The Director Of Please Don't Destroy's First Movie On Creating A CGI Penis And '90s Influences [Exclusive Interview]
This post contains spoilers for "Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain."
The comedy trio known as Please Don't Destroy has been making a splash at "Saturday Night Live" for the past couple years. Creating fast-paced, absurd, pre-recorded sketches starring themselves (Martin Herlihy, John Higgins, and Ben Marshall), as well as being part of the writing staff, the trio has made a quite name for themselves. Last weekend, their first movie debuted on Peacock, "Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain," and it's the kind of comedy that we wish could have been given a theatrical release in order to have that communal experience of laughing out loud with a crowd. But at least it's getting a chance to find an audience. Plus, director Paul Briganti is used to people watching his stuff at home anyway.
Briganti worked at "SNL" for six years before departing the series late in 2021, just as Please Don't Destroy had joined the series. But that was enough time for all four of them to cultivate a comedic relationship that blossomed into collaborating on "The Treasure of Foggy Mountain." Just before the movie was released, we spoke with Briganti about working with the Please Don't Destroy dudes, which also afforded him the rare opportunity to direct comedian Conan O'Brien as an actor. Plus, we talk about the hilarious cameo by "Stranger Things" co-star Gaten Matarazzo, the challenge of graduating from "SNL," and directing visual effects artists to create a CGI penis flapping in the wind.
Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
'You want to make it funny, and you also want to make it a surprise and kind of visceral'
Man, I love this movie. This is exactly my comedy style. It's silly. It's hilarious. Well done. So just to get right into it, I wanted to ask, how do you direct VFX artists to properly create a penis flapping in the wind?
It's a great question. It actually took a lot of swings, if I'm being honest, because you want to make it funny, and you also want to make it a surprise and kind of visceral, but not too jarring and weird and off-putting, because you can really lose an audience if it's not correct. So we actually did a lot of versions, not to get too, ya know — just a lot of different sizes and types of things. How long you have it up is really important. I think what makes it not jarring and then cringey is the sound of it, because the sound of it in the wind is really funny. So yeah, it took a lot of time. There was a lot of conversations about that, if I'm being honest.
Now, you worked at "Saturday Night Live" for a while, so just to set the table, what are some of the segments that you directed that people might be familiar with?
I did the "Joker" thing, the [Oscar the] Grouch thing with David Harbour that people seem to really like, and I did the Totino's commercial parody with Kristen Stewart people liked. Oh, and then this other one, "Friendos," it's a rap music video parody of Migos, when these rappers are in therapy. That was really fun to do. Those are probably the three. Oh, also a Dunkin' Donuts thing with Casey Affleck, that did really well.
I love that sketch so much.
Thanks so much. Yeah, that was so fun to do. That was very early on when I was working there. He was great and that was fun.
You left "SNL" in 2021, and that was right around the time that Please Don't Destroy arrived. So did you get to work with them very much at "SNL" before you left? And how did you end up getting involved with the movie?
Yeah, there was three months of overlap, and it was a very active three months. They got hired at the show as writers, and I was a fan of theirs before they got hired. I was leaving, and they had just started, so I kind of was like, "Hey, if you want to do any videos or anything, let me know. I'm not going to be here for awhile. I'm kind of down to just have fun and try some things." And they were really excited about that idea, so it was a good match. It was a good dynamic, because they were coming in and kind of fresh and nervous and excited, and I was kind of leaving and sort of like, "I want to just try some fun stuff to do."
So in the beginning, we did a bunch of videos together, but then I also had to do another shoot that week. We were doing like a music video or something, like a bigger budget kind of thing, because it was a little more experimental in the beginning. Then, as I was leaving, the movie started, they told me that they had this project with Judd [Apatow] and Universal, and it all fit together really quickly, but it was weirdly very fast and very uncommon in this industry to be that quick.
'I'm too obsessed with work, I don't have any hobbies, and I love what I do'
What's the collaborative process like working with Judd Apatow as a producer? Was there any specific guidance that you appreciated the most from him?
Yeah, one of the reasons I wanted to work with him a lot, and why I like working with the guys, is because he has such a strong work ethic. He's very into work and really grinding and trying to beat things and trying to have a lot of stamina and just talking things out a lot, which I really was excited to do. I'm too obsessed with work, I don't have any hobbies, and I love what I do, so I knew that he has a bootcamp, of sorts, creatively in comedy, and I was really excited to kind of go through that and learn from him.
Every step of the way, he was involved, and he was very helpful and he was very protective, and he was there a lot and it was good because he would kind of help us with stories of things that went right and wrong in his past and how that could apply here. So he would always have really good lessons for us and was very available for us, and then is really funny, too.
Yeah, of course. I'm curious about your cinematic influences and touchpoints for this movie, because I personally get a vibe of '90s adventure movies that I grew up on, like "Wild America" or "Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain," which is such a deep cut. Would that be accurate?
Yeah, it's interesting because I grew up on a lot of that stuff, and I love that stuff. Weirdly, I think this is something we brought up as a joke, but the "3 Ninjas" movies, I don't know if you remember those.
Yeah, of course.
With Hulk Hogan and stuff. Just kind of these weird, absurd adventures. I also love "Wayne's World." Something that I really love about that movie is it's so unique and special and has such a voice to it, and it has a very sweet friendship at the center of it, but it's very eccentric at the same time.
For sure.
So those were comedies that I was really into. Also, when I was kind of coming of age, it was this boom for comedies, it was "Austin Powers" and Judd's movies and stuff. It was really special time for comedies.
