What's up guys? Nikki Novak here for Young Hollywood in Austin at South by Southwest with Ron Livingston, Anna Kendrick, Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson. Before the interview goes any further, I wanted to, um, have a little drinking game with the audience and I'm going to refer to one of your tweets. You tweeted, yes, that you've been using the word literally incorrectly lately and it's embarrassing, but you literally can't stop. So, anytime the word from now on literally is used in this interview, the audience, if you're under age, no alcohol. If you're above 21, you're all good, or if you're in Europe, just have at it. So, literally. Literally the best idea I've heard. Is that literally the best? So drinking buddies, we're going to kick off with a few drinking questions. Did you two go to was it beer boot camp?

We did, yeah. Our pre-production consisted of sitting in our director's basement and drinking beer and making some beer.

That's tough research.

That was hard.

Oh my gosh. How'd you deal?

hard. And then we brewed some beer and we also hung out at breweries. Everyone's a three Floyd and revolution.

One time I got close to the brewing process, I got boiling wort, which is how you make beer, boiling wort splashed. He's nodding like he knows this already. Well, he did it. He splashed it into my eyeball. And we didn't have goggles on because we didn't know everything and hot like boiling hot wort went right into Olivia's eye. And I saw it happen but in that moment of like nervousness and trying to be cool for the beer guys, I was like, you okay? And she goes, she's like, yeah, I'm totally good, bro. And so we had like a whole, you know, tutorial and stayed in it. And then they were talking about what happens if it gets in your eyes and how you have to go to the hospital.

So did you? How injured were you? Can you see out of this eye at this point?

Um, I can see, I can see. I actually somehow pulled it together but weeks later admitted that I was in an immense amount of pain and was like kind of shuffling to the corner to cry for a second.

Well, of the four of you, who do you think could drink who under the table? Who can hold their alcohol the best?

My money's on Kendrick.

I was going to think she could do it.

We did one scene. Oh, that's right. Well, that's because you snuck up on me. I wasn't in my, I didn't have my drinking face on. Okay, okay, but sometimes, sometimes there were real beers and sometimes there were fake beers and they'd been giving me mostly fake beers. On camera we played a card game as a drinking game and I just kept losing and I'm pounding this beer like on an empty stomach, didn't know what was coming and I and like I put it down and I was like, hey guys, was that real beer? Cool, yeah, no, I'm drunk at work.

Did that inspire the tweet? Because I saw on your Twitter a picture of you sitting in a cupboard and you were holding a glass of something.

No, my friends just dared me. They were like, as friends do when they have a small friend. They're like, oh but you couldn't fit in there. I'm like, oh that I can. And it goes really well for everyone.

I also heard something else about you in Chicago because you shot most of the film in Chicago. That there was a hot dog named after you. It was the Anna Kendrick and it was named after you because it was very, very hot.

It is called the Anna Kendrick.

Did you all try it? It's described as mighty hot.

I barely had a time to to do it myself. We had to like sneak off set and like go in there we had like 10 minutes and I signed the hot dog thing because they renamed them a lot. It used to be which is pretty sweet. It used to be the Kiera Knightley, the Jennifer Garner and the Britney Spears. And great company. And I signed the sign so that now they can't change it. Now it's my hot dog forever.

Now did I hear something about you turned Jake on to Mumford and Sons, which allowed you to do some jogging, which allowed you not to gain weight during this film with all the beer. Did you

I got the fluffy buddies. Yeah. Fluffy buddies is the alternate.

Did you get like the freshman 15 from drinking all the beer? Or just sitting around listening and getting fatter by the song.

Ron, you run super slow. Mumford and Sons doesn't sound like a great jogging song. There's

But you would go like at night in the rain.

Yeah.

Wow, you're hardcore.

It's like, you know, it's like a a romantic comedy climatic scene. It is not a romantic comedy if you saw a sweaty, my back was.

So one of the themes of the film is sort of like relationships, platonic relationships, buddies, so to speak. So I wanted to ask each of you, guys perspective and girls perspective, can men and women be buddies?

Yes. Some of my best friends are guys. And

But do they want to be friends with you?

Yes, they do. They are my brothers.

Ron.

You know, sure. I uh, you know, I think life gets messy sometimes and that's part of the fun and uh, but if everybody's you know, cool about it and uh, just tries not to do too much harm along the way, it'll it'll all work itself out.

That is literally the most diplomatic answer of all time. You're the best, Ron. Fantastic. You're old Hollywood. Thank you so much. What do you think, can men and women be friends? Can they be buddies? Not just drinking buddies.

Yeah, I think so. Uh, I don't know. I don't know anything about anything, so. I don't know.

What about you?

I'm with Ron actually. I think it's uh, things can get complicated, but like in our movie, the big lines aren't crossed. So I think as long as you stay in the the lines a little bit, it's going to work out.

Well, speaking of lines, there were no lines in this film. I think you said there was no script. You actually got no pieces of paper. Sort of your experience doing like living in that world.

Well, we had this incredible director, Joe Swanberg, who uh created an environment of organized chaos. So we were set free to react organically to the situation, but he had kind of set up boundaries um so that we were actually following a path that would, you know, tell the story he wanted. You know, it's like dancing. When you get to dance with people who are great dancers, it just makes it so much fun. So with this group, to improvise was just a blast and like an acting cleanse and uh certainly made the rest of my work better um when I returned to normal movie life, but I want to do it again.

What are these lines after that? What are you writing me lines?

I've got ideas. I'm just going to see what happens.

I've got better ideas.

Well, speaking of good times in Austin, I saw one of your twit pics. You were wearing like because it's been raining here. It's typically supposed to be one. You were wearing like a poncho, like a plastic poncho. There's no way to make a poncho look cool. That's what I learned.

If anybody could make it look cool, you could definitely make it look cool.

So if you were going to get rid of one item of clothing, donate it, recycle it from your wardrobe. Right now? Yeah. You're going to donate. Well feel free to donate that sweater. Oh, let's play a drinking game. Every time Ron takes off an item of clothing the audience drinks. So one one item you would donate just sort of get rid of it in your wardrobe.

I've got like a pile of stuff to get rid of all the time. I like let my friends go through it and then it goes to Goodwill if they don't want it and Yeah. I don't know. It's I don't get that attached to my clothes, I guess. It's just stuff. It's just stuff. I'm trying to be like really cool right now.

We really cool. Literally the coolest. Literally the coolest. Great chatting with all of you. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

It was literally the best interview.

Literally.

Literally.

That was like six shots right there on audience. Do not drive. Don't drive.