Honolulu Star-Bulletin
An assistant offers strips of tape to comedian Rob Schneider, who removes his pants to secure the flesh-colored stocking that amounts to less than a rudimentary loincloth. Tape anchored, he crab-walks with a pinched face, muttering “Ow!” and a few unprintable words as the extras take their places. Donning a whistle and a goofy captain’s hat, Schneider responds to the director’s call for “Action!”
SNL veteran Rob Schneider hams it up during a Funny or Die shoot.
In the scene, he offers to retrieve a volleyball hit into the bushes. This requires the very exposed Schneider to bend over with his back toward onlookers, who cover their faces to suppress peals of laughter.
Schneider’s brother and manager, John Schneider, glances between his Blackberry and sibling, and shrugs. “Nudity is comedy,” he says.
When the director yells, “Cut!” Schneider emerges from the bushes and waves to the crew and extras, their applause affirming the success of the philistine humor. “Thank you,” he nods, pulling a towel around himself. “Some of my finest work. All those years of acting lessons!”
A veteran of more than 80 “Saturday Night Live” episodes in the show’s second round of glory days in the early 1990s, Schneider is also a writer, director and character actor who has appeared in films such as “50 First Dates” and “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.”
He’s in town shooting a satirical movie trailer for the Web site FunnyorDie.com. Plans to make the video in Los Angeles changed when he accepted a part in the feature “You May Not Kiss the Bride,” in production here with David Annable, Tia Carrere, Mena Suvari and Katharine McPhee. New location? Punaluu. The two- to three-minute piece spoofs cliche-ridden 1980s action flicks like “Red Dawn” and features Russian soldiers invading America — represented by a nudist colony. Started by Will Farrell two years ago, Funny or Die solicits audience judgment on all submitted videos.
“If it’s not funny, you’re going to get roasted,” says Cuirus Legg, an extra on the set. But that’s all part of the fun.
Word of mouth and advertisements on Craigslist invited Legg, his twin brother and anyone with a sense of adventure to participate.
“Everyone showed up on the premise that there would be flesh-colored underpants,” extra Rob Masterson notes with a smirk. “We got here and there were socks.”
During the low-budget shoot, men secure towels with one hand and send text messages with the other between takes. A table covered with bagels, chips and pretzels keeps everyone satiated until the bento lunches arrive. Inside the private home, a few clothed extras endure slaps to the chest as wardrobe chief Ara Laylo covers the “U.S.” printed on their uniforms. Others shout Russian phrases while an actor/instructor corrects them repeatedly. Plastic machine guns are passed around. One extra complains that his pants are several sizes too small and won’t zip properly. Producer Mike Farah mutters, “Guess it’s better than a sock.”
Away from the activity, Schneider gets philosophical. “We love filming in Hawaii,” he says. Sitting cross-legged in a chair and draped in a towel, he chats about the “ridiculously good food” at Alan Wong’s Restaurant and his affinity for the islands, where he spent summers as a child. “The people are the most amazing; the crews are great. It’s a magical place. If you make friends with a Hawaiian, you’ve got a friend for life. I appreciate being here.”
A shout from the director sparks a flurry of activity on the set: “We need the running team, the soldiers and the nudists again!”
Affable and quiet off camera, comedic actor Rob Schneider glances out the window at a group of men running around screaming in the Punaluu yard with nothing but socks or pieces of stocking covering them, and shakes his head. “That’s ridiculous.”
Unfortunately, he’s dressed the same way.
When “Naked Dawn,” a parody of a cinematic trailer, is up and running on FunnyorDie.com this week, the socked areas will be mercifully blurred on screen. The video is an entertaining contribution to Funny or Die, but the 2 1/2-minute piece also is an effort to generate buzz about “Big Stan,” a movie Schneider directed and starred in, released on DVD and Blu-ray this week.
The trailer “is pretty stupid and funny, so that’s why I’m here wrapping myself up in a towel,” says Schneider. “They showed me several ideas, and this is the one I liked best.”
Jake Szymanski, a director with Funny or Die, jumped at the opportunity to travel to Hawaii to make the satire based on the 1980s classic “Red Dawn.” “We’re playing it straight like a war action movie, except with everyone nude,” he says. “We’re just running around to all of these amazing locations; it’s gorgeous, so we’re literally trying to fit in everything we can.” Completing the project here has been “a really nice added bonus.”
When asked what he looks for in Funny or Die projects, producer Mike Farah explains, “It needs to be short because people’s viewing habits just aren’t at a place where they’ll stick around for much longer than two to three minutes. But there are definitely things that lend themselves to more Internet-y ideas. Movie trailer mash-ups are just a popular thing because they play off an existing movie. It puts it in a good position to be passed around. I would love for people to wonder if this is a real movie.”
Shooting with a red camera, which yields high-quality footage, will help. But most of these projects are done quickly and with the kinds of limited resources that rely on friendships and connections.
“We’re always really low budget,” says Josh Simpson, an associate producer for Funny or Die, who adds that they are constantly pushing the envelope. “It’s like YouTube. We pretty much do whatever we can get away with. … The Internet is nice because there aren’t those rules. We’re lucky that our writers have an idea, and we can do it how we want to.”
Though someone screens everything submitted to the site, anyone who posts has a chance to be seen — and evaluated — by thousands of viewers.
Cinematographer Shawn Booth, who also works on “Lost,” says participants stepped up to turn the lack of glamour into a couple of days of fun. “This is Hawaii, and the locals came out in force,” he says. “Everyone’s been amazing.”
Back in the house, wrapped in a towel and wearing an indigenous necklace from the Amazon River, Schneider doesn’t seem fazed by the ascetic conditions; indeed, he appears to view them as a way to enjoy the island setting even more.
“If you’re not affected by the majesty and the beauty of the emotion of this island, you’re not alive,” he says. “It’s impossible not to be swept up in it.”