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Andy Yerlett: Sorry, no daddy issues here. Gutpunch originated from a couple of different places. When I was a teenager, a friend of mine was hit with life-changing news all very casually across the dinner table. Before they could process it, everything was swept under the carpet, and life continued as normal. I guess that's the origin of the film.I started writing it after seeing a bunch of 1980s dating videos and wondered, What if you found out one of these guys was your dad? I joined the dots between what happened to my friend and these videos, and it grew from there.Adrian McDowall: I'd worked on a bunch of coming-of-age stories before this, so I wasn't in any rush to revisit this territory, but the script was hilarious, and most importantly, Andy's take on the genre was totally original. But you only know if you can collaborate on a project when you get in a room together. Thankfully there was an instant bond over old-school gaming, John Hughes movies, and a shared desire to make shamelessly funny commercial films. It was a no-brainer.
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Yerlett: It's a bit of both really. We had the plot device of a VHS tape, and a fifteen-year-old boy looking for his father on it, which naturally cornered us into setting it somewhere around the 90s. But the 90s are also my main point of reference when writing about being a teenager. I grew up in a house that looks very similar to the one in the film. So, although it is very much a 90s setting, it's the suburbs, and the suburbs don't really change. Half the stuff in Adam's room was collected from my parents' attic, so it was like seeing a weird mock-up of my childhood bedroom.
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We were keen to create an authenticity to the dating sequence that felt spontaneous, so we shot it on an old VHS camcorder and encouraged the actors to spontaneously react in character while I asked them a bunch of random questions. This was probably the highlight of the shoot for me. There is something special about working with great comedy actors like Rufus Jones, Justin Edwards, and Chris Wright, who are exceptional at improvisation. They can put on a wig and some random ridiculous clothes and before you know it, they have embodied the character and are able to create genuine moments of magic out of nothing.
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Yerlett: I wanted Roddy to be the kind of guy that you might look up to as a kid, and then totally regret that you ever did. I remember having a Brian May poster on my wall as a kid. I regret that. Then I went to a Brian May gig and bought the T-shirt. I thought he was really cool, until I got to school the next day, and then I realized and tried to distance myself from the whole thing. That's kind of what happens to Adam. He gets suckered in. So I wanted Roddy to appeal as superficially as possible—and being a virtual-reality tool ticks the box. He had to be everything that Mike wasn't.Roddy is a massive, tragic fraud, but weirdly lovable. Rufus brought a lot to playing Roddy. He really got what kind of dick Roddy was and then really went for it.McDowall: Roddy didn't really become a full-fledged character until Rufus donned the wig and started playing with his transatlantic accent. It was only then that I realized the full comedy potential of the character. The fact that Roddy takes himself so seriously while being so obviously ridiculous makes me chuckle like a naughty boy at the back of class. I think he deserves his own film. I could watch him all day.
Yerlett: The different styles trace back to the bigger story that I was trying to tell originally, which was Adam on a Broken Flowers–ish trip to track down his biological father. I intended him to use the videotape as his road map and track down each of those dating weirdoes in turn.
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