Adam Shankman is famous for his hit movies such as “A Walk to Remember,” “Bringing Down the House,” “The Pacifier” and “Hairspray,” but the filmmaker went indie for his latest project, “Stop! That! Train!”
“It was really, really, really funny. That was the No. 1 thing when I read the script. When they asked me about it, I sort of cocked my head, like, ‘Are you sure you want to get into this with me?’ I’m a studio guy, this would be my first independent. Because this train runs a certain way when I’m directing, but everybody was down for it,” the director told TheWrap. “You just don’t get an opportunity to make things that are this sort of unabashedly silly and, frankly, in the best way possible, stupid.”
“Certain stressors change. Some of the janky effects are part of it; it’s part of that world, it’s intentional,” he added. “I’m not gonna get crazy about certain other things. On top of which, 19 days is insane, it’s less than a TV pilot. The cast is massive, so just trying to schedule and get in and out before they have to shoot another season of ‘Drag Race’ was crazy. The shortest movie that I had made before then was ‘A Walk to Remember,’ but that was like 34 days.”
“Stop! That! Train!” marks the first theatrical release in the extended runiverse and stars “RuPaul’s Drag Race” royalty Jujubee, Ginger Minj, Symone, Brooke Lynn Hytes, Marcia Marcia Marcia (aka Marty Lauter), Angeria Paris VanMicheals, Monét X Change and Latrice Royale in a disaster comedy spoof in line with classics like “Airplane!” and “Naked Gun.”
“These characters have come from ‘Drag Race,’ but this is not a ‘Drag Race’ movie; a ‘Drag Race’ movie would be a different movie,” Shankman noted. “The Easter eggs that we put in for ‘Drag Race’ fans are basically loving gifts. Obviously, none of this exists without ‘Drag Race’ in the same way that ‘Superstar,’ ‘MacGruber’ don’t exist without ‘SNL,’ but it’s its own thing.”
And this isn’t Ru’s first rodeo, either.
“RuPaul is an actor and was 100% super responsive to notes. We come from generationally the same place and we like a lot of the same entertainment, so our point of references are very similar,” Shankman shared. “I could throw out ‘More Susan Hayward’ and that would be that.”
“The only person who didn’t go through a casting process was Ginger, because I worked with Ginger and had seen Ginger in a couple other movies. My best friend Anne Fletcher made a movie called ‘Dumplin” Ginger was so good in, and she was in ‘Hocus Pocus 2,’” he recalled. “Everybody else was auditions. I have been made aware that, franchise-wide, there have been 790 queens through the doors of ‘Drag Race’ … a lot of people auditioned.”
Plus, the director further insisted his movie did not rely on AI, despite reports from those who’ve seen early screenings: “There’s not a single generative shot in the movie, not one. That feels like people trying to pick a fight where no fight exists.”
Catch “Stop! That! Train!,” now playing in theaters.
