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“There are scary things in the world. But isn’t it fun to get together with people that we love and… have a few laughs?”
Ben Falcone isn’t exactly known for making kid-friendly projects. His films with wife and frequent collaborator Melissa McCarthy are “R-rated quite often, but I do think there’s a certain sweetness that we usually try to hit.” And it’s that sweetness he’s bringing to his first kids’ book, What’s Scarier Than Thunder? “My secret goal is that it’s something that kids will think is funny, but that parents will, too.” The story follows Claire, who is afraid of thunderstorms. For future stories, Falcone sees many other things to be scared of: “Heights, first day of school, remember that one? Meeting someone new, auditions…” Another story he’s actively involved with is the podcast Hildy the Barback and the Lake of Fire, which he created with McCarthy and Steve Mallory. “There’s going to be a season two, so we’re excited.” And even though “the industry is clearly changing,” Falcone says he believes in comedy. “Melissa and I, our big goal is to try to be a very small part of the bigger push to get comedies back in the theaters. I think it’s so good for people to get together and laugh.”
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Editor’s Note: This conversation has been edited and condensed for publication.
I have to admit, I did not expect a children’s book from you, especially because of many of your collaborations with your wife, Melissa McCarthy, which are often R-rated comedies.
R-rated quite often. But I do think there’s a certain sweetness that we usually try to hit where the characters are eventually, even when they do all the things wrong that they do, there’s some reason that we have to root for them, or hopefully, that speck of humanity inside. So that’s hopefully thematic.
What inspired you to do this?
I met with this really smart editor slash bigwig at Penguin Random House, Jen Klonsky, and she sort of said, “Are you interested in doing a picture book?” They call them that. And I was like, “What’s a picture book?” All the things that you don’t know. And she said, “Do you have any ideas? Think about it. We don’t have to talk about it right now,” and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, “I do have one idea, which is sort of based on an idea I had a long time ago with a friend of mine, who’s a very funny guy, about thunderstorms.” And so I was like, “I think we could do some version of that and make it sillier.” And I took her through it, and she liked it, and it just seemed like a really silly fun thing for parents and kids to read together.
Were you a scared kid?
Definitely I was. I’ve just always been a little tightly wound, even though the way that my personality developed was I was always trying to hide that with a mellow outer facade, and inside my blood pressure is just skyrocketing, and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, everything.” But I would be like, “Hey, I’m just kind of chilling out,” and meanwhile, my head is going a mile a minute. So I always had worries and stuff, as we all do. I think the point of this book is to say, “We do all have worries. There are scary things in the world. But isn’t it fun to get together with people that we love and that we like, and to sort of make fun of ourselves and to have a few laughs and have a good time?”
Penguin Random House
Since so much of your work has been adult-oriented, was it difficult to stay within the child-friendly tone?
Sure. My secret goal is that it’s something that kids will think is funny, and it’s not like parents would go out of their way to seek silly rhymes and stuff, but that parents will think it’s funny, too. So that’s the way I kind of went with it, and hopefully we succeeded. Because it’s tricky, right? Because you’re like, “Oh, how can I, as a 51-year-old gentleman, write something that will make a 4-year-old laugh?” So it’s a tricky ticket. My girls are older now too; they’re 15 and 17, but I still can get them. They’re way too old for this book, but at least I can get people that are under 30.
Because you primarily work in acting, directing, writing, when you’re writing this, are you also thinking about what this could look like visually?
You know, it’s really interesting. In our movies, the ones that I’ve directed with Melissa I’m in them sometimes, but you’ll notice my parts in those movies are really, really small, because I do not like the idea of needing to make sure everything is going great for everyone, and [also] making sure we’re getting the best product with the best process. So, I intentionally with the book, I sort of said, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to work with Jen. She’s super smart. I trust her totally. I’m just going to write the funniest, dumbest stuff I can think of. We’re going to create this world. And then she is undoubtedly going to introduce me to some sort of Illustrator who’s amazing, which she, of course, did. She gave us some candidates. And, of course, I had Melissa look, too. And then we came up with, you know, Kevin Cornell, who, right off the bat, got it. It was almost like he wrote it. It was just one of those things where he just captured it immediately. It’s been such a joyous, simple process. I really tried to stay in my lane and give my opinions as they were warranted. It’s almost like Jen, in a lot of ways, is the director of this book, and I was just the writer.
Well, if kids respond to this, and I think they will, what other things can you write about for them to be scared of?
There’s different stuff, you know, heights, first day of school, remember that one? Meeting someone new, auditions. I was always really scared of tryouts for athletics, because I was interested enough to and decent enough to want to try out, but I’m gonna have to do an amazing job to make this team. So that was always terrifying for me. And then once, if I even got on the team, I’d be like, “Do I want to be on this team?” Like after all the work of doing it, then you’re like, “Oh, do I like this so much to get on?” And now I’m not sure I want to be a part of this club. [laughs]
Your podcast with Melissa, Hildy the Barback and the Lake of Fire, is so beautifully weird and original. How did it come about?
