Monday Memory: How Second Life Roleplay Wound Up in Hot Tub Time Machine With John Cusack & Clark Duke

Listening to The Office podcast about the 2007 episode where Dwight and Jim play Second Life reminded me of another appearance by the virtual world a few years later -- in Hot Tub Time Machine (2010), starring John Cusack along with Craig Robinson and Clark Duke. (Both of whom, funny enough, also starred in The Office.) In Hot Tub, Duke is Cusack's geeky nephew, who apparently is obsessed with playing in one of SL's many dark urban roleplay communities, like the infamous Crack Den (think Grand Theft Auto Online but with hardcore sex), but is stuck in the game's prison, doing hard time.

When the movie came out, I got to talk with Steve Nelson, the SL creator who worked with the filmmakers on the machinima for the SL scenes:

"We got detailed notes from the associate producer on this one, describing the characters, setting, and action, and they wanted 3-4 minutes of footage," says Oe. His partner Troi Timtam built an elaborate set and designed the avatars. "We shared some test shots with the producer and got good feedback on details. The final shoot included four of us, in Berkeley, Walnut Creek and Copenhagen. I directed, filmed and edited; Troi drove the main character; and our daughter and her boyfriend ran two extras (that didn’t make the final movie.)

"[T]he Second Life footage actually used included two brief shots of Jacob in jail, walking around his cell, and doing pushups," says Nelson. "There’s also related dialog between Adam and Jacob when you see the back of the laptop. We had a copy of this section of the shooting script, and they pretty much stuck to it, so we knew that the script didn’t call for extensive use of the SL footage. The longer machinima we delivered afforded two things: it gave the director and editor a wider range of footage to select the clips to use on screen. It also delivered the fuller backstory for the director and actors to better inform their performance."

They shipped the results to the producers last April, but weren't sure if their work had made the final cut. Until, that is, they started reading about previews of the movie earlier this year.

"We started hearing about the scene after bloggers reported from the screenings in January, and saw a screening ourselves for the first time on March 9. We didn’t know what would be in the final cut until Friday. That’s also when we were the last two in the theater to see nearly at the end of the credits: Second Life® footage -- Troi Nelson and Steve Nelson."

More on it here. I haven't actually seen Hot Tub yet but it rates pretty decently on Rotten Tomatoes, so maybe worth a quarantine watch. Maybe not the most balanced or accurate depiction of Second Life overall, but other movies have been better on that front -- more on that in a future Monday Memory!

"We got detailed notes from the associate producer on this one, describing the characters, setting, and action, and they wanted 3-4 minutes of footage," says Oe. His partner Troi Timtam built an elaborate set and designed the avatars. "We shared some test shots with the producer and got good feedback on details. The final shoot included four of us, in Berkeley, Walnut Creek and Copenhagen. I directed, filmed and edited; Troi drove the main character; and our daughter and her boyfriend ran two extras (that didn’t make the final movie.)

"[T]he Second Life footage actually used included two brief shots of Jacob in jail, walking around his cell, and doing pushups," says Nelson. "There’s also related dialog between Adam and Jacob when you see the back of the laptop. We had a copy of this section of the shooting script, and they pretty much stuck to it, so we knew that the script didn’t call for extensive use of the SL footage. The longer machinima we delivered afforded two things: it gave the director and editor a wider range of footage to select the clips to use on screen. It also delivered the fuller backstory for the director and actors to better inform their performance."

They shipped the results to the producers last April, but weren't sure if their work had made the final cut. Until, that is, they started reading about previews of the movie earlier this year.

"We started hearing about the scene after bloggers reported from the screenings in January, and saw a screening ourselves for the first time on March 9. We didn’t know what would be in the final cut until Friday. That’s also when we were the last two in the theater to see nearly at the end of the credits: Second Life® footage -- Troi Nelson and Steve Nelson."

More on it here. I haven't actually seen Hot Tub yet but it rates pretty decently on Rotten Tomatoes, so maybe worth a quarantine watch. Maybe not the most balanced or accurate depiction of Second Life overall, but other movies have been better on that front -- more on that in a future Monday Memory!