‘Horrible Bosses’ stars channel chaotic chemistry of Three Stooges

(L-r) JASON SUDEIKIS as Kurt Buckman, CHARLIE DAY as Dale Arbus, and JASON BATEMAN as Nick Hendricks in New Line Cinema’s comedy “HORRIBLE BOSSES,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – On the set of “Horrible Bosses,” they were known as Charlie and the two Jasons. But among themselves, stars Charlie Day, Jason Bateman and Jason Sudeikis often thought of their characters as kindred cousins of the Three Stooges.

Cast as three working stiffs who are driven by abuse and desperation to plot the murder of their three crazy bosses, this dark comedy – cooked up by screenwriter Michael Markowitz (of the dyspeptic “Becker” TV series) – demands an escalating slapstick and spinning-out-of-control zaniness from its trio of stars.

While none of the three knuckleheads ever mutter, “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk,” there are indeed a lot of implied “Oh, yeahs?” among them and loads of comic head slapping.

During a freewheeling press conference hosted by Warner Bros. at the Waldorf Astoria, Day, Bateman and Sudeikis talked about the Stooges dynamic that grew among them as the filming progressed.

“As far as the Stooges thing goes,” Bateman said, “we knew that the three of us were going to create one Stooge-like character, and the conversations that we had with (director Seth Gordon) at rehearsals supported that. So if you’re going to do X, then I need to do Y and you need to do Z and that’ll constantly be rotating to create one guy. And Seth shot it all for the most part in a three-shot so you can kind of see that and watch whichever one of us you want to have it all balance out.”

But while many of the movie’s most chaotic comic set pieces seem wholly improvised, Sudeikis (a mainstay on TV’s skit-based “Saturday Night Live”) said it was all carefully plotted.

“Improvisation for me is like saying when the cameras start rolling we don’t know where we’re going and let’s just waste people’s time and money,” Sudeikis said. “That’s not what happens. There’s a lot of people, a lot of time, these writers laid a tremendous framework. At the beginning of the day the four of us – Charlie and Jason and Seth and I – would talk about a scene and would develop a rhythm. You know each other’s rhythms at that point, and you know where the scene’s coming from and you’re just trying to make it lively on the day. It’s more just like quick discussions about changing things up.”