Colson Baker (recognized professionally as Machine Gun Kelly) and Derek Ryan Smith (recognized professionally as Mod Solar) are childhood friends who prefer to make stuff. From hit music tracks to function movies, the duo has had nice success creating collectively and individually. However in terms of their inventive partnership, there’s a sure sort of magic that may solely occur if you’re working along with your greatest buddy. In keeping with Baker, he and Smith all the time have a rotating concord when engaged on numerous tasks. “It’s such a superb yin-yang scenario between us that we meet within the center each time. We got the blessing of if my tank was empty, he was full, and if he was empty, I used to be full.”
Once we join over Zoom, Baker and Smith are desperate to share their movie-making insights and their weed smoking exploits, particularly with respect to their newest movie, Good Mourning, which they each wrote, directed, and starred in. Good Mourning follows London Conflict (performed by Baker) who wakes as much as a message from his girlfriend that reads “I want I didn’t have to do that via textual content. Good Mourning.”—an assumed breakup textual content. This alarming chance arrives on the identical day that London has an necessary assembly that can decide the way forward for his appearing profession. His day turns into a wild journey that forces him to decide on between his love life and touchdown the massive function. The following dialog is additional proof that the mix of each weed and friendship is the right system for any profitable inventive pursuit.
Excessive Instances: Rising up, did you guys ever envision writing, directing, and starring in your personal function movies?
Derek Ryan Smith: I did. It was a aim I’d had since I used to be very younger. I most likely would say “film” [instead of feature film] however—
Colson Baker: Yeah, I used to be gonna say. Each IG Story put up that Mod’s achieved for the reason that begin of Instagram has stated the phrase “film.”
I used to be all the time that child with the large chunky digital camera—earlier than they began inventing the smaller ones—filming skate tips or smoking out of an apple. I used to be all the time documenting after I was youthful. It sort of felt like the whole lot was main as much as Good Mourning.
On that tip, Good Mourning isn’t your first film collaboration collectively. What was the inspiration behind this one and why was it necessary for you guys to make it?
CB: It’s a really meta film that got here from an actual scenario that I used to be spiraling about, which is strictly what the character London was doing within the film: Misreading a textual content message and never having the ability to get the reply again, so asking your folks “What does this imply, what does this imply?” And them simply providing you with horrible recommendation.
My favourite elements of the film are the moments we wrote down that ended up coming to life later. Just like the Batman reference. It’s London’s audition—it’s his large day getting his Batman audition—and this was earlier than we even came upon they had been going to make a brand new Batman with Robert Pattinson. It’s humorous [our] movie comes out proper after The Batman is the speak of the city.
It jogs my memory of—and I can’t imagine I’m quoting this—Not One other Teen Film, or Scary Film, or any of these motion pictures the place they reference popular culture moments occurring on the time. We didn’t deliberately have any information of this stuff. Identical with the Pretend Drake.
DRS: The Pretend Drake factor is simply mind-blowing to me. I’ll by no means recover from that.
CB: The truth that there wasn’t this viral Pretend Drake factor occurring after we wrote the film…[it happened for us] as a result of the function was initially imagined to be Drake. We couldn’t see [the character] as every other particular person. Drake was going to do the film, however then due to scheduling, he may solely make it at some point. However we didn’t have the home that day, and the opposite day he was again in Toronto. He was like, “Should you get a jet, I could make it,” which might have value your entire finances of the film to get him by way of jet to Los Angeles for this five-second shot. It labored even higher with the Pretend Drake.
DRS: That was my last straw. Once I noticed the Pretend Drake viral factor, I used to be like, “Dude, cease.” I couldn’t imagine it.
CB: The whole lot manifested from this movie. It was a visit.
Do you suppose in some methods, you guys placing Pretend Drake into the movie helped it manifest in actual life?
DRS: We wrote that skater boy bit after which swiftly now I’m engaged to Avril Lavigne [laughs], so I don’t know.
CB: The manifestation from this film nearly feels prefer it wanted to come back by way of some sort of vessels, and we ended up being the vessels. Stoner comedies—particularly for the brand new generations—are nearly nonexistent, they usually’re positively nonexistent within the sense of precise stoners writing and directing them.
We weren’t smoking faux weed on set. We had kilos and kilos.
DRS: Shhhhhhhh.
That is Excessive Instances, you’re good. We wish this info.
DRS: Okay, good.
CB: I reached out to Berner and he despatched us a pallet of Cookies and each accoutrement you’d must get excessive.
DRS: Whoa. What phrase did you simply use?
CB: Each potential approach you might smoke weed, he had it within the package deal. We knew we had so as to add to the legend of every basic stoner film having both a [weed] recreation that you simply study or a brand new method to roll that you simply study. We most likely have a 10-minute smoker’s montage within the film, so if there isn’t one [legendary]…
DRS: Please be “the smorkle.”
CB: It’s both “the smorkle,” “5 fingers of loss of life,” or the large Snoop Dogg joint. I’m hoping a type of lands within the basic stoner archives.
The takeaway being, if one child emulates your smoking methods, you guys have achieved your job.
CB: Completely. And by one child, we hopefully imply a million. However yeah.
What’s the distinction in your inventive course of between making a film like Good Mourning and making an album?
CB: If we fuck our albums up, that’s simply on us. If we fuck the film up, we embarrass the forged, we embarrass our financiers, we embarrass ourselves.
DRS: Placing your artwork in different individuals’s arms is a special sort of monster to sleep with at night time.
CB: Or them placing our artwork in our arms, however them being those giving us the cash to do it.
