Latest / Mic Drop Comedy / John Early - Food Influencer Culture Meets 80s TV Movie in _Maddie_s Secret_ _ The Daily Show

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John Early - Food Influencer Culture Meets 80s TV Movie in _Maddie_s Secret_ _ The Daily Show · Mic Drop Comedy

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Sup and up, John.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: Hi. How do you want me to orient myself?
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you think? This is.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: I have a BFA, so I know that I can
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: slightly turn... I can cheat out and still address you. Yes,
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: that's good. Okay, okay. Play to the crowd. This is
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: your audience, yes? And they'll just cut me out. They'll
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: cut me out.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I can already sense the director in you.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: This is what's amazing. Cut! Yes, this is it. You
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: are a director in this. You wrote this. You star
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: in this.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: This is pure, uncut John Early.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Uh-oh. Oh, yeah. Sorry, I'm getting turned on.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Were you at all afraid if this went poorly, you
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have someone.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Else to blame? No, I actually, I wanted to do
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: all those roles so that, you know, no one else
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: would get any of the blame. So I could spare
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: my friends any of the blame. So this is an
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: act of kindness? Yes, of course. Yeah, it really shows through.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: So what was the, for people who haven't seen it yet,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: which is, it's not out yet, so they're not as
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: cool as me, where they get to see Screamers before.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: What is Maddie's Secret about? Well, I won't tell you
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Maddie's Secret. Thank you. But no, Maddie's Secret, it's about
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: a kind of bright-eyed, optimistic, plucky, humble dishwasher at a
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: big kind of content farm food media company called Gourmeby.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I'm proud of that. And she gets kind of promoted
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: to an on-camera position. She makes a viral recipe, and
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: she kind of becomes a reluctant... food influencer, and this
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: kind of rising fame reawakens these old demons. She struggled
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: with an eating disorder as an adolescent. It's in many
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: ways a kind of contemporary retelling of this old 80s
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: TV movie called Kate Secret, starring the great Meredith Baxter,
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: which is a TV movie that a lot of gay
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: men pass around to each other.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: And you're just like, I'm going to make this, and
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: we're going to update it for this.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: I want to do that.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Let me do that. What is so funny about the
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: food influencer culture?
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. I can't really explain what I
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: find funny about it. I mean, I have all these
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: little earworms from living in LA and New York and
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: being around all these kind of trendy foods. It's kind
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: of mysterious to me what I find funny about it.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Just hearing little, like, you know, halloumi with a yuzu
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: kosho crisp. Like, I don't know. I don't know. I
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: can't explain it. The tone is so fascinating.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: I think what I was so struck by is it
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: seems to walk the line of both, like, an homage,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: a bit of an ironic wink, but also it's remarkably sincere.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Is that sort of the intention from the get-go?
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Kind of. I mean, I have to say, when I
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: started writing it, I really thought I was going to
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: make something that was a little more sharp-toothed, a little
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: more like kind of hard, kind of brash satire. And then,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: you know, I don't know. Maybe I would have been
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: able to sustain that tone if I were 23, but
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: I'm 24. Play to that camera. You play to that
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: camera with that. I'm 24. Yeah, great, great. No, I'm 38.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: And I guess I just kind of almost immediately found
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: out that I just felt a little maternal towards her.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: I felt very protective of Maddie. And so as I started,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: as I kind of wrote the script more and more,
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: the satire of it all sort of kind of melted away.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: And it became very, like, kind of big-hearted and sweet
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: or something. I mean, it's many things. I don't know. Well,
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: that's what I think is kind of remarkable.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: It seems like there's, I don't want to say there
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: was a shift halfway through in tone, but it seems
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: like the beginning, to me, is an invitation to people
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: who might know you for your comedic work.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Yes. If you know John Early for his comedic work.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: It's good.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: But then there's a shift to some dark themes. Yeah. Like,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: were you conscious of that in the writing and in
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: the directing of how to welcome people into maybe a
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: genre they're not as aware of?
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Yes, I was. I knew it was a risk. I
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: knew it was like a kind of... I knew it
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: felt to me like a kind of tonal experiment and
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: one that I would never know the results of until
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: the movie was like fully edited. Basically, I was just
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: kind of following the demands of the genre. Like these
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: kind of old TV movies, they actually have these like Greek... stakes.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: It's like, people, die! And there's betrayal. They're very intense.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: And I was like, OK, if I'm going to do this,
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: I'm going to do it. And so I knew that, basically,
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: I was asking this kind of ensemble of largely comedic actors.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: I was like, we're just going to commit to this.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: And tonally, we'll let the chips fall where they may.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: I had a feeling that if we just threw ourselves
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: into it, it could be extremely funny and possibly extremely
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: moving too. And sometimes it's both.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: I think that's what's kind of remarkable about it. But
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: you do have very funny people. You have Vanessa Baer.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: You have Conor O'Malley. Were you finding, like, turn it down?
