Don’t mistreat your waiters–they’re the ones bringing you your food! That’s the message in writer/director Rob McKittrick‘s hilariously crude new comedy Waiting, which stars a bumper crop of who’s hot in comedy right now.
Ryan Reynolds, stand-up hot shot Dane Cook, Andy Milonakis, Justin Long and Anna Faris play the disgruntled wait staff of a chain restaurant called Shenanigan’s, where rude customers are treated to unsanitary extra ingredients and the guys relieve their boredom by indulging in a “flash your genitals” game with elaborate rules.
We sat down with the cast at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills and discussed how much to tip, who’d been a good waiter and who believes the customer deserves what they get.
How did you come up with this story, especially the “penis showing game?”
Rob McKittrick: “I didn’t create that out of thin air. Most of that is based on my actual experiences. I’m not as a good a writer as I am an observer of all the crazy stuff that I saw going on. I did see people do things to food that was not very nice. I myself did once. A restaurant I worked at, Steak and Ale, we did play a game where we pulled out our genitals and showed them to each other in a festive manner.”
So we hear that there was a version of the penis showing game on set too. Who was in on that?
Ryan Reynolds: “I have never actually attempted any puppetry of the scrotum, nor will I. I heard the game was going on on the set a little bit, but thankfully I wasn’t involved, nor did I achieve an eyeful of cluster, thank God. I just don’t shut up in the movie, so I was more concerned about everything I had to say.”
Justin Long: “Ryan didn’t partake because it wasn’t a game. He was just always naked from the waist down. It was just like, ‘There’s Ryan, there’s Ryan’s penis.’ He thought it made everyone more comfortable. He had this whole rant, ‘ What are clothes, really?’ He had a few lawsuits against him, I think.”
Who’s waited tables before? What kind of waiter were you?
Reynolds: “I worked at a yacht club for a long time and I worked at a restaurant bistro for a while. The group dynamic is very much as it is in the movie, yeah. It’s all very incestuous and disgusting and if you would actually be a patron and be able to peruse the staff’s psyche’s you’d never set foot in there.”
Dane Cook: “I waited tons of tables doing comedy, picked up jobs anywhere and everywhere. I found that I couldn’t do the ‘How you guys doin’?’ thing. And you know how male waiters always sit with you? I couldn’t play that, so I thought I’d be purposefully rude. I’d say, ‘What do you guys want?’ And they kind of enjoyed it and I didn’t have to be this smarmy, good mood guy and I could say, ‘Wait, you want another Coke? I’m busy!’ You have to have that game face. You put on that persona. You want to earn the tip, you have to earn it. There’s that little game of you know what I’m doing with the customer and the customer has this little b.s. game between server and customer.”
Andy Milonakis: “I used to work in a restaurant, cleaning tables. It was not fun. It was up there with pumping gas, which was the next job I had.”
Long: “I was a terrible waiter. I was unbelievably bad. I could never remember who ordered what. I had to write everything down. And I used to screw up orders left and right. I remember the head chef was this big Italian guy, he looked like Jabba the Hutt and he always called me a nickname I thought was a term of endearment but it turns out it was Italian for ‘penis face’ and he’d been calling me it for months.”
McKittrick: “When I got the [the third restaurant I worked at], what hit me, and was the inspiration to make the movie, was I felt like I was hanging out with the exact same kind of people as the other restaurants There was always one cute hostess that was probably underage that everybody tried to have sex with. And one waiter or waitress who’d been there way too long, just burnt out and who complained about everything. There was inherent friction between the cooks and the wait staff. There was just this universal experience I noticed.”
Did you ever ‘dose’ your customers?
Reynolds: “I could never bring myself to do it. Believe me, I encountered some f**king hostile people, but I just kept thinking, ‘What if I was having a bad day. What if I was just a prick someday?’ It is definitely possible and I don’t want to be the guy biting into a burger that tastes vaguely like saliva. You don’t really want to mess with the people who serve your food. I mean, are you an idiot? It’s a vulnerable situation here. I’m going to give you a plate of stuff that you’re going to put in your body, so be nice to me. That would be a smart move. But you’d have to be a pretty profound imbecile to think you’re actually getting one over on somebody by putting something in their food.”
Long: “I never did anything that bad. I’ve heard stories, though. I’d never seen the things that go on in the movie, like putting your balls on the food, but I’ve seen some stuff that came kind of close.”
McKittrick: “The worst thing I ever did to a table was for one of my waitress friends. She had this woman who was such a bitch, she and her two bratty children had no regard for the her. I saw her being treated like s**t and it just filled me with rage. Of course, they sent their food back in a very snotty way, what they didn’t know that this waitress, her boyfriend was the head cook, so he added a little magic to it. I teabagged it. I placed my testicles upon it and then gave it back. And I stand by that action. She did deserve it. She was horrible. It’s the exception, not the rule. It happens very rarely.”
Who did the most ad-libbing on set?
McKittrick: “We didn’t get to improvise as much as I wanted to, but whenever we did, it always paid off. There were 10-15 jokes in the movie that I didn’t write like the ‘Welcome to Thunderdome’ line. I just let them do their thing.”
Long: “If anything I had to restrain myself. I wanted to do a bit and be funny, but I was the straight guy. I was like an organ grinder with the monkeys dancing around me. Vince Vaughn, told me you’ve got to just be the guy, be grounded. There’s movies about insane people in a sane world, like “Ace Ventura” and there’s sane people in an insane world, like “The Wizard of Oz.” You’ve gotta just be that guy and not look for the jokes.”
What do you tip, usually?
Reynolds: “I think you’re safe at 20 percent. 15 is customary. I tip anyway. I’m a people pleaser. I’ve also been there, so I know what that’s like. There’s a really dysfunctional relationship you have anyway with your server. It’s a one-way relationship: ‘I’m here to serve you.’ There’s something a little icky about it to me and I’d just as soon apologize for it with money.”
Cook: “Usually 20 percent. I think that’s fair.”
Milonakis: “Always 30 percent.”
McKittrick: “I’m cool to my servers. I was a server myself. You have to tip 15 percent because they tip out to the bus boys and the hostess so if you’re tipping them 15, they’re probably only getting 12. And if it’s good service, you gotta go 20.”
