Reginald Hudlin shot most of “Serving Sara” in Dallas (some early scenes were set, and filmed, in New York), and he returned to the Metroplex last week for a special pre-release screening of the finished picture at the city’s USA Film Festival. There had been suggestions that despite its Texas locale the picture should be shot elsewhere (Canada, for example, where “Texas Rangers,” among others, had been made), but Hudlin rejected that idea from the beginning. “It’s wrong, it’s just wrong,” the director emphatically of shooting a story like this up north.
The experience of making the picture locally had been a good one, Hudlin said. “We had a great crew, a mix of people from L.A. and a lot of people from Texas,” he recalled. And the welcome was memorable: one sequence was filmed at Ross Perot Jr.’s ranch, and afterward “they threw a huge barbeque for us–that’s really the whole Texas hospitality thing.” The locals were anxious to help, too. Hudlin recounted a week-long shoot at the Will Rogers Coliseum in Fort Worth, where the big finale at a monster truck rally was filmed. “We scouted the real monster truck rally, and while it was impressive, we wanted to go bigger and badder–even louder and more dangerous,” he said, laughing. So they mounted a fake event and sent out a call for extras, filling half the stands with patient, eager crowds without difficulty. “That’s the great thing about shooting here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area–people were so supportive and enthusiastic. They didn’t have that jaded L.A. attitude.”
Hudlin was raised in the East St. Louis area and went to college at Harvard, where he majored in Visual and Environmental Studies and made a short film which he eventually expanded into the treatment for his first feature, “House Party” (1990), with rappers Kid ‘N Play. When he shopped the script around at the major studios, they all rejected it as a combination of two dead genres–a teen movie and a rap movie. Eventually he took it to New Line, and they bit: “They’re bottom-feeders–crucial to the ecology of Hollywood,” he joked. “They’re not business-as-usual, and that’s how original things get made.” “House Party” went on to become a surprise smash, eventually spawning two sequels (made by others), and Hudlin went on to make “Boomerang” with Eddie Murphy and Tim Meadows’ Saturday Night Live takeoff “The Ladies Man,” among others.
His latest is a screwball road-trip comedy that pairs Matthew Perry of “Friends” as a New York process-server and Elizabeth Hurley as the wealthy Texas wife on whose husband (Bruce Campbell) he tries to serve divorce papers before his rival (Vincent Pastore, from “The Sopranos”) can serve them on her. The production was halted for a couple months after the first scenes were shot when Perry entered a substance-abuse program, but Hudlin said the hiatus hadn’t been overly disruptive. “All shoots are difficult, each in its own way,” he said philosophically. “The body forgets pain.” And he was enthusiastic about the final result, a mixture of raucous farce and romance he thinks audiences will respond well to. “We really tried to be equal-opportunity offenders in this movie,” he said of its broad comedy. “We make fun of Texans and Italians and New Yorkers and British people–we give the Moe Howard triple slap. We’re cruel but fair.”
And he had nothing but praise for his cast. Of Perry he noted: “Matthew is really scientific in his approach to physical comedy. This is a guy who’s studied the old masters and has really thought about how to execute it properly.” He met Hurley and quickly decided: “We’re on the same comedy wavelength–she’s got a great sense of humor.” Campbell, an idol of his from Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” movies, has “an amazing comedic imagination.” And of Cedric the Entertainer, who has lots of solo scenes as Perry’s boss at the process-serving office: “It’s a tribute to his talent that he can fill up the screen like that by himself.”
He recalled the improvisation that the cast constantly engaged in during filming with special pleasure. “You don’t have people as funny as Matthew and Cedric and say, ‘Stick to the script, we don’t want to hear those funny ideas you have.’ I don’t think so.”
Hudlin’s next offering will be the season premiere of “The Bernie Mac Show.” “Serving Sara” is a Paramount Pictures release.