By Will Tentindo and Gill Pringle
Initially slated for a limited theatrical release in Australia, The Little Hours will arrive direct to transactional VOD, ideal for its raunchy subject matter and an ensemble cast full of quirky actors that populate the streaming platforms.
In The Little Hours, Jeff Baena (Life After Beth, Joshy, writer of David O. Russell’s I Heart Huckabees) adapts Boccaccio’s 14th century book The Decameron into a raunchy comedy set in a convent. When Dave Franco’s Massetto flees from his master, he seeks shelter in a convent occupied by Aubrey Plaza, Molly Shannon, and Alison Brie among others.
As a long-time collaborator and, to gossip, his girlfriend, Plaza wanted to become more involved in the filmmaking process on Baena’s latest film. “It just felt like a natural next step goal for me to take on,” she said. “I was involved with putting the cast together in the very beginning, and securing the financing and stuff like that. So, it just seemed like it made sense and I was interested in doing more this time around. I learned a lot and I really liked it.”
Plaza and Baena helped cast the movie by, in part, calling people they knew that felt right for the film. The entire process was very collaborative, says Plaza. “[Baena] loves working with actors and hearing their ideas. I think we all brought ideas to him while he was forming the script and the characters. We all got to put our two-cents in for sure.
“I was really excited when I read the outline that Jeff wrote,” Plaza said. “I thought that all the characters had a lot of really fun stuff to do, I loved my character’s journey in the film and her kind of secret motivation. All that stuff was really appealing to me.”
The nuns of The Little Hours feature in the best scenes in the film, including when they all sit down and start drinking. “A method actor needs to experience what it’s really like,” Plaza says sarcastically. “It was actually fun, we had saved one very special bottle of wine that I think Jeff had reserved for that night for us. So, we had a little bit, so a little bit was real.”
A less fun scene was with Plaza’s animal co-star, a donkey. “The donkey had a baby donkey inside of it, so trying to get a stubborn pregnant donkey down a mountain was a really hard thing to do. Especially when you’re under a time crunch. So, I really had to yank that donkey.”
The Little Hours is available from February 21, 2018
