Described as “Scream meets Suspira”, The Last Laugh – from the makers of Hunting Grounds and Ayla, is set to terrify and entertain film fans when it’s released tomorrow and PopWrapped are delighted to share an exclusive clip.
The new film from Jeremy Berg centers around a stand-up comedian, Myles, played by Steve Vanderzee, who, on the verge of breakout success, must make a terrible choice when he discovers a murderer on the loose in the theater where he’s about to perform his biggest show. He’s joined in the film by Eric Stone and Lowell Deo and Angela DiMarco, and Jeffrey Arrington.
Ahead of the films’ release, PW caught up with Jeremy to find out a little more about the creative process to the movie, how the cast came together and the possibility of The Last Laugh being the first film of a whole new franchise.
How exactly did the idea for this film come about?
I had written the script over the course of 9 months or so and was pretty excited about shooting it. My producer partners Matt Medisch and John Portanova were helping with notes for rewrites and looking for investors. It was a strange confluence of events because Matt had been talking to a potential production partner and he wasn’t sure the conversation was going anywhere so my hopes were not high. Then out of the blue, I ended up losing my regular job, which I really enjoyed and had been very good to me. So, I was feeling displaced and confused and not sure what my next steps should be. And literally the day after I lost my job Matt called and said that the investor had agreed to move forward with our project and we had to start pre-production. It was perfect timing and it helped center me so I could move forward doing what I really love and prefer to do, which is to make films.
Is there any particular inspiration to or behind the script?
As with most scripts, there are lots of different inspirations and ideas that end up finding their way into the story. I have always loved stand-up comedy and I find that subculture really interesting. It’s also a very solitary occupation that takes a lot of dedication and an almost obsessive mindset to achieve anything. It made sense to me to use that in a murder mystery with a tinge of the psychological. I was also very inspired by Italian horror films from the 70’s, which was why the architecture of the theater was a really important element to me. They usually revolved around a murder mystery and a masked killer. I wanted to subvert some of those tropes and turn that into a fun horror movie.
Tell me a little about the cast.
I’m really happy about the cast we put together. Steve Vanderzee is our main character, Myles, and he was perfect at portraying a man on the edge with everything to lose. It was really important that you believe the character has what it takes to be a successful stand-up but also that he will stop at nothing to make it happen. I think Steve walked that line beautifully. He also got to play opposite Eric Stone who nailed the role as the manager who’s helping to steer Myles’ career. Nelson is a great friend and foil to Myles and I love how Steve and Eric played that back and forth, sometimes with more tension and sometimes with more compassion.
Angela Dimarco plays Donna, the person running the theater. She has to make hard decisions about the theater and its future in a time where people are attending live cultural events much less often. She’s very conflicted and there’s no black-and-white in her actions, which makes everything she does very suspicious. I was incredibly grateful to have Angela play this role as she’s so gifted at inhabiting the gray area in her performances.
Marcus Leppard, Meranda Long, Brad Jesernig, Nick Sage Palmieri, and Luke Schuck play the theater crew and they were each wonderful in their own right. This is a crew of younger adults who are all theater junkies and have mixed feelings about working as a skeleton crew to host a standup comedy event, which is about as far from Shakespeare as you can get. We auditioned a lot of these roles in pairs so we could find just the right chemistry, which was a lot of fun. I think it’s really easy to believe that these people have all known each other for a long time.
Lowell Deo plays Reggie Ray, the headliner for the comedy show. He’s a guy who’s incredibly famous and influential in the comedy world but his time has come and gone. He forfeited his comedy reputation for a quick buck in a string of formulaic family comedies. This show is his chance to make some money and hopefully get his cred back. It really took somebody with the gravitas to sell a character that you could believe has been in the spotlight like that. Lowell was so great at playing that persona.
Do you think The Last Laugh could be the start of a franchise of movies for you?
We’ll see! I definitely have a lot of fun ideas for what a sequel could be. Ultimately, this is a low budget indie film – though I don’t think you’d know that from the acting, cinematography, and FX -but it did impact what I could do in the scripting of the film and in how many days we could shoot. I think a chance to make a sequel that could be a bit bigger and answer some of the questions that The Last Laugh leaves hanging would be a fantastic challenge that we’d all welcome; not to mention it would have bigger set pieces and more gore. I could never say no to that!
Check out our exclusive The Last Laugh clip below. The film will be available to purchase and rent via VOD from Tuesday.
