“Collider: What’s the last year or two been like for
you, because you’ve really been bouncing back and forth. Obviously with Parks and Recreation, but
you’ve been some solid work on so many other things. What’s it been like, being able to work on
all these different projects?
NICK
OFFERMAN: It’s been incredibly fun. It’s every guy’s dream to be able to do
things like Parks and Rec and Axe Cop and I wrote a book and I get to take my
shirt off and play mediocre songs for college students in my American Ham
show. It’s just been a blast. It’s been somewhat exhausting, so I was just
talking to my sister about how busy I’ve been, and I always make sure to point
out that when I cry my tears, they are tears of the finest scotch.
…
You
obviously are paired with Kathryn in the film.
She is incredibly funny. Are you
really good at keeping a straight face when she’s improv-ing or when people are
improv-ing? Do you have a tough
time? Do you break a lot?
OFFERMAN: No, I’m pretty good at it. I come by it honest. I learned to keep a straight face in the
Catholic church, where the punishment is eternal damnation so a lot was riding
on my ability not to crack a smile.
However, Kathryn and Jason both had moments, and it’s like this on Parks
and Rec too. Ninety percent of the time
I keep a stoic, straight face, but then when somebody really gets me, it feels
really good to cut loose and giggle. Kathryn
Hahn is like a hurricane of comedy, if you can get through seven or eight takes
without busting, I think that’s a fine score.
I
did the press conference in New York with the whole cast but you, and the thing
I discovered was I’ve always been a fan of Jason, but I didn’t realize how good
he is on his feet with improv, because he had the entire room just laughing,
almost on every question. I was blown
away by his humor. What was he like to
work with, in terms of sticking to the script, ad-libbing, and coming up with
better stuff on the spot?
OFFERMAN: He was incredibly admirable to me. I’ve known Jason for a while, and I’ve always
been a big fan of his. He’s obviously
incredibly funny, and his work on SNL is really heroic. It was real exciting to
work with him, and I was only surprised by kind of what you just said: that he’s
even funnier than I could have imagined.
He’s also incredibly smart. He has a great ability to step outside the
actor side of himself and examine the script and the story, and achieve what
we’re going for in a scene, but always be looking for a way to improve things
with improv when he feels it’s appropriate.
I came away with a great deal of admiration, and I kind of feel like I
got an education from Jason working on this film. I had done a lot of studio-sized comedies,
and the attention he paid to the role and the script was elucidating to me.
…
I’m
not sure if Parks and Rec is popular in London, if people watch, but I would
imagine that, with American tourists, how did people react seeing you over
there, with the mustache, in London? Did
anyone react to it, or were you able to anonymous?
OFFERMAN: Parks and Rec had been playing there for
about a year, so they’re into season two on the BBC. There was a pretty good deal of recognition. Ron’s hair and mustache are so iconic. We have our fans there, and all the American
tourists, it made for a lot of recognition on the streets. I think the rest of the population was
strangely intimidated by Ron. They
couldn’t understand why this man would look the way he does, and carrying
himself the way he does, with his pockets full of bacon. It was really just a lot of fun, and the
strange thing was we were shooting on location, and we had some German fans
freak out. It was interesting to see
fans from all over the world who watch the show online. A Japanese woman was flipping out and was
taking pictures with me. She couldn’t
even speak enough English — I was trying to get out of her, “How do you know
the show, because you don’t even speak any English,” but she couldn’t even tell
me. I can only assume she must see with
subtitles or dubbing, but it was really neat to see that we have fans around
the world with modern broadcast systems.
…
You
got to work, at least a little bit, with Terrence Malick on Knight of Cups, if
I’m not mistaken.
OFFERMAN: I did, yes.
Just one glorious day.
OFFERMAN: Oh yeah, absolutely. He famously will cut his lead out of the
movie. The guy who came in and played
for one day, the chance is very slim that we’ll ever see any of it, but I’m an
incredibly big fan of his work, and getting to meet with him and work with him
was such a joy and a treat. By now, you
go in knowing you’re rolling the dice in terms of whether or not you’re going
to appear in the final cut. If it had
come as a surprise, you can get angry about it, but I knew that going in. I just had a lot of fun. He directs like a painter: he looks around at
all of the ingredients and colors that he has and just starts painting, and I
think that continued into the editing room, where he just keeps working on the
painting. He may find that he has that
horse-drawn wagon in the lower left of his painting, and eventually he paints
over it because it doesn’t work in the final cut. Being one small color in his brush stroke was
quite a treat.
One
of the things about Malick is the unorthodox places he’ll put a camera. I’m curious about you working with him that
one day, you noticed the camera might have been aimed at your feet, or it might
have been aimed at a window with you delivering dialogue. Was that what he was doing, or was it more
conventional narrative with your character?
OFFERMAN: No, no, it was very much like that. It was kind of fun. I was playing the role, that in the space of
one day, I was an agent, and Christian Bale’s over-sharing in a lobby, and then
he said, “Okay, maybe now you’re a ghost.”
We sort of continued to improvise and play off the same material we had
been doing. Then I went into a sound
van, and recorded all of my material, because he said, “Maybe I’ll just have
him hear your voice as he’s in this lobby.”
Then he came up with a whole other scenario where we had a writers’
room, and Christian Bale is playing one of the writers, and we just did a huge
session of an improved scene. It’s
really fun. He has a real train of
thought filmmaking, but it’s very creative.
It’s really.
I
have to say, that’s such a different way of making a movie than other people
can get away with it. It has to be
interesting, for all actors involved, because you don’t know what the hell he
made until you see the finished movie.
OFFERMAN: That’s for sure. You have to be a master on the level of
Terrence Malick to get funding and say, “Oh, I don’t know what we’re going to
end up with, but we’re just going to roll the footage. I have a general idea.” His work has been so beautiful and moving,
that everyone is just happy to get a chance.
Terrence makes such a high-end product.
…”
0 Comments:
Post a Comment