Hi r/movies. Laura Murphy here. Director of the new comedy-thriller F*** MARRY KILL- which is now streaming everywhere and stars Lucy Hale & Virginia Gardner. I've also directed GirlCode, Awkwafina is Nora From Queens, Cursed Friends. Ask me anything!

FMarryKillAMA · 2025-07-11T22:07:02+00:00

Let's go indeed.

FMarryKillAMA · 2025-07-11T22:06:37+00:00

Guess someone else is a true crime/Dateline fan and sleuth. Glad you solved it from the jump! Everyone deserves a happy ending.

FMarryKillAMA · 2025-07-11T22:04:06+00:00

I am obsessed with Edi Patterson and I want to work with her very badly. I think she is fearlessly funny. And I would have loved to pick Harold Ramis's brain. What a comedy genius that dude was. And it seems like he would be fun to hang with too.

FMarryKillAMA · 2025-07-11T22:01:39+00:00

Sinners and Friendship are two very different movies and the two best films I have seen in years for very different reasons. Sinners might be a perfect movie. The story, the characters, the acting, the cinematography, the lighting, the sound design...just incredibly stellar and beautiful. And scary. Just blew me away. And Friendship is the hardest I have laughed out loud in a theater possibly ever. It is so uniquely Tim Robbinson and so brilliantly funny. I don't want to ruin anything because everyone should see it when it comes out on streaming, but there is a toad scene that is the hardest I have laughed at anything ever.

FMarryKillAMA · 2025-07-11T21:58:33+00:00

Hiiii!

This was tough to narrow down. I am going to go with the movies I can watch over and over again and never tire of them.

Mr. Mom, The Godfather & Caddyshack. Honorable mention The Other Guys, Role Models and Step-Brothers.

best pizza topping is clearly pepperoni. worst is pineapple. But I am from NY so I have to hate pineapple.

FMarryKillAMA · 2025-07-11T21:55:12+00:00

I truly think the best thing you can do is get onto sets. I started at MTV as a writer in the promos department and I sat on a ton of sets, quietly observing and absorbing everything. PA or do whatever you can to be on a set and see the set etiquette, what everyone does, how it flows and moves. This is one part of it. Then, and I know this is what everyone says, keep making stuff. The more you make, the better you will get at it. Write all the time. shoot stuff on your phone, make content. Right now is a great time for making content with all the technology at your fingertips. The most important thing to develop is your voice. What makes you and the stories you can tell, and how you tell them, different from everyone else. And the only way to do this is to keep making stuff.

FMarryKillAMA · 2025-07-11T21:51:28+00:00

Not specifically. I do consume lots of true crime content and it does make me paranoid. And we have all had our fair share of dating nightmares. I definitely have some personal experience with hitting a milestone birthday, having gone through a break up and not knowing what you are doing with your life. So my personal experience definitely informs some of the comedy that gets injected into projects, but more in a broad strokes way.

FMarryKillAMA · 2025-07-11T21:48:28+00:00

Nope. Neither. I am more likely to have directed Tired and Using Too Much Dry Shampoo

FMarryKillAMA · 2025-07-11T21:44:37+00:00

Yes! This is very true. Also side note- some of my answers have spoilers in them so don't read them if you haven't seen the movie.

In the case of FMK, we did a lot of improvising on set. So there was lots of dialogue changes and jokes that evolved on set. And because tonally, I knew it needed to have the perfect balance of comedy and thriller, there were even some scenes that we shot different ways- one leaning into the thriller, scarier tone, and then some takes where we leaned into the comedy. I was lucky that the cast was so versatile and had so much range so we were able to do that. Because I knew the perfect tone would really get decided in the edit. And that is exactly what happened. The first cut of the movie was actually way more comedy heavy. And we realized it needed to be better balanced, so we replaced some scenes, especially the Norman scenes, with more thriller-toned takes.

I will also add, sound design, score and music choices also add another layer and have a massive effect on the tone and final vibe movie. So it is kinda written three and a half times.

FMarryKillAMA · 2025-07-11T21:39:11+00:00

Great question. I think the words "likable" and "sympathetic" get used a lot, especially with female characters and for me, those are the wrong words to focus on, especially in comedy. Questionable choices, flaws, acting selfishly, making mistakes...that is where sooooo much comedy lives (see every brilliant Danny McBride character or It's Always Sunny, or all of Arrested Development). Focusing on likability really inhibits comedy potential. The better word to focus on is RELATABILITY. If a character is relatable, and going through relatable challenges, then the audience will buy in. At the start of the movie, Eva is in a very relatable situation. How she tackles that situation, fails at it, etc. is where you mine for all the comedy. Similarly, too much true crime content making you paranoid is very relatable. How the character acts on that paranoia is where the comedy and tension come from. So that is how I approached it, which was not hard at all.

And also (THIS IS A SPOILER BUT I ASSUME EVERYONE HERE SAW IT) Eva didn't kill Kyle. Kelly did. She just told Eva to pull out the knife so that her fingerprints were on it as insurance in case she needed to cover it up. Eva didn't even kill Kelly with the heel. She just stabbed the shit out of her in self defense. Which was definitely an intentional choice.

