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There’s lots to love in Spa Weekend, a laugh-out-loud comedy that features four actresses at the top of their game. A movie that knows female friendships so well, people might be surprised to know it was written and directed by two men.
Of course, Lucas and Moore proved they could write complex, hilarious women with the Bad Moms movies. On that film, they purposefully sought out a female producer; that’s how they met Suzanne Todd, who has produced all their features since. “Sometimes people say, ‘How could this movie be written by a man?’” Todd admits. “It’s because both of them are truly interested in the female perspective. They really
make them as a love letter to their wives. They are so tuned into them, and they want to hear from women.”
Filmmakers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore have one goal with their comedies.
“We just love movies you can watch with your friends and laugh your ass off at,” says Lucas. “There used to be 20 of those a year, and now, I don’t know where they’ve gone. We may be the last ones making them—and we may be idiots—but we believe people still love these movies.”
They also recognise good material.
“I think men aren’t as intricate as women, we’re pretty simple beings,” says Moore. “My male friendships aren’t that complicated, whereas women can have fascinating relationships with so many different facts.”
Adds Lucas, “I don’t think people make enough comedies for women. They overperform and do really well. There’s a huge audience out there that’s just untapped and that love to go to movies, they just don’t have anything to go to.”
As writers, the pair don’t look far for inspiration.
“We write about what we know best, which is our wives,” says Moore. “And we also pull from our cast. In Bad Moms, we cast all moms because we wanted to bring their experience in. We met with them, did rehearsals with them, and really used their input – something we brought to Spa Weekend.” Lucas adds his wife gives every one of his scripts “a joke pass” when he’s done.
And it doesn’t just stop with the actors; for Spa Weekend, Moore adds, “We tried to hire as many females as possible; we have a male and a female editor and we had a female production designer and costume supervisor. Most of our department heads were women, and we had a lot of the women on the camera crew.”
In fact, it was talking to women that inspired the very story of Spa Weekend.
“When we were doing Bad Moms we asked each mom what they would want to do if they had a day to themselves,” says Lucas. “And every single one had the same answer, ‘I want to go to a spa. I want to relax, I want no one to talk to me for an hour.’ Obviously, you can’t make a movie about no one talking, but a spa was such fertile ground. We couldn’t believe there hadn’t been more movies set there.
