The writers and co-leads of indie sex-comedy The Napa Boys, Armen Weitzman and Nick Corirossi (who also directs), sit down with EoM Contributor Andrew J. Eisenman to discuss the success of the film’s comedic premise. The imagined 4th entry in a Sideways (2004) cinematic universe of straight-to-DVD sequels, the film follows “Miles Jr.” and “Jack Jr.” as they reunite their childhood group of misfits to compete in a winemaking competition and solve the mystery of a magical amulet.
L-R: Jamar Malachi Neighbors as Stifler’s Brother, Paul Rust as Squirm, Mike Mitchell as Mitch, Nick Corirossi as Jack Jr., and Armen Weitzman as Miles Jr. in THE NAPA BOYS, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
The pair’s conversation centers on the jokes, their relationship to writing jokes about movies they love, and The Fabelmans (2022).
You can read Andrew’s full review of The Napa Boys here. This print-version of interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Andrew J. Eisenman: Right off the bat, I have to tell you, when the film was gearing up for its theatrical release, our editor in chief here at Elements of Madness [Douglas Davidson] did message the entire staff and say, “Hey, has anyone seen the rest of the Napa Boys franchise who’s willing to cover the film?”
Nick Corirossi: Wow. It worked.
Armen Weitzman: Yeah.
Eisenman: It did work and really well. Really well. And I was wondering how often people are telling you that they have to watch the previous films before they catch up with this one.
Corirossi: One of the great aspects of this whole thing is when you just go and and, to the chagrin of Armin and me, sometimes is just going through all the letterboxed reviews because they’re so overwhelmingly positive and then sometimes so insanely crazily, like, filled with hatred for the movie. But a lot of those, there’s probably one out of every like 15 or something, are someone going, “Where are the other ones? Like, where what happened to the other-?”
So the fact that to a degree we all did it to play the game. And I think that some people, and I was saying this earlier, is like, we gave them a permission structure to love it and we gave them a per permission structure to hate the movie. But the fact that there’s a game to be played and people can play it when they know that there aren’t others, but the final level that is such a great success is the fact that there’s a a large quantity of people that it that it completely worked on and that just assume that there are other films and when it’s streaming soon.
I think that’s going to be an even greater section of of the audience will be like, where the fuck are these other Napa boys movies? And it’s a testament to us laundering this into existence. You know, we laundered The Napa Boys into existence. It just sounds like something that existed before, you know.
Eisenman: Absolutely. And I would love one day to peek behind the hood and just see how many people search “Napa Boys One” on Apple TV in just a little bit.
Weitzman: Yeah.
Eisenman: But the thing that really caught me off guard, because I did know the bit going in, was how much of it kind of is almost unauthorized sequel and just like, homage to a bunch of other films.
And if I can just list some references that I caught for the viewers at home. I caught homages to Sideways, American Pie, Road Trip, Degrassi, The Judge, The Lord of the Rings, the works of Lynn Ramsey, Lawrence of Arabia, One from the Heart, Megalopolis, and of course, The Fabelmans. What does it mean to you guys, outside of landing a laugh, to write with such love about movies you love? ‘Cause that love for movies really comes through.
Corirossi: We’ll also say City Slickers, The ViewAskewniverse, yeah?
Nick Corirossi as Jack Jr. in THE NAPA BOYS, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
Eisenman: Yeah.
Corirossi: Tree of Life. yeah.
Weitzman: No, no, well we shouldn’t there’s more of – I’ll just say the obvious thing. Sorry, I’m not interrupting. I just meant before I forgot, just the George Lucas of it all.
Which was that once you learn that The Searchers or whatever was sort of inspiration for these Star Wars things and we just sort of reminded ourselves of that, like re-learning loving film literally, like when we were young and we used to care and then also just using those rules to apply it to the movie.
So it’s almost like some of the references were accidental and some of them were just how they’ve been doing it. Like we saw R2D2 and C3-PO and it looks like Lawrence of Arabia and they have Alec Guinness and they’re like, that makes us more serious. And I just felt like that was that.
Like it wasn’t specific, “just this movie.”
Corirossi: The long short of it is like Andrew, you could almost say like you know, Star Wars took a disrespected kind of genre which was like serialized sci-fi, like Flash Gordon or whatever, and then elevated it with high-minded, you know, Lawrence of Lawrence of Arabia, Kurosawa references and and elevated, you know, the the source material of this kind of serialized throwaway sci-fi stuff.
It has since been dealchemized back into throwaway serialized Star Wars. You know, but what we did is kind of similarly, we took the disrespected genre of, you know, 2000’s buddy comedies that maybe had some some sequels like American Pie Presents, and then tried to infuse The Tree of Life, Lawrence of Arabia, the same kind of Star Wars calculus to elevate that genre into something that’s greater than the sum of its parts.
