Interview:
Brian McElhaney,
Nick Kocher,
writers/directors,
"Pizza Movie,"
writers.
"Over Your Dead Body"
No other writers and directors had a better SXSW Film & TV Festival than Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher. Known as the comedy duo BriTANicK, McElhaney and Kocher returned to Austin—where they premiered their first short film Eagles Are Turning People Into Horses at the 2010 SXSW Film Festival and starred in the 2014 comedy Balls Out—with their first two feature film projects: the college stoner comedy Pizza Movie and the comedy thriller Over Your Dead Body. McElhaney and Kocher make their directorial debut with Pizza Movie, which they also wrote. In Pizza Movie, two college students experience a bad trip after each takes a homemade drug dubbed MINTS (mind-igniting neural tuning stimulants) they find hidden in their dorm room. The only way for Jack and Montgomery to stop the bad trip is to eat some pizza, and they spend the entire film trying to obtain the pie that they order from a delivery robot. Pizza Movie stars Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo as Jack, The Goldbergs’ Sean Giambrone as Montgomery, and Becky’s Lulu Wilson as Lizzy, another student tripping on MINTS. Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher also wrote the screenplay for Over Your Dead Body, a remake of director Tommy Wirkola’s 2021 Norwegian comedy thriller The Trip that starred Noomi Rapace. Directed by The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone, Over Your Dead Body finds estranged married couple Jason Segel and Samara Weaving trying to kill each other during a weekend getaway to a remote lake house. But Segel’s Dan and Weaving’s Lisa must put aside their differences when they are taken hostage by two escaped convicts (Timothy Olyphant and Keith Jardine) and the prison guard (Juliette Lewis) responsible for their breakout. Pizza Movie premiered April 3 on Hulu; Over Your Dead Body opens April 24 in theaters. Having first crossed paths as kids in their native Atlanta, Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher began performing together as a comedy duo at New York University in the late 2000s, eventually adopting the moniker BriTANicK. Writing and performing in online sketch videos eventually led to McElhaney and Kocher joining Saturday Night Live as writers for the 2016-17 season. They also wrote for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. They appeared onscreen in Joss Whedon's 2012 adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing and Andrew Disney’s 2014 Austin-shot sport comedy Balls Out. They also host the podcast “Cash Grab.” Aired: April 1, 2026. Web site: https://schedule.sxsw.com/films/2241483 https://www.hulu.com/ https://schedule.sxsw.com/films/2241529 |
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