Page 2
Ben Stiller Does a Cameo: “He would stick to the script,” said Heder, “but he would add a few little things every now and then and was very funny. It was hard. I mean, my favorite part was just the end when we have that awkward moment together, just kind of looking at each other. And just dealing with all those cats... You never notice in the movies. They had a lot [of cats on the set]. I can’t remember – there were like 30, at least. It was dirty. It was just a gross set. I mean I love cats, but these were dirty cats. They were everywhere.”
To make matters worse, Heder’s allergic to cats. “I am. But I have two of them, so I can hold up if I don’t touch them too much.”
Behind the Scenes of the Paintball Sequence: “Reading the script it was one of my favorite scenes because it took me right back to in high school my friends and I would not, you know, where you go to the park and do it but we would do it full on guerilla-style in his backyard. I lived in Oregon so he had like huge forests and stuff and we’d go around shooting each other, so that was very reminiscent of messing around. I remember my dad served in Germany during the Gulf War as a doctor, and when he came back he brought back from Germany these paint guns and we were like the first ones in our group of friends who had them. Basically it was the exact same thing. We just wanted to shoot each other. No one had any protective [gear]. We were shooting each other on the leg and really close to the crouch. I was like, ‘You’re crazy - let me get away!’ It was almost the same thing.”
Heder revealed his co-stars don’t have the best aim when it comes to shooting paintball guns. “It was kind of my fault. We had protective gear but I felt like a robot and I could barely move so I kept taking it off. But all they had to do was shoot me in the crouch and Matt Walsh, who was the main guy doing it, was right next to me. Every time he’d be like pow! right in the chest. I’m like, ‘How hard is it to hit me?’ And even when they had to shoot me they’d miss and they’d hit the inside of my leg and it would sting. I had a couple of good welts, but they were battle wounds and I felt like a Klingon.”
Jon Heder Shows Off His Tennis Skills in School for Scoundrels: Well, sort of… He and the rest of his onscreen tennis partners played between takes but when the camera was turned on, they all lost their ability to hit any balls. “It was fun because Jacinda likes to play. I mean Sarah [Silverman’s] really good, too. Sarah and Jacinda and I would actually play. Jacinda and I still have not finished our match. We started one and we were tied. I’m better than her but she would always luck out for some reason or I’d get too aggressive. We haven’t finished. It was a lot of fun just playing. Anytime I get to do the physical stuff, I love to do that. It was a lot of fun to do because we were all there and I got to hit Billy Bob with the racket in the back of the head. It was a fake racket, but still, hitting him nonetheless...”
Heder’s happy with the way the scene looks on the big screen. “You forget what it was like shooting it. It pulls you into the moment. I mean, when you hit someone with that final swoosh, that was really good. Except I was like, ‘Wow, Roger’s a really good aim.’ I was trying to hit real balls in the beginning when [Billy Bob Thornton] was standing up front. It’s hard. I pegged him in the back for real quite a couple of times but he was cool about it.”
Up Next – Blades of Glory: “I play opposite Will Ferrell and we are both Olympian figure skaters who have to skate together because they’re kicked out. They get in a fight - because they’re competing - they get in a fight, they get kicked out and get banned from men’s singles. The only way they get back in is through pair skating. Nobody else will take them so they pair skate together.”
Pairs skating is usually one girl and one guy, but not in Blades of Glory. “Well, they don’t pretend, no. I’m going to be more the girl character because I’m lighter. He does the lifting. They skate together.” And according to Heder, he and Ferrell have some serious skills. “We have some pretty spectacular moments.”
Heder and Ferrell do a lot of their own skating, but neither actor became proficient enough in the sport to tackle the more difficult moves. “We knew that all the fancy stuff was going to be doubled, but we tried to get as good as we could. I love it. It’s a really fun thing to do. Each day on set I just got gradually better and better so by the end of shooting I was like, ‘Can we go back and re-shoot my skating, because I can do it better now?’”
What’s the Status of Napoleon Dynamite 2: Heder’s used to answering this question. “Everybody talks about it; nobody ever shuts up about it. But, yeah, we’ve talked about it but nothing’s really happening. Honestly, I wouldn’t be opposed to doing it if you had all the same people working on it. But I think it’s just that we’re so busy doing other things it’s like we haven’t gotten around to it.”