DRS: It’s positively an entire completely different expertise and takes an entire completely different aspect of belief to occur. It’s one factor to belief in your self, it’s one other factor to belief in all people on set.
Is there something from the music world that you simply deliver into your inventive course of if you’re making a movie?
DRS: I believe we’d not have believed that we may begin a script and end it if we hadn’t realized find out how to write a tune and be capable of end that. Or if we didn’t know find out how to end an album. I believe [finishing music] unlocked one thing in our brains to see one thing by way of till the tip.
We reside in Los Angeles, so how many individuals are exterior this window proper now like, “I’m engaged on [a] script.” And it’s been 30 years, ?
CB: The opposite factor I took from music to motion pictures was how collaborative music is. They don’t actually deliver that into motion pictures too typically exterior of the Adam Sandlers and the Seth Rogens. There’s just a few individuals who realized that reaching out and being collaborative on movies is feasible—that you would be able to really simply decide up the telephone and ask to collab on movies the identical approach you may ask to collab on songs. That was one thing we got here in with on this.
DRS: We stuffed this film with wonderful actors and individuals who have by no means acted earlier than. Individuals who we simply believed may do it.
You’re not solely indoctrinating—hopefully—tens of millions of individuals to new smoking methods, you’re additionally breaking within the expertise of your folks in a brand new lane for them.
CB: One-hundred p.c. It was an honor to have the established comedians are available and produce their comedy to our movie as a result of a few of these traces that Whitney [Cummings] and Pete [Davidson] stated, you couldn’t write. These had been strictly from comedic genius brains.
Folks like GaTa—who we’ve watched on an amazing sequence like Dave be GaTa—we had been capable of give him a personality to play that’s the entire reverse of GaTa. Folks like Megan [Fox], Dove [Cameron], Zach [Villa]—we obtained to observe them discover characters we haven’t seen them painting earlier than. Like, I’ve by no means seen Dove in a stoner film, proper? She’s coming from a very completely different finish of the spectrum in movie and TV.
After which Boo [Johnson] who’s this rad skater from Lengthy Seaside coming in and having a primary function in a film when he’s by no means acted earlier than. I now have excessive hopes that I’ll see him in one thing else.
You talked about you had been effectively taken care of with weed on set. How does weed influence your inventive course of?
DRS: I believe with [the Good Mourning] script, it was the genesis to the whole lot. Writing a script can really feel like homework and we didn’t go to varsity. We had been achieved with college after we completed highschool, and I’m fairly certain each of us barely completed highschool. [Writing the script] sort of felt like a job, however having the ability to smoke weed along with your greatest buddy all day sort of gave it that cushion to be enjoyable.
CB: I believe the act of rolling [papers] is sort of like a stress ball or one thing. It’s much less even the smoking and extra that you simply’re capable of roll one thing when you’re writing and also you’re sitting in a single place. Having one thing to do along with your arms is nice. It’s both that, or punching one another within the face. I don’t know if that may have been as productive, nevertheless it additionally would have been satisfying.
Was there any explicit pressure you guys gravitated towards?
CB: Rising up, I liked Inexperienced Crack. I’ll always remember after I smoked Inexperienced Crack for the primary time and I used to be driving in a automotive that also had snow on the roof of it. In Cleveland, it snows a bunch, so it’s not such as you brush the snow off the roof, you simply depart it on there and get it off the home windows. I used to be so excessive on Inexperienced Crack and my mouth was so parched that I simply reached my hand out of the window and grabbed a large glob of snow and ate it. It was probably the most refreshing water style ever.
DRS: Mine was Jack Herer.
DRS and CB: Ohhhhhhhhhhhh!
CB: Jack Herer, dude! That was the go-to sativa.
DRS: That was the designer weed after we had been younger.
To that finish, do you guys have any plans to create your personal strains or accomplice with any manufacturers?
CB: My buddy has an amazing weed firm referred to as Rapper Weed. I believe the identify is genius, however I don’t have any half in it. I simply suppose it’s an amazing identify.
DRS: I nonetheless have plans to jot down a e book the place each web page is a paper that you would be able to smoke.
CB: Oh, that’s sick.
DRS: You may actually digest the writing.
You would have your personal smokable library.
CB: Yeah, that’s laborious. You would mild that library on fireplace. It’s a brand new twist on Fahrenheit 451, dude. It’s the less-dark model of that.
What was probably the most difficult side of creating Good Mourning?
CB: It must be by no means really having a forged till the day we might shoot. Even after we had the principle forged casted the day earlier than we needed to shoot, there was all the time cameos or characters within the script the place we had been like, “Oh shit, we forgot there’s ‘Unknown Individual #2’ that we all the time needed to be so-and-so.” We had been calling in favors left and proper.
DRS: The hours had been fairly loopy. [Colson] additionally needed to present up an hour-and-a-half sooner than me day-after-day to cowl up his tattoos. And I believe simply directing the vitality of a bunch of individuals in the identical room and preserving the vibe the place it must be to get the suitable shot.
CB: We needed to break up the weed montage into two days as a result of there was a lot smoking. Rather a lot didn’t get used, however at some point the smoke set off the fireplace alarm in the home, which initially was okay as a result of we’d turned the sprinklers off. Or so we thought. One of many sprinklers was really left on and it sprayed all around the digital camera gear and wouldn’t cease. It was like a fireplace truck hose was going off.
Did that burn a day?
CB: It burned plenty of the day.
DRS: We flooded the home we had been in just about.
However you continue to made a film.
DRS: By some means. By some means we did.
This text seems within the August 2022 challenge of Excessive Instances. Subscribe right here.