TIM & ERIC: The Billion Dollar Movie-makers tell all

I felt dumb asking Eric Wareheim and Tim Heidecker about how they came to make Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie. Not because questions about fast-splattering fecal matter and a wolfen-tubercular John C. Reilly seem hard to get a real and honest answer about.

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TIM & ERIC: The Billion Dollar Movie-makers tell all

POSTED: Friday, March 2, 2012, 2:00 PM

Filed Under: Interview | Movies

I felt dumb asking Eric Wareheim and Tim Heidecker about how they came to make Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie. Not because questions about fast-splattering fecal matter and a wolfen-tubercular John C. Reilly seem hard to get a real and honest answer about. So I started with one that has nothing to do with the film and everything to do with their audience, the obsessives that filled the Ritz at the Bourse to see their film on Valentine’s Day. “It’s true” says Wareheim (Heidecker is on another line but says nothing). “All of the screenings have been almost 100 percent die hard fans. They’ve be fun. And not at a fair crowd at all. “

The only screening crowd that wasn’t a T&E lovefest was the infamous Sundance screening where 50 percent of the viewers were into the experience and the rest were “really grossed out” and “really didn’t want to see” what Tim & Eric had planned for them.

“Sundance was a very polarizing experience,” says Wareheim. “ When we did the Q&As some people had never seen us before and wanted to know more about us and others were just surely disgusted.”

Wareheim and Heidecker have had more guardian angels than detractors during their years in the biz, even though reviews for their newest film might not seem so. Bob Odenkirk from Mr. Show was an early adopter who pushed them to Adult Swim. Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis asked T & E if they could be written into the new film with the former acting as a co-producer with his Funny or Die partner Adam McKay. Sure, these pros love T & E because they’re hilarious but some business acumen must show through so to want to work with the unconventional team.

“With [Odenkirk] a lot of it was presentation,” says Wareheim. “I cobbled together a DVD of our stuff when I was still working at Urban Outfitters in Philly, hating my life. We got together a professionally packaged thing with head shots. It looked great. As a joke we even sent him an invoice for having mailed him the package. Honestly we really took our time with the details. He liked our comedy but definitely dug our work ethic. We proved we were not the lunatic wild artists our sketches presented us to be. The Funny or Die connection came about because we made a few short films for their HBO show, which came through under budget and everything look great.”

As Wareheim and Heidecker come a “punk rock Philly background” of DIY stuff — lighting and editing their own shorts, printing out labels, making their own t-shirts — the pair knows how to make flicks look great for less.

So it cost something closer to 2.5 million to make the Billion Dollar Movie, the premise of which finds two filmmakers running up outrageous debt and remaking a desolate mall to find the fortune they owe the mob. They wanted to tear apart the show biz experience with movies inside of movies that “make fun of Hollywood douche bags.” What they didn’t quite plan on was getting some of the kings of movie bad guys — Robert Loggia and William Atherton — as their on-screen rivals.

“All I remember was talking to our manager and saying wouldn’t it be great to get a Robert Loggia-like character. The next thing you know he says we got Robert Loggia. Having guys like that really made the movie real for us. We’ve always wanted to make movies since our days at Temple University — and did — but somehow that put us over the top.”

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net) (@ADAmorosi)

See Also:

Patrick Rapa's review of Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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