Apartment Troubles marks the screenwriting and directorial debuts of costars and real-life friends Jennifer Prediger (Red Flag) and Jess Weixler (Teeth). In the film, Olivia (Prediger) and Nicole (Weixler) are codependent roommates who are definitely going to make it; they’re just not sure how. When they get evicted from their shoebox apartment in Manhattan, they boldly take off to L.A. Will Forte, Megan Mullally and Jeffrey Tambor co-star star in this madcap comedy/dark comedy/dramedy. The multi-hyphenates tried to decide which comedy category Apartment Troubles would fit in and more in our interview.

How did Apartment Troubles happen?

Jess: We had just met and we really liked each other. After a short time of being roommates, we bonded very quickly. We met some producers who sort of liked us and told us that if we could write something that they approved of, then we could shoot it that summer. After being given such a glorious opportunity to make something that we wrote, we jumped on it. We wrote the script in a month and a half. A month later, we went into production and shot it over the course of 14 days.

Wow, 14 days?

Jess: Well, maybe 15 days with a pick up day.

Well, that one day makes all the difference. I want to make sure I quote you correctly. I don’t want to create a scandal by misquoting you.

Jess: You can totally create a scandal. Scandal is good for this movie.

Jen: Yes, all kinds of scandal.

I’ll do my best. I can make up all kinds of stuff if you want.

Jess: Thank you.

Jen: Maybe start some rumors.

I know some scandalous people here in West Hollywood, so I’ll see what I can do.

Jess: We are a Hollywood scandal. But anyways, Jen and I became fast friends. We immediately liked each other and had a similar sense of humor.

Jen: It was great. We were really lucky. Jess and I were both cut from [the film] Celestial Cloth and we actually had a lot of apartment troubles so to speak in the apartment that we were sharing. I was out of town and the stove almost exploded on Jess. Then Jess came home one day and there was an eviction notice on the door. She called me to tell me about these -problems and I was like ‘uh-oh, that’s a problem. What will we do about that?’ I was subletting the apartment and she was subletting for me, so it was a doubly illegal sublet. Everything was sorted out and thankfully we weren’t evicted. [Those experiences] were a great springboard for the movie and literally inspired us to make this movie.

You already touched on this, but since the movie is about the two of you moving from New York to L.A., how autobiographical is it?

Jess: Not much really.

Jen: We were living in the East Village in this dilapidated but wonderful apartment, so that became the backdrop for the story. We do have the stove incident and the eviction notice in the movie. In the film, my cat died and my cat died in real life, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. We just took these elements and ran with them and created these characters that were archetypes of a codependent friendship. We wanted to play around with the idea of friendship because friends are so close and sometimes the boundaries get blurred. Sometimes the people involved [in a dysfunctional friendship] are no longer being strengthened by the relationship, but are diminished by it. We really wanted to look at that in the context of a comedy in the spirit of Dumb and Dumber and The Odd Couple.

Jess: When we studied these buddy movies, we realized the relationship is funnier when the characters’ personalities are opposite of each other. With this in mind, we pushed each of our characters into extremes. One is an extreme narcissist and the other is really needy. In The Odd Couple for instance, they are two very diametrically opposed personalities.

Jen: That was fun to play around with. Jess’ character is kind of like the top and my character is kind of like the bottom.

Jess: If you were to put our characters in bed together… [laughs]

And there’s the scandalous headline we could use.

Jess: You are confused in the movie as to whether there is more to the relationship. For example, when you have that person in your life who is your ‘other’ – it could be your best friend, a boyfriend or girlfriend – the relationship you have with your ‘other’ is a very intimate relationship and can be confusing to other people.

You mentioned The Odd Couple a couple of times. Are there any other movies that inspired you?

Jess: There’s one that a lot of Americans haven’t heard of. It’s a [1987] British cult film, Withnail and I, and people love it, especially British people and we love it.

Jen: We started talking about that movie and Jess and I both loved it and had watched it a while back. We said, ‘let’s watch that again’ and re-fell in love with it. We thought, ‘let’s do something like that’ so our film is an homage.

Jess: At the end of Withnail and I, there’s a Hamlet speech and in our movie, there’s a Nina from [Chekhov’s 1895 play] The Seagull speech. In Withnail and I, there’s a gay uncle and in our movie, there’s a gay aunt, played by Megan Mullally, who’s a fantastic gay aunt.

