Anyone familiar with cult comics Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim knows to expect the unforgivably bizarre. As such, it’s not that surprising that the duo went to strange lengths to achieve authenticity in their feature debut, Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, which premiered last night at Sundance and is said to be just as polarizing and deranged as the pair’s Adult Swim series. How deranged? Well, the film chronicles Tim and Eric’s attempt to revive an abandoned shopping center with the help of a Top Gundevotee played by Will Ferrell, a man-child named Taquito (played by John C. Reilly), and a mustachioed sword proprietor played by Saturday Night Liveveteran Will Forte—all in the hopes of coming up with $100 billion so that they can finally make the movie of their dreams.
To celebrate the premiere, Tim, Eric, and Will hosted a dinner at the Montage Deer Valley Resort in Park City last night, where Forte told us about the cast and crew’s experiences shooting in a real-life derelict mall. “It’s kind of good that this much time has passed and everyone is still living,” Forte said. “There are no long-term health problems that we’ve been dealing with. That was a real concern because everyone had to wear these medical masks, SARS masks, because the mall had been shut down for so long. They had a health inspector come in and checked out everything. They roped off some areas that were just too environmentally unsafe to go in. You heard stories about everyone holding onto a cough for a couple weeks.”
So whether or not shooting in a dilapidated mall that weakened immune systems was a means of cost-cutting convenience or just a demented touch, the cast of Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie went Method.
“It looks like a big, super-scummy mall, and it is indeed a super-scummy mall,” Forte confirmed.
Magnolia Pictures secured distribution rights for the comedy last spring, and come March 3, Tim and Eric fans can watch the stars risk their respiratory health in the pursuit of mad comedy.
