‘Can’t Hardly Wait’ Directors Spill All: Reunion Ideas, Deleted Scenes And Auditions

Teen movies have a way of staying in people’s hearts and at the top of people’s minds because of the nostalgic feelings they evoke. That’s why, on the 20th anniversary of “Can’t Hardly Wait” Tuesday, June 12, the nostalgia factor is at an all-time high.

Starring Jennifer Love Hewitt (Amanda) and Ethan Embry (Preston), the classic flick centered on a group of teenagers trying to complete their own end-of-high-school agendas at a major graduation party. The cast featured a slew of actors who would go on to become major players in the industry, including Peter Facinelli (Mike), Seth Green (Kenny), Erik Palladino (Cousin Ron), Jaime Pressly (Girlfriend #1), Jason Segel (Watermelon Guy), Selma Blair (Girl Mike Hits On #1), Sara Rue (Earth Girl) and more.

To celebrate this milestone event, learn more about the making of the iconic 1998 teen movie and hear about any reunion movie plans, International Business Times spoke with Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, who both wrote and directed the movie.

The idea for the movie came about because of a need to do a project inexpensively.

“The whole idea was even born out of the necessity of like, ‘Well, what could we do,’” Elfont told IBT. “Because we needed to do something inexpensively, ‘What could we do?’ And we knew a lot of young actors and we figured if we set a movie pretty much in one location, it’ll be less expensive and we really figured it out mostly from there.”

“Can’t Hardly Wait” originally had another title.

Originally called “The Party,” Elfont and Kaplan were a bit bummed that they were asked to change the name by the studio. He said they “struggled a long time to come up with another, alternate title,” but ended up having a contest with their crew to brainstorm title ideas.

“Can’t Hardly Wait” was chosen because they were planning on using the same-titled song by The Replacements in the movie, anyway, but there were a couple other names floated around.

“I remember two suggestions,” Elfont said. “One was ‘Party on a Stick,’ which made no sense to me…and the other one, somebody wanted to call it, ‘Party: The Movie.’”

James Marsden auditioned for the role of Mike and Segel read for Cousin Ron.

“James Marsden tested for Mike and was excellent,” Elfont revealed. “Peter was just playing it a little bit meaner.”

He also shared that Segel originally auditioned as Cousin Ron and though they didn’t give him that part, they thought, “O.K., he would be funny for the Watermelon Guy.”

Melissa Joan Hart didn’t care about auditioning for a lead role because she just wanted to be a part of the fun project.

While Elfont’s “pretty sure” everybody who was in the movie in some capacity had originally read for one of the lead characters, he doesn’t recall Girl Whose Party It Is (Michelle Brookhurst) or Hart doing so.

“[Hart] had a TV series, so we just met and she was like, ‘Look, I really like the script, whatever you guys want me to do,’” Elfont said. “So, we said, ‘Would you want to do Yearbook Girl?’ And she was just game to do whatever. She was really cool.’"

Some scenes had to be cut in order for the movie to get a PG-13 rating.

The duo didn’t realize while filming “Can’t Hardly Wait” that although they didn’t include nudity and kept their dialogue fairly tame, they were going to get an R rating because of unsupervised teenage drinking. Because of this, they had to cut out all snippets of kids drinking what was clearly supposed to be alcohol.

Elfont said they event had to “use very early CGI technology to change somebody doing a funnel to a balloon.” Not only did these edits change some of the actual images people were seeing, but it also ended up changing the style of the movie, as well.

The filmmakers loved long tracking shots and “planned out all of these scenes where we’d be following an action and then we would go and pick something else up and then we’d pick up another character on the walkthrough and we followed him” to give that effect, Kaplan said. Unfortunately, they had to cut it all up into pieces because if there was even someone passing by drinking, it had to be cut.

They’d designed it to include the tracking shots because “it’s a movie about characters who didn’t necessarily know each other, but we wanted to connect them in this space to make it feel like ‘O.K., these people are crossing paths, but they’re not really affecting each other’s lives yet. Although they will,’” Elfont said. “And now it all kind of came out.”

One of the scenes cut was the introduction to Segel’s character, Watermelon Guy.

Segel is a household name nowadays, but he wasn’t when he joined this 1998 movie. In fact, this was his first-ever acting gig. And, as it turns out, his role was actually a little bit bigger than the film shows. The “How I Met Your Mother” alum had filmed another scene for the movie, but it was eventually cut from the final version.

He runs into the scene and “he’s holding the watermelon over his head and he says, ‘I poured four bottles of vodka in here and it’s been in my freezer all year.’ And then someone runs into him and it falls on the ground and shatters,” Kaplan said. “His crown and glory is destroyed in a matter of seconds. So, the rest of the party, he’s walking around trying to like suck pieces of this watermelon. So, when you see him by the pool, he’s got that watermelon rind in his hand and it doesn’t make any sense, but it did earlier on.”

The directors are down for a “Can’t Hardly Wait” reunion movie.

There are no official plans for a sequel yet, but both Elfont and Kaplan believe that one should “never say never.” Plus, because of the big 20th anniversary, the writer-directors began thinking about what a reunion film would look like.

“It would be, ‘Did everybody’s life kind of wind up the way they thought it was going to wind up? Are people who wound up together in the movie still together? And can you really meet your soulmate for your life in high school? Like, does that really work?’” Elfont revealed about their sequel idea. “It’s just kind of a lot of those. And, you know, hopefully, it would be funny if we actually did it.”

With Tuesday being the official anniversary and the window closing of having a reunion project actually come out 20 years after the first, Elfont is looking ahead to next year: “It may end up being a 21 year reunion,” he partially joked.

Kaplan built on that idea, saying, “It’ll have to start with Melissa Joan Hart being really annoyed that no one got it together for the 20 year and they had to have a 21 year reunion.”

There’s a reason why the movie tries not to reveal the time or place it’s set.

Kaplan explained that fans likely related to the movie because it wasn’t necessarily written about her high school experience or Elfont’s, but it was created so that viewers could see their own experiences in the film.

That’s “why they never say what year it is, or what city they’re in, or what state they’re in, try to keep their license plates off the cars,” she said. “It could sort of hopefully be any place, any time. Except for now, obviously there are cell phones and texting and all that, but at the time, we tried to make an attempt to make it seem like it could be anywhere. This could be your school.”

A reboot would be hard in this technologically-advanced age but not impossible.

“There’s really no movie there,” Kaplan said about someone trying to remake the movie today. “I mean, the whole premise is Preston not being able to give her this letter. I mean, although, it’d be nice to think that there’s still somebody who’s romantic enough to write notes and letters, but I don’t know if kids still do that.”

Even with texting and social media, she realized that the film still could find a way to work. “I guess if his phone, his battery ran out or he lost his phone, you could probably figure out a way to make it inconvenient and have enough things pile up, but it would be a lot of work.”

Amanda was a different type of role for Hewitt.

“I think she was excited because she had always sort of played the best friend and the sort of mouthy girl and not really the object of desire,” Kaplan said. “Even in ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer,’ which was a big movie, they always put her in overalls or glasses, she was just kind of the side chick, in a way. But in this one, she got to be the girl that everybody wanted.”

“Can’t Hardly Wait” is currently available for streaming on Starz and will air on TV Tuesday at 2:16 p.m. and 10:40 p.m. EDT on Starz Encore.