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FunTranscript
00:00 I'm Finn Wolfhard. And I'm Billy Brick. And Hell of a Summer is a summer camp
00:12 slasher comedy, an ensemble coming-of-age movie about a killer who starts targeting
00:20 a group of teenagers during the counselor weekend before the campers
00:24 show up at Camp Pineway. Billy plays Bobby, who's sort of, he's a vain sort of
00:34 character with a heart of gold. And Finn plays Chris, who's his his best friend
00:42 and loyal companion who's sort of stuck between, you know, his loyalty to Bobby
00:48 and then this sort of newfound romance with someone else at the camp. So he's,
00:53 there's a bit of a, there's a bit of a rivalry between me and his new sort of
00:58 girlfriend. I'm Fred and Abby plays Claire. She has been to the camp before
01:05 and wasn't necessarily gonna come back this year, but ultimately did. Claire's, I
01:12 would say, probably the most, not only most grounded, but but also the smart,
01:17 probably like one of the only people at this camp who actually has a wide grasp
01:24 of things and, yeah, very good head on the shoulders. I'm Abby. Fred plays Jason. I
01:33 would say Jason is dedicated to the camp, loves going to camp, loves the color
01:43 purple. His shoes are purple. And he, I would say he's kind of the anchor of the
01:51 camp with the most spirit and heart and, yeah. Well, Billy and I had met on set of
02:01 Ghostbusters and we had become like close friends. We were a part of sort of a teen
02:07 ensemble. There's a part of the film that sort of has a teen ensemble sort of
02:12 energy to it. And so we all got really close and Billy and I wanted to start
02:19 writing something together. And so we just sort of started writing, you know,
02:24 like a version of the kind of relationships that we had on set or
02:30 relationships that we had with, you know, school friends or people in the
02:34 past and stuff. And it really just made us want to write a teen comedy. Yeah, it
02:37 felt like we were kind of at summer camp and neither of us really went to summer
02:41 camp ever. I went to camp, I went to sleepaway basketball camp for one week,
02:44 but my last name is Brick and that means to miss a shot in basketball. So I had
02:48 the worst name ever and everybody laughed at me the whole time. But we
02:52 wanted to like sort of, we never went to camp. Sad story. Well, Finn never had a
02:57 childhood and we sort of just wanted to write a film about all these young
03:03 people and set it somewhere that felt like, you know, a blast to shoot at
03:07 and somewhere that kind of felt like timeless and sort of stuck in time. So we
03:12 decided to write a summer camp movie. You know, we wrote the first draft like very
03:16 fast and then sort of like really, really started working on it and dialing it in
03:22 like the pandemic in 2020. So it's been like a long road and I think we've
03:28 known we wanted a directive from the beginning. I guess the first thing is
03:31 just one of the funniest, most humane scripts I read in a long time. It just
03:37 felt like it was really about people and it felt that the way that it was, the
03:43 parts of it that are genre were coming from the way that people are trying to
03:50 change and be better and can help but get in their own way, but also help each
03:54 other through that. And so it just was a truly great script and then
04:00 meeting them and getting to talk to them about how they were gonna
04:05 direct it made it even more exciting and then doing it was just one of
04:10 the best experiences of my life. So then, you know, it was great in this way.
04:16 I'd say same. And then I got to meet them over Zoom. I'd known of Billy because
04:23 I'm friends with his brother so it felt like I was comfortable right away.
04:27 And I think I, after reading the script, could just envision a summer of like
04:35 fun and at camp and that's kind of what it turned out to be. Yeah, and I just
04:41 loved getting to meet them and talking through the script with them.
04:45 I never thought I would make a slasher film and I don't think if I made a film on my
04:51 own and without Finn that I would have and I think that it sort of became
04:54 something that just really felt right for us to make together and a lot of the
04:59 films that we were talking about in referencing it just sort of kept going
05:02 there. But I mean, yeah, I mean I think, you know, we both wanted to make a teen
05:09 comedy like that was I think that was the first thing that we sort of talked
05:15 about together about doing. Well, technically not actually. We had some
05:18 ideas that were way worse for films but we ended up doing this because we just
05:24 wanted to, we hadn't seen like a great teen comedy in a long time and, you
05:29 know, we'll see what people think about this one obviously. But for us we were
05:32 like, you know, we were just excited to sort of get an ensemble together and
05:39 then I just loved growing up watching Scream and all these
05:44 horror movies and so I was like, you know, and we both love horror comedies. I
05:49 actually have to give a shout out to my roommate because he sort of showed me or
05:55 like got me into slasher films and slasher comedies and he had written a
05:59 short film and then I was like, hey, can I rewrite this? He's like, I don't know, I
06:03 guess. And then I wrote it again and then the movie isn't based on that at all but
06:08 Finn and I had kind of like, we just read with some of the cast on Ghostbusters
06:11 this short film and we were like, oh this could be fun to do something that's like
06:15 in like a horror comedy hybrid. So I probably wouldn't have made it if not
06:19 for my friend Jamie and the fact that I kind of stole his short film. But that
06:23 was about ghosts and stuff. Yeah, that was paranormal. Yeah, but it was
06:28 paranormal. It was paranormal. It was already a 4x4 film. Yeah.
