Filming a hidden camera comedy film is no easy task, and Eric Andre says that he and his Bad Trip co-star Lil Rel Howery can attest to that.
Directed by the Eric Andre Show director Kitao Sakurai and produced by Jackass co-creator Jeff Tremaine, Bad Trip follows André and Howery as two best friends who set off on a road trip while being chased by the former’s convict sister, played by Tiffany Haddish. Alongside the usual comedy road trip trappings, the movie also has a series of hidden camera-style pranks similar to something from Borat or the Jackass stuff in public.
One prank involving a finger trap got the duo in a lot of trouble with one store owner, the pair revealed in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times. “There’s always, like, this primal fear,” said Andre, who has had his fair share of dangerous hidden camera incidents for his eponymous Adult Swim show. “You’re going into an unpredictable situation, dealing with completely unpredictable people, and the threat of violence is always there.”
It wasn’t even that far into production that they ran into their first major incident. The two run around multiple businesses in one scene in a way that looks like they got their penises stuck in the same finger trap, and one business owner was so mad they pulled a knife on them. “I literally left and said, ‘I’m done. I’m not doing this movie,’” said Howery. “I walked straight to my hotel still in my character clothes—that’s how mad I was. It was my kids who convinced me to keep going. I told them what happened and they thought it was hilarious.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Andre also explained how he showed an early cut of the film to hidden camera comedy legend Sacha Baron Cohen. "We showed Sacha an early cut of the movie," explained André, who highlighted how Cohen thought his movies showed the bad in people while Bad Trip shows the good. "He laughed and said, ‘You know, my movies are set up to expose shitty, rich, white oligarchs. And your movie shows the beauty and the humanity of working-class people and people of color’.”
Bad Trip is available to stream on Netflix now.
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