Oh, well, thank you very much. Beautifully weird is one of my favorite descriptors. So our friend, one of our old friends, a really great writer, this guy named Steve Mallory, during COVID he sort of pitched [this idea]. I’m a huge Lord of the Rings fan, and he was like, women don’t get to do almost anything in the movies. And then the books, it is true. And so he said, “Wouldn’t it be fun to do something, and we could make it like a radio play where Melissa and a bunch of women saved the day because the men screwed everything up.” And I thought that was a really fun idea. And then I know Melissa is gonna dive into an idea when immediately she starts to go, “Oh, it’s this, and this.” I’m usually much slower. I’m the boring member of the team. But that one, I was like, “Oh yeah, she’s a barback. She works in a bar, and her brother is the guy who runs the bar, even though he’s an idiot,” which Steven ends up playing the idiot brother. And so the idea just sort of took off right from there where it was just like, oh yeah, this seems super simple. We’ll get our friends who are hilarious women to do it, and then we’ll get our other dipstick friends to do it too. And it was great.
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What I found so interesting about it is that it’s not your traditional podcast, where people are just talking. It’s a real radio play. Very unexpected for the genre.
I don’t want to speak for her, she’s not here, but I’m going to at least say my part of the Melissa-Ben partnership is we never like to play at a genre or a thing. So if it was Thunder Force, it was going to be a superhero movie that was also funny. That’s why I think Spy is so funny, or The Heat, both of those are Paul Feig films, but those are movies that are not like spoofs in any way. They’re good films that are also really funny. So that was our idea with the podcast too. We’re going to try to live in this world, in this genre of Dungeons and Dragons and everything like that. And we’re gonna try to be really real, but we’re gonna try to be funny about it. I’ve gotten one note from executives, “What is the villain’s plan?” And it’s not a bad note, but I started to think about it, and I’m like, “Well, what’s like Sauron’s plan?” [From Lord of the Rings.] Like he’s an eye and he wants to blow up everything, but he just wants to coat the earth in darkness. That’s always what it ends up being. Or there’s a Thor movie where it’s like, “I want to coat the world in darkness.” But one thing that I took from that was I want to explore. Jim Rash plays my right hand. He’s a grimy, terrible guy demon, but he sort of walks me through it. Like, well, if you blow up the world, you don’t get to eat at your bagel shop. So are you gonna blow up your bagel shop? And it’s like, “Well, no, I want my bagels.” “Well, okay, then we need a path to the bagel shop.” He just takes me through the logistics of it, because that stuff I think is really fun and funny in these worlds that you create. Like, “the Eagles are coming,” to actually be like, “Well, where are they coming from?” So, it’s been a blast to do, just to live in that world and take the ridiculousness. That’s the fun I’ve been having with it. And there’s going to be a season two, so we’re excited.
You’ve directed a ton of great comedies, but in recent years there does feel like a decline in Hollywood taking a chance on original ideas, leaning into more safe territory with guaranteed properties people know, like a Marvel film. So where do you think we are and what is the state of original comedy films?
I believe in comedy, and the industry is clearly changing. That’s one reason we did the podcast the way we did it, because we created our own IP [intellectual property], more or less. Where we controlled all the elements, and it was during COVID, and we were just trying to have fun and make a thing. But I think comedy will come back. It literally just takes one. For a long time when I was getting started [with] horror they’re like, “Oh, watch out. Horror. Just can’t get them to work.” And then they were like, “Oh, wait a minute, they work great again.” So, I think it’s just getting a comedy made with people, actors and such that everybody is interested in seeing, which doesn’t mean they have to be super famous or anything. It’s just they have to break out in that moment and it just has to be a really funny, funny movie. They say comedy is hard. I think making comedy is, if you’re with a bunch of funny people, it’s actually pretty easy and fun and wonderful, but it’s hard getting everybody to agree on what’s funny or what’s not funny when it comes out. And that’s why we went through the sort of Paul Feig, Judd Apatow [genre], we followed in the footsteps of people who knew what they were doing ahead of us. Like Life of the Party is a good example. It was just supposed to be, “Here’s a fun situation.” We’re not trying to reinvent anything. We’re not trying to impress anybody. It’s not high concept. It’s literally what would happen if your daughter is mortified by the mom, and the mom goes through all these experiences at this school, and so I think that comedy doesn’t need to be IP because part of it is that it’s surprising. Melissa and I, we have some stuff in the works that we’re very hopeful will get made soon. And I’ve seen that comedies are coming out, and a lot of them are on streamers, but hopefully our big goal is to try to be a very small part of the bigger push to get comedies back in the theaters. I think it’s so good for people to get together and laugh.
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