Jason Segel and Jorma Taccone on ‘The Goonies,’ Large Marge, and Their New Film ‘Over Your Dead Body’ [Interview]

Over Your Dead Body is now playing in theaters from IFC Films. Directed by comedy royalty Jorma Taccone (“The Lonely Island”), the genre hybrid follows a dysfunctional couple who retreat to a remote cabin to reconnect, only to reveal that each has secretly been planning to kill the other. The film features an all-star cast, including Jason Segel, Samara Weaving, Timothy Olyphant, Juliette Lewis, Paul Guilfoyle, and Keith Jardine.

Speaking with Taccone and Segel, it’s clear both are drawing from very different reference points when it comes to what scared them growing up.

“I remember being really scared when Large Marge’s eyes popped out of her head in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” Segel said. “I don’t know why. That really, really scared me a lot.”

Taccone, on the other hand, points to one of cinema’s more intimately visceral and brutal moments.

“I had to turn off Reservoir Dogs when the ear-cutting scene was so unbelievably real and disturbing,” he said. “That guy’s performance is so dark and sad and brutal. I couldn’t take that one. Natural Born Killers also did that to me. I was just like, I can’t take this.”

That contrast between references, outlandish shock versus visceral violence, lines up with how both approach Over Your Dead Body, which constantly shifts between tones. Both men come from comedy, and the transition into horror isn’t accidental. Segel sees the two genres as fundamentally linked.

“I think comedy as a genre has a lot in common with horror,” he said. “