| 1) The Ten
Commandments have been a cornerstone of our society for nearly
one hundred years. Whether it's taking a Sunday off, or not
murdering someone, many of us follow the Ten Commandments
every day, without even knowing it. The pervasiveness of these
simple directives inspired me and Ken Marino to spin the tales
that make up THE TEN.
2) In early June 2007, we began our exhaustive research.
After ninety long seconds on Google, we'd learned not only
what The Ten Commandments were, but what order they were
in. We were thrilled to discover that all Ten Commandments
were available - they'd been optioned by Universal but had
reverted back to the writer last year.
3) THE TEN was adapted (aka stolen) from Krzysztof Kieslowski's
"Dekalog," which was ten dark, one-hour dramas
set in a Polish apartment building, each inspired by one
of the Ten Commandments. Our version is much shorter and
much funnier…and (mostly) does not take place in Polish
apartment building.
4) Armed with our newfound source material, the characters
flowed out of our imaginations so vividly that it was often
the characters themselves who wrote the story! Each episode
was different - Ken Marino and I just tried to think of
unique takes on each topic. This is what we came up with:
- A guy (ADAM BRODY) becomes an accidental hero after falling
out of a plane
- A librarian (GRETCHEN MOL) has a sexual awakening in Mexico
with a swarthy local (JUSTIN THEROUX)
- A doctor (KEN MARINO) kills his patients "as a goof"
- A police detective (LIEV SCHREIBER) covets his neighbor's
Cat Scan machine
- A mother (KERRI KENNEY-SILVER) enlists an Arnold Schwarzenegger
impersonator (OLIVER PLATT) to be a father figure to her
children
- A prisoner (ROB CORDDRY) covets his fellow inmate's "wife"
- A woman (WINONA RYDER) falls in love with, and then steals
a ventriloquist's puppet
- A Rhinoceros learns the pitfalls of gossip
- A husband (A.D. MILES) skips church with his family to
get naked with his friends and listen to Roberta Flack
- A man (PAUL RUDD) presents all of these stories to the
audience while struggling with his own moral dilemma: having
to choose between his beautiful wife (FAMKE JANSSEN) and
his also beautiful, but somewhat younger, mistress (JESSICA
ALBA).
5) THE TEN, like "Wet Hot American Summer," was
a wonderful opportunity to use a combination of my "rep
company" of actors I've worked with frequently over
the years (all the members of "The State": Zak
Orth, A. D. Miles, Nina Hellman, Paul Rudd, etc), plus a
group of my favorite screen actors who we begged to be a
part of it (Winona Ryder, Liev Schreiber, etc) and rounded
out by a lot of amazing actors we found through the normal
audition process (e.g. Michael Ziegfeld, Novella Nelson).
Working with so many different actors with different backgrounds
was a huge treat.
6) Ken Marino and I conceived everything together. He and
I creatively oversaw the entire production, hiring, casting,
determining locations, script changes, costumes, sets, etc
etc. He was on set every day, functioning almost like a
co-director. He was also heavily involved in editing, sound,
and music.
7) In creating a visual style for the film, I chose to
shoot in color for three reasons:
a) Most movies these days are in color
b) Black & white didn't seem appropriate
c) Black & white having been eliminated, color seemed
like the only other choice.
I used a similar process in making choices throughout the
making of the film.
8) Filming each episode was like making a mini-movie, but
much more complicated because we often had to shoot parts
of different segments on the same day. It was hugely ambitious
trying to filming ten stories, plus the limbo/tablets material,
and the finale, in 28 shoot days on a small indie-film budget.
Four of our shoot days were in Mexico, one in LA, the rest
were in New York City. We had over 40 locations.
9) When the movie is over, I hope that people have laughed,
had a nice time, and are thinking about where they want
to go eat. I have no pretensions that this movie will change
the world; my only expectation is that it will change the
way everyone on this planet thinks and behaves.
10) Wain and Marino's first collaboration was "The
State" - an eleven person sketch comedy troupe that
formed in 1988 and was best known for their self-titled
MTV series that ran in the early/mid 90s. Members of "The
State" went on to create on such projects as "Reno
911!," "Wet Hot American Summer" and "Stella."
All eleven members of "The State" appear in THE
TEN.
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