Cigar Exclusive: Director Steve Pink explores hilarious absurdity of newly released 'Hot Tub Time Machine'

03/30/10 - So you're partying it up on vacation with some old pals, popping bottles in a skeevy hot tub for old times' sake. Pretty standard. Then things start getting wild, as things are wont to do when you've been throwing back Jager like you're about to make a cameo on "Jersey Shore." In the middle of the mayhem, the dumbest of your old homies knocks over an off-brand Russian energy drink onto the hot tub. Then you all end up in 1986.

This is the breathtakingly absurd premise of "Hot Tub Time Machine," released March 26. Granted, it's ridiculous and, yes, you're correct, Einstein, it's completely implausible. But here's what actually matters: it's hilarious.

HTTM's director, the wry and reckless Steve Pink, is a man well attuned of the trappings of absurdity. And for all of the bizarre antics, Pink did a solid job anchoring the preposterousness in something a little more real.

"I tried to execute a very coherent tone," Pink said. "Where the guys were really real, and the world around them was absurd, and most of the time it was really funny."

"The characters have to feel the reality of their circumstances," he said. "Even if they're fighting aliens and pterodactyls, they have to be like, 'That pterodactyl is f**king huge. That thing's gonna eat me.' Rather than be like, 'Oh, pterodactyl!'"

That "real" ridiculousness is part of the movie's winningly weird charm, though. (The original script bore the pitch-perfect subtitle "Based on the Incredible True Story.") And the gags, of which there are many, are lobbed at you full force. It's like being in a batting cage with the pitching machine on high: prepare to be bombarded. And the jokes keep rolling straight through the credits, which feature what can pretty safely be called one of the best alternate-universe versions of Motley Crue to date. (Not that there has been too much competition on this front, but still, an achievement).

Flash back to the magic hot tub for a second though. There are four dudes in there: Adam (John Cusack), a jaded insurance salesman whose home life is a mess of bitter Post-It notes; Nick (Craig Robinson), a disgruntled doggie gym employee and "wildly mediocre" musician; Lou (Rob Corddry), a quasi-suicidal alcoholic; and Adam's young nephew Jacob (Clark Duke), who lives in the basement and plays Second Life all day with a convicted felon avatar.

While they're partying it up in the hot tub, a dousing of Chernobylly, a dubious Soviet-themed energy drink Lou picks up on the black market, sends them spinning back to Winter Fest '86 at Kodiak Valley, where they inhabit their younger bodies- and have a chance to relive the past in order to make their bleak futures less depressing.

And given the film's free-form plot, it's not all that surprising that Pink and his cast kept an organic flow on set, improvising much of the movie.

"Yeah, lots of stuff changed during the filming," Pink said. "You know when you have come on and they have ideas, I tend to want to support those ideas- that's my thing."

With that sort of free flowing atmosphere on set, there's definitely no room for bad vibes, meltdowns, or generally disagreeable people.

"There are tyrannical sets and that's all bullshit," Pink said, pointedly segueing into a colorful meditation on self-important moviemakers. "You are not curing cancer. You are not even close. If you can be like 'I know how to cure cancer!' then you can be a motherf**ker."

In Pink's sensibly sardonic view, moviemaking across the board has at least one common goal.

"You are spending a ton of money to either elicit sadness or happiness from an audience who is actually going to get in their car, risk their lives, to get to a movie house. So you have the responsibility of that no matter what you're doing."

And while "Hot Tub Time Machine" probably won't be winning any Academy Awards, Lizzie Caplan, who plays Cusack's love interest in the film, would like to nominate it for a superlative it definitely deserves: "Best Movie to Watch Stoned," she laughed. "If you do that kind of thing. which I don't condone."

But here's another nomination I'd like to throw out there: "Most Memorable Performances From (Semi) Unknowns." With the exception of Cusack (dreamy since 1983), the movie's main characters are not played by traditional Hollywood leading men. In fact, it's essentially an all-star cast of sidekicks who step up to the plate and deliver top-notch comedic performances.

You may not have heard of Clark Duke before HTTM, and may not be familiar with Rob Corddry's performances outside "The Daily Show", or Craig Robinson's work away from "The Office"- but you definitely will remember their performances in this film.

"I think if you cast a movie well, 90% of your work is done," Pink said.

But of course casting is not the end of it. In a movie like HTTM, the cast and crew have one major obligation.

"Every day you gotta wake up and make shit really f**king funny," Pink said, and he said it with the kind of conviction that makes it clear that- for all the f-bombs and pterodactyl jokes, he is a man who takes comedy pretty damn seriously.