Hold on to Your Butts and Fly, You Fools! – The Lo-Fi Blockbuster Parodies Taking Edinburgh by Storm

From award-winning US company Recent Cutbacks comes Hold on to Your Butts, a lo-fi, high-energy parody of “the greatest dinosaur film of all time” – reimagined with just two actors, one live Foley artist, and a whole load of cardboard. Following a sell-out Edinburgh Fringe debut, a West End transfer, and a UK tour, the show returns to Pleasance Courtyard this August alongside fellow parody production Fly, You Fools!. 

We spoke to director and co-founder Nick Abeel, Recent Cutbacks Co-Founder and perfromer ahead of both show’s runs at Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

For anyone new to your work, how would you sum up Hold on to Your Butts and Fly, You Fools! in one sentence each? And what inspired you to parody thse particular iconic films?

Butts is a 2-person “shot for shot” homage to the greatest dinosaur film in cinema history. Fools is a 3-person balletic parody of the first chapter in the greatest fantasy trilogy of all time. 

We love these movies! I think you really have to know something well to pay homage to it and I probably could have recited most of the lines to both of these movies before we made the shows. We’ve also found that movies that take themselves seriously are particularly ripe for parody. 

Between dinosaurs and dark lords, these shows cover a lot of epic ground—how do you compress such sprawling blockbusters into just an hour each, and with so few performers?

We usually start by writing down what we can remember from the movie - an iconic shot, a famous line, a small random detail that always stuck with me - and fill in the gaps from there. We essentialize the language in each scene as much as possible and the shows move fast. And then we rely heavily on the audience’s imagination to fill in the blanks. I also think having fewer performers allows us to go at the pace that we do because we’re so in sync. 

Both productions use minimalist props, live Foley, and a ton of ingenuity. What’s the biggest challenge (and greatest joy) in staging such ambitious stories with such lo-fi tools?

We find that it’s a nice pairing - the epic story with the lo-fi aesthetic. Having limitations forces you to come up with creative solutions. I always say we’re not fooling anyone. Everyone knows we’re just pretending this umbrella is a helicopter. So for me the greatest joy of the lo-fi aesthetic is just getting to really pretend for an hour that I’m in that movie. 

But yeah it’s definitely challenging to build these shows. It takes a lot of time in a room goofing around and trying things out. We always work towards a deadline and there are a lot of great ideas that don’t make it to the final show. Finding the right lo-fi solution is always an experiment, and putting it up in front of an audience really helps with that. 

You’ve played the West End, toured the UK, and now you’re back at the Fringe. What keeps drawing you back to Edinburgh, and how does the Fringe compare to other stops on your journey?

Well, personally this will be my first time performing at Fringe (I had a baby in early September last year!) so I’m really excited to be there this year. I’ve been performing these shows for years but never so many performances in such a short amount of time and I’m really looking forward to that challenge. 

These films have passionate fanbases. What kind of reactions do you get from audiences when they see your versions—and do superfans ever try to join in?

Mostly, very positive!! It helps that we love these movies. We’re not making fun of the films; we’re paying homage to them. We’re reminding audiences of all the things they fell in love with about them. We’ve definitely had folks in the audience saying the lines from the movie along with us but honestly the shows move too fast to really do that too much. We’ve also built in a few times where the audience is expected to say a famous line along with us. 

You’re performing two shows a day—do you have a secret to surviving that? And finally: what’s your all-time favourite sound effect to perform live on stage?

These shows are very physical, so I’ve been exercising a fair bit to get ready. It helps that I’ve performed them so many times and I think I’ll be able to pace myself within them. Being mic’d is going to help tremendously. But honestly I think the secret will be stretching and hydrating haha. I think my favorite sound effect is the coconuts for horse hooves. It’s so simple but so effective. It puts a smile on my face every time. 

Hold on to Your Butts is at Pleasance Courtyard, Forth, 30 July – 25 August (not 7 & 18), 12.30 – 13.30. Tickets available at https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/hold-on-to-your-butts

Fly, You Fools! is at Pleasance Courtyard, Beyond, 30 July – 25 Aug (not 7 & 18), 15:10 – 16:10. Tickets available at https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/fly-you-fools