Eisenman: I think you did a wonderful job. I could not believe, I mean just to just to see a Megalopolis t-shirt is-
Corirossi: You know, someone actually, and this is this was I think we were counting on this, but someone caught it where in one of these letterbox reviews where they go,” It was a super secret celebrity guest, but they were already wearing Megalopolis and Francis Coppola beards.” Like they were already that big of fans that they were ready for it.
Eisenman: It’s just fantastic. but speaking of that, like elevating this genre, you know, I have a soft spot for at home sequels. Like when I was a kid was a lot of the Home Alone sequels. There’s too many to count now. They’re still going. What was the first one of those films that you guys saw as a kid or a teenager where you were like, “I like this, but maybe this isn’t being made with the same care as the first one, and why is that?”
Weitzman: Well, there’s two separate answers because you’re saying first one we saw that we also liked it.. I feel like I have to mention Aladdin [Return of Jafar] because that was definitely the first time I saw Robin Williams is not here and this is different. Even though now I would say that they had Lion King Two [Mufasa: The Lion King ] in the theater, so I don’t know what that means, but that’s the dealchemizing or whatever the word.
Corirossi: I’ll pull a reverse Uno card. I’ll actually say some cases, in some cases, I watched Ghostbusters II and Wayne’s World 2 first. And I was like, man, like I knew there were sequels, but I was like, man, we’re having fun. And then later realized that people were like, “I don’t like Wayne’s World 2 and Ghostbusters II, those were the bad ones or whatever. And you’re like, “What?” Like those were the ones that I watched more.
Weitzman: Yes. That’s part of the thing, or even I’ll say Short Circuit 2. I didn’t even know what happened the first time, you know, for a long time he was just in New York. I didn’t know that he was in the army, all that other stuff. So I think we grew up with that feeling of like you know this robot, you know these guys, and you know The Napa Boys.
Eisenman: Yeah, sequels were cheaper to license on TV, more available in the rental stores. But moving on to some individual questions. Nick: How many takes did you have to do of “I’m shitting and cumming into Mitch’s wine”?
Corirossi: All of that was one big long series.and it was at the end of the day, and I guess it was the last one. It’s like we’re doing this, it was already a low budget, we’re gonna do it in a very short amount of days. Right in the middle of it, the fires, the wildfires happened in LA. So we had a nine day schedule. So we shot this movie basically nine, nine and a half days. So a lot of things ended up being one take, I would say, I think, or two takes.
What I would also say is that to me, actually, it kind of galvanized everyone. We wrote these parts for people. And a lot of people, you know, they showed up and it made it more like a play. Like they knew they had to do it. Like we had, a time limit and everything was there. That shitting and cumming was one big long series with two cameras. One was, you know, kind of a faraway long shot, and one was the handheld that was right with me.
And I did that for like maybe eight minutes straight at the end of the day and I have huge bruises on my legs from the barrel and I just had to keep yelling it over and over again. But it was very cathartic for me, yes.
Eisenman: That’s incredible.
And for Armin: Did you ever consider doing a really hardcore Paul Giamatti impression?
Weitzman: You know, I this is now this is another earnest answer, apologies, but I think I was trying to do the half and half because I was trying to calculate what would happen if this was actually real and how it’s an amalgamation of the hair and the skateboard, and it’s not just “These guys are the sons” exactly one to one. Because I would say Jack Jr.’s also not you know?
Corirossi: Right.
Weitzman: It’s sort of the all the guys that are awkward on dates in every single movie that people forget was literally in every single thing for like twenty years. Just making sure that it was those guys from… I forget the movie now. But no, it was tough. Yeah. I purposefully did not do it.
Corirossi: When you watch the American Pie sequels, normally they’re centered around like a Stifler, or something. And they’re not specifically always doing an exact perfect Sean Williams Scott impression.
It’s sort of like a little bit by way of whatever, the actor or the circumstance of the budget or whatever they got, you know. So it’s kind of you’re going through the looking glass of like, this isn’t someone that is tasked with exactly replicating it. This is someone who’s supposed to be a relative that has their essence and we’re now conflating that with the archetype of nerd or cool guy, you know?
Weitzman: I think there’s also, like there’s Jim, right? Or Jim Levenstein and Stifler. And then combining them with this, which is like the odd couple of Walter Matthau and Jack Lemon, meaning like they represent both just the nervous guy and the not nervous guy. But also, yes, Sideways. But also just every single Road Trip, whatever. There’s sort of quote unquote an everyman, even though he’s a despicable “not everyman.” He forces you to be like, “Well, he’s nicer than that one,” even though they’re both in different ways, like ridiculous.
