At the LA press day for the Universal Pictures film, Brand said he wouldn't be surprised if somewhere down the line there's another Aldous Snow film. "This character keeps resurfacing like a corpse abandoned in the Thames," joked Brand. "We will never be free of it, never, unless we tie concrete to his ankles and abandon him in some deeper body of water. I think perhaps it will return again and again. Perhaps it will be like the new James Bond or Sherlock Holmes, constantly played. 16 movies, Basil Rathbone will have a go, Sean Connery. That’s my feeling."
And although this time his character has a couple of serious scenes, Brand said the chance to go dramatic wasn't something he was hunting for. "Actually, no. I assumed that the movie would be comedic throughout. It would be a rip-roaring roller coaster ride of giggles, chuckles, guffaws and laughs. When I arrived on set and suddenly I was expected to do crying and shouting, initially I spoke to my management and said, 'Look, they’re asking me to show genuine emotions. Is that in my contract?' They then said that acting done properly encompasses a whole variety and range of emotions, and by then it was too late. I had agreed to it so I was forced to do it. But in retrospect, I thought I was too serious. When it was going on, I was thinking I just want to be saying things that are funny all the time. I don’t like saying things that are not funny, but then when I watched it, I think it makes me look quite cool and deep. That’s what I was hoping for," revealed Brand.
And Brand's all about getting into the character. "Very method, methodical. What I did was I heard that Daniel Day Lewis went and lived as a cobbler for three months in Italy. I immediately got a job as a plumber in Havana. It went well for a while. I infiltrated Fidel Castro’s secret network of spies," explained Brand. "I’m still working for him now and unless you lot start being a bit more communist, there’s going to be some gunfire, let me tell you."
As Aldous Snow, Brand made quite an impression in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but he didn't feel any pressure continuing the character. "No, I did not feel any pressure at all. I mean, I knew there had to be some continuity because they liked that character and my relationship with Jonah. That’s why this film was being made, so if I said, 'Well, now I see him as a Frenchman,' they would have quarreled with that analysis. So I knew yes, there had to be some continuity, but in a way this is a very distinct and separate film. I think it’s different. Like has already been observed, it has a different sort of gravitas and emotional intensity to it."
"I suppose what I think is this: if you’re a comic actor, like I’m a comic actor, at the beginning of your career you tend to operate from a certain sphere. Let’s say Jim Carrey or whatever, it’s not like after he’d done Ace Ventura and you see The Mask, you don’t think, 'What the hell is going on?'' And Woody Allen or [Richard] Pryor or the comic actors I like, they tend to operate, certainly at first, within a recognizable strata. So I thought, 'Stay in that strata, don’t get out of your depth.' Like say for example I’d taken all my research from Havana and put that into a part, that I’d been sort of a socialist with a glint in his eye, a romantic proper socialist from the good old days of socialism, Kalashnikovs and real change, sexy Che Guevara change, people would’ve said, 'Well, this isn’t appropriate.'"
The Life of a Rock Star
So did he hang out with rock stars to get into character? "I do hang out with some rock stars just because they’re my friends," answered Brand. "Noel Gallagher, he’s one. I’ve hung out with Pete Doherty a bit. Winehouse, she’s my mate. She’s more blues, I suppose. Carl Barat out of the Libertines, he’s a mate of mine and contributes to the soundtrack. So I count some rock stars among my friends.""Noel Gallagher, especially, is a mate of mine and from him I learned this kind of inherent nonchalance that rock stars have. I was so troubled by this nonchalance I took to inquiring as to why it was going on. 'Why are you so nonchalant, Noel?' Then there followed a brief time while I explained the word nonchalant. Not really, Noel Gallagher is a brilliant man and poet, but I did have to explain that word. Then he said, 'It’s because I know that anywhere I go, whatever happens to me, no matter what people say, as long as I’ve got the guitar and the ability to play, people will pay 10 quid to come and see me.' So I thought, 'That’s good.' Aldous Snow is a person that knows that people will pay money if he’s got his gift. Whereas a comedian or whatever, you tend to be more neurotic about stuff like that."
Brand admits that getting to playing Aldous Snow and take to the stage at the Greek Theatre fulfilled one of his childhood fantasies. "Do you know what I did? Say sometimes you’ve got to do a kissing scene with a good looking woman. What I do is I go, 'I’m just gonna kiss her and not even act.' Then it’s free kissing of a woman. So with a rock star, I thought, 'Just be a rock star now.' It’s not like anyone could go, 'Cut, who the hell do you think you are? That was embarrassing.' They’ve got to go with it because it’s the film. So I just completely released a lot of childhood fantasies, although a good many of my other childhood fantasies have been rightly repressed as they are dangerous. They involve a utopia in which there is no money and everyone is topless."
Brand joked that he even took the rock star fantasy far enough to improvise a few raps. "I’d like to add hip hop artist to my ever growing... No, them songs were written by Jason Segel, this fella Mike Viola, Carl Barat out of the Libertines, Jarvis Cocker wrote a couple. So no, I’ve changed the odd words to make it sound more English because sometimes the American writers would use anomalous language. Like 'Bangers, Beans and Mash,' you do not have beans with bangers and mash," said Brand. "You’d get tomato ketchup in the mash, it’d be horrible. Gravy is what you want. So Jason Segal wrote that one, but you cannot criticize Jason Segel for this one minor fault - given that he gave me a career."
