There was improv in some scenes to make them pop. “The Boozecathlon was about recognizing foolish pride and digging our heels into the ground,” mentions Palmer. This is the basis of the speech Ollie gives Molly after the scene. Nico Santos and his (real life) husband Zeke Smith wrote that speech the night before filming. “So it was this rich collaboration.” 

The Re-education Of Molly Singer doesn’t explode into a volcano of lust after Molly and Elliot get together following the Boozecathlon. Palmer concurs that the setup lends itself itself to a “crazy hookup scene,” but he pivoted in another direction. That scene ended up being tender and sweet, and ultimately more effective. “Lindsay had too much to drink and Elliot’s sitting in the chair the next morning and says, ‘I just didn’t want to leave you here.’” Chivalry prevails.

This is the director’s college experience he wanted to portray. “You’re making bad decisions and participate in underage drinking, but here we’re showing a young person [Elliot] doing something responsible.”

By design, R-rated comedies need “dangerous and sexy elements. Some movies show more things than others. We do a lot of innuendo, but I don’t think there’s any actual nudity in our movie. I like really fun, clever dialogue that may be a little bit more adult,” states Palmer. It satisfies the audience by not giving them quite what they expect, but still enjoy.

Nico Santos

Comedians like Nico Santos come up with jokes on the fly while on set. “It is about finding something that’s just dirty enough, but doesn’t completely make people turn off. We subvert those things by flipping them on their head.” Palmer takes traditional tropes and reverses them to the opposite sex, or in a way that makes them more PC, but still risqué.

Although it was Andy Palmer’s intention to infuse The Re-education Of Molly Singer with current pop culture references, he has to consider that the modern references might quickly become dated. Cultural references do have expiry dates, but their appreciation can still linger well after their peak.

“I’m a pop culture nut and I want to pepper all these things in there. I think if something’s funny, or the gist of it is funny, then people may look back and think that it was cute.” Writers have long written cultural breadcrumbs into their films. If the audience picks up on them, fine. If not, the movie is still funny.

Molly’s Messiness

Molly Singer is instrumental in bringing Eliot out of his socially-awkward shell. But her motives weren’t always so altruistic. It’s a demand Brenda made on her so she might get her old job back. As it turns out, that being a lawyer isn’t what Molly really wants. “Ironically, there’s a moment where she becomes a great lawyer even though she doesn’t want to be a lawyer.”

Things come to a head after the infamous Boozecathlon and Brenda calls off their arrangement. It’s a cross examination and Molly is at her legal best as she realizes this kid [Elliot] needs her help and she’s gonna fight for it, even though it’s under the guise of saving her job. I think in her heart, she believes, “This kid’s worth it.”

Here’s where Molly’s character shifts the most. She’s maturing and understands the nature of the consequences of her actions on others. She gets to know herself and is comfortable with the person she is becoming.

“There’s a great line that Molly says to Elliot, ‘You know, maybe I’m just supposed to be that Jiminy Cricket on your shoulder to teach you what it’s like to be young and to have fun and to get fucked up. I’m going to teach you how to be a man and we might just get drunk doing it?,” recalls Palmer.

Elliot does indeed emerge more confident and sociable, but he still hasn’t fully bloomed. He’s still nervous (albeit less so) and needs to make his move on Lindsay (Cierra Ramirez). Andy Palmer personally relates to this scenario because fortunately his wife made the first move on him. “There’s such little bits of me in there. That’s so me in the scene in the amphitheater when Elliot has proven himself and he’s with the girl of his dreams. In that moment you really want him rise to the challenge.”

“But I think even at my most nervous, I would have gone the Elliot route. Luckily, Lindsay is smart enough to say, ‘I think you’re my guy now.’ That was the most raw ‘me’ in the movie,” reveals Palmer.

(Lindsay) Cierra Ramirez. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate Pictures

Wearing A Director’s Hat – Breaking Down A Shooting Script

We asked Andy about switching hats as he sits in the director’s chair.

“I’m a sucker for tone. I always want the tone of the film to feel right. And if something feels completely out of character, or completely out of tone, those become red flags,” warns Palmer.

“The way that I break down a script by a scene is that I read the whole script first and identify the overall arc. What’s our story and what’s our theme? What’s the movie about and what do we get out of it? In our movie, it’s about a girl that goes back to college to watch over a kid. But what it’s really about is about a person that has to go back to a place and find herself and grow up by going backwards into college.”

The next thing is to group scenes by location and block pages to a reasonable number that can be filmed in a shooting day. “Every scene has a goal. It is either a goal where our protagonist succeeds or they fail. I’m always trying to find a ‘therefore… but’ rather than an ... ‘and then’ where the scenes feel episodic.” Each scene progression must be consequential to its predecessor.

First And Final Scenes

Arguably, these are the most important scenes in your film. “The first time we see Molly, she’s drunk, hungover, a dog is licking her face, and she thinks it’s Michael B. Jordan in her dreams. Her hair is unkempt and she’s late for work. She’s a bit of a disaster.” This is a prologue for Molly’s life before she returns to college.

The final scene includes Elliot. “The kid that she was supposed to watch after is with the girl of his dreams. He’s thriving in college. They wipe frame in front of her and she drops the newspaper, which is a little callback to an earlier scene with Ollie and her. She’s completely put together, she’s happy, and she’s the polar opposite of what she was the first time we saw her,” concludes Palmer. That’s character growth.