Based on the production stills we’ve seen from Michelle Monaghan’s upcoming film Due Date, it appears she’ll be playing a role best described as “pregnant wife on phone.” With Robert Downey Jr. on the other end of the line, however, those are bound to be some pretty entertaining phone calls. Maybe Zach Galifianakis will even jump into the conversation at one point to make the whole thing a three-way call of weirdness, coolness, and hot-from-the-chest-up-unless-you’re-super-into-pregnant-chicks-for-whatever-reason-ness. We’ll just have to wait and see.

A word from Michelle: “Interview with a Vampire, I loved that!”

Due Date is a slow build of a comedy, and it’s effective at that. By the time it gets really crazy, you’re so waiting for it that it’s a cathartic release through the rest of the movie. It also means that the first half could be a bit of a chore if you’re not in it for the long haul.

Peter Highman (Robert Downey, Jr.) isn’t an entirely likeable guy. Keeping in touch with his wife by Bluetooth is fine, because a man’s got to work, but he does seem to court disaster with his attitude towards other people. Ethan Tremblay (Zach Galifianakis) is an oblivious screw-up, as frustrating as he is lovable.

So the first half of their adventure is full of normal mishaps: an airport misunderstanding, running out of money, an automobile accident. Peter faces an ethical dilemma when he considers leaving Ethan, and Ethan has an emotional stake in the road trip too, because he’s got his father’s ashes. Due Date starts there and then builds to crazy.

Peter actually softens after he’s survived the worst of things, but to appreciate that you have to see him flip out for a while. Ethan starts to say more random non sequitur lines about Shakespeare, and there is more slapstick on the bumpy road. The stunts are huge, really eye popping setups that make you worry for the characters. You’re probably never worried for their life, but you’d worry how on earth they’ll get out of the latest situation when it seems so debilitating.

Sounds like an instant riot, right? To get there is gradual. The first automobile accident really plays the reality of an injury. It’s kind of intense, certainly not comedic slapstick. Peter and Ethan really bite at each other, and the emotional attacks really cut deep. You expect a comedy to throw in the heart, not go all Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire on you. You need that to appreciate when they get goofy though.

The forces that push them together make sense and build up to outrageous extremes. It takes the exact right exchange of words to get them kicked off a plane, but it seems natural, not contrived. Ethan is relentlessly unhelpful, but again, Peter doesn’t exactly smooth situations over provoking the people whose help he needs.

Some of the early jokes aren’t as funny as they think they are, like Peter riffing on baby names or his chauffeur butting into the conversation. That, I’m just going to have to call it like I see it. It does get crazy funny though. People will say it’s not as funny as The Hangover but The Hangover only works because of the tonal shifts too. Due Date has different sorts of tonal shifts but it commits and gets to a good place.

The first time I ever met Todd Phillips was for the movie Road Trip. That was 10 years ago and now he’s gone from a funny teen comedy to one of the most quoted college movies to the biggest R-rated comedy of all time. Due Date follows The Hangover and prefaces The Hangover 2. It’s in a Hangover sandwich. Robert Downey Jr. plays a traveling architect desperate to get back to his pregnant wife. Zach Galifianakis is the only ride available to him. In one of his last interviews at the L.A. press junket, Phillips spoke with us about orchestrating comedy. Then he invited me to a Hangover 3 orgy, so you’ll want to keep reading.

Screen Junkies: Was it important structurally that this movie build to the craziness as opposed to The Hangover which starts big and slowly reveals the details?

Todd Phillips: I think that’s always a choice that you make and I think so for sure.

SJ: Do you like to construct comedy as more of a build?

TP: Yeah, you want to just go on a ride and whether it’s big to small to big, whether it’s a roller coaster or whether it’s a straight line or going up, I don’t know. It’s something that just kind of happens organically while we’re making it. It’s not something you necessarily consciously think about but it always does seem to happen organically.

SJ: Do you like comedy with big stunts?

TP: I do, yeah. I like just kind of shocking the audience. Even in The Hangover when those guys got hit by Mr. Chow’s car, not a huge stunt but it really took you like whoa, I didn’t expect that in this movie. I like putting things in comedies and doing them well hopefully where it feels like wow, they really went for it in this movie.

SJ: Is there just something funny about big destruction?

TP: It’s just the fact that this little Ethan can cause so much of a wave to me is what’s funny. It’s not that the destruction’s funny. I don’t watch Transformers and think, “That’s funny.” But I do think that this little one man tsunami can cause such a wave is kind of funny.

