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[0:05] David Lipper: Are you ready? It's The Roundtable with me, Robert Bannon.

[0:05] Robert Bannon: Hi.

[0:10] David Lipper: Hi.

[0:11] Robert Bannon: How are you?

[0:12] David Lipper: I'm good. How are you?

[0:13] Robert Bannon: I'm great. My name is Robert Bannon. Welcome to The Roundtable. We are here on Broadway World, the Broadway Podcast Network, iHeart, Spotify, wherever artists are talking about art. And this is David Lipper, everybody. Congratulations.

[0:24] David Lipper: Thank you so much.

[0:25] Robert Bannon: You studied musical theater. You know something about jazz hands.

[0:28] David Lipper: Yes.

[0:29] Robert Bannon: Congratulations.

[0:30] David Lipper: Thank you for actually having looked that up. I did get a BFA in musical theater. Yes, very true.

[0:37] Robert Bannon: He's our kind of people. And he wrote a movie that is perfect for our kind of people who love holidays and fun and joy and a little romantic comedy moment, November 6th on Hulu. And not only that, just to bring this whole musical theater thing back, my writing partner, Seth Howard, and I were bunkmates at the age of 15 in a theater camp called Stage Door Manor in New York.

[1:01] David Lipper: Get out. So look.

[1:04] Robert Bannon: And here we are.

[1:06] David Lipper: And he directed it.

[1:08] Robert Bannon: I directed it. Seth co-wrote it with me.

[1:11] David Lipper: He produced it.

[1:12] Robert Bannon: And I produced it with my company, Latigo Films, and we had a blast.

[1:17] David Lipper: And you are in the movie.

[1:19] Robert Bannon: I am. I play Jimmy, the guy who comes on the date with his dog.

[1:24] David Lipper: So I saw the movie and it's a trip and it's a classic and you got to watch it. If you have Hulu and bundled with Disney Plus, you go to Disney Plus, you go to Hulu, it's going to pop up. You could watch it. You have an incredible cast. Lucy, Ian, the whole team. How did this all come together?

[1:37] David Lipper: Very quickly. This was like on a Saturday before Thanksgiving. I zoomed with Lucy and I've known her reps, her CAA rep for some time I've worked with before. I met her manager, Alyssa, who now I consider a friend. And it was, can we do this? Can we do this in this short time frame? She got comfortable after that zoom. And then on Monday was like, let's go. And then it was, okay, who's going to be the love interest? And to make a long story short there, a friend of mine at a management company said, you know, we rep Ian Harding and he's available. And I said, let me call Lucy and let me see if she'll be open to that. And spoke to Alyssa, her manager. And Lucy said, yes, let's do it. And thank God she did.

And then she called Ian, by the way, and said, I want you to do this. And then he got on a zoom with me and, you know, the rest is history. And then it was, okay, I need my veterans. So I picked up the phone and called Paul Ben Victor and Penelope Ann Miller, who, funny enough, had played parents in another film I directed called Murder of Hollow Creek. So to reunite them as the parents, because they were so brilliant the first time, was an easy phone call. And they're like, we're there. And then, you know, the rest of the cast just fell in with everybody chipping in. Kyu and Kim, Lucy's team, pitched her to me. And I watched her footage from her sitcom. And she was brilliant. And I said, yes, I'll take her as Molly all day long.

Greer Grammer, Carter Jenkins, who was an EP on the movie and played one of the dates, he called Greer Grammer. And, oh my God, was she the perfect villain. So we got her. And this is just how it happens sometimes. You know, you write a really good script that's fun, that people like, and they'll come. And that's what happened. They came.

[3:32] Robert Bannon: And you did it. And now it's out, everybody. And you could be watching it. It's a staple for the holiday season. Have you been on a lot of bad dates? What is the inspiration for you? Or maybe you're a bad date. No shame, David.

[3:44] David Lipper: I mean, I hope it's not me. But God knows I'm still single. And it's been a terrible process of dating on these dating apps. And it was the whole motivation for writing it because this is what we do as artists. We take all our baggage and we put it on the screen. And this is one of those moments where we just thought, Seth and I, we're like, God, we're still in this horrible process of dating. We're two guys who have been single since we're 15 and bunkmates in theater camp. And here we are. I won't say how old. But many years later, still single. Still going through it. And how fun to be able to poke fun at it and just write about it in this way. And we had a great time. These dates are pretty funny. I mean, if you gauge the audience reaction last night, they all really landed. They're really funny.

[4:36] Robert Bannon: And as somebody who has been married now, I wouldn't want to go on a date with a stranger ever again in my entire life.

[4:45] David Lipper: Oh, my God. It's a terrible process. You've got to check this out because the premise is set for a perfect evening, a perfect fun. It's a perfect date movie. So when you order food and you go to the mall and you're shopping and you're stressed and it's Friday night and you get home from work and you order something to eat, pizza, Chinese food, and you sit down with that person or by yourself and say, oh, I need to laugh and spend a few minutes just to have a good spirited time. This is your movie.

[5:10] Robert Bannon: Do you always do all the jobs? Did you do craft services too? Did you sweep up after people?

[5:16] David Lipper: Sometimes it feels like that. I mean, look, yeah, writer, director, producer, actor. That has happened multiple times, believe it or not, on my films. And, you know, the weird thing is sometimes it's easier, especially on the producing side, when I don't have to fight with the director and explain that you don't need to drive 45 minutes for the shot. We can just do this over here. Logistically, I've gotten really good, which is how I'm so efficient at doing these things when I have a gun to my head on coming in at such a short time frame. But that's been my strength is not to focus on the self-indulgent stuff. Tell the story. Let the funny actors be funny. Throw in some improv. Let's play a little and we end up with something great and that's how we did it. Make a great movie.

[6:06] Robert Bannon: You're watching this and you know David's work, but maybe you're looking at him and saying, I know him. He's done a lot of acting. If you've seen Dante's Peak, The Pacifier, of course, he knows something about reuniting casts. He's a Full House vet who's been on Full House. You've had quite the career to pivot into this and reunite these two after your own reuniting.

[6:26] David Lipper: It's a moment. I was a sitcom guy all through the 90s. That's all I did, right? So my whole foundation is comedy from Full House, The Martin Short Show. I had my own Kaufman Bray Crane pilot, which unfortunately was the other pilot when they made Friends. If you ever get bored, Google Reality Check David Lipper on YouTube and you'll see this pilot. It was crazy. It was me in the lead with Hilary Swank, Giovanni Ribisi, Kaley Coco, Tiffany Thiessen, and the other pilot was Friends. They made these two pilots at the same time and unfortunately, they put me on the wrong show. It should have been a huge hit. It was just one of those things that happens. Back then, they used to make a million pilots. It was a real crapshoot. That was my foundation. Warner Brothers, who really discovered me, Les Moonves, was like, we're going to put you on our hit show, Full House. I'm like, okay. That's really how it all got started.

[7:26] Robert Bannon: Now you're all stars. That kept Friends, your pilot, you, everybody. Right now, you've got to check it out. Lucy Hale, Ian Harding. It comes out. It's out November 6th. Today, this interview is out. It's streaming right now. Thank you so much. Merry Christmas.

[7:39] David Lipper: Thank you for making such a fun movie.

[7:41] Robert Bannon: Thank you. We are here for it all. David Lipper, everybody. Thanks for being here.

[7:45] David Lipper: Thank you so much for having me.

[7:47] Robert Bannon: Thank you, everybody.

[8:02] David Lipper: Merry Christmas.

[8:03] Robert Bannon: Merry Christmas.

[8:04] David Lipper: Merry Christmas.