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Harry Elfont (born April 5, 1968) is an American screenwriter and film director. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and raised in nearby Lower Moreland Township, he met his creative partner Deborah Kaplan while they were both enrolled at the Tisch School of the Arts of New York University (NYU).
Harry Elfont. Writer: Josie and the Pussycats. Writer/director Harry Elfont met partner, writer/director Deborah Kaplan, at NYU film school. In a strange coincidence, they discovered that their parents were friends and that they both attended neighboring high schools in Philadelphia.
- January 1, 1
- Writer, Producer, Director
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
- Harry Elfont
Harry Elfont. Writer: Josie and the Pussycats. Writer/director Harry Elfont met partner, writer/director Deborah Kaplan, at NYU film school. In a strange coincidence, they discovered that their parents were friends and that they both attended neighboring high schools in Philadelphia.
Jun 11, 2018 · When Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan, writing partners in their late 20s who had just finished the script for 1996’s A Very Brady Sequel, were trying to come up with an idea for a movie they ...
- Andrew Gruttadaro
- The Set Was A Big Party, too.
- The Party Plot Was A Product of practicality.
- …One of Whom Was Jason Segal, Who, Apparently, Made An Impression.
- Peter Facinelli Suffered An Unusual injury.
- The Locked-In-The-Bathroom Scene Was Based on A Real-Life event.
- The “Paradise City” Scene Was Envisioned with A Different Song.
- Audiences Never Saw The Movie’S Original Opening Scene.
- The Movie Was Supposed to Be called The Party.
- If Can’T Hardly Wait Were Made Today, Two Things Would Be Very different.
- To Keep The Movie from Getting An R-Rating, A Scene Had to Be… Added
Can’t Hardly Wait was the first directing gig for Elfont and Kaplan, who had previously written the script for A Very Brady Sequel (and whose latest screenwriting project is Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, now in pre-production). “Pretty early on, [producer] Betty Thomas said to us, ‘You know, it’s never like this.’ It was just fun all day...
Having the movie take place entirely at a party was borne out of logistical concerns felt by a pair of newbie directors who wanted to minimize production challenges and expenses. “It was all practical,” explains Elfont. “The idea of doing a movie set at a party came first, because it seemed like it would be really cheap to shoot a movie in one loca...
Segal had just graduated from high school when he auditioned and had no prior experience, remembers Kaplan, but it was immediately clear he was good. “We knew how funny Jason was but there wasn’t a bigger part for him, so we were, like, let’s cast him as this watermelon guy,” says Elfont. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uphjOgJwLHU]
Facinelli began his audition for the part of jock Mike Dexter by doing a few push-ups, but the injury that almost kept him from filming didn’t come from an athletic stunt. The actor had just had a baby and those tiny fingernails can be dangerous; one day he showed up on set with an eye that was scratched and swollen shut. In the scene shot that day...
The CHWcharacters are composites, but one scene was taken from a real experience at Deborah Kaplan’s house: the scene where a bathroom doorknob breaks, locking Kenny (Seth Green) and Denise (Lauren Ambrose) inside together. During a rager Kaplan once hosted while her parents were out of town, one of her friends got locked in the bathroom; everyone ...
In the script, nerd-gone-cool William rocked out to “Panama” by Van Halen, but they couldn’t get the rights to use that song in the movie. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asySRpuqnTM] (MORE: Richard Corliss on the Teen Movies of 1998)
The movie opened in the bookstore where Preston (Ethan Embry) works, with the character hanging up the phone after learning that the girl of his dreams is finally single. Elfont and Kaplan decided they needed to start with something funny—which is why one of the first things that happens in the movie is somebody running into a table at graduation.
Though Elfont and Kaplan wanted to keep the title The Party, the studio wanted to save it in case they ever remade the old Peter Sellers movie of that name. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU9s8L7Sewg]
Texting and Facebook would make a lot of Can’t Hardly Wait—grapevine-related miscommunications, losing your friends at a party—obsolete, though Elfont and Kaplan say they think Preston’s on-paper love letter would have still worked. Another thing that would definitely be different is that, in a post-American Pieworld, the movie would be a lot dirti...
Even though the sex in Can’t Hardly Wait—which gets talked about a lot but mostly happens off-camera—was tame by today’s standards, the movie almost got hit with an R for its depictions of unsupervised underage drinking. Scenes with teens downing shots got cut — and a jailhouse lecture on responsibility was added. But what really helped the movie e...
The latest posts from @harryelfont
May 13, 2021 · On Jonah Ray and Dave Schilling’s new podcast Galaxy Brains, Josie writers Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont take the stage to talk satire, product placement, subliminal message Easter eggs, and...
