{"id":321533,"date":"2026-03-10T00:31:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T00:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/321533\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T00:31:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T00:31:09","slug":"can-pizza-movie-over-your-dead-body-duo-change-comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/321533\/","title":{"rendered":"Can ‘Pizza Movie’ & ‘Over Your Dead Body’ Duo Change Comedy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBrian McElhaney and Nick Kocher, more commonly known by their sketch-comedy name BriTANicK<\/a>, may be best friends, but their funniest jokes usually emerge after a long, drawn-out battle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI want option A, and Brian wants option B,\u201d Kocher says. \u201cWe fight for a week straight, and neither of us gives up. So we finally come up with option C, which is better than both A and B.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMcElhaney chimes in: \u201cWe\u2019re both incredibly stubborn. We don\u2019t relent. We want to win over the other person.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMcElhaney and Kocher\u2019s combative dynamic is paying off at SXSW this year, where the duo has two films debuting \u2014 \u201cPizza Movie,\u201d a wacky college comedy, and \u201cOver Your Dead Body,\u201d a dark dramedy about warring spouses trying to kill each other. As if that weren\u2019t enough, they\u2019re finding time to perform a live comedy show while in Austin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPizza Movie,\u201d which McElhaney, 39, and Kocher, 40,\u00a0wrote and directed, is about a group of college friends (Gaten Matarazzo, Sean Giambrone and Lulu Wilson) who take a hallucinogen that sends them on a seemingly endless quest down one flight of stairs to retrieve a pizza that\u2019s been delivered to their dorm. It\u2019s an absurd premise, but despite sounding like \u201cHalf Baked\u201d meets \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d the film tells a surprisingly heartfelt story about friendship.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFrom our early sketches, we realized we should ground them in some sort of emotional truth,\u201d McElhaney says. \u201cStart in a place that is maybe even dramatic. We\u2019re talking about jealousy. We\u2019re talking about what it feels like to fall in love. We\u2019re talking about being scared \u2014 something we can really anchor on. Once we get that, we can go off into crazyland.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFinding a way to make something both deeply relatable and hilarious is a cornerstone of BriTANicK\u2019s work. Their videos, which send up everything from dinner parties to morning routines, attracted a large online fan base early on. From there, the pair got gigs writing on shows like \u201cIt\u2019s\u00a0Always Sunny in Philadelphia\u201d and \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDan Doperalski for Variety<\/p>\n

\n\tMcElhaney and Kocher grew up near each other in Atlanta \u2014 they went to the same preschool, played in the same little league and performed at the same arts camp \u2014 but didn\u2019t get to know each other until the end of high school. When they wound up at NYU together, they started collaborating. Taking inspiration from other NYU sketch groups that found success on YouTube, like Donald Glover\u2019s Derrick Comedy, they secured a regular show at the comedy launching ground Upright Citizens Brigade and found representation soon after.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter college, the pair landed work as the voices of Cartoon Network\u2019s commercials and interstitials; when the gig ended, they sent out a flurry of pitches and got the job on \u201cSunny\u201d in 2016. While they were only there for a transition season \u2014 when star Glenn Howerton was toying with leaving the series \u2014 they received an education in sitcom writing from a show that revels in bad taste and boundary-pushing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOften for comedy shows, the writers\u2019 room is so funny, and the things people pitch are insane. But then [the writers or showrunners] go, \u2018We can\u2019t do that. This show is not that style,\u2019 or \u2018The network wouldn\u2019t want it,\u2019\u201d McElhaney says. \u201cWe\u2019ve been in rooms where it\u2019s been heartbreaking because great storylines are too wild, too out there, too R-rated, whatever. But at \u2018Sunny,\u2019 everything went. We actually tried to go too insane and couldn\u2019t get there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe duo moved to \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d in 2016, after friends who made it onto the show urged them to submit for writing jobs. It was a trial-by-fire experience, having to satirize pulled-from-the-headline moments \u2014 their first episode, for instance, took aim at Donald Trump\u2019s presidential debate with Hillary Clinton \u2014 but that experience taught them the importance of flexibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOne of the best lessons we took was to just get it on the page. It\u2019s going to change a billion times,\u201d Kocher says. \u201cYou just throw it out there and see what works. We labor over where the commas will come in a script, but we have to keep reminding ourselves to just get the first draft done. This whole line will be gone, let alone the comma.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat education was essential for \u201cPizza Movie,\u201d their first feature as directors. \u201cMaking these movies, it was very much the case of, you lose a location like that\u201d \u2014 Kocher snaps his fingers \u2014 \u201cand then all of a sudden, you have to completely change the scene.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDan Doperalski for Variety<\/p>\n

\n\tMcElhaney and Kocher are well acquainted with how audiences respond to their humor from both killing it and bombing through the years with their live sketch shows.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe know when something just isn\u2019t there,\u201d McElhaney says. \u201cThere\u2019s no worse feeling than having your lame joke not really hit. That just sucks so much that we want to put in the work where it doesn\u2019t happen.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBecause they like feedback, they\u2019re the rare writers who value test screening \u2014 in fact they ran focus groups for \u201cPizza Movie\u201d themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou have a good idea of how an audience will react, but you\u2019re going to be surprised,\u201d Kocher says. \u201cThere are certain jokes that we would have cut that did really well, and other ones that we would have kept that were good to cut.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBilly Rosenberg, a producer on \u201cPizza Movie\u201d and the co-CEO of All Things Comedy, sees the same DNA in BriTANicK that he does in other sketch creators who become major filmmakers, like Jordan Peele and Zach Cregger.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere is this goofy spirit, this freedom of silliness and over-the-topness, but it\u2019s so grounded in character and relationship storylines that you never lose the audience,\u201d Rosenberg says. \u201cThat\u2019s something that\u2019s really hard to achieve in comedy. You\u2019ll never see another movie like a movie they do.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDan Doperalski for Variety<\/p>\n

\n\tWith their other SXSW film, \u201cOver Your Dead Body,\u201d the duo had a different challenge in adapting the script of the 2021 Norwegian film \u201cThe Trip.\u201d Their English-language version, starring Samara Weaving and Jason Segel as a feuding couple who each plan to kill the other during a remote vacation, is directed by Jorma Taccone of comedy trio The Lonely Island. Because the project had a preexisting plot to adhere to, McElhaney and Kocher looked at it as a unique challenge.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe original structure was great,\u201d McElhaney says. \u201cThe house is already built. We get to change the walls to decorate it. It comes with limitations in that you\u2019re dealing with someone else\u2019s story. But at the same time, there\u2019s something so relaxing about saying, \u2018We can play jazz with the characters and make them our own.\u2019 But also, \u2018Let\u2019s let the story guide us here, because it\u2019s already happening.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEver the perfectionists, the pair are excited for the debut of their films at SXSW but admit that one thing gets them nervous. \u201cWhat we\u2019ll be mostly stressed about is our live show the Sunday after,\u201d Kocher says. \u201cI don\u2019t know \u2026\u201d He pauses, teeing up a joke for McElhaney, who deadpans, \u201cWhy we\u2019re doing it.\u201d Then they both laugh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher, more commonly known by their sketch-comedy name BriTANicK, may be best friends, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[170200,156,173673,409,111,139,69,45415],"class_list":["post-321533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-britanick","tag-entertainment","tag-its-always-sunny-in-philadelphia","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-snl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}