Bringing the R-Rated Comedy Back: Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao Discuss ‘Joy Ride’

Since the early 2000s, a slew of R-rated comedies lit up the box office. The Hangover (2009), Bridesmaids (2011), and Girls Trip (2017) were just a few that brought hilarious, raunchy antics to the big screen. Pre and post-pandemic, naughty humor has taken a backseat to tamer, broader humor like Turning Red, Minions: The Rise of Gru, Knives Out, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story and Confess, Fletch. The mighty rom-com even tried to make a comeback, with Ticket to Paradise, starring OG romantic leads George Clooney and Julia Roberts, emerging in 2022.

Comedy can be specific while also being universal. Teresa Hsiao, who’s written for Awkwafina is Nora from Queens, Fresh Off the Boat, Family Guy, and American Dad, believes that “Being able to go to a theater and laugh with strangers is one of the reasons it's important to bring back theatrical comedies.” She’s co-writer of the upcoming Joy Ride and understands the importance of going to a film that leaves you excited and hyped. “What we saw in the screenings were that the jokes that we thought were going to be for a specific group of people, ended up playing well with a big audience.”

Teresa and Cherry Chevapravatdumrong are friends who’ve worked together on Awkwafina is Nora from Queens and Family Guy together and now they’re moving into the feature realm with the upcoming Joy Ride, a frenetic and joyous celebration of friendship. 

The film stars Stephanie Hsu, Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, and Sabrina Wu as four Asian-American friends who go on a quest to the “motherland” China, in search of one woman’s birth mother. While the film is an ode to adult comedies of the aughts, it also brings contemporary, fresh joie de vivre with an emotional center. Cherry enjoyed the writing process. “We basically came up with a movie we wanted to have fun writing and one we would have wanted to see as young adults.”

Cherry and Teresa recently took the time to speak with Script Magazine about their freshman experience writing an adult feature comedy and how much fun writing can be.

When you're writing a comedy like this, which is a little raunchy, how do you know when you've gone too far? Or is there such a thing?

Cherry: During the actual writing of the movie, I don't think at any point, to everyone's credit, did anyone say that we’d gone too far. Are comedy writers great at self-policing ourselves? Probably not, because we want to push the envelope. We were encouraged to try anything and see what works.

Teresa: It's like throwing everything against the wall and seeing what works. When you actually film it and you see it, sometimes you're like ‘What's coming out of their mouth isn't as funny as it was on the page.’ We knew we could find the balance during post.

You two write for Awkwafina is Nora from Queens, right? What are the differences in comedy beats in a feature as opposed to television?

Teresa: In a feature, there are so many set pieces, and you all of a sudden need to do those big things. You need to really make those comedy moments sing in those big set pieces. In a TV show, there's a lot more little storylines here and there that might not result in a huge comedy moment, but there are little things you have to plant throughout a season in order for everything to make sense. With Awkwafina is Nora from Queens, we do 22 minutes episodes. We did seven this past season. It felt like we could have put those together and made a movie from them. A 22-minute episode has to be self-contained in that episode of television. You have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

What are the challenges of writing "ethnic" humor for a mainstream audience?

Cherry: We were writing it to make ourselves laugh. I don't think we had any challenges initially besides making ourselves laugh. Further along, when we started putting it in front of other producers or there were screenings, we noticed the jokes that were culturally specific. We knew that if we got them, there might not be as high a percentage of general audience getting them. Point Grey, to their credit, was very open and understanding with trusting us. We balanced out the specific jokes with those that were more universal.

I'm sure this is probably true for most of the scenes but were there any scenes that just made you lose it on set?

Cherry: You mean almost died laughing?

Yes!

Cherry: Genuinely that was any given day! Our actors are so funny, and they were so good at improv. We were shooting alts for the jokes all the time so at any given joke spot we were shooting four, five, or six potential lines that we could go in and edit later. It was very much an attitude of play. So, yes, people were cracking each other up.

Is it easier to write/rewrite for actors you've worked with before?

Teresa: I don't know if it's easier. I'd been lucky enough to work with Stephanie before on Nora from Queens. It was nice to have that familiarity. The character that she plays in this, though, is so different from the one she plays in Nora from Queens. We got very familiar with the actors...knowing what they could do. They all bring something so different and so funny to the table. Writing never ends. We're always writing and rewriting on set.

How do you think this film will affect not only the Asian film landscape but film in general?

Teresa: We anticipate winning an Oscar now that Everything Everywhere All at Once has set the bar so high! [laughs] We're keeping our expectations very grounded in the sense that it's exciting to have Asian people in front of and behind the camera, but I think we always set out with it being a comedy first and foremost.

What are the benefits of collaborating as opposed to writing solo?

Cherry: It's faster, more efficient. We come from TV, so we're used to being collaborative. And we're used to thinking about beating every joke and not having too huge an ego when you want to beat that joke.

What was your biggest writing lesson from this experience?

Teresa: The nice thing about this project was that we also got to be producers on it. It was the first time we were producers on a movie. We've been producers on television before but being producers on a film is a whole different animal. We were there in the beginning and then on the set the whole time and all through post. 

We were lucky to have the opportunity to make sure the movie turned out to be what we wanted it to. A lot of the time in features, the writers aren't really a part of that process. In TV, we're used to being decision makers because that's what the TV writer is tasked to do. We were able to use our showrunner brains for a longer format in this case.

Cherry: I think there's also something to be said for the sheer number of hours we've spent working on feature drafts and feature structure. By doing it, we've absorbed it. I feel like going forward, feature scripts will come out faster and more efficiently for us because we're used to them now.

What's the biggest message you want people to take away from the film?

Cherry: Have so much fun!

Joy Ride, a Lionsgate feature directed by Adele Lim, hits theaters on July 7, 2023.