SJ: Did you want to up the masturbation humor after The Hangover?

TP: I don’t know that you can ever beat a baby masturbating. Honestly I think it’s a toss up, no pun intended. It’s a toss up which is more epic but I do know it took a lot longer to train the dog to do that than to have Zach do it to a baby.

SJ: Were you ever worried about putting another masturbation joke in a movie?

TP: Worried?

SJ: Did you ever think, “Let’s not do another one?”

TP: No, are you crazy? No, why? That’s my favorite moment in The Hangover, bar none. “Not at the table, Carlos.” That’s probably my favorite line. There are kids walking around with T shirts that say, “Not at the table, Carlos.”

SJ: Was the line in Due Date about Ethan being 23 a reference to the false synopsis about Zach being a college stoner?

TP: Not at all, but that’s an interesting question. No, not at all. Maybe somebody put that synopsis out because they didn’t understand what we were doing. That’s a good point. That’s very funny. I never even thought about that. Zach being an actor is lying about his age but he’s lying so severely that it’s so dumb.

SJ: So we shouldn’t believe when he says he’s 23.

TP: Yeah, of course, yeah. Do you mean when he first says, “Of course I’m an adult. I’m 23 years old.” When you saw the movie, did you think, “Are they seriously trying to play that he’s 23?”

SJ: I thought maybe he could pass with the beard.

TP: No, we never meant to pass it. We meant it for it to pay off later but also Peter never believed it.

SJ: Tell us about the importance of Barry.

TP: Barry is a character who shows up every so often in some of my movies, only the R-rated movies. I’ve made four R-rated movies. Barry’s been in all of them. He won’t work in PG-13. He’ll only work with me. Barry’s been offered other roles. He just doesn’t do it. He’s the same character in all my movies as you know or might know. He goes by other names in the credits but it’s always Barry.

SJ: Would you notice a storyline if we followed all four cameos?

TP: If you did the math, you’d notice that Juliette Lewis in Old School plays a girl named Heidi. Barry shows up at the door, he’s here for the gang bang. Juliette Lewis in Due Date plays Heidi again and she’s now living with Barry. Now those are not Barry’s kids, but if you really did the math, you might think those are Will Ferrell’s kids because she does hook up with Will Ferrell at the end of Old School. So are those two kids Will Ferrell’s kids? And now Barry’s living with her raising those kids.

SJ: How many foreign countries were in the running for Hangover 2?

TP: Not many. It was really between Bangkok and Rio.

SJ: Did they court you?

TP: Like The Olympics? Yeah, I was flown to Bangkok three times, put up in the presidential suite at various hotels. No, they didn’t but you bring up a beautiful point. If we make Hangover 3, I’m going to put it out there. This is a great idea, Fred. Have your city court us and we’ll decide if The Hangover 3 will be shot there. Just like The Olympic committee is so crooked, they get flown all over the world, they get whores and all this stuff sent to them. I don’t know that that’s true. Allegedly. I’ve heard that. Wouldn’t that be a great thing? That’s very smart. You could be my ambassador, get the word out. You and I will just fly around the world and just be in Amsterdam and get all the f***in’ weed and girls. In Amsterdam the president will come or whatever they have there, he’ll be like, “We’d love you to shoot here in Holland. That’s a great idea.”

SJ: Does that mean Warner Brothers is thinking trilogy?

TP: No. By the way, this is the first time I’m talking about it but now there’s a reason to do it.

SJ: Can we assume the same format with waking up and filling in the night before?

TP: You should not assume anything about Hangover 2.

SJ: How have you managed these back to back productions?

TP: All I ever wanted to do since I was a child was honestly make movies. So the opportunity to make movies is there and I’m going to take it. It’s hard to say after Hangover, “maybe take a year off” when it’s like hey, you mean I can go make this with Robert and Zach right now? I know I haven’t slept in 8 months but f*** it, I want to make movies. Then oh really, you want to do Hangover 2? We’ve just finished Due Date, we’re just editing and sound mixing right now but all the guys are available in the fall? All right, let’s do it. It’s a little bit of a sickness in that I just love doing it so much, I feel so lucky that I get to do it it’s hard to walk away or even to take break. But I definitely need time to just recharge a little bit.

SJ: Are you in a great place where you can just put what you think is funny in a movie?

