Q&A on T&A with the Screenwriters of The Last Exorcism and The Virginity Hit
by Mike McPadden

Writing partners and independent filmmakers Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland may seem as unlikely a team as has ever scored mainstream Hollywood success but, remarkably, audiences are enjoying two of their high-profile films on a big screen near you—right this minute!

The team’s relentlessly unnerving, Eli Roth-produced The Last Exorcism (2010) opened in first place at the box office recently and this weekend brings The Virginity Hit (2010), a one-of-a-kind teen sex comedy produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay.

What makes the Botko-Gurland conquest of the suburban Cineplex so surprising, however, is the dark, dangerous and even deranged milieus from which both emerged.

Botko scandalized film festivals worldwide throughout the late 1990s with his “dessert-umentary” series.

Bearing straight-ahead titles such as Fruitcake, Baked Alaska, Cheesecake, and Graham Cracker Cream Pie, each film depicts Botko unspeakably defiling various confections and then serving them to his despised family members.

Gurland founded the New York Underground Film Festival, produced the Al Goldstein/Screw magazine documentary Screwed (1996), and, along with Todd Phillips (Old School, The Hangover), created Frathouse (1998), an up-close look at savage hazing rituals for HBO that never aired due to legal concerns (Gurland is proud that the movie is available now only through outlaw resources).

Together, Botko and Gurland made the barbarically vicious short comedies Julie, Broken Condom and (Mr. Skin's favorite) Gramaglia, before writing and directing the terrifically uncomfortable feature Mail Order Wife (2004).

Botko and Gurland talked to Mr. Skin about sex, nudity, horror, comedy and what happens next.

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MR. SKIN: What was the first movie nude scene you remember seeing?

HUCK BOTKO: Some movie on HBO when I was in second grade. No idea what it was but there was full frontal and I remember overhearing another kid at school the next day who had seen the same movie telling everyone how you could see this woman's bush - but he would just call it her "front" because the crude adjectives hadn't entered our vocabulary yet.

ANDREW GURLAND: My dad likes to get to movies early and watch whatever else is playing at the theater until his movie starts.

When I was six, we walked into a scene that featured a guy with a ’70s mustache wearing jeans and no shirt painting a den with his girlfriend who was also wearing jeans with no shirt.

It freaked me out but is still an erotic image I hold on to. I also remember the Belushi peeping tom scene from Animal House as one of my first.

MR. SKIN: What is your favorite movie nude scene?

HB: You're not supposed to cite you're own work, but I'll do it this once and say Gramaglia because it's got nudity that's so very very wrong.

AG: For comedy, I love Alexander Payne nude scenes (Sideways , About Schmidt) and, for erotica, I definitely enjoy voyeuristic stuff like Body Double and Morgan Fairchild in The Seduction.

I am still very much a 12-year-old boy that would like spy on pretty girls.


MR. SKIN: Who is the sexiest actress presently working in movies and/or TV?

HB: Kelly Ripa. Maybe it's in contrast to Regis that puts her over the top. You know because if you put Angelina Jolie or someone like that in a scene with Johnny Depp, I'm not sure who'd I'd rather fuck.

AG: I love Lizzy Caplan. She had a meeting from me across the hall from me the other day, and I pretty much tanked the meeting because I could not stop looking at her. I think its because she is a beautiful girl that you want to be best friends with.

I love Connie Britton on Friday Night Lights because of her confidence. And I'm just really into the way that shows a real marriage -- reminds me of my own.

MR. SKIN: Who is the sexiest actress of all time?

HB: Kate Moss. She's my favorite and technically she has been in a movie.

AG: When I was in high school and college I felt like Winona Ryder and I would have hit it off. I've never really fallen out of love with her.

MR. SKIN: What is the WORST movie nude scene you’ve ever seen?

HB: The worst nude scenes are whenever you can sense the repressed and horny creators of the movie using their power to get a girl to take her clothes even though it has no story value whatsoever. We've got a couple of those moments in The Virginity Hit.

AG: I really enjoyed how miserable I was looking at the flasher in Observe & Report. I don't have a problem with male nudity -- but there was something about that that really, really repulsed/delighted me.


MR. SKIN: How did you both come to work together?

HB: Andrew was a founder of the New York Underground Film fest. In 1996 I submitted my first dessertumentary revenge short, Fruitcake. Andrew liked it and we connected creatively through that. We had known each other at NYU, but didn't become friends and collaborators until we decided to make Julie.

AG: Huck and I were part of the same peer group as undergrads at NYU film school. Although we were not great friends at first, I always admired his talent. As we got to know each better, it became clear that we wanted to be doing the same kinds of things and that our skills complemented each other.

