STACK February 2017 Issue 148

91 / 95

I t’s an unfair fight of course,
pitching a quivering Day against
the rock solid Cube in a David
vs. Goliath scenario between
teachers, and the premise of new
comedy Fist Fight. Directed by
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s
helmsman Richie Keen, Day is
counting on his buddy to make
sure he doesn’t end up in an
ambulance.
No stranger to adult comedy,
having switched from small to
big screen courtesy of Horrible Bosses
and Vacation , Day feels familiar enough
with the genre to serve as an executive
producer on Fist Fight, even coaxing his
pal Christina Hendricks to play a sexy
French teacher.
Day already looks a little punch drunk
when he chats with STACK on the set
– and that’s before the fight has even
begun. “I’ve essentially gotten Ice Cube
fired,” he explains. “He’s had an incident
with a student, and he’s asked me to stick
together with him, saying that ‘Teachers
always stick together’. But because my
job’s also on the line, I rat him out, and
he challenges me to a fight at the end of
the school day. I spend most of the movie
trying to worm out of it, and then I man
up and fight him. And it doesn’t go too
well… but I give him a better run than he
expects,” he says, attempting to flex a
non-existent bicep.
Recalling his own high school years,
he says, “Oh, it’s terrifying, isn’t it?
Especially in a school like this, which
feels like a prison. High school was not
the happiest time of my life, so it brings
back chilling memories, so I had all those
feelings when we begun filming, but now
I’m numb to it.
“I struggled in school. I couldn’t pay
attention. I blame the girls. I was too
distracted. Better as I got older, but as a
youngster, my head was in the clouds,”
says 5’ 6” Day, 41, who was raised in
Rhode Island, the son of two music
teachers.
He learned fast. “I got into a few
scraps, but when you’re as small as I am,
you try to avoid them, and I think that’s
how I learned to be funny, which
was ‘I got to make these guys
laugh, or they’re going to knock my
teeth out!’ ”
Fist Fight, he says, is set in the
high school of nightmares for any
sensitive kid. “It’s not exactly a
quality school,“ he offers. “The
school is struggling and the teachers
are at ground zero, stuck between
an oppressive administration and out
of control students. Ice Cube’s Mr.
Strickland has a militant philosophy
of how to deal with these kids, whereas
my Mr. Campbell tries to kill them with
kindness, and those two philosophies
have to meet somewhere in the middle
until the final showdown.”
Featuring Tracy Morgan, Dennis
Haysbert and Jillian Bell, Christina
Hendricks’ Miss Monet is the teacher
who every kid crushes on.
“Miss Monet certainly has a dark side.
She carries a switchblade in her pocket
and is ready to use it,” purrs the Mad
Men star, who has gone on to find her
funny bone in Bad Santa 2 and Zoolander
2. “They wanted me to go with the idea
that she fancies herself as this worldly
woman who pretends that she’s a bit
French but is actually just a girl from the
Mid-West teaching French. I don’t even
think Miss Monet is her real name,” she
laughs.
Like Day, Hendricks,
41, has few happy high
school memories,
shuddering as she
walked on to the real
high school set on her
first day. “I hated it. I hate
high school vibes. It gives me
the heebie-jeebies. When I
first walked in, I was like ‘Ooh!
Someone’s going to make fun
of me!’ ‘Someone’s going to say
something mean, I just know it.’
It’s a psychosomatic thing that
happened immediately. These
guys are great but it takes me
right back to high school, just
waiting for the bell to ring so I
can leave.”
2 1
High school was not the
happiest time of my life,
so it brings back chilling
memories
• Fist Fight
is in cinemas on
February 23
continued
DVD&BD