When you think of movies based on a true story, you think of something serious and aiming for authenticity. Tag isn’t that at all. Not only is it an action comedy, but it’s also one that plays very loose with its story and characters. When Fandango visited the Atlanta set of the movie last summer, we witnessed the filming of a scene with tons of improvisation and met an ensemble with the goods and the collective chemistry to steer the wildest and funniest release of the year.
THE STORY
Yes, Tag is based on a true story. A few years ago, a Wall Street Journal reporter accidentally stumbled upon the existence of a bunch of guys still playing the titular children’s game well into adulthood. In the movie, they’re played by Jon Hamm, Ed Helms, Jake Johnson, Hannibal Buress and Jeremy Renner, a combination of the hilarious and the athletic, with the plot following a potential final game where four of the men attempt to finally tag the never-”it” fifth.
Much of that foundation remains in the script, as written by Rob McKittrick (Waiting…) and Mark Steilen, with the journalist a character on screen (played by Annabelle Wallis) discovering that the big business executive she’s interviewing is playing tag as a grown-up -- because his friends actually burst through and mark him as “it” as she’s sitting there. And a lot of the tagging scenarios in the movie are based on those the real men experienced. It had to be, because nobody would accept the movie as believable otherwise.
“I got this script and said, ‘This just seems ludicrous, too silly to build a movie on,” admitted Helms during a break from filming. “It’s like when we see a biopic about someone extraordinary -- half the time those stories wouldn’t resonate if they weren’t real, because they’re too extraordinary or they’re too absurd or they’re too crazy in some way, and I think this falls into the category of something that’s a little too absurd to just make up and pull out of thin air.”
The truth of the game and the men’s relationships to the tradition and each other also helps to ground the movie when necessary. “Because it’s based on real guys who really do this and really love it, and it’s something that’s kept their friendships afloat through 30 years of life and love and loss -- that to me is what makes it a really poignant, meaningful story to tell,” Helms added. “Because it is out there; we are pulling from reality.”
“I think that this script does a great job of towing the line of like man-child, that sort of bawdy/ridiculous dude humor… It isn’t that,” Helms assured us, stressing that there’s an aspirational quality to the movie. “It crosses into a story about friendship and maintaining these connections through our lives that, as adulthood progresses, just diminish and get harder to keep. And these guys have a totally manufactured construct that just keeps them locked in. I think a lot of people have different forms of this in their lives. For me, I play music with a bunch of guys that I went to college with, and if it wasn’t for the music we might have drifted apart, but we always have this excuse to hang out. And then when we’re together it’s so much more than music. And that’s what I think tag is for these guys. It’s ultimately not about the game, it’s about the friendships and staying together and finding ways to connect.”
Elevating the material to laugh-out-loud comedy standards does require a writer with a certain no-holds-barred approach, though, and according to producer Todd Garner, McKittrick was perfect. “He's the darkest motherf***er,” Garner told us. “I mean, some of the stuff we couldn't do as dark as he wanted. When you hear “Tag,” you think it's going to be like this PG kids movie, and then you give it to McKittrick and... there is no chance this isn't R.”
Still, the movie could get even wilder than the true story and its adaptation.
THE SCENE
On the day of our visit, Hamm, Helms, Johnson and Buress filmed a scene in one room of a space used as the setting of a therapist’s office. Portlandia’s Carrie Brownstein was also on hand as the doctor whose session with Buress’s character is interrupted by the other three players during the section of the movie where all the guys are rounding up the old gang. The trio hides in a closet of the office for hours in order to surprise their friend, tag him, and recruit him for the latest game.
As filming went on, each time the men are discovered, the scene went off the rails with regards to the ensemble’s freedom to riff on the premise. Take after take after take and set up after set up turned out progressively darker and more politically incorrect as the guys attempt to explain themselves and their regressive pastime to Brownstein’s therapist. Much of this is likely now on the cutting room floor, while some of it may be compiled in a blooper reel for the DVD bonus features.
“Most of the sh*t probably won’t even make it,” Buress acknowledged during another break, but he also noted that the darkest, most shocking lines won’t necessarily be the first ones to go. “I mean just because something is dark doesn’t mean it doesn’t play. You might just have to really test it and see how it works within the context of the finished product. I just try to, as a performer, give a bunch of different looks, and then it’s up to the editors.”
