel, who is usually relegated to supporting roles. Was there any hesitance going in knowing this or did you have faith in the material?

Alice: Oh, I love first time directors. I love first time directors because you never know what you’re going to get and if you were able to work with that director on his first outing and it turns out to be a star director, which I think Jim will be, then it’s great. New talent, that’s what I was until about 30 seconds ago, so you can’t be snooty about that, you know what I mean?

Krysten: It can go either way for first time directors.

Alice: But it can go either way for established directors too.

Krysten: Yeah, but I feel like with first time directors, sometimes they’re not confident and they’re worried about cast mutiny and they overcompensate.

Alice: Right, but any of those worries were left behind by the fact that we had a heavy hand with Dreamworks and Mosaic so we were protected if that ended up being a problem.

Krysten: And doing a big studio film with a first time director doesn’t matter as much as an indie film or TV because there are so many other voices. We were all in similar places in our careers and I think in the cast, you sort of recognize people, you’ve sort of seen them before, but it was pretty much like everybody was on equal footing which was cool.

You’ve both done dramatic roles, so what brought you to this romantic comedy?

Krysten: It seemed like a special script and it was funny. It’s nice to laugh at your job. [Turns to Alice] Are you going to make out with me? I feel like you’re uncomfortably close to my face. [Laughs]

You two are so giddy around each other.

Krysten: We have a good time. We’re real life friends.

And you could see that onscreen. Did you two connect right away or did it take some time?

Alice: She really pushed for it. [Laughs] Eventually it worked.

Krysten: Yeah, she’s really hard to get along with. She offends people all day long and you kind of want to walk away.

I’ve been offended this whole time. You two disgust me.

Alice: Oh God! [Laughs]

Krysten: No, we had a good time. She was already cast and I was brought in to chemistry read with her and that’s how it worked out.

Alice: You know, casting directors have a very specific and quite intricate job in casting whether it’s male/female leads or female/female, male/male leads now in these buddy comedies and their job is to imagine who would be friends and I think Allison Jones, who casted this movie, is excellent at her job. She cast all the Apatow movies.

Krysten: She cast Knocked Up and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Alice: I think that you would believe that all the boys in our movie had hung out for a decade. It’s hard to get a friendship thing between guys and she did that. They didn’t know each other either.

In their scenes together, like you were saying, they do gel well together. They seemed like they were improvising a lot. Was there a lot of that going on?

Krysten: Yeah, in pretty much every scene there is some improvising.

Alice: And also, we had two weeks rehearsal so there was a lot of kind of, “finding it,” during that period and then that was written into the script and then we improvised it on the day as well.

Krysten: And you do a lot of alternate takes. If you see a joke in the movie, you can pretty much bet there were six or seven other versions. I mean, you have to do the script version, but once you’ve got that then you do other versions.

So what about in the trailer when you say “Shut the hell up” as opposed to “Shut the fuck up” in the movie?

Krysten: Well, what we did was we shot an R rated version and a TV version. When we were making the movie, we didn’t know if it was going to be R rated or PG-13, so we had two versions.
Alice: There were a lot of conversations about that going on while we were making it.

Krysten: So we had to say “crap” and “shut up,” you know, really safe versions that aren’t that fun.

I’m glad you went with the R rating.

Alice: Yeah, I know, it makes such a difference. We love it. We’re so proud of it and that’s why we’re doing this. I think the fact that it’s an R movie is what makes it a good movie.

Alice, your parents in the movie were played by your actual parents. Have you ever acted with them before?

Alice: No, I haven’t. It was an honor and a privilege to be able to work with them because my dad is a great actor in England and my mom does a lot of theater. Dreamworks said, “Would you like your parents to play your parents?” I called my mom and I was like, “Do you want to play my mom?” She said yes, so I asked “Do you think dad does?” She said, “I’m going to work on it.” He has a busy schedule, but eventually he came around, he came out and we had a great time.

I read online that you’re in a band Krysten.

Krysten: Yeah, I’m in a band called Ex Vivian. I’ve been doing that for a while. In fact, when we were shooting this movie, I recorded four or five new songs in my hotel bathroom.

Alice: [Singing] I just go where the pretty girls go.

Are you in a certain genre? Are you inspired by any other bands?

Krysten: Well, I have my favorites like Jesus and Mary Chain and Cat Power I think are on the top of that list, but I also like country music so I think it’s all influenced by that. Mostly, I’m always influenced by my environment and the people around me.

You seem like a punk rock girl to me.

Krysten: Yeah, I know but I’m not really. I’m not really hardcore in any way. I’m punk rock in spirit, but not in sound.

What did you two have playing on your iPod’s during shooting?

Alice: The XX, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Neil Young…

Krysten: You’re just listing everything we listened to yesterday! [Laughs]

Alice: Well, we agreed!

Krysten: Yeah, we picked the same ones yesterday. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Kings of Leon.

