All these mockumentary TV shows are cramping Christopher Guest's style
The all-too-brief reunion of Christopher Guest’s Awkwardly Getalong Gang at the Oscars served to remind audiences that it’s been ages since Guest made one of his mockumentaries, and also that there can be prerecorded bits of Oscar comedy that don’t have all the wit and verve of high school teachers staging a “Say No To Drugs” skit . But mostly the first one, which naturally led Collider to take the question of when we can expect another one of those and pose it to two of Guest’s regular ensemble members, Jennifer Coolidge and Eugene Levy, while they worked the press rounds for American Reunion. Unfortunately, Levy didn’t sound too optimistic about the prospects, basically saying that you can blame the influx of mockumentary TV shows (like The Office, Modern Family, and Parks And Recreation) for Guest’s unwillingness to go back to that particular well:
There’s nothing on the horizon. We really didn’t want to do another movie that’s a cookie-cutter movie, where you’ve got the same kind of style, but you just change the subject. Everybody is doing that fake documentary style now. Even TV shows are using that fake documentary style. So, there’s nothing novel about that, anymore. And we haven’t really hit on an idea that moves us and that we both agree on, but we’re always talking.
Though it’s only implied, this suggests that Guest’s previously reported mockumentary about “retro collectors” is likely no longer happening, which is certainly disappointing. Perhaps it would lighten your mood to read the rest of the interview, in which Coolidge muses about wishing that “Stifler’s Mom” could have had sex with Chris Klein—and even “wouldn’t mind” sleeping with Stifler? No? How about thinking about the fact that Eugene Levy has by now probably spent more hours discussing the American Pie franchise than his entire combined screentime on SCTV? Well fine, what would make you feel better? [via The Playlist]