Tag certainly seemed, on the day, a comedy that would be figured out after all the filming is done, and that’s a wild, dangerous yet exciting way to make a movie. “It's really going to be on [Director Jeff Tomsic] in post,” Johnson confessed. “This is one of those movies that they'll find in editing because we're just shooting and giving options, options, options, and he's going to have to do a lot of work.” Helms added, recognizing the stuff that obviously won’t work, “You have to explore; you have to take those wrong turns to find it.”
Tag isn’t entirely unique in its process, though. Johnson believes movies and television shows are “turning into an option game.” Rather than knowing what the thing is in the script stage or even on the set, he claims productions are now “about getting as much coverage and as many angles as you can so that when they test [screen] the audience has many questions and you can answer those questions with the amount of footage we got.”
The risk should be worth it, especially with the cast involved.
THE COMEDIC ENSEMBLE
Watching the group perform together, you’d think they were old friends or maybe longtime members of the same improv troupe. But most of the ensemble met on the first day of filming and apparently just had great chemistry from the start. “Everybody’s kinda swinging,” Johnson said of the heavyweight cast’s comedic punches. “Isla [Fisher, who plays Helms’ wife] is the craziest. She will get mad if you print the word ‘crazy,’ but she makes me laugh really hard. Everybody's really funny.”
Garner reminded us that we were seeing the actors after they’d embodied their roles a while and were comfortable in their skin and could just go completely off script. “A couple of writers in a room five months ago have a completely different set of rules than we're following right now,” he explained. “These guys know these characters inside and out, and they are monster improvers. Even Renner, whom I've never really known to be funny, is just killing it. He's so funny. I think when you're around funny people -- and they now have such a rapport -- there's a ton of improv going on.”
The key is putting the right people together, and for each of the actors to know where they fit. “It's just as hard to find something that universally makes people laugh as it is to find something that moves people,” Hamm said of comedic work versus dramatic. “Everyone has a different way to get to the punch line in many ways, get to the joke. I'm very very aware of what it takes to be a stand-up comedian or a sketch or improv comedian, all that stuff. That's not what I do. I can come in and not get in the way and hopefully add to it because I'm a good actor and I'm smart and I listen and I play the scene. My way of describing it is I'm good enough to be comedy-adjacent. I keep myself next to funny people and funny things happen to me.”
Of the rest of the ensemble, Hamm recognized it’s a “great cast of like-minded comics, people with similar comedic sensibilities. That's always a challenge to find that recipe, where one guy's not 'Oh he's the crazy one, and he sticks out like crazy!' Between Ed and Jake and myself and even Renner and Isla, and the whole gang, everyone's a similar side of the polygon. So there's not one side that juts out too far that it kind of throws the recipe off.”
Even the non-leads had to be perfect, so getting someone like Rashida Jones for a supporting character was important. “Her character was a little underwritten,” Johnson admitted. He had suggested the actress for the role of his own character’s love interest. “A lot of female characters in these kind of movies, where they're in for five days, if you get the wrong actress there is nothing to that part. I said, 'If you can get Rashida Jones...,’ knowing how smart she is not just as an actress but as a writer. I didn't see my way into the story until she was in it.”
Then there are the day player guest performers, such as Brownstein. “You get someone like Carrie Brownstein -- we have her for a day -- and you have to milk it,” Helms said of the actress. “I was so psyched when I heard that she was doing this. On a day like today it’s just really fun to open it up a bit and explore some stuff, and everybody is so good at playing and ‘yes-and-ing’ -- to use an improv term -- so it’s been great. It’s been a mix, though, in terms of how we’ve shot it. We’ve done some fun improv beats but it’s also pretty structured filmmaking.”
“She's such a really deeply funny individual,” Hamm added in praise of Brownstein’s contribution that day. “And her energy is -- again it's exactly the right thing -- she's just this much left of center to be funny. But she's not complete 90-degree left turn. She's just goofy and weird. You need a little of that for the little things.”
“There’s some stuff that is scripted that is super dark and weird, and sometimes you discover things, but I think that’s part of what pushes the comedy envelope a little bit in this movie,” Helms added, going on to compare Tag shoot to that of the first Hangover. “In some ways, there’s some more truth to it, the inside jokes that people have, the things that are like okay within a friend group but probably aren’t okay to the general public. Even with all the crazy jokes that bubble up in this, I genuinely believe the underlying love these guys have for one another.”
