The original cast - including Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet, and Natasha Henstridge - reunite for another wild mob comedy ride. This time around, Jimmy 'The Tulip' Tudeski (Willis) is living the quiet life, enjoying retirement in sunny Mexico. Jimmy's days of perfecting his culinary skills are interrupted when Oz (Perry) barges in and begs him to help rescue his kidnapped wife (Henstridge). Hot on Oz's tail are mob boss Lazlo Gogolak (Kevin Pollak) and his gang of hit men, eager to settle an old score now that he's out of jail on parole.
INTERVIEW WITH BRUCE WILLIS AND MATTHEW PERRY:
Did they get the sequel idea from a press junket for the first movie?
MATTHEW PERRY: I don't know if it’s the press junket. But the reason we are here doing it again is we all like the ensemble cast, and we all had such a blast doing the movie. Then everybody watched it and it had this great shelf life on DVD and all that stuff. I don't know that it was the press junket.
What’s the connection between your characters and chickens – “Friends,” “Hudson Hawk?”
MATTHEW PERRY: Chickens are funny.
BRUCE WILLIS: Contractually, every five years, I have to do a film. It’s for the chicken related audience, the poultry industry.
Are you domesticated at home, Bruce?
BRUCE WILLIS: The point is to be kidding. That was Matthew’s idea that we switch roles, and me be this kind of ‘domesticated doesn’t want to kill people anymore’ guy, and Matthew would be the tough guy who had to heroically save the day.
MATTHEW PERRY: One of those worked. We decided early on that me being the heroic guy wasn’t funny, so we dropped that out.
Why?
MATTHEW PERRY: It just wasn’t that funny. One of the great things about the first movie was that I was scared of everything. I was scared of him and I was scared of all that stuff. So in the opening table read, we had the idea of making me kind of this Clint Eastwood guy in the beginning and him being this Martha Stewart kind of person. We had to drop half of that out.
Do you two have similar takes on comedy?
BRUCE WILLIS: I think that we understand timing. For me, I can attribute that to two things. To the sixth, seventh and eighth grade when I was entertaining my class, all through high school actually. And the other thing is from working with TV. When you work on TV every day, your goal is to try to make people laugh and be funny. You become adept at paying attention to where the joke falls. How long to hold a take. It’s an exercise every time and that’s all we do. We just fool around on the set and try to get it to where it just looks natural and sounds natural. It’s like “The Three Stooges,” it really is.
Were you the class clown?
BRUCE WILLIS: If I had my yearbook here, I would show you right now. I was a class clown in 1976.
Who came up with the idea to wear bunny slippers and cook?
BRUCE WILLIS: Well, that was just the start of it. That was all just part of Jimmy’s plan. My character, Jimmy Tudeski, has got this plan that is the most arcane, Byzantine goofball plan that, with a really great script written by George Gallo, also Matthew’s idea, that just all we wanted to do was try to make each other laugh.
Would you ever wear the slippers?
BRUCE WILLIS: Those bunny slippers? I have a pair right now.
How domesticated are you?
BRUCE WILLIS: Quite domesticated. I can cook. I’m tidy.
MATTHEW PERRY: You are tidy. That’s what we should next is “The Odd Couple III.”
BRUCE WILLIS: I’m thinking road pictures. I’m thinking Matthew Perry/Bruce Willis road pictures.
What do you cook?
BRUCE WILLIS: I make lasagna, I make chicken cacciatore. Actually, my chicken cacciatore would make you start crying. It’s so good. The chicken falls off the bone.
How do you stay comic when you’re pointing guns at women seriously?
BRUCE WILLIS: Isn’t that the joke? I was just trying to play a guy that nobody knew what was going on with him, that was capable of anything at any time and it evolved, just like the first film did. We did the first film on our feet the same way every day and in between takes going, “Okay, how about you try this? Why don’t we try this?” There’s a shorthand of comedy that happens because we, first of all, everybody gets along so well. And we did work together on the first film and kind of moved through that one. It’s fun. It’s fun to do it as a job. It’s fun to have a job where you’re just trying to be funny.
PAGE 2: Keeping Comedy Fresh, "Friends," and Another "Die Hard?"
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Interview with Natasha Henstridge and Kevin Pollak
"The Whole Ten Yards" Photo Gallery
"The Whole Ten Yards" Credits and Trailer
