Movie musicals are a tried and true genre within the film world, with these projects sometimes leading to major Academy Awards like Best Picture. A new one of these movies has just arrived in theaters, although it’s far more twisted than most. Dicks: The Musical is absolutely unhinged, so one can only imagine how many laughs were had on the set. The cast of Dicks revealed the scene that made actors break character the most, and yes the Sewer Boys are involved.
Acclaimed studio A24 is making its first movie musical with Dicks, and it’s a bonkers movie that truly pulls no punches. Case in point: two deranged puppet characters name the Sewer Boys, who are the object of affection for Nathan Lane’s character Harris. As you can see in the video above, I had the chance to speak with the movie’s cast, director, and writers ahead of its release. Lane revealed one scene that was challenging for him not to break character in, referencing co-star Megan Mullally by saying:
There’s a lot of days like that on this film. There was a lot of laughter because it is so absurd and insane. We just had a lot of fun, and there were certain things with Megan the Mullally as opposed to Thee Stallion. In the restaurant scene I had a great deal of difficulty keeping a straight face through all of her…the telling of the saga of her fallen vagina.
I mean, can you blame him? One of the recurring gags throughout Dicks: The Musical is that Megan Mullally’s character Evelyn’s vagina fell off years ago. The runner gets more ridiculous as the film’s runtime continues on, including a sequence when said genitalia is used as a weapon. Of course, the most character breaks actually involved the aforementioned Sewer Boys.
In Dicks: The Musical, The Sewer Boys are two grotesque creatures who Harris found in (you guessed it) the sewers of New York City. They reside in a cage in Harris’ apartment, and one scene in particular shows Nathan Lane chewing up deli meat and spitting it into their mouths like a mother bird. Borat director Larry Charles was the man behind the camera, and he told me about that day of filming in particular. In his words:
The whole shoot was 20 days so people were really on their game. And then we built in enough time that people could mess around. But the hardest day probably was Nathan feeding the Sewer Boys. He just didn’t believe he was going to do it. And I made him, and he did it. That wasn’t really very difficult. He was extremely cooperative; he just couldn’t believe we were gonna do it.
The cast of Dicks all had some bonkers material to work with, including Bowen Yang who narrated as God. The Sewer Boys have been the unofficial mascot of the movie, featured heavily in its marketing. And it turns out that they were responsible for the day of shooting with the most laughs.
After a few weeks of being available in select theaters, Dicks: The Musical is in theaters now. Be sure to check out the 2023 movie release dates to plan your next movie experience.
