“Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure Of Foggy Mountain” premieres on Peacock, November 17 this weekend. The feature-length debut effort of the eponymous comedy team Please Don’t Destroy (Ben Marshall, John Higgins, and Martin Herlihy), the trio who are currently the “Saturday Night Live” Digital Shorts creator, the film is a hilarious absurdist treat. And it is perhaps the most wacky, out-there, and oddball film the movie’s producer, Judd Apatow, has ever produced.
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Directed by Paul Biganti (the director of many of Please Don’t Destroy’s clever ‘SNL’ shorts), ‘The Treasure Of Foggy Mountain’ was written by and stars Marshall, Higgins, and Herlihy. It centers on three friends who live together with aimless lives, and when they realize that they don’t like their life trajectory, they set off to find a gold treasure that is rumored to be buried in the nearby mountain. Things get pretty nutty from there.
As we’ve detailed this week, Apatow is known as the writer/director/producer of many modern-day blockbuster comedies such as “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up,” and “Funny People.” However, just as essential to trace the arc of Apatow’s career is his role as a mentoring producer.
While he develops, writes, and directs his own film, Apatow is always taking a comedian under his wing and helping a vehicle for them (and in some cases, it’s like a cinematic Sherpa, helping shepherd their project from start to finish and being a cheerleader and producer along the way). Whether it’s the launching pad he helped make for Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill, producing the Netflix series “Love” for comedian Paul Rust, the feature “Trainwreck” for Amy Schumer, helping Kumail Nanjani make his co-written screenplay for “The Big Sick,” or producing “Bros” for comedian Bill Eichner and Nicholas Stoller (the latter a filmmaker who came-of-age as a director under the Apatow mentee system), Apatow is often there behind the scenes of any major comedy project.
“Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure Of Foggy Mountain” is another product of that system. Apatow spotted the trio before they were a big sensation on “Saturday Night Live” and as they were blowing up on social media during the pandemic.
As “Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure Of Foggy Mountain” opens on Peacock, we spoke to Apatow about producing, mentoring, and all the excellent work he has done to uplift up and comers trying to make their mark in comedy.
When did you first spot the Please Don’t Destroy trio— before ‘SNL’? After? And what drew you to their zany comedic voice?Yeah, we have the same manager, actually, and they had set up the script and had been working on it. I got involved after they were hired at SNL, but before the show started, we were surprised at how fast they took off. Sometimes, it takes years for people to make their mark at the show. But, for them, it happened immediately and in a really big viral way. So suddenly, the movie became much more of a real thing.
The way you take people under their wing and help them flourish, Rogen, Hill, Jason Segel, etc.—mentoring, sharing experience, and wisdom seems like such an essential part of your career. So tell me that and what it was like working with them.Yeah, I mean, they had a script, and I started giving them some thoughts about it, and they made many passes on it. But for me, it’s important that I try to encourage them to be unique. I don’t want them to do what I would do, so I’m trying to give them whatever wisdom I might have while pushing them to be them. And they’re really hard workers; they get so much material on at ‘SNL’ because they’re so strong and fun to collaborate with. And it just becomes a year of constantly talking about this insane movie and what they could do to make it stronger. It’s really an ongoing conversation that doesn’t end until we hand it in.
What they do is bite-size, short, and compact. Features are a marathon in comparison; were there challenges in making that leap for them?Yeah, but it’s fun to make your first movie because you don’t know what you’re doing, and that means you’re not following all the rules. And that’s what we want. We want to see a pure expression of somebody’s madness and creativity [laughs]. So, when you’ve made a lot of things, you could fall into patterns and become predictable. I really enjoy working with people on their first movies because they’re really going from their gut instincts about what makes them laugh. And there’s so much enthusiasm and passion that it’s infectious to everybody involved in the project.
When you’re young, something makes you laugh, and you don’t intellectualize it. You just think, ‘Oh, Carl Weather should get his hand cut off! By an alligator!’ [laughs] Which is what Tim Herlihy, the dad [and writer] of “Happy Gilmore” wrote. And it just makes you happy to think about that [laugh. And you don’t want people around going, “That makes no sense!” [laughs]. You have to be pushing the boundaries all the time and indulging in what you want to see on screen. So, I try to give people my wisdom, but I do not let it water it down.
How involved were you with casting? When someone like Conan O’Brien jumps in there, a veteran and presumably an old friend, that rings of maybe your suggestion.Yeah, Conan is a great comic actor, but he’s been focusing on his shows and his podcasts. So, we were thrilled when we realized that people hadn’t used him in other movies. It was a great, fresh thing to do with somebody who is a real hero to everybody involved in the film. I met Conan when Adam Sandler was on “Saturday Night Live” in the early nineties. So, I’ve been able to witness his entire career from a distance and been a guest on all his shows. He’s someone that we all look up to. So, it was really special to get a chance to see him get to do something like this because he hasn’t done a lot of it, frankly. He was deliriously happy every moment on set, [laughs] and he was also chatting with all the actors and actresses in between takes. And as a comedy nerd myself, I knew how special that was for all of that.
You’ve plucked so many up-and-comers and given them a bigger platform, taken people on the verge like Amy Schumer and Billy Eichner, and given them the space to lead their own feature. What’s the process of choosing who gets “deserves” shot? Or is it more organic and less thought-through than that?Well, I like fresh ideas, and I enjoy collaborating with people on some of their earliest work when they’re trying to figure out their personas and how what they do might work in a TV series or a movie. I think the challenge of that is really fun. How do you make somebody’s attitude and comedic style transform the movies? I’m not exactly sure why it’s happened so many times [laughs], but I think, in a way, I must be attracted to that level of freshness and enthusiasm, maybe because I’m crusty [laughs]. I need other people’s passion to help wake me up. I love those discussions where it doesn’t feel like a product to people. I think when you’ve done a lot of work, there’s a different kind of pressure to keep your career going. But in the beginning, you’re just trying to figure it out, and you hope that you do it well enough that they’ll let you make another one. So, you work really hard.
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