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Features
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Hanging a Sacrilegious Ten
As a follow-up to their Toronto International Film Festival coming-of-age comedy Diggers, actor Paul Rudd, producer Jonathan Stern and co. decided to tackle the Bible.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006 at 4:30 PM
By Daniel Robert Epstein
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Jessie McCarthy / WireImage.com
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Co-writer, director Wain
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In a segment based on the commandment Thou Shall Not Steal, Winona Ryder plays a woman who falls in love with a stolen puppet and begins treating it like a real person. In another piece, based on the edict Thou Shall Honor the Sabbath, the story brings together the unlikely combo of naked men and Roberta Flack music.
Welcome to the wonderfully wacky world of The Ten, an independently financed comedy planned for 2007 release that features ten stories based on – you guessed it – the Bible’s Ten Commandments. Shot entirely on location in New York, save for a Mexico City vignette involving a certain Jesus (Justin Theroux), the film – in addition to Ryder - managed to attract the short shoot schedule talents of everyone from Jessica Alba and Liev Schreiber to Famke Janssen and Ron Silver.
Co-writer Ken Marino and co-writer-director David Wain met many years ago as gag meisters on the MTV improv series The State, but it was actually another film, Diggers, which really set The Ten project in motion. Coincidentally, that film just had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this past Saturday, September 9th.
“Last summer, the four of us [Marino, Wain, co-star Paul Rudd, producer Jonathan Stern] were doing Diggers together,” explains Stern during a recent interview with FilmStew. “Mention was made of the script for The Ten, but Ken and David didn’t seem to be taking it that seriously at that time.”
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Jeff Vespa / WireImage.com
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Partner in comedic crime Marino
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“I said, ‘Let Paul and I read it. It’ll be fun to read it,’” Stern continues. “I read it and loved it, so we very quickly decided to, all four of us, work on The Ten and try to get it made. As soon as we wrapped Diggers, we started shopping it around and adding cast to the package and it happened relatively quickly.”
And how could it not, with vignettes like the one inspired by Thou Shall Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Wife. In that one, Marino himself plays Dr. Richie, a convicted murderer who finds himself thrown into prison with a convict, Big Buster, who instantly declares Marino his wife. That is, until another new inmate (Daily Show correspondent Rob Corrdry) takes a liking to Marino’s Richie and covets him as his own wife. Envision a preposterously sappy romance, but set among three men in the slammer.
Meanwhile, although Rudd was initially slated to play one of those Flack-loving nudies, he switched to a more principal role. Above and beyond that, the actor has very much been a creative force behind The Ten, helping speedily bring together many of its elements.
“So often now, when you want to raise money to try and get a film made, the financiers want the cast in place,” he reveals. “It has been a pretty fun thing to see investors say, ‘Wow, you guys found a lot of people to be in this movie.’ A lot of people liked The State and David’s stuff, so people have been really excited to do something with us.”
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Ron Galella / WireImage.com
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Rudd, at this year's Tony's
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Adds Stern: “Someone like Paul gets to have leading roles in big comedies all the time. But for a lot of the other actors involved with this film - like Jessica [Alba], Famke [Janssen], Gretchen [Mol] – they don’t get the opportunity to be in comedies. It also takes pressure away, because the time commitment is short and the material is really weird. I think a major studio would have some notes if they read this.”
Shot in July and early August, The Ten features 75 speaking parts, about 20 of which are of the substantial variety. It is Rudd’s first time out as a producer, and both he and Stern are ready for the conservative blog attacks when theatrical release finally rolls around. “It’s a loose interpretation,” Rudd insists, “but whenever you’re doing anything about the Ten Commandments, there are going to be people who are going to be upset.”
Stern has known co-writer-director Wain for many years. At one point, when he was a fledgling producer, Stern says he optioned the rights to Wain’s Wet Hot American Summer, before migrating to another film project. As an outgrowth of Diggers, The Ten may well have cemented a formidable filmmaking quartet. On the former, Wain was executive producer, Rudd was the star, Marino was the writer and Stern co-produced and co-starred.
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James Devaney / WireImage.com
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Ryder, on set with her dummy co-star
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Still, Diggers was the first time Wain and Stern actually worked together for the big screen. And for Stern, there’s just no way, again, that The Ten could have been made on a studio lot in Burbank, CA. “It can be really tough when you’re trying to make a very specific comedy,” he suggests. “Comedy usually works when it’s the viewpoint or point of view of one person - the director or a very small number of people.”
“If you do something like this at a studio, unless they give you control, the comedy is going to get watered down,” he continues. “People are going to be afraid of how this might come off, or if it would offend somebody. So you keep control by keeping the budget within reason and doing it independently.”
That budget is also the reason The Ten was shot in Manhattan. “We determined right away that we had to shoot in New York or L.A. to have access to all of the talented actors there,” says Stern. “If people are going to work for a day or two days, it’s one thing to walk out your front door and be there. It’s another thing to fly down to, say, Austin, Texas.”
“David, Paul and I live in New York, so that was a real motivating factor. New York also has a tax credit, which was helpful in raising the money.
But for the aforementioned Theroux piece, in which he – as Jesus – picks up an American tourist (Gretchen Mol) and has a romantic fling, all to set up a resounding punch line that neither Rudd or Stern will reveal, they journeyed south to Mexico City. As Rudd says, “It’s tough to disguise New York City as Mexico.” Amen to that.
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