Jake Johnson spoofed post-movie Q&As to avoid his own post-movie Q&A
On Jan. 3, Jake Johnson’s directorial debut, the Lonely Island-produced dark comedy Self Reliance, had a one-day debut in theaters ahead of its Jan. 12 release on Hulu. Those of us who showed up for the theatrical screening got a surprise bonus: a 10-minute Q&A that ran after the credits, styled as a fake talk show, In Bed With Lamorne, hosted by Johnson’s friend and New Girl co-star Lamorne Morris.
As a post-credits gag, the fake talk show was pretty hilarious, a pitch-perfect skewering of all the flaws of post-screening Q&A sessions. The questions are rote, stiff “How did you come to make this movie?”-style softballs, and Morris clearly isn’t interested in the answers. He interrupts Johnson, takes him to task for not casting Morris in the movie, and gets distracted admiring the photos of himself that surround the bed.
No matter how adversarial or disengaged his host gets, Johnson gamely tries to promote his film by answering the questions, but he comes across as a mildly arrogant, stuffy shill. It’s a pitch-perfect, only slightly over-the-top satire of the kind of artificial contractual-obligation interview segment that no one really enjoys — not the participants, and not the audience.
If you are now experiencing Jake Johnson goofball FOMO, good news: A significantly shorter version of the Q&A is now online, and you can watch it here.
Even though I saw the longer version as a post-movie sketch, the online cut works fine as a teaser for the film — Johnson gamely tries to describe the basics of the plot, and the straight-faced, dry humor here is a great preview of Self Reliance’s brand of comedy. Johnson, who wrote and stars in the movie as well as directing it, plays Tommy, a middle-aged man whose life is so boring
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