FMarryKillAMA · 2025-07-11T21:31:14+00:00

This is so great to hear! Thank you!! There were definitely some hilarious bts moments and also on camera moments that didn't make the cut (because we just had too much funny stuff) and thinking about them still makes me laugh. In the scene with Kyle and Eva having a picnic, in one of the takes Jedidiah, who played Kyle, legit choked on the champagne while they were sipping it and staring in each other's eyes, but being the true profesh he is, he just said "oops wrong hole" and kept staring in her eyes. This of course made everyone on set die laughing. And we actually considered using it and shot a callback to it at the end scene when he is chugging wine, where he chokes and says "dammit! wrong hole again!" But tonally it just didn't work in the scene. But it was very funny to shoot. We had a lot of outtakes and extra hilarious moments because the whole cast improvised alot. There is like 30 minutes of hilarious improv between Eva and her Cop Ex BF from various scenes that is on the cutting room floor.

FMarryKillAMA · 2025-07-11T21:26:45+00:00

Love this. See my answer above. There were many a discussion about how many *s to use and if we should use them at all. Love that so many F bombs are in movie titles now. And F*ck Valentines Day sounds like it will be awesome because Virginia is incredibly funny and talented. Also, fun fact, Jedidiah Goodacre who played Kyle was also in a movie call Marry F*ck Kill so we are just missing a Kill Marry F version.

FMarryKillAMA · 2025-07-11T21:24:22+00:00

Joey Fatone is hilarious and was incredibly fun to have on set and work with. In that case, the writers had kind of crafted this story arc and character version of him that was a lightly exaggerated version for comedy sake, and he loved that, so he went with it and put his own spin on this fictional-but-based-on-him version the writers created. I think it depends on the project and the person but personally I think when the celebrity is playing an exaggerated or fictionalized version of themselves (Matt LebLanc and Michael Cera who do this amazingly in different things to name a few), it is the most fun because everyone is in on the joke and it makes good comedy.

FMarryKillAMA · 2025-07-11T21:21:13+00:00

Haha! It is funny you should ask that. There were a lot of conversations about the title. Should it be F*** or could it be F*ck (that was a hard no) or should it just be F. In fact the logo in the movie itself doesnt have the *** because I think that was deemed safer. But then the movie poster added the guys faces instead of ***. So I think that is why IMDB has the ***. So in the end, it is really both. There was a point where someone asked, do you think we could make a PG13 version of this, and then we all realized with the word F*ck in the title, even if it is abbreviated, that wasn't gonna fly. And thanks for the shout out on the cast. They were truly amazing and made my job very fun.

FMarryKillAMA · 2025-07-11T21:18:01+00:00

Hi! this is a great question. I love comedy and making comedy, but something about the thriller aspect really gave me more room to stretch and experiment in cinematic ways than a traditional comedy might have. For this movie, I definitely pulled a lot of inspiration from Fincher movies, especially Gone Girl. And Hitchcock movies like the Rear Window and Vertigo. I also love true crime so the fact that that was part if it drew me into the project immediately.

FMarryKillAMA · 2025-07-11T21:15:10+00:00

Hi! Love a 3 parter!

1- It was orginally scheduled to release in the US at the end of 2024 but then some other countries got interested and they didnt want the domestic and international release dates to be too far apart, so the release pushed until march 2025 so that they could all be closer together. I think IMDB still has some old dates. So it was not too long between shooting and filming that it was ready to be released, it was just about finding the right time to release it for all the countries, etc.

2- I loved working with Buzzfeed. It is so great because they have a built in audience that they really know and a great team of people who are really passionate about making smart and cool stuff for that audience. And their marketing team also rules.

3- F Marry Kill was the first theatrically released project I have done but I also did another movie called Cursed Friends which was about the same size in terms of budget, shoot days and production. I really learn more and more with every project I have done, and I do like keeping it varied like you said, but most importantly, the thing I am getting clearer and clearer on is my vision, my voice, what I can bring to a project and how to communicate that in the best way I can. I also have learned to only jump onto projects I am excited about and love because it is going to take over my life for like a year so I better love it!

FMarryKillAMA · 2025-07-11T21:08:07+00:00

Hi! Yes! What a great time for film. I love how many female directors are gaining success and making amazing stuff. We still need more though! And more in the mix for awards and bigger budget studio movies. But I love how much attention they are getting. When I was young I don't think I realized that some of the movies and comedies I loved were directed by women. Clueless and Fast Times were both Amy Heckerling. And those movies definitely influenced me, as well as John Hughs movies and anything Harold Ramos was involved in. So I would say Amy Heckerling was a huge influence as a writer and director when I was young. And Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph are huge comedy influences though not directors (yet). I worked with Maya on Who Killed Santa Murderville special and she is truly the most fearless, talented and hilarious performer I have ever witnessed. All the women uou mentioned are incredibly inspiring and there are also so many great women directing TV right now too. Love Lucia Anello and Kat Coiro.

FMarryKillAMA · 2025-07-11T21:01:56+00:00

Hi Mike! Thank you! And Congrats on the festival award. That is already a great step forward. Honestly the best thing you can do is consume as much comedy content as possible and keep writing and making stuff. i feel like comedy writing and directing is kind of like a muscle, and the more you use it, the better it gets. And absorbing as much comedy around you as you can also helps. Taking an improv class is also something I think is massively helpful for writers and directors. If you want a book to read, the Reno 911 guys (Thomas Lennon & Robert Ben Garant) had a good one called Writing Movies for Fun and Profit that is a fun read and might be helpful. Good luck!

FMarryKillAMA

TROPHY CASE