Alice: A little bit of Jay-Z, a little bit of T.I., a little bit of Drake.

Krysten: Like I said, Cat Power, Jesus and Mary Chain, the Stone Roses, the Strokes, Interpol. You know, the basics.

I was told I had to ask you about the premature ejaculation scene and what the semen was made of.

Alice: It was pâté. What we did was we had the dog, and as you saw, the dog had to lick it, so in order to get the dog to lick it--and it was a big dog that had a temper--we had to keep putting this pâté on the patch.

Krysten: Like dog pâté?

Alice: No, human pâté. You know that duck pâté has a strong odor, so the smell of this dribbling, dog licking duck pâté was awful.

Krysten: How did he have a temper? I want to hear about that.

Alice: He was just grumpy, you know and he had moods. After a few takes, he’d be like [imitates a growling dog]. [Laughs]

Alice, your chemistry with Jay in the movie is really good. Considering that you’re the hard 10 hot girl and he’s the mediocre, skinny…

Alice: He’s not though. He’s not an unattractive guy.

No, I think he’s beautiful.

Alice: [Laughs] He’s tall, he’s nice, he’s charming, he’s clean.

Did that chemistry just naturally come through?

Alice: I guess so. We heard very early on that we had good chemistry. It’s sort of an ethereal thing. It’s not something you can control. You either have it or you don’t and I’m glad we had it.

How awkward was that scene where you and he had to strip down? I imagine that would be pretty intimidating for him.

Alice: You both have a job to make each other feel comfortable. His job is to not make me feel insecure and my job is to not make him feel insecure and I think we both did our best in that. You know, it is nerve-wracking to drop your dress in that kind of situation and I think we worked hard to make each other feel comfortable. He’s a good actor.

Do you think that chemistry also came as a result of casting?

Alice: We didn’t chemistry read interestingly enough. They just cast us. He was already cast and then they cast me and I guess we had a kind of boundary relationship off screen, so there was already an established connection between us.

What’s on the horizon for you two?

Alice: I have Sex and the City 2 coming out in May.

Krysten: I’ve got a new show called Gravity on Starz about suicide. I also have a movie coming out later this year called Killing Bono about the rise of U2 and the music scene in the 80’s in England. It’s totally rad. And I’m starring in Amy Heckerling’s next movie called Vamps. She did Clueless.

Well, being the two beautiful ladies that you are, what advice would you give all of the fives of the world if they want to find their 10?

Krysten: Be confident and funny. Show girls a good time.

Alice: Fix things when they break.

She's Out of My League Ignorant of Reality

My father once told me of a game he used to play with my uncle before I was born. Every year, my family would head to the beach and my dad would sit with beer in hand and rate passing women on their looks. He used a scale of 1-10 and would debate with my uncle over who was the best looking. My dad never was the classy type.

She’s Out of My League deconstructs this game, though perhaps “deconstruct” is not the right word, as that would imply the film has an air of intelligence around it. It does not.

You see, Kirk, played by Jay Baruchel, is a five. He is a lanky, skinny, nerdy type of guy that looks at a beautiful girl and immediately dismisses his chances with her. That is until Molly, played by the beautiful Alice Eve, accidentally stumbles into his life. She is, as his friends put it, “a hard 10,” and we all know a 10 like her could never find love with a five. Kirk is already pessimistic and self-conscious of himself and his friends only play into those fears, which could end up ruining his relationship with Alice.

There might not be much to recommend here, but I can say this. She’s Out of My League gives hope to all of the fives of the world. It tells them that they are tens in the eyes of the one that loves them, which is a nice change of pace regardless of how cheesy that message is. However, it also says that all men are womanizing meatheads that cannot function normally when a pretty girl is around.

When Molly walks in a room, every male in sight goes googly eyed and ogles her like a Thanksgiving turkey. While the actress certainly is a gorgeous woman, as a man, I found it kind of insulting that the movie insinuates our general lack of control when pretty women are around, suggesting that we have two heads and aren’t using the one with a brain in it.

Nevertheless, whatever analogous analyzation I may be finding here should be overshadowed by laughs. Unfortunately, this thing rarely elicits much from its tired premise. While Baruchel has been likable as a supporting role in movies such as Knocked Up and Tropic Thunder, he isn't much of a leading man. He's hardly compelling and his nasally voice eventually proves grating on the nerves. It’s tough not to feel sympathy for his pathetic character, seeing as how, let’s face it, the majority of us are fives like him, but he doesn’t have enough charisma to work this movie through to its conclusion.

With contrived attempts at creating drama and the only laughs coming from a character nicknamed Stainer, who adopted the moniker due to his weak bladder as a child, She’s Out of My League is little more than another run-of-the-mill teen comedy that lives in a world where beautiful women actually look on the inside before they see the stained teeth, puss filled pimples and giant gut on the outside. What a world that must be.

She's Out of My League receives 1.5/5