MR. SKIN: What would you say are the common themes and elements of your solo work and your mutual collaborations?

HB: We both have a fondness for docs, and both of us directed docs, but neither of us liked having to manufacture situations that would make things more interesting. It felt dishonest somehow. We love the style of documentaries for storytelling though, so faking a doc story from inception made more sense for us.

AG: Thematically some of the things we seem to return to are misguided masculinity, hypocrisy, and invasion of privacy.

MR. SKIN: What movies, books, comedians, personalities, etc. do you find funny?

HB: There are so many. Andy Kaufman, Howard Stern, Joan Rivers, Wanda Sykes, Dudley Moore…

AG: My favorites comedian is Louis CK. I also love Sarah Silverman. I love it when the Coen Brothers do comedy. I love Adam McKay's movies. Truthfully, nothing makes me laugh more than YouTube. It's kind of ruined everything else for me.

MR. SKIN: What are your favorite teen sex comedies?

HB: I have four that I love - Dazed and Confused, Fast Times at Ridgemount High, Risky Business and more recently Adventureland. I'm actually not a connoisseur of the genre. I think some people would be surprised by what I haven't seen: Porky's, American Pie, Superbad, Last American Virgin, Better Off Dead, Sex Drive, She's out of My League, The Sure Thing, to name a few.

AG: My favorite teen sex comedy is probably Fast Times. I loved how real and awkward it is. Virginity Hit was really inspired by our earlier short films (Gramaglia, Broken Condom) that involved men documenting their revenge on women. We were also inspired by teen YouTube clips that showed kids partying and pranking each other.

MR. SKIN: Virginity Hit seems like a natural outgrowth of your work so far, but the straight-ahead horror of The Last Exorcism came as a surprise. Have you always wanted to make a horror movie?

HB: Yes. For a director it's the best genre to work in because you're expected to stretch and be innovative with story and visuals.

AG: My love affair with horror is a new one but I am having a blast and I love working with Eli Roth.

MR. SKIN: What are your favorite horror movies?

HB: Mostly '70s psychological stuff. Burnt Offerings, The Changeling, The Omen, Rosemary's Baby, The Tenant.

More recently a few that come to mind are Mute Witness, Hostel, The House of the Devil and above all else The Blair Witch Project. It should have won all the awards that year for best movie.

AG: Some of my favorite horror films are The Shining, The Omen, The Ring — anything with "the" in it.

MR. SKIN: What happened when you saw that LAST EXORCISM had opened #1 at the box office? How did you react?

HB: Everything about Last Exorcism was bigger and better than I could have expected. Being in a box-office race for #1 was just gravy.

AG: Last Exorcism has been an incredible ride. Working with Eli Roth has been a career highlight. His passion for movies is infectious. And I also think he's a pretty great guy.


MR. SKIN: Last Exorcism is rated PG-13. Was it a conscious decision to forgo nudity, obscenity, explicit on-camera violence, etc.?

HB: When Andrew and I wrote The Last Exorcism we imagined it was going to be R, but we had no experience with the MPAA's view of horror so we were just making assumptions.

The MPAA saw the first cut and gave it an R but the producers realized that the smallest tweaks would make it PG-13 without sacrificing what was scary. So, at that point, why not? The producers wouldn't have done it if it would have diminished the impact.

I'm a big believer that you have to do the right thing with the movie you made, not the movie you thought you were making because the final product is always a different animal than the original idea of it.

I think PG-13 was 100% the right move for the final product.


MR. SKIN: The Virginity Hit, on the other hand, is rated R for “strong and crude sexual content, nudity, pervasive language, drug and alcohol content.”

HB: Real life for millions of American teens isn't a rated G, PG or PG-13 life. It's an R-rated life. We wanted the movie to reflect that.

AG: We were always aware we were going for a hard R. The idea is that if you're going to get the rating you should use every inch of it.

I'm always bummed out when I go to see an R-rated movie and it's just because they used the f-word a couple times.


MR. SKIN: Any chance you might get another nude scene out of Andrea Ruth from Gramaglia?
HB: I think she would do it for her art. I have to say Andrea gave one of the greatest performances I've ever had the pleasure of being a part of.

Everyone assumes she's just being her self but she's really nothing like that character off camera. It was a brave performance because she had to play herself being a dumb actress. It was brilliant and, in my mind, flawless.

AG: Andrea is currently pregnant and can be seen nude on her blog Whine Kvetch Bitch.

MR. SKIN: What’s next for you?

HB: Right now Andrew and I are writing a remake of the 1981 Tobe Hooper movie The Funhouse with the producers of The Last Exorcism, Eli Roth and Eric Newman of Strike Entertainment.

AG: Teenagers and killer carnies. It should be fun.