Baking with Becky: Ingredients for "Hall Pass"

Good morning and welcome to Baking with Becky.

Today we’re making a modern American comedy. With a few basic ingredients you can make frat boys laugh from coast to coast. With a few tweaks, you can design your own flavor of the month. But don’t mess with the basic formula! That would be creative and we can’t have that.

Ingredients:

One to Five (1-5) male schlubs, dorks, goofy everymen, fat losers, or goobers.

One (1) Impossibly hot woman who looks amazing in a bikini or sundress and who would never give the hero(es) a second look in real life.

One (1) Wacky, irresponsible, irreverent, foul-mouthed, borderline illegal friend who may or may not be on the National Sexual Offender Registry.

One (1) unlikely and/or impossible set up or problem to solve. Must include desire to sleep with the hot woman.

One (1), but no more than one (1), serving per schlub of illegal drugs. Marijuana is fine, but mushrooms or roofies are better.

A minimum of five-hundred-twelve (512) obscenities, vulgarities, profanities, and rude hand gestures

Two to twenty-seven (2-27) jokes about poo

One (1) scene involving masturbation

A minimum of five (5) scandalous and shocking events/images/situations and/or speeches

One (1) sweet ending with a realization of true love and/or bromance that makes it all ok

Optional:

Sprinkling of attractive and patient wives/fiancés/girlfriends to taste

Instructions:

1)      Introduce your schlubs. In the case of “Hall Pass,” they are Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis), two married men approaching middle age. Rick, married to (optional ingredient) Maggie (Jenna Fischer) has kids while Fred, married to Grace (Christina Applegate) is childless. Thoroughly domesticated, they pay homage to their male horniness by checking out every woman that walks by (in Rick’s case) and other more disgusting methods in Fred’s case (See Ingredients: One (1) masturbation scene).

2)      Set up your unlikely or impossible situation. “Just Go with It” had Adam Sandler pretending to be married to pick up women, until he fell for one of the pick-ups (see Ingredients: One (1) hot woman). In “Cedar Rapids,” a shockingly naive man leaves his small town for the depravity of an insurance convention. In “Hall Pass,” Maggie and Grace decide that the way to tame their husbands’ annoying look-but-don’t-touch sensibilities is to give them a week off from marriage with no consequences. The girls and children decamp to the beach. The men set out for a week of debauchery and wild sex, their male Greek chorus of poker buddies in tow. First stop? Applebee’s. Because, remember, they’re schlubs.

3)      Gently fold in the one (1) serving per schlub of illegal drugs. This must be handled delicately. Think schlub souffle. Your characters are, at heart, good people, so to have them be habitual drug users doesn’t sit right with the audience. There are several techniques a good movie cook will use to accomplish this goal. In “The Hangover,” the one (1) wacky, borderline illegal friend secretly slipped the entire bachelor party a roofie. In “Due Date,” the one (1) wacky, borderline illegal friend smokes pot while the schlub is asleep in the car, giving him a secondhand high. A general rule of thumb is that heroes can choose, under pressure from peers or stress of situation, to smoke marijuana, but it should be clear it’s not his normal habit. It’s a good idea to have it be stronger than anyone realized through some miscommunication with the dealer or brownie baker. Anything more potent than pot should be a trick played upon them.

4)      Bring on the poo jokes and shocking situations. Make sure you include the masturbation scene, which is mandatory for comedies since 2008. High on drugs, your characters can act like idiots and jerks and be morally absolved. In “Hall Pass,” one friend poops on the grass while golfing. Ha ha. What a card. But wait, he was high on pot, so he can comfortably go back to his normal life after the slow speed golf cart chase with the country club fuzz. But, you say, all the shocking situations have been done? Well, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. There’s always room for a creative soul to find something new. Full, zoomed in shots of male genitalia? That hasn’t been done before…at least not until “Hall Pass.” Explosive diarrhea that covers the bathroom wall? Now you’re talking, but “Hall Pass” beat you to it.

5)      Once the lead character(s) are appropriately chagrined and humiliated, bring in the one (1) hot woman to be sensitive, charming, and stroke his ego. Make sure you show her breasts at some point. And always have her in skimpy clothes, even if you’re set in Michigan in the winter.

6)      Bake for 88 minutes. When it develops just a slight crust and has a delightfully putrid odor, pour on the one (1) sweet ending. Have your schulbs realize what really matters. “The Hangover” was about friendship. “Little Fockers” highlighted family. “Hot Tub Time Machine” was all about correcting mistakes in the past. “No Strings Attached” had their characters find something more real than meaningless sex. “Hall Pass,” as it happens, ends with an ode to marriage, faithfulness, and even the beauty of having just one sexual partner in a lifetime. But remember, you have to have diarrhea all over the wall at some point or that’s just too sweet and corny.

7)      Slightly adjust the ingredients and repeat. It’s good for at least a thousand more servings.

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