Project X

Todd Phillips produced this and hired Nima Nourizadeh off his party themed Adidas commercials; it is Nourizadeh’s first feature. Casting went open nationwide because the producers wanted faces with no credits: anyone over eighteen could film themselves dancing or telling a story. Thomas Mann had a film to his name, was turned down for that, and auditioned seven times before they relented. The suburb is a backlot: twenty five nights on the Blondie Street set at the Warner Bros. Ranch in Burbank. Because the set was wrecked as they went and could not be repaired backwards, scenes were shot largely in story order, and that shows: the damage never resets, each shot opening on a more ruined house than the last. Cast and extras were handed BlackBerrys and iPhones, so some footage comes from inside the crowd. The DJ Jesse Marco played live between takes. In September 2012 a teenager in Haren, the Netherlands, left a Facebook birthday invitation public; riot police shut the night down and the Dutch named the episode after this film. A good fit if you want one house taken apart step by step across a night, its continuity coming from the shooting schedule, not the edit. Not for anyone who will mind that the camera frames its women as bodies and never questions it.