‘Office Christmas Party’ director 'shocked' idea was new

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Why Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman keep collaborating

Face2Face: Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman discuss their latest collaboration together in the comedy 'Office Christmas Party'

Hollywood honesty was the major theme at Wednesday night’s Los Angeles premiere of Paramount’s raunchy “Office Christmas Party” at the Regency Village Theater.

“It’s the one night of the year where everyone is honest,” said co-director Josh Gordon on the red carpet on a chilly evening.

“We used to work for production companies so we humiliated ourselves at Christmas parties the way lots of people humiliate themselves,” co-director Will Speck added. “We were kind of shocked that the idea had not been done before as a movie.”

Both said it was crucial to balance out the star power contained  in the cast, which consisted of Jason Bateman, Olivia Munn, T. J. Miller, Rob Corddry, Courtney B. Vance, Kate McKinnon, Randall Park and Jennifer Aniston. Bateman was shooting elsewhere but most of the cast made it to Westwood, two nights after the New York premiere. Production companies included DreamWorks, Bluegrass Films, 360 and Reliance Entertainment.

“Without sounding arrogant, it turned out exactly the way we expected because we had such a great partnership with DreamWorks,” Gordon noted. “They understand the kind of movie we wanted to make and they didn’t require us to sort of make it too top heavy; they wanted it to be a democratic ensemble. Tonally, we wanted it to feel like movies we grew up on by John Landis and Harold Ramis.”

“And they let us shoot in Chicago, which is not cheap,” Speck added.

Karan Soni, who plays a supervisor that hires a hooker for the party to act like his girlfriend, admitted that he’d never been to an office Christmas party.

“I worked in restaurants after college so spent a lot of Christmases at work as a waiter, which was pretty depressing,” he mused. “So we worked long hours on this movie but we always went out to dinner. We ate a lot of barbecue and had a lot of fun, and now we have the proof.”

“Office Christmas Party” bows Dec. 8.