Behind the Scenes

In 2007, Ray, Snyder, Daryl, and Nate put on cheap wigs, fake beards, and whatever else they could find, then headed into public with no real plan beyond making each other laugh. There wasn’t much more preparation than that. The costumes created the characters, and whatever happened once they left the house became the movie.

What followed was less a conventional film than a collection of improvised pranks and public disturbances shot around Blockbuster, Starbucks, parking lots, shopping centers, and anywhere else willing to tolerate them for a few minutes.

The disguises gave everyone permission to commit harder than they otherwise might have. There are failed kite launches, unsolicited autograph sessions, arguments with strangers, and increasingly elaborate characters being invented in real time. Nobody needed to know who these people were supposed to be. Most of the time, neither did the people playing them.

That uncertainty became part of the fun. A wig or beard could suggest a voice, an attitude, or an entire backstory for exactly as long as the joke lasted. Once it stopped working, someone moved on to the next thing.

The most memorable stop came at the Starbucks in San Bruno’s Bayhill Shopping Center. What began as another excuse to perform in public eventually pushed the staff far enough that the group was told not to come back.

It was an appropriate ending for a movie built almost entirely around seeing how long everyone could keep a bit going before somebody objected.

Wig W/Beard is barely structured and frequently obnoxious, but that’s also the point. It preserves a stretch of the early Dollars & Donuts years when making something didn’t require a script, a schedule, or even a particularly good idea.

Put on something stupid, take the camera somewhere public, and see what happened.