With Vacation Friends now streaming on Hulu, I recently spoke with director Clay Tarver about directing his first feature film. If you haven’t seen the trailers, Vacation Friends is about two couples that couldn’t be more different that happen to meet up at a resort in Mexico. Marcus (Lil Rel Howery) and Emily (Yvonne Orji) are straight-laced and careful planners while Ron (John Cena) and Kyla (Meredith Hagner) are thrill-seeking partiers that don’t worry about what tomorrow may bring. When the two couples end up rooming together because of a hotel mix-up, the usually level-headed Marcus and Emily spend the week enjoying uninhibited fun with their “vacation friends.” Months later, back in the real world, Marcus and Emily are shocked when Ron and Kyla show up uninvited at their wedding. As you can imagine, chaos ensues. Vacation Friends was written by Tom Mullen, Tim Mullen, Tarver, and Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley and also stars Robert Wisdom, Andrew Bachelor, and Lynn Whitfield.

During the interview, Tarver talked about the way the film balances the crazy with characters that have heart, what it was like having to shut down the movie after two weeks of filming because of COVID, how he came up with the look of the drug scene in the forest, if anything changed in the editing room, and more.

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Clay Tarver

• What was it like directing his first feature and having the film shut down after a few weeks due to COVID?
• What was it like finding the right balance of crazy with characters that have heart?
• How he came up with the look for the drug scene.
• What was it like editing the movie and did they have any big changes?