The first day of shooting was not exactly “the ultimate” for David Hyde Pierce on Wet Hot American Summer.
Paul Rudd made a recent appearance on Amy Poehler’s podcast Good Hang to cavort down memory lane and discuss his new movie Friendship with Tim Robinson. The two naturally reflected on the first project they worked on together, the landmark comedy Wet Hot American Summer.
The 2001 low-budget summer camp movie directed by David Wain is now hailed as a lodestar for well-known talent, with some of the earliest notable appearances by Bradley Cooper, Elizabeth Banks, Christopher Meloni, and several others. Rudd and Poehler went on and on about how, despite cosmically horrible weather, they truly felt like kids at camp making the film. And part of that may have been due to the one grown-up, Pierce, expressing mixed feelings about the party atmosphere.
Karwai Tang/WireImage; Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan via Getty
Amy Poehler at the 2025 Vanity Fair Oscar Party; Paul Rudd attends ‘SNL50: The Homecoming Concert’ in NYC
“We worked very little,” Poehler remembered about the weeks-long shoot at an actual summer camp in Honesdale, Pa., which is about a 30-minute drive from the closest store.
“Whoever wasn’t filming had to buy the beer,” Rudd reflected. “We would all just hang out and drink beer. [The movie’s composer and Shudder to Think frontman] Craig Wedren would play guitars, play music really loud, really late.”
“Do you remember David Hyde Pierce coming out to tell us … ‘Can you be a little quieter?’” Poehler asked. “Yeah,” Rudd replied. “He showed up… we were all dumb kids who wanted to have a blast—”
That’s where Poehler corrected him. “We were not kids, we were in our 30s,” she said to some chuckles.
“You were late 20s, I think I was 30. And Pierce showed up later, and, except for Janeane [Garofalo], was the only one that anyone would really know. We were all like, ‘What is this guy gonna think?'” Rudd said.
“We all slept in that, like, infirmary, where we had our own rooms with cots,” he continued, “and there was the main infirmary room where we would hang out every night until two in the morning playing music really loud. I remember it was his first night. None of us knew him. It was, like, one in the morning, and it’s so loud and he’s filming in the morning.”
“He’s probably been rehearsing, running his lines, he’s a professional,” Poehler said, still in a bit of awe.
“I remember he came out and stopped in the doorway like, ERRRRRRR,” Rudd added, “like the needle on the record stopped. Everyone got quiet, we all looked, and Ken Marino goes, ‘Oh, great, it’s Frasier!'”
TM & ©Universal
The gang getting rowdy in ‘Wet Hot American Summer’
Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.
Luckily, this remark was well-received, and did not lead to static between Pierce and his costars. Rudd and Poehler recalled that Pierce was a “cool” and “lovely guy,” and just seemed genuinely curious as to what was going on that night.
The ’80s-set Wet Hot American Summer, though revived in both prequel and sequel form on Netflix, was not exactly a box-office hit during its initial release. The film, written by Wain and Michael Showalter, was not hailed by too many critics at the time, either. (A few righteous publications, like EW, were ahead of the curve!)
The use of the Jefferson Starship song “Jane” in the opening credits does, however, lead us to ask a profound philosophical question. What is the best movie to feature a song with Mickey Thomas on vocals? Is it this, or is it 1987’s Mannequin, that includes Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”? Perhaps some things just can’t be answered…
If you have an hour, you would do well to spend it watching Rudd and Poehler crack each other up on the latest episode of Good Hang. There’s even a whole to-do with Jon Hamm checking in from — wait for it — the inside of a hot air balloon!
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
