Downhill, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell, came out a couple of weeks ago. It did not do well at the box office or with critics, but the subject matter was kind of a bummer. The trailer makes it look like something that would kill it on Netflix, but that people wouldn’t want to pay for. (See also: Marriage Story.) It’s about a couple having marriage problems after a family ski trip to Austria. Julia, Will and the movie’s co-writers Jim Rast and Nat Faxon (The Descendants), were on Late Night with Seth Meyers. They talked about filming in Austria and Julia told a funny story about being surprised to see old fat naked dudes in the sauna.
Nat Faxon on the mad scramble to get to the ski lifts in Austria
They have an aggressive way of getting on the lift. [In America we line up.] There it’s just an opening and it’s a massive crowd. People [put] their skis in between your skis. It’s so tight.
Julia Louis Dreyfus was surprised at the naked saunas
I did go to a spa. They’ve got a whole sauna and steam life there. I’ve got a towel, I take it off, I sit. Two men in their 50s, 60s, quite overweight and talking a mile a minute come in completely naked. I’m so shocked. I didn’t really understand [the coed part]. I just put my head down, prayed to Jesus Christ I didn’t know them particularly well and skidaddled. It was bad.
[From The Late Show via YouTube]
They joked afterwards that people got mad at them for shutting down the ski lifts. Plus Jim Rash told a story about trying to grocery shop and being surprised at how fast they checked you out. He said a guy at the store told him during a bad experience “don’t worry they hate everybody.”
I have told this story many times, so I’m sorry if you’ve read it before. I used to live in Germany where they saunas are nude, it’s considered rude to wear a towel (you sit on one of course) and they’ll tell you to take off your bathing suit. You just get used to it because the saunas are amazing. I miss them so much. It grosses me out to see people in gym clothes in the sauna now. So it’s surprising to me when people still don’t know about this.
Also, I was so frustrated in Germany by the lack of polite lining up to do anything. There is a different culture around that, especially compared to the south where I live now and where people will go out of their way to let you ahead of them. I don’t want to offend our German or Austrian readers by passing judgment, but this was a culture shock for me and I had a few words with people over it.
Here’s that interview and it’s a fun watch. I remember when Jim Rash, Nat Faxon and Alexander Payne won the Oscar for adapted screenplay for The Descendants in 2012. Their category was introduced by Angelina Jolie in that iconic high slit dress and Jim clowned on Angelina by sticking his leg out just like her.
Bombshell!
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photos credit: Avalon.red and Getty
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