NEW YORK -- The trailer for RV, a comedy co-starring Robin Williams and Jeff Daniels, looks like dumb, dumber, dumbest.
"I think the trailer sucks!" I tell RV director Barry Sonnenfeld when he rolls into the room ready to chat about his comedy.
"I do too!" Sonnenfeld says, agreeing that the trailer is misleading for audiences.
It is the kind of admission you would expect from the eccentric maverick, who shows up on set in cowboy gear, complete with a giant Hopalong Cassidy hat, lavender cowboy shirt, huge belt buckle, jeans and cowboy boots. He also sits in a saddle -- mounted on an apple cart ("So it's like Jewish rodeo," quips Williams) -- and wears absurd fake moustaches while barking directions.
Sonnenfeld says he liked another trailer better, one that was "more confident in its joke-telling, because it was just the scene of them trying to back out of the driveway. And it implied that, if this is just a scene, there is a lot more there.
"We had a big debate about it and I got really angry. But I decided that I hadn't directed in three years and maybe it was time to not be so angry at the studio.
"But I agree with you. Let me riff on that for a second: One of the things that I liked about making this movie is that it was sort of autobiographical, in that I have a 12-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Chloe, who was about to go through hormonal hell. I wanted to make a loving movie about a dad and a daughter before we hated each other so much that I wouldn't make that movie."
The point is, Sonnenfeld says, RV has that heart and the trailer doesn't let people know about it.
