Behind the scenes of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's pitch perfect new comedy.
By Brandon Voss
As a red-blooded American gay man, Jason Moore was a big fan of Amy Poehler and Tina Fey before he directed them in Sisters, out December 18. “I love so many ladies from SNL, but they were always my favorite pair,” he says. “The first day I shot Tina and Amy with Maya Rudolph, I was pinching myself. I just sat back and watched this well-oiled machine in action. I was so entertained, I almost had to remind myself that I had to call ‘cut.’”
Penned by out SNL writer Paula Pell, Sisters, a comedy about siblings bidding farewell to their childhood home with one last house party, is Moore’s second feature film after Pitch Perfect, and he wouldn’t mind being pigeonholed for future female-driven flicks. “I’d be honored,” he says. “I’ve always been drawn to female writers and comedians, and I guess that’s my gay sensibility. But it helped me, being a gay man in a room full of women, because they really let me in. Sisters is a movie about how women behave together, and they let me see them as they really are.”
As with Pitch Perfect, Moore was confident on set that gay men would welcome Sisters to the family. “Because I am the gay audience, the gay audience is, by default, always at the front of my mind,” he says. “I’m always thinking about what I’d want to watch, and this movie definitely falls in that category. I knew the gays and females were taken care of. If anything, I had to try to make it more inclusive for the straight dudes who might show up.”
Fey recently told The Advocate that she and Poehler were both alphas — a fact that might intimidate some directors. “I did wonder what it would be like, as a director, to work with actors who’d ruled their own kingdoms for so long on 30 Rock and Parks and Rec,” Moore recalls. “But they come from the world of improv, where everyone tries to help each other out. They are alphas, so they really go for it, but they’re incredibly collaborative.”
Moore, who will next direct Jesse Tyler Ferguson in Broadway’s Fully Committed, previously helmed Broadway musicals like Avenue Q and Shrek. In which musical would he cast Poehler and Fey? “Wouldn’t it be interesting to see them in Wicked? But they’re both so smart and original, maybe we should just write our own.”
Next, December 2015.