'Cocaine Bear' Interviews | Elizabeth Banks, O'Shea Jackson Jr. & Alden Ehrenreich
The hilarious ensemble of the new comedy "Cocaine Bear", including Elizabeth Banks (Director/Producer), Alden Ehrenreich (Eddie) and O'Shea Jackson Jr. (Daveed) join CinemaBlend’s Sean O’Connell to discuss this absolutely wild film. Find out what they used to recreate the film’s powdery namesake, their favorite (and least favorite) stunts and more. Plus, they take a moment to remember Ray Liotta, this being his last project to hit theaters.
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00:00 - Did the bear have music cues like Jaws kind of does?
00:03 - Yeah, the bear has, yeah, of course it does.
00:05 Yeah, yeah, the bear has its own theme, if you will.
00:08 - Right, yeah. - Yeah.
00:09 (bear growling)
00:12 - A bear did cocaine!
00:14 (upbeat music)
00:16 - Let's see what kind of effect that has on us.
00:22 - There is, as expected, a ton of cocaine in this film.
00:26 It's snorted, it's eaten, it's sprinkled in the air.
00:30 I wanna know what you used for it
00:32 to make sure that it photographed
00:33 the way that you needed it to.
00:35 - Oh man, we did a lot of testing on that.
00:37 It's mostly sugar.
00:39 It's like a combo of powdered sugar and granulated sugar.
00:42 There's some salt in some of the scenes
00:44 when people actually have to try it
00:46 because we wanted a real reaction.
00:48 I was a little worried if people were just eating sugar
00:50 that they would like it.
00:52 And, you know, that's what we did.
00:54 We imagined also if you crushed up baby aspirin,
00:57 like what it would taste like, tastes disgusting.
00:59 So things like that.
01:00 We did a lot of experimentation
01:02 to get the cocaine just right for this movie.
01:05 Thank you for noticing.
01:06 - There you go, girl.
01:08 Yeah. (laughs)
01:09 - O'Shea, I wanna start with you
01:11 because this material can and often is
01:14 played for either comedy or horror.
01:17 You can take it from either direction.
01:18 I'm curious what kind of conversations
01:20 you had on set with Elizabeth
01:21 to make sure that you sort of hit the balance
01:23 that she was looking for.
01:25 - Elizabeth likes to say that comedy and horror
01:28 are two sides of the same coin,
01:31 which I agree because there's a lot of scary situations
01:35 that happen in your life that later on down the line,
01:38 you end up laughing at.
01:39 So it's, you know, it definitely is a weird balance.
01:43 Suspense and anticipation can, you know,
01:47 either flip on the scary or the fun side.
01:50 And yeah, she just wanted to make sure
01:52 that "David" was a nice balance of,
01:56 not only are you playing a criminal,
01:58 but you're also, you know,
02:00 me and Eddie work as a bit of a heartwarming story
02:03 with our relationship and things like that.
02:05 So yeah, it was a lot of creative conversation
02:08 with Elizabeth for us to make sure that we hit the balance.
02:12 And yeah, I feel like we hit the mark.
02:15 - Your dude had a tough day, man.
02:17 He went through a lot.
02:17 - A lot of people had a lot tougher days.
02:20 (laughs)
02:22 - He was four!
02:23 - Hey, that's inappropriate.
02:25 (gunshot)
02:26 (woman screams)
02:27 - And then of course, staging all the kills
02:29 were, had to be a ton of fun.
02:31 And I'm curious which one might've been the hardest one
02:34 to pull off, like to move from page to screen.
02:37 - Well, for sure, the ambulance chase
02:39 took a long time to do.
02:41 It's a many, many pieces pulled together for that
02:45 because there's so many people involved in it too.
02:47 You know, but I gotta give props to Jesse Tyler Ferguson
02:50 because he got up in that tree in a harness.
02:53 He was fully up there, 40 feet up.
02:55 He did all of his own climbs.
02:56 He did all of his own stunts.
02:58 He hung upside down, which is not easy.
03:01 I've had to do it in things, you know,
03:02 the blood rushes to your head.
03:04 It was so intense and he got up there and did it all.
03:08 So that, I really relied on him
03:10 to make that as real as it is.
03:13 - You held that shot for such a long time.
03:16 - Yeah.
03:16 - I was like, how much longer is she gonna make
03:18 that poor man hang there?
03:19 - I mean, it was really fun and realistic.
03:22 You know, the other thing about bears,
03:24 bears don't kill their prey before they eat them.
03:27 Bears eat everything alive.
03:29 - As we found out later on in the movie.
03:33 I'll let people discover that for themselves.
03:35 (dramatic music)
03:38 - Oh man, you fucked.
03:41 - There's a moment in this film
03:42 where you get trapped under the bear.
03:44 Your character gets trapped under the bear.
03:46 - Yes.
03:47 - I'm curious how you guys filmed that.
03:49 Was there anything ever on top of you
03:50 for what amount of time?
03:52 - Yeah, I think we put a bunch of like
03:54 big beanbag chairs or something on it.
03:56 It wasn't that, but it was some kind of heavy thing
03:58 they put on me so that I could kind of
04:01 like rub around in the dirt and sound muffled
04:04 and yell out from under it.
04:06 And then we had Alan, who's this great creatures performer
04:08 who's playing the bear with a bear face
04:11 on the end of like a frame in front of his head.
04:14 And he was really great.
04:16 - How long did that take to get used to?
04:18 - I don't, I never got used to it.
04:20 - Yeah.
04:21 - Yeah, that'll make showers hot enough.
04:23 (laughing)
04:26 - It kind of seems like the thing
04:27 that stays with a man forever.
04:29 - Of course, I love your song choices for it.
04:32 I think they perfectly set the tone that you're going for.
04:35 I'm curious, what was the one song that you knew
04:36 that you needed to have in order to complete the film?
04:39 - Jane, for sure, the opening song.
04:42 It was an homage to "Hot American Summer,"
04:45 one of the first movies I was ever in.
04:47 Took place in the '80s.
04:49 I've never made anything in the '80s.
04:50 I loved going back and going through all of the music
04:53 of that time period.
04:55 I was very specific that no song could be in the movie
04:57 that didn't come out before September 1985
05:01 when the movie is set.
05:02 So that it's all realistic.
05:04 And then we had Mark Mothersbaugh do the score.
05:07 Of course, he's like an icon of the '80s
05:10 and totally gets what the tone of this movie is.
05:14 He's like a breath of fun and energy
05:18 every time we work together.
05:19 And he brought so much to this film as well,
05:22 tying all the music choices together.
05:24 - Did "The Bear" have music cues like "Jaws" kind of does?
05:28 - Yeah, "The Bear" has, yeah, of course it does.
05:30 Yeah, yeah, "The Bear" has its own theme, if you will.
05:33 - Right, yeah. - Yeah.
05:35 - The bear. - It loves cocaine.
05:37 - O'Shea, this is one of Ray Liotta's last performances.
05:42 And I'm curious what you'll remember about him
05:44 as a collaborator.
05:45 - Just laughing off camera, laughing in the makeup trailer,
05:50 always cracking jokes with him, grade A trash talker.
05:55 Yeah, it's just a titan in this industry
05:59 that you got to go spar with a little bit.
06:03 And it's a gift that I didn't know that I wanted
06:07 or would be receiving and that I'll cherish forever.
06:11 - Man, you rest in peace.
06:13 - Lot of cocaine was lost.
06:14 I need you to go and get it.
06:16 (dramatic music)
06:20 (explosion booms)
06:22 (upbeat music)