Eisenman: Yeah well, I think he did a great job. I found his collapse quite moving. It is really good.
Weitzman: Yeah, he has to.
Eisenman: But for for both of you, the line that made me laugh the hardest was “You’re the fucking Sammy Fabelman of comic books.” This gave me several questions that I’d like to run past you both rapid fire. If that’s all right.
[Armen nods]
Did Jack Jr. watch The Fabelmans to completion?
Corirossi: No, see what happens, this is actually the answer, is Sammy Fabelman exists in in the world of this movie. So he is a director in this. I would also go as far as far to say Disclosure Day was directed by Sammy Fabelman.
Eisenman: That was his follow up?
Corirossi: In our world.
Weitzman: Yeah.
Corirossi: But in our world, Jay and Silent Bob exist and Sammy Fabelman exists as a filmmaker.
Eisenman: Okay. Okay. So in that case then, have they crossed paths or or they just watch his movies?
Weitzman: Yeah, I think they’re just use him as a reference, as you might Steven Spielberg.
Eisenman: Okay, so they went and saw Disclosure Day. Do they believe in aliens? Are they convinced by him? Or were they already going in and –
Corirossi: The Napa Girls, famously, are on their spaceship journey. Which we might find out a little bit more when The Napa Girls film comes out as was promised at the end of the credits. So I would imagine that them on their spaceship journey, and on their separate Napa Girls adventures have encountered things that made them believe that that is real.
Weitzman: I will say it’s possible Miles Jr. would say he doesn’t believe in aliens, but that might be annoying to hear.
Eisenman: Mm-hmm. No, that makes sense.
Weitzman: He might be proven wrong, I guess.
Eisenman: Well he could be, he could be. Does he believe in ghosts?
Weiztman: No.
L-R: Sarah Ramos as Puck, Armen Weitzman as Miles Jr., Jamar Malachi Neighbors as Stifler’s Brother, and Nick Corirossi as Jack Jr., in THE NAPA BOYS, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
Eisenman: No. Okay. so in that case, just to wrap it up, speaking of the Napa girls, are there any plans for the Napa Boys to get Downsized or Held Over?
Weitzman: Do we- you mean Downsize? I was like, well, I guess they might get downsized. Hey-
Corirossi: Ha!
Weitzman: – that was good. You got me good. I was like, “That’s yes. They definitely could accidentally.”
I don’t know if I don’t want to spoil that movie, but it’s possible that Jack Jr. would change his mind, maybe.
Eisenman: Mm-hmm. Okay.
Weitzman: One might Downsize.
Corirossi: But also, The Napa Girls is Awkwafina.
Awkwafina is signed on, almost perfectly, because she’s announced it verbally. [She] verbally signed on for The Napa Girls along with some other great actors. So, awesome. You might have to find that out very soon.
Weitzman: In the trades.
Eisenman: Glad I’m glad to hear it. Thank you guys. It’s been great.
Weitzman: Thank you so much Andrew. Downsizing!
Corirossi: Thanks, Andrew.
[Andrew holds up a wine glass filled with NA Corona]
Corirossi: That was a good one. Hey, cheers to the grape, baby.
Weitzman: Are we fired?
Official Synopsis:
In this fourth chapter of the hit comedy franchise The Napa Boys, Jack Jr. (Nick Corirossi), his reluctant co-captain Miles Jr. (Armen Weitzman), and the rest of the Napa Boys gang are back for one more wine-sloshed journey into the unknown. With a mission set forth by the mysterious “Sommelier,” they are joined this time by Puck, a bright young podcaster and the Napa Boys’ biggest fan, as the group embarks on the adventure of a lifetime. Featuring Sarah Ramos, Mike Mitchell, Chloe Cherry, Vanessa Chester, Paul Rust, Jamar Neighbors, Nelson Franklin, David Wain, Ray Wise, Riki Lindhome, Natasha Leggero, Ivy Wolk and Beth Dover, The Napa Boys enlists a hilarious ensemble of alt-comedians to hop in the Wine Wagon™ for the new installment in this historic (made-up) franchise.
Available on VOD and digital April 17th, 2026.
Available on Blu-ray and DVD May 19th, 2026.
For more information, head to the official Magnolia Pictures The Napa Boys webpage.
Andrew J. Eisenman is a filmmaker and critic working in the Triad, and a voting member of the NCFCA. He is a regular contributor at Elements of Madness, as well as Editor-in-Chief at Pontificator. Additionally, he has served as a voting member of The Real to Reel Film Festival’s Film Selection Committee. He writes about movies so that he and his community can better understand themselves through art.
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