At the
film’s press day at the Santa Monica Museum of Flying, actor and comedian Dane
Cook, who plays Dusty the lead character in the film talked about how John Lassiter
convinced him to be in the movie, meeting Steven Spielberg, understanding
flying jargon and much more.
“I’m
a huge fan, but your humor is not exactly kid friendly. What was the draw in doing a kids’ film?
Cook: When they approached me about this, there was
no trepidation about that, because for so many years as I’ve done shows, I
would do meet and greets. I would meet
my fans after the show, and year after year, I would meet families. Parents would be bringing their kids to my
show, and sometimes it was a little surprising because I would say to them,
“There’s some adult stuff that I’m… the sexuality stuff.” What I learned from those parents in those
conversations is they would always say the same thing, and I’m paraphrasing,
but basically they would say, “But there’s no malice. You don’t come from a bad place.” They could distinguish that I come from a
lighter place, even if was a darker tone.
I grew up watching – I’m trying to think of an example of somebody, a
comic, who was a little bit darker and grittier comedy-wise. I can’t think. But it’s like that message let me know that I
could participate in things that maybe were outside of that particular box
because people would embrace that. They
weren’t looking at me like, “Oh! It’s
offensive that he would be part of something family-oriented.”
…
There’s
a lot of technical jargon in this, especially for a kids movie. I felt like I was learning something while I
was watching. For you, with some of the dialogue
about the equipment, did you feel like you had to figure out what these things were
before you could say them?
Cook: I did.
I asked a lot of questions. I
know that John Lasseter is an aviation enthusiast. I understand he’s done this with all his
films. He wants everything to be the
actual science. If a kid is really
interested in wanting to have a career in aviation, he’s actually learning and
getting some of the [basics], not even just fringe. There are things in here that he’s talking
about like the pulp of an engine, and it’s the actual engine, the actual parts
and pieces. So I felt like I got
schooled as well. (laughs) I learned a lot just being in there and doing
that.
Was
it also important for you to understand? It wasn’t like you were just saying the lines.
Cook: Oh no, I wanted to understand, like “How does
this affect the altitude? How does this
affect…? Okay, Dusty is winded here
because… What happened? Oh, his engine stopped. That must be the equivalent of getting a bad
cramp when you’re running.” Everything
had a way of bleeding into the performance.
I’m a person that loves asking a lot of questions anyway, so there was
no shortage of knowledge in that room when it came to [aviation], and Clay
(Hall) is also a massive aviation enthusiast.
So, those two together, I got schooled.
(laughs)
…
Could
you relate at all to your character’s determination to make it? Did it remind you of your career and moving
to L.A.?
Cook: Very much so.
In even simpler terms, I was a very introverted kid. I was not a silly kid or outgoing. In fact, I suffered from quite a bit of
anxiety. I used to have panic attacks
when I was a teenager, really incapacitating moments, because I had some
phobias. I had a fear of being in front
of people from a very early age. Not to
get too depressing, but my mother, when she was pregnant with me, was very
phobic. My mother had a lot of phobias. She’s pregnant with me and she was a very
phobic person. So I was born into phobia
basically. I’m not a phobic person, but
because I was born with this, I had to unknot some of the things that I just
picked up being inside my mom who had a fear of crowds and a fear of being
alone and fear of abandonment issues — all these things that my mother
explained to me as I was growing up. The
way I related it to Dusty was there was a period in my life where I had to
realize that if I wanted to entertain the world, which I did, [I would have to
overcome this].
I’m
11 or 12 years old knowing I would like to be a comedian. I would like to entertain. I would like to do plays and sing and dance,
but I can barely go out on my front porch.
If a neighbor sees me, I’m back in the house. And so, I had to fight through. When this project came along and I started to
read it, I got very emotional. The first
time I read it, I got very emotional for two reasons. One’s kind of silly. One is that it just immediately struck
me. I remember feeling this feeling in
my life of not having any belief in myself, of being just very self-deprecating
and not very healthy to myself. That hit
me when I was reading it, and I was like I know that feeling. I can put my whole self into this. But the fact that his name was Dusty
Crophopper and DC was Dane Cook, I was like symbolically this is supposed to be
mine. It lit me up. It made me feel like every scene of this
movie, every little bit of desperation that you hear is me digging down and
saying with Clay in that room, “Let me remember and find that feeling of
hopelessness that I felt.” I used to
feel hopelessness in my life. And it’s
all in this performance.
That’s
crazy that you inherited some of that from your mom.
Cook: Yeah.
And she knew it, too. As I got a
little bit older, she actually said, “I know it’s all because of me.” In fact, when I was born, she didn’t leave
the house with me until I was about one and a half because she had a fear of
going outside. She said finally one day
she looked out the window and she saw a young mother pushing her child down the
street in a stroller, and she said, “I started to cry and get so mad at myself
that I was afraid to bring you outside.”
She forced herself to go to the park, and she said that every step
pushing the stroller by herself just to take me to the park, she was so
terrified. You’ve got to imagine. I love my mom and she’s my best friend, but
I’m absorbing all of this. It took me a long
time to deconstruct that. It took me a
long time.
…
What
would you like kids to walk away with from this movie?