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: This is not a moment for comedy? I mean, comedians
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: aren't necessarily known for their restraint more often than not.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: They can own a scene or find a joke.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: They like to find and fill those spaces. Yes. You know,
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: I don't know what I like about the genre. And
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: I say that very loosely, like TV movies or old
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: school Hollywood melodramas. it's, they're very forgiving. You know, like
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: you can kind of like fling a line out there
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: and you can really miss the mark. You know, you
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: can do poorly. Like I do a lot in this movie.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: And it still can kind of hold that, you know?
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: And that was sort of by design because we didn't
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: have a lot of time. We didn't have a lot
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: of money. You know, this is a very humble, film.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: And we shot it at my house. And it was
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: very done in the style of a sleepover. But I
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: guess I chose a style that could, you know, when
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: you watch a TV movie, you kind of expect some
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: people to be bad. Yeah. You want shit to go down.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: And you want fangs to come out.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Well, I more mean bad in the acting sense. Oh.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Right. OK, yeah. You want people to be bad at
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: their jobs and execution of it.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: OK, yeah.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: That's not what I'm hoping.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: For at the beginning of my entertainment choices. But yes, continue.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: I think there's joy in that. TV movies were trying
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: to do this thing that big old school Hollywood melodramas
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: were doing, but with no money. And that was the
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: position I was in. So I don't know. I think
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: they were very charming. I don't know.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: I read something that camp, the tone of camp, there's
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: both intentional and unintentional camp, right? And whether or not
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: unintentional camp is something that can be achieved anymore.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Was that something that was on your mind? Definitely. I mean,
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: I think maybe what I started making was kind of
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: intentional camp. Or it was camp that knew itself to
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: be camp. But it was striving so hard to be
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: the first kind of pure, naive kind of camp. And
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: then it lands somewhere in between.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Well, there's a wonderful dance sequence in this film that
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: is an emotional core and center to this film. I'm curious,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: having seen your past work, how early on did you
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: know there must be a dance.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Sequence in this film? I'm always trying to narratively justify dance. Always. Always.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Thank you. Um... I'm always trying to find an excuse
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: for dance. And at first, I was like, oh, I can't.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: I have to be honest. When I was writing this,
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: you're going to think I'm insane. But when I was
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: writing this movie, I wrote it exclusively to the Shaft soundtrack. Really?
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: I was really going through. I really haven't left this.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: I was in a very intense Isaac Hayes moment of
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: my life, listening to a lot of Isaac Hayes. And
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: I wasn't high.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: No good creative ideas ever come out when you're high, no.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: But I was really getting into the Shaft soundtrack, and
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: the sunny kind of 70s horns of the Shaft soundtrack,
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh my God, this is the tone
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: of the movie. I was imagining Maddie jogging through the
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: city and be like, hey, Maddie. And so why was it?
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: What were we talking about? Oh, dance, dance, dance. And
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: so as I was listening to Shaft and I wasn't high,
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: I was thinking like, I couldn't help but get into
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: the groove, to quote. Madonna. Oh, I was thinking Chad
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: for that. I suppose Madonna did it.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: As well, yes.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, if I put dance, there's
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: no way I can put dance in this. That's too broad.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: That's too silly. But then I was like, no, in
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: all of these movies, there's always a kind of, all
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: these eating disorder TV movies, there's always some sort of
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: physical form of exercise that pushes the ingenue over the edge,
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: you know? And I realized I could kind of, I
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: realized it could be a dance class. I found my
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: way to dance, as I always do.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: You write yourself into a corner and then dance out.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: Of it, right? Yes. And to me, I wanted to do, like,
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: to me, this was like, can I make showgirls, basically? Like,
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: can I make showgirls with my friends? with a really
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: low budget? Like, that is kind of the prompt of
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: this movie. It has a very showgirls spirit.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, I would say you are 2026's Elizabeth Berkley.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: Thank you!
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: I've been saying it for years.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: Maddie's Secret, we.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Open in theaters beginning June 19th. John Ehrlich.