By In the back sunroom of Zinqué, a French coffee and wine bar located on a main artery in Los Angeles' West Hollywood neighborhood, Paul W. Downs is reflecting on what it means that Rough Night, his motion picture debut co-written with longtime romantic and writing partner Lucia Aniello (who also directed it), is the first R-rated movie to be directed by a woman released by a major studio in 20 years. "It's a sad statistic, we couldn't believe it," he explains. "I think it encouraged the friendship that the cast had, because it was a safe space and comfortable and cool and everyone felt very supportive and good. Not that that can't be true with a male director, but I just feel there was a different dynamic."
It comes across in the emboldened relationships between the core cast of Rough Night. The buddy film stars Scarlett Johansson as Jess, a go-getter running for state senator who breaks from her domestic life with her fiancé Peter (played by Downs) to reunite for a bachelorette party with her college friends: Alice (Jillian Bell), who craves the golden years of beer pong and frat parties; Frankie (Ilana Glazer), a protester incapable of actually organizing a protest; and Frankie's former girlfriend Blair (Zoë Kravitz), whose life is in shambles as she engages in a custody battle with her soon-to-be ex-husband. When they arrive in Miami, cocaine is procured and drinks are had. Jess's out-of-circle Aussie friend Pippa (Kate McKinnon) arrives and they return to a sprawling beach house where, after a stripper arrives, Alice accidentally knocks him back on his chair, cracking his skull open and effectively killing him. (The hijinks that ensue are manic. They consider eating him and tossing him out to sea.)
The juxtaposition of the bachelor party, simultaneously taking place at a vineyard, is a gender role reversal: The guys sip wine and take in the floral notes. His coterie of buds, which include Eric André and Bo Burnham, console Peter when he falls under the assumption that Jess no longer wants to marry him. He embarks on a solo road trip where he's forced to snort meth and wear adult diapers so he can drive through the night. It's a comical bright point of the movie, and Downs inhabits the role with a type of sensitivity that makes him one of the few characters that come across as sympathetic in the film.
"The guys in the movie are really sensitive," Downs says. "They're all feminists, whether or not they would say they're feminists. They are sensitive and like nice things, whatever descriptor you want to use. Men are like that, and while we did exaggerate certain things of course for the comedy, I think it's important to portray dynamic characters that are realistic and aren't typical."
It's in the spirit of Bridesmaids and 2016's Ghostbusters as a counter to the all-male buddy flicks that have dominated the box office for decades, and one of few this summer starring and focused on women. Rough Night comes ahead of Girls Trip (July 21) starring Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Regina Hall and Tiffany Haddish, followed by Fun Mom Dinner with Molly Shannon, Toni Collette, Katie Aselton and Bridget Everett (August 4). (The former is directed by a man, the latter a woman.)
"I think the playing field is just getting more even, because the amount of male buddy comedies... You could say any summer was the summer of male buddy comedies," he says. "Like, oh, there's three? I don't know. It'd be great if this is not a summer but it continues and we see more stories about female friendships that are realistic and good, and also they're going to be so different."
Downs recognizes the responsibility that comes with with writing female characters as a man, and points to the collaborative relationship with Aniello as a means to properly portraying them. "I'm lucky in that because I wrote it with Lucia; we did have a cis-female voice that she could draw from, her own," he explains. "I think also, because these characters were based on amalgamations of people that we know, it was kind of easy. As long as you are an empathetic person, I think you can write in the voice of a character, especially if you know that character well."
"As long as you are an empathetic person, I think you can write in the voice of a character, especially if you know that character well."
"But," he elaborates, "I also don't think of it as a female character. I think if you changed genders, obviously it wouldn't always work, but we tried to write the funniest thing. So if you lead with the joke, it should be the kind of thing where if in a screenplay you give the men's lines to women, it would still be fine."
As for why guys should see the film? "I think it's really fun for men to watch the curtain pulled back on what girls do when they get drunk and go out and have fun," he says. "Guys should get together, have a drink, and see the movie. It's a fun night. Also it's a great way if they're single to pick up a girl, because I think there will be a lot there."
Comedy and acting have always been Downs' calling. Native to Sussex, New Jersey, he attended the private institution The Pingry School for his high school years, participating in its acting program and swimming, the latter of which he continued at Duke University for a short spell. It was there that he joined his first improv group and created his own major in public policy and cultural anthropology, but it wasn't until he moved to New York City and started performing improv at Upright Citizens Brigade that he met likeminded comics like Aniello—as well as Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, stars and creators of Comedy Central's Broad City.
Downs and Aniello started making videos "because you can get stuff to be seen more than 150 people in a black box beneath Gristedes," he recalls. They found kinship with Jacobs and Glazer and began collaborating on shorts like 2012's Time Traveling Bong (a near two-minute vignette that Comedy Central would later expand to become a three-part series in 2016). That got them a manager who coaxed Aniello and Downs to move to Los Angeles in 2011; the following year, when Broad City was picked up, they moved back to New York where they live six to eight months out of the year writing and filming the show.
Rough Night was penned between seasons two and three of Broad City, and was never intended to be picked up by a major studio until Sony optioned it. They shot the film over the course of 36 days in the Hamptons after Memorial Day, staying at an expensive motel where they bonded off-hours. "We were so lucky to have a cast that was not only so talented but got along so well," he recalls. "The girls became friends instantly and in that way it was really fun. We would get back very late at night every night and had ordered Indian food, so it was weirdly like camp because no one was there but us—even though they played music even though there was."
There's a loose parallel between Rough Night's Peter and Broad City's Trey, the painfully optimistic personal trainer played by Downs who falls into a relationship with Abbi's character. Downs doesn't exactly see it, but they're both characters who are essentially seeking acceptance from the women they're with. "Initially, that first season when we were developing the role in Broad City, it wasn't like, oh, you'll play this part," he says. "And so in that way, it's kind of evolved and maybe become more sensitive. But that's true of a lot of the men on Broad City: They are romantic and sensitive, except for Bevers. They are attentive to women and feminists. I think Peter is much closer to who I am."
In real life, Downs has been together with Aniello for a decade, and they share a home in Los Angeles' Silver Lake neighborhood. They aren't married but share a joint bank account and a will. ("I know, it's very morbid and serious," he jokes.) Johansson asked them to write a script for her following Rough Night, and they're at work on another script about the Boston mob—both comedies. Comedy has always been in the cards for Downs, but who knows. Maybe something more serious is his calling, too.
"The joke answer would be to say I'm better at drama than comedy. I think I just gravitate towards it because it's fun and being a comedian is obviously the thing I do, but I'd love to do drama," he says. "Some of my favorite movies are when someone like Steve Carell does Crazy, Stupid, Love that's comedic but really grounded emotionally, or Jim Carrey does Eternal Sunshine. When you see the clown do something dramatic, it's really impactful. Having similar careers to Steve Carell and Jim Carrey? I really need to do that."
