BOP Interview: Topher Grace and Teresa Palmer

By Ryan Mazie

March 3, 2011

I was told that a guy named Randall works here...

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How did you go about picking the songs in the film?

TG: We had that mix and about 90% of that mix went into the final film. This is not really the way to sell the movie [to studios]. You should say that there are plenty of titties and cocaine in the film (laughs)...which there are. We wanted it to be kind of like a musical. In great musicals when the character can no longer say it in words, they sing it. Again, there is no singing in the movie. If you make a movie that is a spoof of the ‘80s, you layer the songs on top of the film, but here we wanted it to be whatever the experience was – if someone gets proposed to, everyone starts singing “Come On Eileen” or if you steal a car you start rapping N.W.A.

TP: The music really became a character. It was so imperative to the story. The majority of the songs you hear in the film, we were playing them on set and partying to that music. All of the extras were jumping around singing, “Come On Eileen” with us. It really felt like we were having a real party while we were filming and I think you can actually feel that in the movie.

TG: When Teresa walks out on the balcony, they are playing “Bette Davis Eyes.”

TP: In my slow motion entrance to the party (laughs).




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TG: A lot of it came out of us listening to the mix and us saying, “There’s got to be a moment when the girl walks out and the guy sees her.”

Again, not wanting to spoof the decade, how did you decide on the costumes?

TP: It was really interesting. I was born in 1986, so I didn’t get to experience that time. When we first started doing rehearsals we didn’t know how big to go with the hair. The first time I remember when I came out of the hair and make-up trailer Topher was like, “Oh God no!” (laughs) My hair was sky high. Topher was going, “No, no, no, no.” And Topher had a terrible wig at one point. It was just bizarre. But as lead characters, we have to be somewhat attractive and tamed back. The gold sparkly vintage dress was so amazing, though. We wanted Tori to look like a golden girl so it would be quite fitting for her to have a shiny gold dress. It was such a nice outfit to wear throughout the entire film, pretty much. That doesn’t usually happen so I was very happy with that.

The whole movie takes place within 24 hours and most of that time is during the night. What is doing a night shoot like?

TP: I think your body clock gets a bit out of whack. We shot for like seven or eight weeks, shooting nights, every night. It meant that even on the weekends, we would all have to stay up, so what we did was hire a party bus and the whole cast and crew would go on this party bus and stay up all night. Just try to stay up till seven in the morning and sleep through the day.


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