Top 12 Questions with directors Nick Roth and Lindsey Haun
17/02/2025
Discovering the spark behind their Award-Winning Comedy-Horror Debut, Hanky Panky
by Sharon Grace Badia
Nick Roth and Lindsey Haun, the dynamic duo behind Hanky Panky, are here to prove that the road to making a movie is a wild, twisted, and often hilarious ride.
Their feature debut is a love letter to the kind of zany comedies that make you laugh, squirm, and wonder how you got here, like Wet Hot American Summer and Caddyshack.
But instead of a summer camp or golf course, they shot it in Lindsey’s dad’s cabin in the mountains above Heber, Utah, during the most insane blizzard anyone could remember. Think of it like The Shining, but with more jokes and fewer creepy twins—well, maybe.
The film’s production was truly a “anarcho-communist-guerilla” —no budget, no rules! Everyone pitched in, whether it was for food, supplies, or the kind of...substances that keep a cast warm during a blizzard.
The whole crew was crammed into the cabin like a horror movie’s version of a sleepover gone wrong. And as for the gear? They shot it with a camera they won at Slamdance. Hanky Panky is the kind of film where anything can happen—and likely will.
So, here are our sea-riously fun 'Top 12 Questions’ for Nick and Lindsay on how they made their award winning film, Hanky Panky! Trust us, this isn’t your typical “behind the scenes” story, unless your behind is covered in snow and unforgettable decisions..
REMEMBER: every answer will get juicier.. Until you each no. 1, then the interview ends.
12. Q. What inspired you both to collaborate on "Hanky Panky"?
A. Well, we’re married. And we’d been making a lot of stuff together, mostly shorts and music videos, and got fed up with it and wanted to make a feature. At first we mostly just wanted to prove we could do it.
11. Q. Can you describe the creative process behind developing the film?
A. The kernel of the idea came out of doing a short film at a 48 hour film festival, where you basically have two days to make a movie start to finish. Everyone had to use the same key prop, a napkin, and we just thought it would be funny and set us apart if we made the napkin a stupid talking puppet and had it be the main character in our movie, because a hundred other teams would all just feature an actual napkin. And then when we were shooting this cute little napkin comedy, we couldn’t help but think, well this is pretty creepy and maybe could also have a sort of slashery murder mystery element, naturally.
10. Q. What was the most challenging aspect of shooting "Hanky Panky" in such extreme conditions?
A. The altitude was pretty rough. It was over 8000 feet up there. Also, most of our team was from LA, and we had to find out the hard way what happens to batteries in sub-zero temps (they die very fast).
9. Q. You decided to shoot the film on Lidnsay’s dad’s cabin.
Why this choice?
A. It was a less a decision to set the movie there than it was a decision to make a movie there because we had the cabin. This was very much a project that started with: well what do we already have and how do we combine those elements into a movie?
8. Q. You used the term "anarcho-communist-guerilla production". What does that mean to you?
A. Nobody got paid. We also didn’t, you know, follow traditional set hierarchies and job titles or get permits and stuff.
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7. Q. What role did improvisation play in the filming process?
A. We were basically open to however much the actors wanted to bring. So if they wanted to stick to Nick’s brilliant perfect script, that was fine. If they wanted to throw it and the trash because they thought they could do better, that was okay too. (Mostly they did the latter.)
6. Q. You have a background in music and teaching. How did it influence your approach in filmmaking?
A. Well, teaching influenced Nick’s character, Dr. Crane, who is sort of a parody of him at his absolute most pretentious. And music probably came into it most in editing, where Lindsey really played a lot with diegetic and extra-diegetic sound. Ashley Holiday’s character Diane has this sort of Gloria Estefan style conga music magically follow her around, and the score cuts in and out on Jacob DeMonte-Finn’s story about the first time he met Woody, for example, to bring us into his reality. We also originally scripted a full Bollywood-style dance number in the snow, but ultimately ditched that idea due to production constraints.
5. Q. What message or theme do you hope audiences take away from the film?
A. Civilization is absurd. Human existence is chaos. Best to err on the side of being nice to each other.
4. Q. Can you share any memorable behind-the-scenes stories from the shoot?
A. One time the hat did really come to life and tried to kill us, but we fended it off with tennis rackets.
3. Q. How do you define success for a film like "Hanky Panky"?
A. I mean, money would be nice. But frankly the people who stan the movie and share it with their friends, the young aspiring filmmakers who are inspired by it – even if that is just in terms of like, look these clowns did this I bet I can do better – that’s what it was about. Also we really really hope people see it and hire the actors in the movie because they are the best.
2. Q. How did you manage to keep morale high among the cast and crew during the blizzard?
A. Drugs. Just kidding! (half kidding). We’re all very very good friends and had been for a while before attempting this.
1. Q. How did you approach casting for such eccentric characters, and how did you choose actor Seth Green?
A. For most of the cast we built the characters around the actor, so there wasn’t really any casting per se. All the actors had a lot of say in developing their characters, and we did a lot of rehearsal that included a good deal of improv before even drafting the script. Seth was a slightly different case. We were all already friends, but because he is famous and we are not, we didn’t want him to feel like we were trying to exploit him, so we didn’t ask him to be a part of it at first. But we did always know that if we were able to pull this thing off, it would be a much more reasonable ask for him to voice one of the puppet characters during post. Instead of: “hey be in our tiny movie, we swear it’s a real thing?!’ it’s “hey can you believe we made this weird little movie? Wanna voice a puppet?” We knew from the get-go (for reasons nobody can remember why) that Harry’s voice would be largely influenced by Skeletor, and Seth has a famously excellent Skeletor in his repertoire, so that was always a potential thought throughout.
Conclusion:
When asked if there was anything they’d change about the wild voyage of making Hanky Panky, the duo kept it smooth sailing: “No. Flawless. The proof is in the pudding! (the movie is the pudding).” Clearly, every splash and every tide in this journey only added to the flavor of their catch!
- Sharon Grace Badia