06:32 Rose of the production. I'm trying to think. What's a good... Oh, well, okay. I have my
06:41 I have my Rose and I have my Thorne. So my Rose would be just like how... I mean, that
06:47 was pretty amazing when we finished the film. Like, I remember when we all like,
06:51 you know, we finished it and we all just like jumped in the lake. It was like at
06:55 sunrise like 5 in the morning. It was very fun and amazing. Thorne, we hit an owl at
07:00 like a hundred and fifty miles an hour. Like, we were driving down a highway on the way
07:05 back and we literally were, we were driving back to our lodging and we were
07:11 all in the back seat. I don't know if that, you know, the owl might have been fine. I
07:14 don't know. Okay, well, feathers did fly. But we were driving down the highway
07:21 trying to go home and literally like this beautiful owl was just like amazing.
07:26 And then it hit and then just went like, like just sort of flew. That was the
07:33 Thorne. I think my favorite thing was just watching the the script sort of
07:37 come to life and that maybe will sound cliche, but working with all the actors
07:41 and just seeing the like jokes that Finn and I had been writing for four years
07:46 and finishing a scene and being like, that was insane. We wrote that, or I mean
07:51 we wrote that four years ago just to try and make each other
07:53 laugh and now we have all these incredible people acting in it and we
07:58 have all these people helping us like film it. It just felt really surreal and
08:01 bizarre to sort of finish a day and be like, that's done. We got that. That scene
08:05 is done now. My Thorne is we went to Montreal afterwards and I really wanted
08:09 everyone to go to the casino. Then we got there and all of the, there was no cards.
08:13 It was all like machines only because, I guess because of the pandemic. But this
08:17 was sort of afterwards. Anyways, and I didn't, I was like, I convinced
08:20 everybody to come to Montreal sort of to go to the casino and I didn't end up
08:23 gambling at all because I just don't trust the machines and I was like, I want
08:27 the cards. That was my Thorne.
08:31 Rose, I really liked Bowling Day. Bowling Day was good and then we got, we just kind of
08:41 walked around town post bowling. Billy's really good at bowling and we ate some
08:48 candy and then I think we ended the night with pizza. It was just a good day.
08:54 But they all kind of blend together because I would say that they were all
08:58 equally memorable and like sweet feeling. But Bowling Day stands out.
09:06 Thorne...
09:08 That's funny because that wasn't at all part of the question.
09:12 Thorne...
09:14 Maybe that was the next question.
09:16 And now what's the Thorne?
09:18 Thorne is that, they served free pie for like a day and that was it.
09:26 Oh, that it was so good that you wanted more.
09:28 It was so good and they, right?
09:30 It was a rose quickly turned to thorn.
09:32 Oh, that's so rare. A rose that turns into a thorn?
09:36 Yeah, only one day of pie at the Lodge that we were staying at.
09:41 Good pie. I think, yeah, rose for me was that every single day there was just
09:49 like truly great scenes and also by the way that they like it was designed and
09:57 that we all lived in the same place like that was like a summer camp and every
10:01 day you go and do a ton of stuff.
10:04 Well, also, I mean the first, because obviously it was like the first feature
10:08 that we directed and there were a lot of things that we were very new to and so
10:14 there was a lot of like, even just, I remember we had to go, we were shooting
10:19 and we had to go get, because you need to get physicals and stuff to make sure
10:25 you're good to work on set and stuff like that, but we were like halfway
10:28 through the production and so we went and all we wanted to do was shoot but
10:33 you just have to, that's something you just have to do and so we were in
10:36 Ontario, both of us just like getting blood drawn and we were both just like,
10:40 "Send us back to camp. We need to go back to camp." It was very funny.
10:44 That's also kind of a rose/thorn as well.
10:47 Yeah, yeah. It was, it just, the environment felt such that like you just
10:51 didn't want to leave, which is part of I think also what the movie's about.
10:56 Oh, nice. That's why he's good at press.
11:00 Yeah. And it just, I don't know, for a couple years I guess of making movies,
11:08 it was really the first time, at least for me, where it felt fully like everyone,
11:18 like to do, for it to all be young people making something together in this way
11:25 felt uniquely special and really exciting and it just felt like, I don't know,
11:30 we really had this place and this space to do something.
11:33 [Music]
11:37 [BLANK_AUDIO]