THE ACTION
Besides being a wild comedy, Tag promises to be an intense action movie as well. While the scene we watched was fairly tame in a physical sense (if not a verbal one), we did hear about a number of story-driven action set pieces, including a thrilling golf cart chase involving all of the guys.
“We spent a week on a golf course out on Stone Mountain and were just chasing one another,” Helms shared. “There’s something really innately funny about seeing guys like me and Jake Johnson and Jon Hamm -- Jon Hamm is obviously like a cool dude, but he’s still not a guy you associate with like crazy action stuff -- it’s fun to see these like dorky guys in huge action choreography; it’s really, really funny. I’ve seen a couple things cut together and I think it’s really fresh and exciting. It’s also fun as hell just to be a part of those big scenes and set-ups.”
“It was the most active I’ve ever been on a movie set,” Buress confessed. “We would drive around the golf course like mad. It was chaos -- not chaos, but it was just exciting.”
“It's shot like an action movie, but it's ridiculous,” Johnson said of the heightened physical comedy of the set pieces. “You're still watching Jeremy Renner parkour up a wall and jump through a stained glass window. We were in the woods the other day and my character gets hit by a log. It's an awesome stunt.”
Of course, some of that can be more dangerous than your usual comedy shoot, too. “When I saw all the stunts, I thought those days will actually be fun, because it's a weird adrenaline rush,” Johnson added. “And you get to do, as the actor, a bunch, and then the stunt person has to do the stuff where they can get hurt because we're insured and you can't shoot the movie if… Well, I guess Renner broke his arms and kept shooting. I'm not shooting if I break my arm.”
That’s right. One of the action set pieces did cause serious injury to one of the main cast members. What was supposed to be a “simple stunt,” according to Garner, went wrong and Renner indeed wound up with two broken arms. But it sounds like it wasn’t actually a big deal. “It was a harness that was supposed to be able to pivot and [land him on his feet], and he jumped and got upside down. So he just kinda came down on his hands and hyper-extended,” Garner explained. “By the way, he went to the emergency room and [was] back three hours later and like killing it. He's amazing. The guy's a beast.”
Of Renner’s recovery, Hamm was stunned: “I was like, 'Wait, what? Are you actually a superhero? What's going on?’ I wake up in the morning and I think, 'Am I really this sore from running around and tagging a bunch of 40-year-old guys all day?' Yes, I really am.”
THE RULES OF THE GAME
If at this point you’re wondering how a game of grown-up tag is actually played and whether there are tag backs, Garner did lay out the rules for us, though they’re pretty much based faithfully on the real guys’ guidelines.
“No tag backs is a big rule,” he confirmed. “You only can play for the month of May. There is a no a**hole punching one. I think there was some evil sh*t when they were in middle school. The biggest was there's no tag backs just because they all live in different parts of the country now and it gives them an excuse to go and just have a beer and hang out, spend time with each other without having to worry about just sitting and touching each other's shoulders.”
THE PLAYERS
Hogie (Ed Helms):
Kind of the leader of the group of guys, their heart and soul and chief motivator. He’s the one that still gets along with all four of the other players and spearheads a lot of their games of tag and maintains the tradition. “Hogie is very much the cheerleader,” Helms affirmed. “His whole MO is to keep the game going and keep it fun for everybody. He’s super sweet and well intentioned. He’s sort of the peacemaker.” A veterinarian by profession, he also has the full support of his wife (see below).
Callahan (Jon Hamm):
This insurance company executive was inspired by a real Nordstrom CMO, a guy who couldn’t wait to get away from the small town where the gang grew up. “It's kind of taking the piss out of Don Draper a little bit. You know, this kind of very buttoned up guy that ends up getting in these crazy scrapes,” Hamm revealed, adding a hint of his main character flaw: “I make the running joke throughout the movie that they're writing the article on me. They're not. They're writing about the game. But my narcissism says that it's really about me.”
Bob Callahan no longer gets along well with Johnson’s character, whom Hamm refers to as “the bur under my saddle.” He explains, “I've run a company and I can't be around [him] smoking that much pot. It's all heightened, obviously. And if you play that stuff as real as you can, then the fact that it's heightened is what makes it funny and makes it shine comedically. Between Jake's proto-stoner perpetual-child character and my kind of proto-businessman grown-up narcissist, there's a kind of a real fun push/pull there and creates friction in a delightful way.”
