When casting the role of Phil, unemployed dad and co-founder of the day care center, the filmmakers were looking for an actor to complement Eddie Murphy's style. "We immediately saw there was a great balance of energy between Jeff and Eddie. Eddie's more the enthusiast, the manic one, whereas Jeff is more the realist, the down-to-earth one," explains producer Wyck Godfrey.
What's the difference in working with a comedian like Eddie Murphy as opposed to Larry David?
There is no difference between working with the two. A genius is a genius and they both are geniuses. I don't like saying that word, and I think it's way overused, but they are both geniuses. They are both very normal guys who happen to be comedic geniuses. I went into the movie thinking Eddie would be funny, but he was hysterical. He was beyond anything that I could have possibly imagined. He's just funny.
He and I would go wherever the other one took each other when the camera was on. He didn't lead me any special way, like "Come here, we'll do this,"-type of thing. If we improvised on a take he didn't negate anything that I said. He went with it, and vice-versa. If he went somewhere, I went with him, too. It was great fun.
We did the script as written. I learned that when you do a big movie with a big budget, they expect you to do the script. You can't just improvise every take; you can't do that. But they will let you improvise as long as you get one or two takes that are exactly like the script. They ended up using a lot of our improv stuff.
How was working with kid actors?
These kids, and most of the kids I've worked with, were pretty great. Every once in a while you get kids who are very children's theatre-y. They are very precocious. A lot of times you see kids at auditions - because they haven't been filtered out yet - and you are like, "Stay away from me. I don't want to be anywhere near you." The children that they hired were wonderful. I can't even think of one of them that misbehaved or was more precocious. They were great kids, just really sweet, and fun to work with.
And you got to sing with "Cheap Trick."
Singing with "Cheap Trick" was really a dream. That was unbelievable. What was really unbelievable was the next night. They said, "Tomorrow night we are performing at the House of Blues in Anaheim. Do you want to come sing 'Surrender' with us?" I said, "Oh yeah." It was sold out, it was packed, and at first they were like, "Who is the fat guy with 'Cheap Trick?'" Then I really got into it like the performance I did in the movie. I was jumping all around and they went nuts. It was like, "I want to be a rock star," except for the fact that I don't really have any musical talent and can't sing. Other then that, I'd be a great rock star.
How'd you accomplish your guitar scenes?
I took guitar lessons as well as [having] a thing in my ear. I could hear myself sing so I sang along with myself, and strummed the guitar with myself. I'm just pretending to play the chords; they don't match anything I'm playing. There's nothing you see on screen where I'm actually playing it or that it even matches chord-wise. I wasn't even playing chords; I was just moving my fingers so I don't look like an idiot.
Did you decide to do this film as a way of distancing yourself from "Curb Your Enthusiasm?"
It was actually kind of funny. If this movie comes out and it's a big hit, I probably won't be able to go anywhere because all of the people who will go see this movie, I guarantee, are not the kind of people who watch "Curb Your Enthusiasm." It's like this whole world of hipsters, and then kids and their parents.
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