TP: Yes, I really am and I’m lucky and The Hangover was a big help but even before that, I had had some successes in comedy and I don’t have to have the battles that I had to have early on. No joke, I had a battle on Old School about the wedding band. They just thought it was excessive that he cursed at a wedding. That was a battle I had on Old School that I would never have nowadays. It’s like are you kidding me? Of course we’ll do what we want with that. Even the stuff like Peter punching the kid in the stomach. You still get people from the studio going, “I think this makes him unlikeable.” You’re like, “You know what? That’s why you’re not Robert Downey Jr. Robert Downey Jr. can pull this off. That’s why he’s Robert Downey Jr. Watch, people are going to love him anyway.”

SJ: Isn’t it also funny if he is unlikeable and lots of comedies are afraid to go there?

TP: By the way, that’s the other thing. You don’t have to be likeable. It’s a two hour movie. We’re not running for president. That character’s not running for president. He’s trying to get you to come see this movie. It’s okay that he’s a little bit unlikeable. A lot of people in this world, some are a little bit unlikeable. It’s all right, they exist.

SJ: But coming up with something and thinking, “Let’s put that in the movie!” And then you get to see it on screen.

TP: It’s great. Even Downey said today in the press conference, I thought, “You know what I’ve never seen? I’ve never seen a guy spit in a dog’s face. I just made that up on the spot.” Even Downey was like, “Really?” I was like, “Come on, let’s just do it. Let’s see what happens.”

Due Date hits theaters Friday.

Interviewing Robert Downey Jr. is always fun. He’s completely unpredictable, but everything he says sounds brilliant even though he just made it up. So for Due Date, he was on a press conference panel with his costars, Zach Galifianakis and Michelle Monaghan, his director Todd Phillips and the screenwriters, but he stole the show. After the jump are the most outrageous things Downey said at this press junket.

The Big One

Journalists seem to think it’s funny to make sex jokes. So Michelle Monaghan plays a pregnant woman in stirrups, let’s all make uneasy references to her actual love life. Downey stole their thunder. “This isn’t Weird Science,” he said. “She’s not Kelly LeBrock. Everybody doesn’t f*ck the way that they used to. Let’s be civil about this.” This was the comment that even made Downey apologize to his publicist. “Alan Nierob, I’m sorry. Clean that sh*t up later.”

A bold claim

After a very articulate description of his irritable character and his process for playing such a guy, Downey made a bold claim. “You could say this is a two dimensional commercial comedy,” he said. “I feel that this is the second greatest story ever told.” One person actually asked him what the first greatest was. “Oh, come on!” Downey exclaimed. Lest he be misquoted, he explained, “The Bible.”

Making his own sex jokes

See above about the press making insinuations about costars. Downey got in some playful jabs about lighthearted adultery. “I don’t want to offend our spouses but I’d love to have a baby with Michelle,” he joked. “Yeah, in preparation for the character so I missed the shot to do it. I should’ve tried it nine months ago.”

Been there, done that

So Due Date is about two guys trying to get home in a series of travel misadventure. That recalls fond memories of Planes, Trains and Automobiles and other road movies. Downey credited his costar with a much more obscure reference. “Michelle was saying Wages of Fear quite a bit, too. Didn’t you say something about that? ‘I hope you guys don’t blow up the studio.’”

I’ve got your Richard Attenborough right here

Downey has worked with Sir Richard, Oliver Stone, Guy Ritchie, John Hughes, and Robert Altman. He puts Todd Phillips at the top of the list. “I think Todd is the best director that I’ve ever worked with, bar none,” he said. “I’ve never come up against anyone who is so confident and so thoughtful and so spontaneous that it’s not even daunting. He’s just in a class by himself.”

Pay no attention to the answer to the question

Some other report can go into the details of how Downey and Phillips improvised a scene where he spits in a dog’s face. The cool part is Downey’s conclusion to the story. “There was a question there somewhere but I’m sure whatever I said was far more entertaining.”

Due Date opens Nov. 5.

Robert Downey, Jr. is cool with the news that Disney will release his next Iron Man movie. Disney is exercising their control of Marvel to release Iron Man 3 and The Avengers. At a press conference for his latest film, Due Date, Downey was enthusiastic about the Marvel developments.

“Love it!” Downey exclaimed. “What’s that mean?”

More after the jump…

After the explanation that Disney would indeed distribute Iron Man 3, Downey gave a real answer. “Well, you know what? I really loved our relationship with Paramount, but to me the main thing is I don’t care about any of that. They’re going to make all those movies. I just want to make a great movie.”

And then, being Robert Downey Jr., he brought it back on message. “Thanks to my tutelage under two guys who know how to play with power, Zach [Galifianakis] and Todd [Phillips], I know exactly what to do with Iron Man 3… That was almost mad with power.”