“Chilly” (Jake Johnson):
Not only is Randy (aka “Chilly”) a pothead, but he was the owner of a very successful dispensary in Denver until recently. “He loves playing tag with his buddies, and he's having some fun,” Johnson stated, but he has ulterior motives this time. He’s going through a divorce and he’s really on the trip back home to see his ex. “His lack of motivation is not for not wanting to play, but he really sees this as an opportunity to catch up with somebody.”
Sable (Hannibal Buress)
Kevin Sable is a paranoid conspiracy theory type in therapy because he believes his wife is cheating on him, and his trust issues clearly stem from the tag tradition. But in terms of his personality, he’s apparently not a stretch for Buress. “Sable is pretty much me, but his name is Sable,” he confirmed. “I’m not doing Daniel Day-Lewis sh*t over here. It’s really just saying words. I mean, he’s just a neurotic overthinking type of person that sounds a lot like Hannibal Buress.”
Where the character doesn’t match the comedian’s own traits is in his physical skill with the game. “He’s apparently the worst at [playing] it, which is great because in real life I’m faster than everybody else,” Buress claimed. “There was one scene where I got up and ran, and Jake Johnson was like, ‘Oh sh*t I didn’t know.’ I still have some athletic ability. I can run really fast, but I absolutely shouldn’t. It takes some recovery time.”
Jerry (Jeremy Renner):
Not just the best player in the game, Jerry has actually never been tagged in the group’s 30 years of keeping the tradition going. So he’s cocky in his competitiveness, and since he never left his hometown he “feels like a big fish in a small pond,” as Garner detailed to us. “He has kind of achieved this mythological status internally,” Helms added of the character, while Johnson called him “Jason Bourne-esque.”
A gym owner and personal trailer, Jerry is definitely the one member of the group who is suited for the action stuff. “We’re all very fish-out-of-water-y in the action sequences with the exception of [Jerry],” Helms explained. “He’s also like a parkour ninja and can really do incredible stuff. And [Renner] is clearly such a pro at action-movie-making, so we’re all just kind of awkwardly following in his footsteps.”
Anna (Isla Fisher):
Hogie’s wife, who is not a player in the game but is its biggest external supporter. Where most other adults think the tradition is ridiculous, she intensely encourages its continuation. According to Helms, “She is always helping strategize, and there’s sort of this fun dynamic where she’s frustrated by Hogie not being competitive enough.”
And she’s definitely a major character. “She's a big part of the tag team, even though girls don't play. She's like [Hogie’s] “Q,” Garner stated, comparing her to the James Bond series gadget-building character. “As she says, this is their vacation. Once a year, this is what they do. They think it's fun. She's loosely based on one of the wives. I think she was the one who was having sex with her husband [when he] got tagged.”
“She's just so gung-ho about it to the point where we have to be like, 'You’ve got to calm down. You're causing a scene here, causing some trouble,” Hamm added.
Cheryl (Rashida Jones):
Chilly’s old flame, whom he’s set on seeing during the latest game, and she’s also Callahan’s ex too. “She's like the girl that we both fell in love with in high school and dated at various times,” Hamm revealed. “And now that we're both adults and are out of our separate marriages and things, it's like, 'Oh my gosh, she's single? That's outstanding. What do we do?' There's a lot of that really relatable nostalgia in the movie. It's that thing when you go back to your 10-year high school reunion and you're like, 'Oh my god, you lost all your hair, and the one girl that no one ever noticed is gorgeous. And Len is an anchor on the TV news. And like, what happened? 10 years happened.'”
Jones’s character was also previously married but instead of being divorced, like the guys, she just recently became a widow. “Her husband passed away, so this is the first time my character is seeing her since then,” Johnson added, admitting that Chilly is keen on taking the man’s place. “Yeah, my character is really excited that he's dead. It's not really a sensitive movie.”
Rebecca (Annabelle Wallis):
The reporter who discovers the story of these guys and their seemingly silly game. “In real life it was a man,” Garner acknowledged, “but we wanted it [to be a woman] because we think it’s funnier just to have females watching how stupid we are.”