Cook: I work with a lot of kids. Every year, for the past fifteen years, I
work at Comedy Camp where I work with a lot of kids. Sometimes I’ll go through Boston Children’s
Hospital. I’m actually going to bring
the movie back and screen it for a bunch of kids at Boston Children’s. Because of what I experienced when I was a
kid, I want kids to have that kind of an epiphany moment, that little jolt,
that little spark that they see when Dusty flies higher than he has before —
like in that scene where he flies straight up, and he’s starting to get dizzy,
and then finally it comes together. We
forget as adults. We get jaded and we
think that’s kids’ stuff, but for a kid who doesn’t know about anything
technical or how a movie is made, they’re just going to see this and hear this
beautiful score and see this dynamic, fantastical thing happening in front of
them. Subconsciously or subliminally,
that’s a message of you can experience something of your own. You can break out of that shell or whatever
it is.
I
work with kids every summer in this camp that sit with me and tell me they feel
hopeless. They feel like they have
nothing. These are kids that have been
through abuse. These are kids that are
in foster programs that I work with.
They detest themselves, and I’m there to say, “Listen. I’m here because I get that.” My voice resonates with them because it’s the
truth that’s coming from me. And kids
sense that. They know when you’re [being
honest]. They can tell the real
deal. If my voice can resonate that way
with kids, maybe it will resonate through this film as well, and they’ll hear
that little something that I’m giving to them, a performance that says to them,
“I want to try.” It’s all
interconnected. I don’t think it’s
thinking too deeply about it.
That’s
what these movies have always done.
They’ve done it for me and they do it for so many families. It gives you hope. A little bit of hope can
seep into everything, so two hours of hope in a movie can absolutely change
your life. It did. I saw E.T.
I loved that movie. I was never
the same after that. My family suffered
a lot of hardship. We had a lot of dark
moments growing up, but my mom took me to see E.T. We sat on the movie theater stairs right
after because I was so excited to talk about it. We left the theater and sat right on the
stairs. It’s an emotional thing to even
talk about, because talking to my mother there, I know that our connection and
what she gave to me through explaining to me what we just saw, it made me want
to someday create something that would entertain the world. I said, “What is this? Where will this go? Who made this?” And she said, “Well, his name
is Steven Spielberg and he did it.” And
she walked me through it, and I said, “I want to do something that moves the
world.”
Have
you ever had a chance to meet Steven Spielberg during your career?
Cook: I did.
Did
you tell him about that?
Cook: It’s an incredible thing. Yeah.
It’s a pinch me moment because I auditioned for a film of his about
three years ago, for a drama, and I went on tape for his casting director. I got a call from my agent later that
day. He said, “Steve Spielberg wants to
meet you for dinner. He loved what you
did.” I couldn’t believe it. My mother had passed away by this time. Yeah.
I had lost both my parents by that time.
I couldn’t believe I was finally going to get a chance to meet him. It was like sitting on those stairs after
seeing E.T. and saying to myself, “That’s the direction you need to go
in.” And so, the dinner didn’t end up
happening that night. A couple weeks
later, I was at an event and somebody came up and tapped me on the shoulder and
said, “I’m an assistant to Mr. Spielberg and he would like to meet you.” He brought me to his table, and I sat with
him for about a half hour and got to talk about that story, about E.T. and
acting. He’s Steven Spielberg, but the
amount of grace and him bringing me into his world, I was so very appreciative. I took a lot from that conversation. Almost like what he gave me when I was a kid,
he did it again twenty some odd years later as an adult.
…
Do
you have any other projects?
Cook: Oh yes, I have a tour. I’m celebrating 23 years of stand-up comedy
this year, but more importantly, I’m celebrating that it’s 10 years since my
first CD released which truly changed my life.
It gave me a career. Ten years
ago, my fans really gave me a career at that point. And so, I’m doing a new tour in September and
I’m going to film that. For the 10-year
anniversary, I’m releasing a new bit of material, a new hour special. That’s been my focus this year.
…
Do
you still get any anxiety before you go on stage? Is there anything you do to pump up or calm
down to get ready?
Cook: Sometimes it annoys people, but no, I
don’t. I don’t get any anxiety. I don’t because of two reasons. Number one, just breaking through it as a kid
and finally getting past it was like okay, nothing’s ever going to feel that
scary again as that deafening silence of a joke not working. Any joke not working is not as bad as not
being able to even try and get on stage.
And then, I just think, I’m 41 and I keep saying I’m in the Act Two of
my life and my career at the same time.
There are so many great changes.
After you have loss in your life and after you experience something like
losing your parents, the greatest gift of that was it prepared me for
[anything]. Nothing else is as scary,
and certainly stand-up comedy is not as scary as sitting there with your mom
and having to have last conversations and things like that. It’s heavy stuff, but it’s enlightening
because it makes me think I shouldn’t be afraid of sharing ideas and thoughts
with people. It’s the yin and the yang
of life.
Plus
you get to talk about bad Burger King experiences?
Cook: No.
That’s the best part. We’re
talking about it a little more esoteric, but it’s like comedy is still just
supposed to be light. I just want to get
up there and make you forget about things for a little bit. So it’s still as light and I’m having more
fun now than ever as a stand-up comic.
It feels like the beginning all over again.”
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