Jack Black’s steadily building up a hefty acting resume, mixing a few dramatic roles – such as a lead role in Margot at the Wedding - in with comedy parts. Although he’s definitely known more for his comedic work, audiences are getting used to seeing the actor in dramatic films.
Black gets some interesting offers for dramas but said it’s still mostly comedy that comes his way. “I'm not going to get paid to do drama any time soon,” joked Black. “I do it for the love of the game. In this case it was the director. I really wanted to work with Noah [Baumbach]. I really loved The Squid and the Whale. I'll do some more movies for free if they're good too. I'm warning you, so consider yourself duly warned.”
Black credited a tight script with helping him rein in his comedic instincts for Margot at the Wedding. “I'm not improvising at all in this movie and so that's usually when the comedy wheels will really start spinning, when I start improvising. I had to keep it more real. I always ask myself if this is really how I would behave.”
That tight script included a scene of Black naked. “That was one of the things that when I read I was like, 'Really? F—k! All right, I'll do it anyway, despite that.' I've shown a lot of my ass in movies past, but never the whole ass. Never a drama ass. This was a full moon.” Asked if it piqued his interest in doing future nude scenes in films, Black laughed. “I'm going to be doing pretty much all hardcore pornography. This is a gateway to that.”
Black’s worked alongside big box office stars, and in Margot at the Wedding he shares the screen with Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh. The first day on the Margot at the Wedding set was different than showing up to work with Will Ferrell or Ben Stiller. “When it's a boy's club that can be more relaxing,” revealed Black. “You can have more fun maybe because there's not… But then when there's these incredible actresses that are really beautiful and intimidating, it's fun in a different way.”
Black found Kidman to be personable and open to pretty much any subject. “Like, I tiptoed around the [Stanley] Kubrick thing and she was totally into talking about Kubrick. I didn't talk about anything else spicy.”
Black drew inspiration for his character of an unemployed artist disliked by the sister (Kidman) of the woman he’s engaged to marry (Jason Leigh) from people he’d encountered in life. “He did remind me of a couple of people that I thought about when I was doing it. I mean, I know a lot of people or struggling artists that didn't catch the train, really talented people. You see them around all the time that for one reason or another…and it's easy to imagine myself having not gotten the lucky career that I've had. But when I tried to do it in the voice of specific people I knew, it kind of went flat. I'm better at just being in my own voice and imagining myself in that situation.”
Black could relate to being a frustrated artist. “I wasn't really that successful from a young age,” confessed Black. “I got a part when I was in my twenties, but for the most part I struggled through the twenties. It wasn't until I was thirty that I kind of got my career going. Throughout my twenties I saw all these other people skyrocketing up all around me. So I know how that is.”
“I always wanted to be an actor or a musician,” said Black, “ I wasn't bitter though. I was still young enough. In your twenties you don't have to accomplish anything. I didn't feel that pressure so much. I was just like kind of having fun and if I had to go back and live at my mom's, it wasn't that big of a deal. I didn't think of it as that huge of a failure. If I had to go back there now at 38, then it would be a crushing blow.”
Black recently finished voice work on Kung Fu Panda and will next be seen in Michel Gondry’s crazy comedy, Be Kind Rewind. Gondry’s twisted tale finds Black and Mos Def acting out famous movies after Black accidently erases every videotape in Mos Def’s video store. “I loved doing Ghostbusters, Rush Hour, Driving Miss Daisy, Robocop…”
Yes, Black did dress up and play the part of Robocop. “ Oh, it's all Gondry’s designs,” Black said regarding the Robocop costume. “Basically car fenders for my legs, a blow dryer for the gun and holster. But he's brilliant in many ways and he thought of all of it. My character works in a junkyard and so all of the stuff was kind of built with junkyard parts.”
Only time will tell if Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind will appeal to mass audiences. “It's very, very quirky and funny and it could go over well. It might stay in the art-house world,” said Black. “I don't know. I know that when we were making it we were swinging for the fences and having a really good time. But he's an unusual director with a very unorthodox style. So I try not to spend too much time thinking how broad the appeal will be.”
Why the ‘unorthodox’ label? Black explained, “In the sense of like traditional big budget comedies you're going to have all the shots – you'll cover a scene from all the angles. Over the shoulders. He's not doing that. He has a very interesting way of shooting scenes and not a ton of coverage, and also some things fall to the wayside. Just straight up plot and story are not always the most important thing to him as much as a feeling or an amazing image. Very creative and original doesn't always translate to big box office gold.”
It’s not just acting that’s keeping Black hopping. The actor/musician is also a new dad. “It's very rewarding. A beautiful babe - he's such a handful,” gushed Black. “Sometimes I'm just sort of wishing that I wasn't working so much so that I would have more time to hang with him.”
Despite his workload, Black’s been around for the major milestones. “They say that the first steps are so incredible to see, but they came and I was like, 'Was that a step? It was more like a fall.' But there were some steps on the way to the fall. He's really good at that stuff, and he's been talking for a while, but not really. He doesn't grasp language yet. There's some words in there, but there are no sentences. There's a lot of gibberish. It looks like he's really talking. I can't tell though. It's like, 'Do you think you're saying something or are you just pretending to talk?'”
