There's a scene in This is 40, which will be released in theatres on Friday, in which Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann), the married couple at the center of the story, talk about ways they'd kill each other.
As someone who has been married twenty-five years, the conversation resonated. It's not that you really want to kill your spouse but somedays you definitely want to kill them. And judging by the comments from some of the other parenting bloggers who attended a preview screening last weekend, those thoughts may be a normal part of a long-term marriage.
Debbie's method for killing Pete is painless and somehow sweet. Pete's idea is somewhat less so as it involves a wood chipper. The scene shouldn't be that funny but it definitely is and that's due to the skill of Rudd and Mann and the wry tone of the scene..
Judd Apatow's movies have been hit and miss with me. I loved The 40-year-old Virgin but disliked Knocked Up intensely. But the heart of this movie, Pete and Debbie's relationship, was real, almost raw in spots, that it's not so much a comedy, even if parts are intensely funny, but more of a slice of these people's lives.
In interviews last week, Mann, Rudd and Apatow, who wrote and directed the movie, said it doesn't necessarily reflect his and Mann's marriage but what they all wanted a true-to-life but funny portrait of a regular marriage.
"I'm happy that people can leave there feeling like they're not the only ones going through some of those things and they don't have to feel terrible about themselves after," Mann said. "When you go and watch movies where couples are perfect couples, which I hate, and then I leave the movie thinking that something's terribly wrong with me, you can leave this movie feeling like you're okay and something's terribly wrong with Pete and Debbie."
"I mean the one thing that I think that we both talked about and have always wanted to convey with this relationship in both this movie and in Knocked Up was a married couple that was dealing with things that married couples that we know and that we are deal with in a way that you don't see in movies all that much but maybe are realistic and heightened and funny," Rudd said. "There is no winner, and there's no real loser, but you understand both points of view equally. You like and then dislike aspects of the personality within each of us."
Some of the specifics, however, are taken from real life. Like Pete's fondness for cupcakes. Asked about that, Apatow plead guilty.
"I like Sprinkles, but I also enjoy Crumbs. I'm not going to say I don't enjoy Crumbs. I don't want the Crumbs people to feel bad. Well, the funny thing is when we shoot those scenes where he's tempted to eat cupcakes even though he has high cholesterol, the set is just littered with cupcakes. And so, we're shooting the scene where Leslie's mad at Paul and screaming at him to 'Stop eating cupcakes,' and I'm literally hiding behind the monitors eating cupcakes, and we're having the exact same conversation."
Caught in the middle of Apatow the director and Mann the co-star is Rudd, who is wonderful in the movie. Asked if it was ever odd to film some of the scenes, particularly one in which Pete asks Debbie to check for problems in his private area (one of the funniest sequences in the movie), Rudd said no.
"He [Apatow] never even attempted to put the brakes on that scene," Rudd said, pointing out by that point that they'd already filmed a shower scene between him and Mann.
Rudd did say, in retrospect, he's a little bit concerned.
"It's funny 'cause I hadn't thought of this: we sat down, and he [Judd Apatow] said, 'That's what you're going to be remembered for,' it brought back this very painful memory that I had at that time, which was one of the scenes that we kind of thought about before we ever started shooting and we were rehearsing and thinking, 'This will be a funny kind of scene.' And it was embarrassing and vulnerable and, yet, also I thought it was really funny. And in the context of the movie and the character, I was, like, 'Yes, for sure.' I wasn't psyched to do it, but I wasn't feeling very anguished about it. It was never a question I wouldn't do it. But then afterward, I kind of thought, 'Oh, my God, what did I just do?' And I kept thinking about the scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High when Judge Reinhold gets caught masturbating by Phoebe Cates and how now that's all I think about now whenever I see Judge Reinhold in anything. I don't think I'm alone in that. Then I started thinking, 'Is now anything that I do is going to elicit me with my legs in the air trying to get Leslie to see my hemorrhoid?”
As a viewer, I'm glad they included the scene because it still cracks me up.
There are some moments when Pete and Debbie fight where it appears all might be lost, and some, especially when they go away alone for a weekend, where they realize how much they still care about each other. And indulge in a little alcohol and another recreational drug.
Aside: If it's as fun as in the movies, I really need to try pot sometime. I never have because the one-time I was offered it, the room was already so smoky that I developed a serious migraine. But the movies make it look like a lot of fun, like in 9 to 5 or this one. Though when I'd find the time to be incapacitated, I have no idea.
I'll just have to stick to watching movies that make me laugh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecB5LRVH9jE