First up, Downey is shooting Sherlock Holmes 2, which he just touched on as he left. “Sequels are always tough but we’ve got a great group. We’re three weeks in and it’s already fantastic.”

During the press conference, Downey revealed a bit of his process. He just plays the director of each movie he’s working on. That means Guy Ritchie too. “Guy Ritchie, yes. Yeah, Guy in a way a bit more of the British smart fighter type thing.”

More on Due Date coming soon on Screen Junkies.

Warner Bros has dropped the new trailer for Todd Phillips‘s Due Date. We get a ton more footage in this one, as well as Robert Downey Jr. spitting directly in the face of an adorable French Bulldog. The outright gall!

In the film, Downey Jr. plays an expectant first time father who’s forced to go on a cross-country road trip with an aspiring actor (Zach Galifiankis) to get home to his wife (Michelle Monaghan) before she pops out the kid. It’s basically Planes, Trains, and Automobiles with a French Bulldog, but that John Hughes classic rocks and hopefully this road trip flick will too.

Check out the trailer after the jump…

Due Date New Trailer – Watch more Movie Trailers

Thanks to the run-away success of The Hangover, expectations are high for director Todd Phillips. And if actor Robert Downey Jr. is to be believed, Philips’ latest film, Due Date, should live up to those expectations.

The film costars Downey and Zach Galifianakis, who became a household name thanks to his role in The Hangover. The two play a mismatched pair racing across the country to witness the birth of Downey’s character’s first child.

Downey has gone on record claiming the film is “the second greatest movie” he’s made, the first being his role in the 1995 made-for-TV film, “Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree.” (/Film)

Watch Planes, Trains, and Automobiles fused with The Hangover after the jump.

What up with Zach Galifianakis‘s face in this new poster for Due Date? I don’t think I’ve ever seen the man smile. It doesn’t even look like he willingly smiled for this picture. The artist must have turned his frown upside down with the "Smile" Photoshop pluggin. You should totally download it.

The best part of the poster is the friggin’ adorable French Bulldog. Look at that g.d. thing. I want to smoosh its precious little face until it’s mush, which is the main reason I’m on PETA’s sh*tlist. (Yahoo)

The debut trailer for Todd Phillips‘s Due Date reunites the director with Zach Galifianakis and Mike Tyson‘s dog from The Hangover. In the film, Robert Downey Jr. is en route to see the birth of his child but must travel with a BluBlockered Galifianakis and keep him safe from the ever-present threat of waffles. If only there were someone in Vince Vaughn’s life willing to do the same.

WATCH THE MAKINGS OF A DISASTERIOUS ROAD TRIP AFTER THE JUMP…

Due Date Trailer – Watch more Movie Trailers

Director: Todd Phillips

Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Zach Galifiankis, Jamie Foxx, Michelle Monaghan

Synopsis: High-strung father-to-be Peter Highman is forced to hitch a ride with aspiring actor Ethan Tremblay on a road trip in order to make it to his child’s birth on time.

Release Date: November 5, 2010

Screen Junkies attended Spike TV‘s "Guy’s Choice" Awards last night and had the opportunity to shoot a few questions at director Todd Phillips on the red carpet. He was nice enough to not ignore us, even though we don’t have epic cleavage or piercing blue eyes (like Bradley Cooper. Ooooooh, Bradley). Here’s what Phillips had to say about The Hangover 2, specifically the release date, and his upcoming film Due Date, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Zack Galifianakis.

What up with The Hangover 2?

“We’re going to start shooting end of October and it comes out Memorial Day next year."

MORE FROM PHILLIPS AFTER THE JUMP.

Is the script locked?

“No, those scripts never get locks. It won’t be locked ‘til it comes out. We have a script that we’re excited about. I just mean it’s not locked.”
 
Do they have to top the incident of the first one, or just go in a different direction?

“I think it’s not about topping. It’s about delivering a really funny movie with these super funny guys who people seem to love. So I feel like we’re ahead of the game in that.”
 
And how will the Hangover audiences like Due Date?

“Don’t let the title fool you. It is absolutely irreverent and balls to the walls comedy. It’s the opposite [of The Hangover]. It’s anti-chemistry. It’s two guys that don’t necessarily enjoy being around each other is what Due Date is."

So mark your calendars for The Hangover 2 next Memorial Day. You have one year to figure out how to sneak a burger, tub of potato salad, and a six-pack of beer in to a theater. Due Date releases this November.

Source: Fred Topel