The bloom might be off the rose a bit for Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg as screenwriters (Superbad, Pineapple Express) ever since Green Hornet and The Watch, but they seem like they’re back in their comfort zone in this red-band trailer for This is the End – formerly Jay and Seth Vs. The Apocalypse. They’re directing it themselves, with Brandon Trost of The FP fame on cinematography, and perhaps the best joke of all is that everyone’s playing themselves, from James Franco to Craig Robinson to Danny McBride to Jonah Hill, and ripping on each other’s careers the whole time (including the afartmentioned Green Hornet). Though they’re not in the trailer, we have to assume the same for Emma Watson, Kevin Hart, Rihanna, Aziz Ansari, Martin Starr, Mindy Kaling, J-Tro… Jesus Christ, who isn’t in this movie? You guessed it, Frank Stallone.

MCBRIDE: “Yeah, right, James Franco didn’t suck any dick last night – now I know y’all are tripping.”

With all the title changes, I can’t believe they never came up with “Seeking a Celebrity for the End of the World.” “aBROcalypse now,” perhaps? …Okay, I’ll leave.

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picture source: Drafthouse Films

According to Brandon (right) and Jason Trost (left), the sibling filmmakers behind The FP, it’s a film that’s been eight years in the making. After shooting it as a short in 2007 (though there was always a feature-length script, Jason assures), they shot the full version (on a budget of less than $100K) and took it to SXSW last March, where it was picked up by Drafthouse films (it opens in 26 markets today and is available for fans to vote to create their own screenings through Tugg.com). By the time they got to the screening I hosted at SF Indie Fest in San Francisco this past February, they were already veterans of the festival circuit, having played Fantastic Fest, Fantasia in Montreal, the Rolling Road Show and a handful of other places.

After screening the film to a raucous, largely drunken crowd (what do you expect when you let a site called “FilmDrunk” get involved), Brandon and Jason, joined by their sister Sarah (The FP‘s costume designer and a former Project Runway contestant), Lee Valmassy (L Dubba E in the movie), and Art Hsu (KCDC), took the stage for a Q & A. Valmassy, a seemingly soft-spoken, slightly-built eccentric who’d apparently just gotten back from China, addressed the crowd in fluent Mandarin, then took a backseat for most of the rest of the Q & A, bearing bizarrely little resemblance to the manic screaming Mr. T he plays in the movie. People at the after party walked right by him, having no idea they’d just seen him in the film. Meanwhile, the Trost siblings (Brandon the reserved eldest, Jason the brash youngest, Sarah the glib middle) showed that the hardest part of moderating a discussion with them isn’t getting them talking, but getting them to pause long enough for people to ask questions. They’ve got that sibling shorthand thing in spades. All the while Art Hsu, the glue holding the film together and the lone person on stage not from Frazier Park, competently played the role of professional actor like the professional actor he is. The dynamic was much the same the next day when I met Brandon, Jason, Sarah, and Art for this interview, trying not to sound like I’d woken up that morning with a wallet full of singles from a late-night trip to a strip club (no comment). Read our chat below (thank Adam for transcribing) or scroll to the end for the mp3 version.

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The FP hits 26 markets this weekend, and is available to create your own screening through Tugg. Here’s my review.

Drafthouse Films released the first ten minutes of The FP online a few weeks ago, and I’d suggest watching it, but truly, nothing can prepare you for the full film. The best way I can describe it is that it’s like watching sheer genius and utter retardation tongue kiss for 82 minutes.

“The FP” is short for Frazier Park, a tiny community in the middle of the Grapevine where the Trost siblings grew up (brothers Brandon and Jason wrote and directed The FP, sister Sarah designed the costumes). It’s one of the first towns across the Kern side of the Kern/LA county border, and thus, according to them, a place where their Hollywood special effects supervisor father could legally store his explosives. (Never discount setting, especially when the movie is named after it). Their fictionalized hometown becomes the setting for a turf war, between rival gangs the 248 from the North (the good guys) and the 245 from the South, whose costumes are like wigger-ized Civil War uniforms by way of Aspen Extreme (bad guy LDubbaE rocks a grill and wears a neon ski jacket with a shiny gold confederate flag on the back). They battle for control over Dawn’s Liquor Mart not with their fists, but through a fictionalized (and copyright-suit-proof) version of Dance-Dance Revolution called “Beat-Beat Revelation,” which is not only highly competitive, but sometimes kills people for some reason. You might expect a silly sketch about guys in moonboots dance-fighting in an underground warehouse to drag under the pressure to stretch into full-length film (and it does, a tiny bit, at a couple points), but the subtext, the utter ridiculousness of the entire enterprise, is really the heart of the narrative. That’s the joke, that someone would spend this much time and money on an idea this silly, it’s so beautifully absurd

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I posted the first 10 minutes of John Carter this morning, and while that was a $200 million movie that managed to pack in an amazing amount of boring, well-worn clichés (rogue hothead, gruff commander, dead wife flashbacks, etc. etc.), The FP is a movie made for less than six figures that I feel pretty confident in saying is unlike most films you’ve seen. The best way I can describe it is that it feels simultaneously home-made and meticulously crafted. Oh, also, it’s set in a dystopian subculture in which gangs do battle through a dance videogame called Beat Beat Revelation, written in a fully-realized, alternate street vernacular where people call each other “Snowcone,” and “Clam Chowder.” (Depending how much you read into “clam,” calling someone “Clam Chowder” is sort of like saying “Pussy Soup.” I always wonder if they meant it as weird version of pussy or as literal clam chowder).

Anyway, The FP opens March 16th in LA, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, and some other cities. Check out the first 10 minutes below, and make sure you ponder that thing I said about pussy soup. (Video slightly NSFW for language and brief nudedness)

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