Talking of improvisation, did the director, David Wain, encourage that?
It’s not his natural habitat. Actually, he became that way during the film. And he did a great job with the script – and we improvised at least 50 per cent of the stuff between Paul and me. It’s often strange with a writer-director, because usually you have to try and convince them really hard that the stuff you’re doing is better than what they wrote. But David wasn’t so like that – although there were times you could tell that he really wanted to get his version in at least once! He was really collaborative and the movie benefited from that, because it feels fun. And a lot of people have said that the film feels very spontaneous, even when we’re bang on the script, so that’s been a nice compliment. Was American Pie the first time you tried improvisation? Yes it was. And since then, what I’ll often do is try to write different ideas based on what is in the script already. Then I’ll try and get those in, and they in turn will lead to something else. For example, we have the scene where
