Comedy 'Snatched' livens up slow season in local film industry

by Mike Scott, Movie writer, The Times-Picayune

Patti Perret / Film Flam Films
A film crew for the comedy 'Snatched' shoots a scene between actors Andrew McCarthy, second from right, and Sam Stone at City Park's Storyland last week.

When it comes to movie premises, actor Andrew McCarthy is no stranger the ridiculous. It was McCarthy and co-star Jonathan Silverman who famously dragged around a dead body for the better part of two hours in the 1989 screwball comedy "Weekend at Bernie's" -- and then again in its 1993 sequel.

Still, discussing his latest comedy, "Snatched," which is filming in New Orleans through Sept. 3 and reunites him with Silverman -- their first time working together since the "Bernie" films -- McCarthy couldn't help but laugh and shake his head.

"It's ridiculous," he said between takes Monday at the New Orleans Botanical Garden's brick-lined Garden Study Center. "It's silly."

The movie tells the story of a TV sports anchor (McCarthy) who checks into a hospital to donate a kidney to his ailing brother-in-law. After a mix-up during admission, however, doctors remove the wrong organ, a mistake that -- without giving too much away -- leaves him half the man he used to be.

For the rest of the film, which co-stars New Orleanian Jay Thomas as a lawyer with visions of a huge payday, McCarthy's character spends his time trying to get the procedure reversed.

Even with a film career stretching back more than 25 years, it's like nothing McCarthy has done before -- and an impossible role to "research."

"Oh, I don't get into that at all," McCarthy said, laughing. "No, no. It's a bit like dragging a dead body around -- you just go for it."

"Snatched" is co-produced by New Orleans native and Jesuit graduate Alan Donnes, who also wrote the script. It's the second film made by Donnes' Flim Flam Films banner, which he runs with producing partner Jerry Daigle, and it's the second in a four-picture distribution deal Flim Flam landed with National Lampoon.

The first: "Dirty Movie," a gleefully bawdy collection of thoroughly tasteless comedy sketches starring Christopher Meloni and Robert Klein. "Snatched," which Donnes said contains a touch of heart between its dirty jokes, would appear to be every bit as off-color and at least twice as off-the-wall.

The self-deprecating screenwriter is unapologetic about his anatomical-leaning humor. Watching Monday's scene play out at the Botanical Garden -- one in which McCarthy's character participates in a colorful group-therapy session as a condition of having his procedure reversed -- Donnes said the idea for the movie came to him in a flash of inspiration while driving.

Before the idea could disappear, he called Daigle and said laid out the bare-bones plot, even providing him with the dirtier-than-it-sounds title. He prefaced it all with a disclaimer: "This is either nothing, or it's a movie."

Turns out, it was a movie -- and even Donnes still seems to harbor a little disbelief about that.

"That's how things come to me," he said, describing that initial flash of inspiration. "You know, like Mozart? This crap comes to me like that."

The production is modestly budgeted by Hollywood standards, but even a small, blue comedy is serious business for the local film industry. Not only is it being backed by an all-local investment team, but -- with the exceptions of New York director Joe Cacaci and cinematographer George Gibson -- nearly every member of the crew is from New Orleans, providing a welcome paycheck during the traditional hurricane-season lull in local film production work.

Donnes said he'd like to bring the two remaining films in his National Lampoon deal to town. In addition, the rights to his book "Patron Saints" -- about the magical season experienced by the Saints in the team's return to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina -- has been optioned for a movie. Assuming that project comes to fruition, New Orleans would seem the only place to base the production.

Until then, he's busy with "Snatched," which he hopes to have ready in time to play at January's Slamdance Film Festival, the upstart cousin of the Sundance Film Festival. The two festivals run concurrently in Park City, Utah, every year.

He harbors no delusions of grandeur with regard to the kind of movie he's making. All he wants to do is make people laugh -- even if it's at his own expense. "If the Democrats had gotten their health plan by now," he said. "I would have my meds and this movie never would have happened."

Movie critic Mike Scott be reached at mscott@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3444.