Chelsea Peretti plays a first-time director in her directorial debut, “First Time Female Director.”
Chelsea Peretti on her directorial debut ‘First Time Female Director,’ premiering at TribecaBy JAKE COYLEAP Film WriterThe Associated PressNEW YORK
NEW YORK (AP) — Chelsea Peretti plays a first-time director in her directorial debut: “First Time Female Director.”
The film premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival takes an acutely meta premise in lampooning the tumultuous experience of an inexperienced woman brought in to a direct a play at a small, local theater in Glendale, California, after its original male director is accused of misconduct.
In one scene, while Peretti’s character bangs a trash can lid and shouts “Learn your blocking,” a cast member grumbles, “We replaced a predator with a female disaster.”
Things went far smoother for Peretti, the 45-year-old comedian and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” star, during her first time behind the camera. “First Time Female Director,” which is up for sale at Tribeca, brings together a cast of funny people, including Megan Mullally, Kate Berlant, Andy Richter and Megan Stalter, along with cameos from Amy Poehler (a producer) and Peretti’s husband, Jordan Peele.
“It was like a crazy summer camp as an adult,” Peretti says.
“First Time Female Director” takes a satire of small-town theater and puts it in the context of a post-#MeToo entertainment world. For Peretti, it was a way to make something unabashedly silly with a little commentary on some of the shifts she’s experienced in recent years in Hollywood, she told The Associated Press in an interview.
AP: Where did the idea for this begin?
PERETTI: Weirdly, it started from me as sort of challenging myself to come up with something by booking a UCB slot years ago, and just forcing myself. I wanted to do a fake excerpt from a play. And I thought it would be funny to then have like a pretentious Q&A about it with the cast, and act like we’re a theater group and this is part of a real play. I went to so much theater as a young person. I was very intimately a lover of theater. But also, anything I love is also fair game to make fun of.
AP: In the upheaval of the entertainment industry in the wake of #MeToo, were there things in how Hollywood responded that struck you as funny?
PERETTI: Well, 100%. I think some things have felt like they moved so fast. Most of my career there was an absolute misogynistic tone in the response to what I was doing. And then one day all of a sudden there was shock and pearl clutching that these things are happening. And I’m like: “Where were you for the last 20 years? Where were you for all my YouTube comments that I’ve endured?” It’s been such a whirlwind that I was trying to process it in this project.
AP: A few years ago on “Conan,” you joked about noticing an uptick in the audience for your stand-up special because viewers were looking for comedy from “people who aren’t rapists.”
PERETTI: I do remember saying that. There were so many comedians that were outed for varying levels of horrific misogyny that I started really contemplating the last 20 years of my life, going: “Wow, I was trying to get a pat on the head from a lot of these people. I was being told to emulate half these people.” It was a revelation and it’s been so inspiring, people like Megan Stalter who are this younger generation. I was told never dress sexy when you’re doing stand-up. I’m watching all these younger women break all these rules and having the time of their lives. That’s the way to do it, you know? So it’s been such a period of reflection. And obviously the pandemic was this pause button in which you could really reflect on, “Wow, I was on a sitcom! That’s cool.” And: “Whoa, my stand-up life was tumultuous in many ways.”
AP: You kind of hold a funhouse mirror up that tumult in “First Time Film Director.” Even what the audiences in the film cheer for is kind of a joke.
PERETTI: When I started stand-up, I was told the audience is never wrong. And I have to say I disagree. I think the audience is wrong sometimes. I remember going to Carolines on Broadway and having a joke that I was really excited to work on and going up and just absolutely bombing. Now, probably that was my fault. But then I remember a guy going up after me and doing a bit about double-sided dildos and just destroying. I was going: “I don’t know if they are right.” Andy Warhol was right that everyone’s famous now. All these comedians have podcast empires. Everyone is preaching to their own choir in a way.
AP: Yet instead of skewering some of the male comedians you were thinking about, you mostly make fun of yourself in the film.
PERETTI: (Laughs) Well, this is a recurring theme for me. Like, it’s not fun satirizing Trump. It’s more fun satirizing people that you know intimately and love. I would have a really hard time like writing about a businessman. Speaking of another adage, write what you know. I know self-doubt. I know failure. I know feeling like people don’t like me.
AP: But I gather your experience directing went better than your character’s?
PERETTI: I really loved it. I often feel that, when you’re being directed as a comedy actor, that directors try to keep you in line a little bit. Like, if you have a big idea, they almost want you to rein it in. When some of these actors on this movie had ideas, I was like: “Let’s do it!” And so many of them were brilliant. As a rule, every comedian I know holds these strange obsessions. Heather Lawless was like: “Can I have Band-aids on my finger when I’m driving?” And Jermaine Fowler was like, “Can I roll around in a pile of cords?” And I’m like, “Yeah!” I just love saying yes to people.
AP: You seem quite game to try new things, like film directing, or making a coffee-themed concept album.
PERETTI: Sometimes before doing standup, I get really anxious a lot of times, especially in new venues. And I would be backstage and I just go, “F—- it.” I feel like you just have to have this part of you that says, “F—- it.” I always want to be like trying new things and I always want to be growing. That’s the fun of being creative to me. And that doesn’t mean that all these ideas work. But I love spontaneity and following inspiration and seeing what happens.
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Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP