interview - JACK BLACK
Tale of the Tape
In an age of high-def, digital and Blu-ray, Jack Black stars in a movie about two guys who remake classic flicks with no budget and on videotape. And guess what? People love them
By Bob Strauss
You may be wondering what happened to Jack Black. The crazy fool Jack Black, that is, who tickled us in The School of Rock, High Fidelity and Nacho Libre. The often dopey guy last seen, by just a few, more than a year ago in the big-screen misfire Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny.
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Jack Black (left) and Mos Def in
Be Kind Rewind
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Since then, Black’s been getting all serious and sensitive (for him, anyway) in more mature fare like The Holiday and Margot at the Wedding.
It’s been enough to make some of us fret that his recent marriage and
first-time fatherhood has domesticated one of the last great wild men
of movie comedy.
Be Kind Rewind should allay
those fears. Manic goofiness appears to be the dominant tone of this
silly-sounding project. But Black cautions not to expect flat-out
dumbness. Like most of his funniest comedies, Rewind has something of a pedigree.
“It’s
a great art comedy set in a town that industry kind of forgot,” Black
explains during a recent L.A. interview. “It is a story of friendship
between me and Mos Def. I work in a junkyard, he works in a video
rental store right across the street. We have an adventure when I
accidentally erase all the videos in the store and we have to quickly
reshoot all of the movies. It sounds like an absurd premise, but it
came out really funny.
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“We do a lot of recreations of old classic movies,” continues Black,
his ample frame covered, as usual, by an unbuttoned checkered shirt
over a T-shirt. “We do cheap, sh--ty versions of all the movies at,
like, 10 minutes, instead of feature length. We’re not very smart, so
we think that we can replace them all.”
The list of movies parodied is eclectic, partly out of necessity; writer-director Michel Gondry couldn’t get permission to lampoon some of the films he wanted to. But perhaps that makes Rewind seem more cinema savvy than originally intended.
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Left side: Jack Black and Mos Def re-enact scenes from RoboCop, Ghostbusters,
Driving Miss Daisy and When We Were Kings. Right side: The original movies
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“We did When We Were Kings, the documentary about Muhammad Ali. I play Muhammad Ali, strangely,” Black reports. “We did Superman — I probably shouldn’t say that, we had to change the name of it to something else. We did RoboCop, we did Driving Miss Daisy. We did a little King Kong, too. That was cool.” Which parody does he believe was the finest approximation? “It was a pretty powerful recreation of Ghostbusters,”
Black offers. “It’s pretty magnificent. It’s not totally clear who was
who at what time, but I think that I’m Dan Aykroyd and Mos is Bill
Murray. And I am also a ghost in the library.”
Like Fidelity’s director Stephen Frears, School of Rock’s Richard Linklater and Nacho Libre’s Jared Hess, Gondry has an impressive rep as an independent filmmaker. After making a splash with innovative
music videos for Bjork and the White Stripes, the French filmmaker went
on to helm acclaimed, surreal features such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep.
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Black certainly believes that he was working with a true artist, since he couldn’t understand half of what was happening. “Michel is a very spontaneous director and supercreative on every level,” says the actor. “He designed and made these homemade props and costumes himself that were unbelievable. I guess, a lot of the time, I felt like nobody knew what was going on except for him, by design. I think he likes to create a little bit of chaos on the set, then at the last minute focus it and yell orders to people. Then there’s a lot of activity, everyone’s running around and it creates a really amazing energy.”
All that said, the wacky doofus humour for which Black is best known dominates Rewind’s trailers. But where, really, does this versatile actor want to go now?
Born and raised in Southern California by parents who were actual rocket scientists, Black started in show business with Tim Robbins’ theatrical troupe The Actors Gang while attending UCLA. Black’s wife, Tanya, is a cellist and the daughter of jazz legend Charlie Haden. He obviously knows that there can be more to a successful performing career than making as many people as possible laugh at him.
“There’s a pressure to being known as the funny guy, that you’ve got to be constantly funny,” Black admits. “You can easily get sucked into the Robin Williams mania of ‘Be Funny All the Time.’ I just try to take that pressure off myself, be in situations where I can relax and try different stuff.”
That’s not always easy when you’ve made your mark as a funny slacker dude. But great actors like Nicole Kidman and Kate Winslet have sung Black’s praises, and he feels that a certain degree of on-set professionalism can open many doors. That and keeping the ego in check.
“Am I humble and hard-working and sensitive?” he asks rhetorically (and with no small hint of irony). “I like to think so. Oh yes, I’m very sensitive.
“I like to think that I’m easygoing and funny,” Black adds. “And giving, as an actor; that I’m there, off-camera, giving all the sauce. I think about it a lot, actually. What’s the best thing I can do to have my co-stars be as good as they can be?”
In interview after interview, Black has gotten amusing mileage out of exaggerating his sense of self-worth. But since he’s been playing sort-of romantic leads recently, he seems to have genuinely picked up a female following that, let’s face it, could go to even the most modest schlub’s head. That borderline sex appeal could help him break even further away from his slapstick reputation.
But Black refuses to take himself that seriously. “I think it might be because I’m perceived as getable,” he shrugs about any sex symbol status. “Whereas, like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt — there’s no prayer, they have no chance with those guys. But me…
“And maybe I seem like I’d be a fun date. It wouldn’t be just straight-up dinner and a movie, I’d take ’em for a little adventure. And a little humour goes a long way. Johnny Carson said it’s the number one aphrodisiac…so I must be verrry sexy.”
Next up is a madcap Ben Stiller comedy, Tropic Thunder, in which Black plays a character named Fats Portnoy. His younger fans should love it. The more thoughtful or smitten ones? Remains to be seen.
In Jack Black’s mind, which fans a movie appeals to is not an issue as long as the project does something for him. “I don’t really worry about who’s gonna think what of me when it comes to different audience demographics,” he insists. “I can’t control it, so I’m just like, ah, whatever. I’m not trying to balance anything. I just wait for the people who interest me, who do work that turns me on, whether it be comedy or drama or any of that. I just try to work on cool things.”
Bob Strauss is an L.A.-based writer.