I can totally see Megan pulling that off. She seems like a gay man in a woman’s body in some of the roles she’s played.

Jess: [laughs] Yea, she’s ballsy. She’s a hell of a woman. I wish she was my gay aunt.

Speaking of Megan, what was it like to work with her and Will and Jeffrey?

Jess: They were dreamy. We felt so lucky to be able to work with them. We had to pinch ourselves. It was a master class in comedy being around them. All three of them are dynamite. You don’t get much funnier than the three of them.

Jen: It was great to collaborate with them to get their insight into their characters. If they felt like doing improv, then let them do what they do. It was intimidating because I was thinking, ‘can we direct these geniuses? Are we even allowed to direct them since they’re so good?’ They were amazing. They wanted to talk about the scenes and collaborate with us. They were team players, all three of them. And it was generous of them to give us their time. I don’t think we could have gotten any of them right now. We happened to find them when they all had this magic pocket of having free time.

Timing is everything.

Jen: We were very lucky. This whole movie had some very wonderful timing.

Jess: There’s always good timing when there’s not much time needed. We shot all of Megan’s scenes in three, maybe four days. The guys [Will and Jeffrey] were [on set] for only a day. Our crew said, ‘if you can hang with us, you won’t get paid much, but we’re going to have a really good time.’ And everybody was down for some indie filmmaking.

Sort of when you make a student film with some guerrilla filmmaking.

Jess: We did have one guerrilla moment in the subway scene. You aren’t really allowed to shoot in the subway, but we kind of did.

You didn’t have the permits?

Jess: It’s hard to say. [laughs] There are subway dancers in a scene and we just ran into those guys on the train. We told them, ‘you are awesome hip hop dancers and we want you to be in this movie.’ They rode around with us for about 45 minutes and let us film them which was awesome.

It comes back to timing again. They were at the right place and you probably made their year.

Jess: They definitely made our year. Jen and I always wanted dancers and street performers in that scene. Something needed to happen to inspire Jen’s character to make her stand up and perform on the subway. We didn’t think we would be able to find people to shoot that scene in the subway and they just happened to be there. That was just one of those things that we didn’t think would be possible, but it turned out to be possible.

What kind of comedy is Apartment Troubles if you had to put it in a category?

Jen: There’s a dry, dark aspect to it. Some people might be open to calling it a dramedy, which we are not [laughs]. There’s kind of a dark, dramatic component to it. Oftentimes, I think the darker, the funnier and we definitely leaned in that direction when we could.

Jess: Tonally, it’s a little heightened. It’s not like [HBO’s] Girls, which is ultra-realism. I’d call it more like magical-realism, where everything is a little heightened – the language, the scenes, the circumstances.

So would the heightened/dark comedy in Apartment Troubles compare to Teeth [Jess’ 2007 horror-comedy cult classic]?

Jess: Interesting question. They actually aren’t that far apart in the realm of dark comedies. They’re not actually ‘playing’ comedy, but the circumstances are ridiculous. Some of it’s just inherently strange. You can decide if you find that funny or not. I more often than not find strange [movies] funny.

Me too. I actually promoted Teeth and I was telling everyone, “you have got to see this movie!”

Jess: Aww, thank you. That was a blast. I got a hold of that [role] and was a little freaked out at first. Then I realized that the dark comedy was one of the things I loved about it. I love hearing that from guys too [that they love the movie Teeth]. Guys just aren’t usually as into it as girls are. I get really excited when guys liked it.

I like dark comedies. I love Heathers. I just love dark comedies that might not sound funny if you just read the synopsis.

Jess: Our movie’s like that. Jen, would our movie be in that category?

Jen: The Heathers category? I can’t say. I wouldn’t put [Apartment Troubles] in that category. I would say our movie is like The Godfather meets So I Married an Axe Murder [laughs]. There’s not really a category for this movie. It marches to the beat of its own drummer.

Jess: Maybe The Godfather meets The Rocky Horror Picture Show [laughs].

Jen: You can call it porn. I don’t care as long as people watch it.

Jess: Maybe we should call it dark comedy porn.

Jen: There’s no porn unfortunately, but maybe in the sequel [laughs].

Jess: Well, I do get to make out with Jeffrey Tambor and Jen makes out with Megan Mullally [in the movie]. That’s an important selling point.

Apartment Troubles opens in select theaters, iTunes and Video on Demand March 27.