“Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure Of Foggy Mountain” premieres on Peacock, November 17 this weekend. It is the feature-length debut of the titular comedy team Please Don’t Destroy (Ben Marshall, John Higgins, and Martin Herlihy), the trio currently the “Saturday Night Live” Digital Shorts creators. Directed by Paul Briganti (who already directs many of the trios’ SNL’ shorts), ‘The Treasure Of Foggy Mountain’ was written by and stars Marshall, Higgins, and Herlihy and centers on three friends who live together with aimless lives. When they realize they don’t like their life trajectory, they set off to find a gold treasure rumored to be buried in the nearby mountain.
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The film is also produced by Judd Apatow, the writer/director/producer of many modern-day comedies (“The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up,” Funny People”). Apatow is arguably just as well known for all the movies he produces with his mentoring touch. Aside from directing hit comedies, Apatow’s main side gig, if we want to describe it as such, is mentoring comedians, taking them under his wing, and helping them make a movie. He’s done it dozens and dozens of times, helping prop up the young comedians he’s made famous and get them on their own two feet (just look at the way Seth Rogen basically runs his own comedy ship now).
The most recent versions of this mentoring producer-ship are “The Big Sick” (Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon), “Bros” (Billy Eichner and filmmaker Nicholas Stoller, who grew up under Apatow’s aegis), and, of course, the Please Don’t Destroy trio.
And there’s still plenty to come. While the status of The Lucas Brothers’ comedy is still a TBD (for just one random example of a mentoring project not yet off the ground), Apatow revealed to us two other projects that are in the works in a similar mentor/mentee dynamic.
And you could potentially file one of them under his second side hustle: directing or co-directing documentaries (like his Gary Shandling or George Carlin comedy docs). Apatow. “I’m working on a comedy documentary I’m co-directing with Neil Berkeley about Maria Bamford,” he revealed.
While no other details were revealed—Apatow just ran down a quick list of projects in the work, including a feature of his own that’s written and ready to go (he was just waiting for the strikes to end, and they have, so we should have news soon enough—Bamford is known for the 2016 Netflix comedy series, “Lady Dynamite,” and her struggles with dysfunctional family, depression, anxiety, suicide, and mental illness, all of which she has used in her comedy. While Apatow didn’t say for sure, this darker aspect of Bamford is what makes her unique and cherished—that she’s brave enough to have these types of conversations in her comedy—so one could presume/speculate that element is one of the reasons Apatow is making it.
Berkeley is a filmmaker already known for comedy documentaries like “Gilbert” about Gilbert Godfrey and “Harmontown,” which follows comedian/showrunner Dan Harmon on tour for his podcast series after he was fired from “Community” in 2012.
Additionally, Apatow revealed he is working on a TV pilot and series with actor and comedian Chris Witaske, known for his work on FX’s “The Bear” and “Love,” the Netflix comedy series from Paul Rust that Apatow also produced.
“We have a bunch of things going; we have a project, Chris Witaske from ‘The Bear,’ that I’m excited about,” he said. “We’re all waiting for show business to come back to life, but he’s somebody that I worked with on ‘Love’ that I’ve always found to be really funny. And he’s written a pilot that we’re going to try and get out there soon.”
Look for the full interview tomorrow. “Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure Of Foggy Mountain” premieres on Peacock on Friday, November 17.