I was at first going, ‘I don’t think so.’ Then they sent me the script and then I was even more like, ‘I don’t think so,’ after I read it. But they said, ‘No, we’re gonna do a re-write. We really want to make the character, we want to make it smarter and funnier.’ When I read the re-write, I laughed out loud. I found myself laughing and said, ‘All right, I’m gonna go have some fun and do this teen movie.'
It really was a kind of fun thing to do. He’s such a conceited, narcissistic character and that was… That’s what I mean. When I read the first draft, I thought it was like not well-conceived. I thought that I could see where the story was. It’s a commercial fun ride. The kids’ll love it but the character wasn’t [well written] and then they said they we’re gonna work on it. And I said, ‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ because that’s happened before. So I still hadn’t committed, and then I read the rewrite and it really had changed a lot. I thought it was funnier. I had fun. I was laughing out loud so all right. This is a comedic turn for me.”
Starring Opposite a Car: “I mean a lot of it was done on, obviously, on green screen. I look over and Herbie’s upside down going alongside me. Yeah, I thought it was fun. There was some funny stuff. I liked doing the scene with the commercial, you know, doing the endorsement. I liked it, the comedic aspects of it.
…I was just down in Puerto Rico for this event for the Water Keepers, it’s an environmental group that Robert Kennedy has. And he’s got like 11 kids and there were all these kids around and I told them that I had to do press for ‘Herbie.’ And all the little kids were like, ‘I want to see Herbie!’ ‘Where’s Herbie?’ My nieces and nephews were all like - they’ve seen me on TV and they can finally see me in a movie where I’m not like a drug addict, alcoholic, having a menage a trois with two high school students…
I didn’t really act opposite Herbie so much as like I just played it the way a guy… I mean we’ve seen people kicking cars before, you know, and imagine if that car kicked back. You know, maybe we wouldn’t. Like why I mentioned to you that I was concerned about the re-write - the script came in and my agent said, 'There’s one scene I don’t think you’re gonna go for.' I said, ‘What’s that?,’ and he said, ‘It’s the scene when you beat up Herbie and then Herbie knocks you out.’ And I read it and I said, ‘That’s the reason I’m doing the movie - because it’s so insane.’
But yeah, it was fun. I mean it was funny…because there was lots of kind of physical humor that I got to play, you know? And the fact that he gets so rattled. I mean, there is something so funny about people… Even though it’s about a car that has these extra powers or it’s alive, people get really nuts around cars. They get angry at cars. They get angry at their car; they get angry at people driving in cars. There’s something really comical about that, about automobiles.”
Matt Dillon on Getting Behind the Wheel of a Racecar: “…I did take one of those stock cars out on the track, out in Irwindale, and you did not want to be in the passenger seat because first you’ve gotta get schooled on it. I don’t get car sick but… Once you’re driving, you don’t feel that at all. [They] really strap you in. That was something that took a little getting used to. I mean you’re really, really strapped in there. It’s a little claustrophobic.”
Matt Dillon on NASCAR Star Jeff Gordon: “I met Jeff Gordon long before that movie. Great guy, really great guy. Unbelievably, I don’t follow NASCAR but that guy’s like Pele or Michael Jordan or something. He wins. He wins, period. And he’s a nice guy. …I think that guy’s amazing and he’s a really nice guy. So in a funny way, Trip Murphy is Jeff Gordon if Jeff Gordon was a conceited idiot.”
On Working with Lindsay Lohan: “Lindsay, I liked her. She’s got a really natural quality and there’s a great kind of energy that she has. I liked working with her. I hope that there’s some kind of like chemistry there, but I really liked working with her.”
PAGE 2: Matt Dillon on Lindsay Lohan and the Press
