Every year, our family gathers for the Passover seder (actually we do two seders– sedarim, if you want to be Hebraically accurate– because of our status as Jews in the Diaspora, while in Israel they only have one, but that’s not the point here). We have riveting discussions about the text of the Haggadah (the liturgical guide for the Passover seder), Hebrew word origins, and the nature of freedom. And of course, we eat. It’s a fairly intense and often entertaining experience. But never have we screened dailies of the film we were working on that was destined to become a classic.
For those of you who aren’t schooled in Hollywood-speak, “dailies” refers to raw and unedited footage shot that day. And for those of us who wondered what goes on at a Hollywood-style seder, we finally have an inside peek, courtesy of a panel at the SXSW conference held in Austin this weekend.
In their promotional junket for “I Love You Man,” Jason Segel and Paul Rudd talked about buddy movies with their director, John Hamburg. Over the course of the panel (as reported by EW), Hamburg revealed that his cousin is Doug Liman, the director of Swingers.

John: My cousin Doug, Doug Liman, directed that. And I remember when he brought the dailies to a Passover seder. He was like, ”You got to watch these performances from these guys!” He showed us the scene at the coffee shop at the end when he thinks the girl is flirting with him. And Doug is like, ”This guy Vince Vaughn is in it and he’s amazing.” And we all watched, and it was incredible, and then we continued the seder.
Paul: That’s like so much of the seders that I went to back during that same time. It was just like that! Only my Grandfather was balancing a spoon on his nose, and he had no footage of a film to show us. [Laughter]

And so, I’m adding Paul Rudd to my list of people I’d like to have at my seder(s) this year. (And yes, Segel, you can come too.)