'It was really important to us to have it slowly dial up, but always have an anchor to the ground'
How do you figure out how to balance the more absurd side of the comedy while still keeping it grounded enough that it never really loses itself? Because there's some meta moments here and there, and stuff that's just plain silly, but you don't want to let it run wild.
Yeah, that was a big thing. That was something that we were all really stressed to being important. The idea was it would start out a movie that started somewhat grounded. It starts kind of silly anyway, but it starts kind of grounded with their friendship, and they have these kind of relatable problems, and then it slowly gets more and more absurd.
It was really important to us to have it slowly dial up, but always have an anchor to the ground, even as high as it goes. Sometimes it just gets pretty nuts and doesn't care about those anchors, but with the wingsuiting, it was like, "Okay, we want them to fly in the end. Well, what's a way that we can have the audience buy that they could actually potentially do this?" And it's like, "Well, he set up that he's sad, and they wingsuit every week, and they have skills, and then they do the kite thing," so it's kind of like planting seeds.
It was really important to us to really have logic built into it, to this insanity, and also have everything sort of somewhat be emotionally grounded. I think that's something that makes it feel grounded as well, when it feels like a problem that you could have that's relatable, but it's just the craziest version of it. Like the penis thing, where he gets embarrassed around the school, that's a very understandable emotion, but it's just the most insane stupid version of that emotion.
So Conan O'Brien has very rarely acted. What was it like working with him as an actor? Because he's great in this.
Thanks. Yeah, he was awesome. We were really excited to get him. It was kind of this nervous thing when we were talking about him, we were like, "Would he do it? Would he want to? We'd have to really make sure we work really hard to make it good for him."
And it was great working with him. He takes his work so seriously, and he's such a good guy, and he was so excited to do it and so kind in giving up his time and also really worked hard. He did those scenes, it took hours and hours and hours, and I think he really put his all into it and also hung out with everyone. He was really sweet with all the younger comedians. He's very cognizant that they were excited to be working with him. So he would take everyone, give them each one-on-one time, Conan time, to sort of give them pointers, or ask what they're doing and really engage with people one by one, which is way more than he needed to do.
That's awesome.
It was really wonderful working with him. I really love, I hope to again. He's so good.
'We did 30-minute takes, and the camera people hated us'
Now, when you have such a big ensemble of comedic talent from the leads to even the supporting stars and extras, are you doing a lot of improvising or are you mostly sticking to the script?
It's both. We had the scenes that are pretty clear and kind of concise, and then we'd have a bunch of alt jokes on paper that we would have written before, and then when we're shooting it, they would do their own stuff as well. So we overshot a ton of stuff, especially with the guys because they just have such a chemistry and such a warmth with each other, that they would say something and then Ben would react on something, then Martin would kind of react, and then it would turn to something new. Then you're like, "Oh, we've found this whole thing that's completely new," which is great, but then also you got to shoot every angle of it as well.
So their friend Brady [Lees], who's kind of their unofficial fourth member, was on set with us, and he was transcribing all the improv as they were saying it. So he would transcribe it, and then he would print it. We call them Gadgets. We have a nickname for them called Gadgets, and he would give us the improv and then we'd have to get all the stuff we liked, the reverse angles and stuff.
It was so, so, so much stuff. We did 30-minute takes, and the camera people hated us, because they had to hold the cameras for so long outside in heat. It was a process in the end, but it turned out great. I'm happy we got it all.
What's that kind of graduation process like of working in an environment like "SNL" that's so fast-paced where you're able to make those last-minute changes, and you're always flying by the seat of your pants, but then, on a movie, you have a whole crew where you have to inform them what's going on and they're not used to that. How was that adjustment for you to do?
Yeah, it was a little bit of a transition, honestly. "SNL," the infrastructure is built for things happening so fast and turning around so quickly and being on TV so quickly, so you have to make snap decisions constantly. There's something where there was a little bit of adjusting and unlearning that process where prep is so important in a movie in the longer-term shoot. So there was definitely some times where I was like, "Why are we talking about this again? We talked about this and it won't matter."
Because at "SNL," you're on this rollercoaster, it's like this rollercoaster that's being built as you're on it. So you just have to give yourself over to it and be like, "We'll figure something out." Just trust that you'll figure something out. And then on a movie, that's really the opposite of how they do it. It's like, "No, we need to know exactly what we're doing, where exactly he's standing." So once I got over that after a few weeks, it was great. And "SNL," it's such a unique giant of a show that they work how they work, and it really works for them.
'He was so cool with getting killed. He totally got it'
So Gaten Matarazzo has a hilarious cameo in this movie. Was that written into the script, or were there other options that were considered for that cameo?
He was our first option. We didn't write in his name yet, because we didn't want to get jinxed or anything like that, but he was kind of similar to Conan, where we'd be like, "Oh, it'd be so funny if we could get him, so great." But we didn't want to do it until we knew we were sure and ready and had something good for him. So we were really excited to have him, and he was so sweet.
The Please Don't Destroy guys, I guess, DM'd him, because he's a fan of theirs, and they were like, "We'd love for you to be a part of it." He came to Charlotte, North Carolina. He shot overnights. He was in New York for, I think, he was in "Dear Evan Hansen" at the time maybe — some play. He was just really special. He's a really talented guy, and I love that he's so funny, too. He was so cool with getting killed. He totally got it, and he was like, "Oh, yeah." Because he was able to see outside of himself. He's like, "Oh yeah, because I'm known to be so sweet and whatever, it's so fun to subvert that." He was really just great.
"Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain" is available to stream on Peacock now.