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Exclusive Interview With Brad Copeland On Coffee Town

CollegeHumor's first feature film, Coffee Town, blends an entertaining story with some great laughs, proving that the internet comedy website can indeed be a major player in the world of full-length movies. Written and directed by Brad Copeland(writer/producer Arrested Development), the film’s all-star comedy cast includes Glenn Howerton(It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia),Steve Little (Eastbound & Down), Ben Schwartz (Parks and Recreation),Adrianne Palicki (G.I. Joe: Retaliation) and Josh Groban (Crazy, Stupid, Love.). It's essentially the first workplace comedy for the generation that doesn't have an office. When a 30-something website manager who uses a local café as his office learns of plans to convert the space into a bar, he enlists the help of his two best friends to help save his freeloading existence.

"Coffee Town"

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WGTC: Are you still working on the Knight Rider movie? 

Copeland: I am.

WGTC: How’s that coming along?

Copeland: It’s great. I’ve never done anything with Harvey Weinstein and those guys before, but it’s great. It’s exciting. It’s going to be a fun movie.

WGTC: Anything else interesting on the horizon you can tell us about?

Copeland: I wrote the movie Ferdinand The Bull for Fox Animation. The director Carlos Saldanha, who’s doing Rio 2, right now, then he’s going to do Ferdinand, so that’s really special for me. It’s one of my favorite books from my childhood. Ferdinand The Bull about the bull who wouldn’t fight. So that’s next. Then I’m doing a pilot for Comedy Central called Bad Advice From My Brother with Miles Fisher and Reggie Watts, who’s a favorite comedian of mine. And I’ve never really seen him in a series yet. Some just fun, cool little things. Otherwise just chilling and finishing up all these gigs.

WGTC: Back to Coffee Town, if people want to see it on the big screen, where is it playing in the near future?

Copeland: There’s a tour still going on and it’ll be in a couple spots, I don’t know where off the top of my head, but then we’re going to be in Montreal this weekend. We have a big screen screening Saturday July 27th, at the Montreal Comedy Festival. So if people want to fly up to Montreal it’s going to be really fun. Myself, Ricky, and the entire cast are going to go up for a Q&A afterwards. And then I’m not really sure. It’s doing so well on-demand. Way better than we thought it would. No one thought it would crack the top 10 of iTunes next to Identity Thief and all these things that had $40 million budgets of marketing and stuff. It’s doing so well so we’re kind of sitting. We still hold the film rights.

We’ve been flirting with the idea of taking it around to colleges and almost doing a live show. Taking it with someone like Ben Schwartz or some other of the comic talent and have stand-up, then the movie. Almost like a touring version of Rocky Horror. An audience interactive movie. If I had that in college I would’ve loved to have gone and seen Office Space with Stephen Root showing up and hanging out. We’re looking at options like that.

Everything we’ve done up to this point has been different, kind of pioneering this new trail, so we talk about stuff like this and Ricky comes up with these ideas and it just makes sense. There’s no reason not to do these kind of things and just try them out. People aren’t doing them and why not, we have all the rights, we don’t have a studio telling us what to do. It’s just kind of an adventurous, maverick style of seeing what kinds of other platforms there are for movies. So there’s a big possibility people will be able to see it in theaters on an actual tour.

WGTC: Final question, if someone’s still on the fence about seeing it, what would be your quick pitch to convince them the movie is definitely worth the watch?

Copeland: It depends on what their mentality is. My pitch would be this: if you want to just sit back and laugh and have a good time, I would promise this movie delivers that. It’s a leaned-back comedy. It doesn’t lean forward, it’s not trying to break rules or to have people walk out going, “Wow, no one’s ever gone there before.” It’s just a fun ride. It’s just like Office Space, just like Vacation, where you’re just going to go there, sit back, relax and have a bunch of laughs. It’s great to watch with friends. It’s just a social movie. If they’re into that, I don’t think anyone that’s gone in with that mind-frame has not loved it. We’ve had such a tremendous reaction.

The only people that don’t like it are the people that are looking for a comedy that does something like (500) Days Of Summer. Something that says something about romance or about the world. It’s just not that, and that’s never what we intended it to be. It’s just intended to be a movie that would come on at 3 a.m. on Comedy Central and you just wouldn’t be able to turn it off because you know the stuff that’s coming up is going to make you laugh.

That concludes our interview, but I’d like to thank Brad for taking the time to talk. If you want to see Coffee Town, you can head over to the film’s website to see if the tour is coming to a town near you, or you can head to iTunes, Amazon, and many other on-demand providers to stream a copy right to your home. Better yet, if you happen to be in Montréal, there are still tickets available for the screening at Just For Laughs on July 27th at 7:00pm, with a Q&A with writer-director Brad Copeland, and stars Glenn Howerton, Ben Schwartz and Adrianne Palicki following the movie.