THE SCRIPT AND INSPIRATION
Zak Penn: Gutter is a dumb version of my very smart friend, Marc Flacks, who had dreadlocks and quit the football team to follow his Marxist studies desires.Marc Flacks (sociology professor, kinda inspiration for Gutter): I grew up in the hard left. [Politically correct] was a term we used. It was a way that leftwing people would help each other stay on message and be righteous. It was never expected that somebody at Dartmouth would be politically correct. We knew that they knew they were conservative bastards.“I don't think we ever walked around Wesleyan and said, ‘This is where the country's headed.’ It always seemed fringe.” —Adam Leff, screenwriter
PRE-PRODUCTION
Zak Penn: We were huge fans of his because he was in Die Hard. That's all we wanted to talk about.Hart Bochner: Initially, I thought it’s not really my sensibilities, it’s not really my area of expertise. I had been out of college at that point for over a dozen years. But the more I examined the script and the more I did my homework about where culture was going on campuses, the more I thought, geez, there’s an opportunity here.Zak Penn: The first draft for PCU was pretty insane. We had an ending where President Garcia-Thompson pulls off her face. It's a mask and it reveals that it was Ed McMahon. Then he pulls off that mask and it’s President Garcia-Thompson again. We had this crazy subplot that The Pit had been built on a Native American burial ground and also a pet cemetery. So at the end, this ghost appears and it’s a dog. Then they say, “Oh my God, it's a ghost dog.” And he was like, “Non-human animal companion, please.”Hart Bochner: We steered the writers. These guys were exceptionally talented. It wasn’t necessarily a joke-driven piece of material, but in its observations of campus life and political correctness, I thought we could mine it for more humor.“The more I examined the script and the more I did my homework about where culture was going on campuses, the more I thought, geez, there’s an opportunity here.” —Hart Bochner, director
CASTING
Paul Schiff: It was a hard role because he was essentially the straight man. It was played with innocence and wide-eyed wonder, walking into this crazy world. That takes a certain finesse and I thought he did that quite well.“We were shocked that John Stamos was coming in to read for Droz, which just seemed totally wrong. He thought we were interns.” —Zak Penn, screenwriter
FILMING
Paul Schiff: It was their idea, and the specificity of their observations about their own experience was a big part of the project. It seems pretty silly not to have the creators there to be able to make adjustments and tweaks and fixes along the way to sharpen the writing and sharpen the jokes. Megan Ward: [Piven] got malaria. How do you get malaria in Canada? He was literally in the hospital for like 48 hours. Alex Désert: Piven is just the king of improvisation, letting it flow. What’s great about that is you don’t have to do too much, just react and act. Megan Ward: So many of those lines came from Piven and Favreau.Zak Penn: We had the whole discussion about “don’t wear the shirt of the band you’re going to see,” and Piven came up with, “Don't be that guy.” We were just like, “Oh my God, that's brilliant. And we’re totally going to get credit for it.”“If you remember it, you weren’t there.” —George Clinton, musician
RELEASE AND DISAPPOINTMENT
Zak Penn: We couldn't even get the people who were represented in the movie to go see it opening weekend. I was like, “Wow, if I can’t convince James Drosnes to go opening weekend, no wonder we did so badly.”“The concept promised an edgy experience. When you sand down the edges and pull the more profane language or drug use or sexuality, all of a sudden the movie isn't fulfilling its own promise.” —Paul Schiff, producer
AFTERLIFE AND LEGACY
Zak Penn: There are times where people will bring it up and I'm like, “You should watch the movie more closely.” The Balls and Shaft guys are still the villains of the movie.Marc Flacks: I think [my students] would say it was cringe-y. That's the term my daughter might use. Some of the things that are portrayed in the movie as crazy on the politically correct side, like some of what the Womynists say, my daughter now would be like, “She's right on.”Adam Leff: The whole woke movement, it’s obviously an echo of those times. I certainly feel like we're on repeat, although this feels more universal. It goes to the workplace, it goes into politics, it goes into your everyday life in a way that the P.C. movement probably didn't. P.C. was much more campus and more academic. Maybe that was just a first hiccup. I do feel like things receded for a while under George Bush. They've certainly come back, maybe as a reaction to Trump.Hart Bochner: The times we live in right now are extremely raw, and rightly so on a lot of levels. Inequality of any kind is unacceptable, but what does it mean when you aren't able to skewer it in order to make a point?Gale Mayron: I'm Gen X. We grew up where everything was sarcasm. We’re going to make fun of the culture. If you grew up in a certain time, it's very hard to adjust to the new time. Zak Penn: We always had an affection for the absurdity of college—the absurdity of what you could take classes in, the absurdity of what you could write your papers about. It was an affectionate look at the absurdity of the whole situation. I do think there are instances today where there's more at stake, where people are afraid to speak in both directions, or where there's a reaction and a counter-reaction that are equally out of line. But back then, it more felt like this crazy little subculture of a bunch of schools that we just happened to live through.Adam Leff: When I look at the movie now, it seems very tame to me. Maybe that's just because of where the culture has gone and where films have gone, but it’s good-hearted, almost.“The movie did a good job of showing that the corporate leaders that run these schools may have what we would now call a ‘woke’ mentality, when in fact they’re the same old guard that always ran things.” —Marc Flacks, actor