Ever felt like you’re trapped in the old “Who’s on first?” sketch? When all three members of the scripting team behind The Unicorn are on the phone, it’s a tumble of one-liners and one-upmanship, and it can be hard to tell them apart.
Will Elliott said it’s easy to recognize when star and co-writer Nick Rutherford is speaking “because it’s a very high, boylike voice, and he’s always insulting.”
“And you can tell when Will’s speaking,” replied Rutherford, “because nothing interesting will be said.”
The trio have all undergone some geographic dislocation. As Beef & Sage, Elliott and third writer Kirk Johnson were mainstays of Austin’s video humor avant garde, but they moved to Los Angeles in 2015. Meanwhile Californian Rutherford (a co-founder with Kyle Mooney of the Good Neighbor sketch comedy group and a former Saturday Night Live writer) is now an honorary Austinite, appearing in two projects from local online content empire Rooster Teeth: Crunch Time, and the SXSW 2018 Midnighter Blood Fest.
And even with all that creative talent, it was the fourth member of the writing team, director Robert Schwartzman, who came up with the original idea, based on a real-life experience. Rutherford said, “Him and his now-wife were approached by this woman at a bar, and she was hitting on him. He was like, ‘Oh, I’m engaged, and this is my fiancée,’ and the girl was like, ‘Oh, I don’t care. I’m a unicorn. I’m into her too.'”
That close encounter became the story of Caleb (Rutherford) and his longtime fiancée Malory (Lauren Lapkus) as they have their own near-misses with a threesome, in a night of misread cues, awkward experimentation, and some uncomfortable persona realizations. Rutherford said, “What drives you to pursue a threesome, and what does that say about your relationship?”
Not that any of the team have ever had a threesome. Elliott said, “We’re all just too nerdy. … it’s just one more person in the bed to disappoint.”
However, Johnson added, “I’ve had awkward enough sexual encounters to extrapolate, and use that sense memory to imagine what a threesome would be like.”What they created is a fully-clothed sex comedy (at least on the screen: During writing, Rutherford said, “There was a lot of me taking it out and saying, ‘Does this look OK to you guys? Should I be concerned?’ and them reminding me that we had a lot of work to do.”) That was a big change from the Nineties American Pie-emulating raunchfests that they grew up watching. Those, Rutherford said, were about “what kind of weird thing can I stick my wiener in, and how can I spy on girls, and our movie was always going to be more about the relationship ramifications of trying to do this with the person that you love, rather than, what zany hijinks can they get into?”
He described the writing experience as surprisingly smooth. “I’d pace around with a Scotch and a cigar, and I would dictate to Kirk, who would type, and Will would change the printer ribbon whenever it needed to be changed out.”
Elliott chimed in: “I’m still expecting to go to the screening on Saturday, and Kirk and I’s names will be removed, and Nick will have pulled some WGA shit on us.”
“I lobbied for that every day,” Rutherford replied, but the reality was a little more chill. “The four of us just outlined it very casually, where we wanted it to go, and when it came to the actual scripting, the three of us would get together and really beat out the outline.”
And even another collaboration off the table, with Elliott ready with an elevator pitch for a sequel. “Our next project is about someone attempting a onesome.”
The Unicorn
Narrative Feature Competition, World Premiere
Saturday, March 10, 11am, Stateside
Sunday, March 11, 3:15pm, Alamo South Lamar
Wednesday, March 14, 3:15pm
This article appears in March 9 • 2018.
