Interview: Will Arnett - Arrested Development
Interview with Will Arnett
Star of the TV series Arrested Development.
|
|
Will Arnett was too big for television – and
that’s why Arrested Development
never stood a chance. That’s the story he’ll stick to anyway. Clint
Morris talks to the TVs ‘Gobe’ about his embryonic feature film career.
So
you’ve skyrocketed since Arrested
Development!
Have I?
You
have. I saw your IMDB Pro page – man, you’ve got like ten projects on
the go.
Yeah it’s quite good. It’s been a good time work-wise.
Is it
right to say then that Arrested
Development made your career?
Without
question – there’s no other way to look at it. If my friends were in
charge of movie studios then maybe then I might’ve got some movie
roles, but no, the show made my career.
Everyone
from Arrested
Development has done great though – I mean Jason Bateman’s
back on the big screen! There’s no more Teen Wolf for him!
He’s doing great – he’s hung up the old TW costume for
good! Mike Cera’s doing great, he’s in Superbad which is
supposed to be great…
And I
heard that Ron Howard guy is doing OK too. He’s making ends meet.
Yeah I heard that too. Good on him! Him and his buddy Brian are out
there giving it a go.
Do you
wish Arrested
Development had continued?
Yes and No – and not because I thought I had bigger fish to fry and
wanted to make my move onto the big screen…
That
was David Caruso’s answer.
Yeah. Insert Jade
here. [Laughs]
No, I think it was just that we were constantly on the verge of being
cancelled and at a certain point that starts to eat away at your
psyche. While it actually fed the show – fed the writers, fed the
performers – and the constant underdog mentally makes you wanna show
the world what you can do, that does starts to ware away after a while.
I just never knew where I was going to be and what I was going to be
doing. It became a little difficult. When it did happen… it was quite
deflating.
At
least you got a wrap-up episode. I mean did you see the series finale
of Veronica Mars??
It sucked!
Did it? Really?
Yeah,
it’s not really fair. Thankfully Mitch Hurwitz on our show thought he
knew how to wrap it up and I think he did a pretty good job.
Did you
get a lot of offers to play characters similar to Gobe after the show
ended?
Well
I got offered – and I still do to this day – a lot of jerk roles or
dick roles, or the really dumb guy role. Most of them are just very
broad and they just don’t interest me. I’m not worried about being
stereotyped, I am attracted to characters that are really dumb and
really confident – I love that combination – but I just want to play
those guys in good movies, ya know?
I just played Isla Fisher’s boyfriend in a movie called Hot Rod
– and he is really a dick; in fact he’s probably the most startlingly
dickish character I’ve ever played. I was quite alarmed by that and
said ‘OK, that’s enough of those kinda roles for the meantime – if I’m
just playing a dick, something has to give’. [Laughs]
Speaking
of, I just saw you in Let's
Go to Prison.
Oh
yeah. That film was totally portrayed in the wrong way. It was a little
$4 million dollar movie that was filmed over 5 weeks. It was never
supposed to be a big release and I think Universal, God bless them,
they wanted to release it – they missed the mark there. We missed the
mark too, I guess – we made the movie. What I wanted to do in that
movie was play a guy who this awfully privileged kid, not necessarily
that stupid just kinda clueless, who comes out on the other side of
jail a changed man…. Prison actually makes him a pretty good guy.
That’s what initially attracted me to that. It wasn’t exactly the movie
that we wished it could’ve been.
Speaking
of which, how do you feel about Grindhouse?
You did a voice in that?
I did the trailer for Don’t
– Edgar Wright is a friend and called me up one day and asked whether
I’d do the voice for it. That was fun. To be honest I haven’t seen it
yet…
I
can’t understand how a good, creative movie like that can tank. Maybe
it’s the fact that the thirty-something’s that remember the drive-in
double feature aren’t today’s biggest cinema audience.
No
they’re not and also I think – remember, I don’t know what the fuck I’m
talking about - a lot of reviewers in the states took great pleasure in
taking Harvey Weinstein apart. It didn’t have anything to with the
movie - it’s very personal. That’s unfortunate. I feel for Robert
Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino and really… Harvey Weinstein. Say what you
will about the guy – and people say all sorts of things about him – but
he has managed to turn out interesting movie after interesting movie
over the years. If you look at the movies that he has greenlit,
produced and financed, he has done single-handedly a lot more for
cinema over the last twenty years than a lot of other people.
You’re
producing movies yourself now aren’t you?
Starting
to. That’s just me wanting to have a little more control over what the
final product is. As you’d know, as you go through the process more and
more you want to have a louder voice in the room; right from the
beginning, all the way through. The only way to do that is to half a
little piece of the movie.
One of
them is Space Invader?
Yeah, really looking forward to that. Pretty excited about Space Invader
– it’s a great script; we were pitched it a couple of years ago. It’s
the story of a guy who works for NASA. His girlfriend does too. He’s
fallen out of life a little bit. She ends up going on a mission to
space – international space station – and he’s convinced she’s falling
for the all-American hero up there. He thinks that guy has everything
he doesn’t have – but he does, he just hasn’t realised it yet - So,
he’s gotta get to space to save his relationship. How far will you go
to get your girlfriend back? And also, how the fuck do you get into
space? So it’s a really funny script and it’s one of those
rare
instances where the script is far funnier from the pitch I just gave
you. It's really, really good.
I heard
the pitch for Blades of
Glory was nothing compared to the script, too?
The
pitch gets everyone through the door – even though people groan and
just assume it’s going to be dick and ball jokes – but the script does
the talking. I’m really happy with how Blades
turned out; I think it’s a funny movie and I think there’s a little bit
of something in there for everyone, which isn’t always the case.
How is
working with Will [Ferrell]?
The
greatest. He’s the greatest. He’s the funniest guy. He’s a great
performer. I’ve been a fan of his work for ages. I like his processes
too – he’s really collaborative; he likes to improvise a lot and my
wife Amy [Poehler, who co-starred in the movie] and I like to stuff
around a lot, so it was good. I just finished a movie with Will, about
a month ago, called Semi-Pro.
What
now?
I’ll
say I’m going to take a couple of months off - but my vacation will
probably be me working – and then hopefully we’ll be gearing up to
start making Space
Invader.
We’ve got like three or four things that are about to go and it’s
really a matter of timing. I’ve kept myself open to all of them. As you
know, it’s whoever pulls the trigger first.
Spring Breakdown is
one of yours, right?
Yep,
that’s complete. That’s actually my wife’s movie – I just do a couple
of scenes in it. Its something she did with Rachel Dratch and Parker
Posey. I was out in L.A at the time and Amy asked me to do it for them.
It’s a funny movie. It’s like the movie Old School
for ladies. Ladies aren’t represented enough – especially in comedy;
it’s a male-dominated area. Women are always cast as the eye-rollers
and they’re really underwritten. There are some great performers out
there – like Rachel Dratch and Tina Fey, who Amy’s making a movie with
at the moment in New York – and they’re really funny performers… it’s
unfortunate people don’t write more stuff for them. That’s part of the
reason why Amy’s starting to produce stuff herself. She and Tina also
just did the re-write on the movie they’re doing in New York, so she
gets a little more control there, too, by writing.
And
what about Jeff the
Demon?
It’s
a great script. Originally written by Tom Scharpling and Joe Ventura,
who are back on it after doing a final pass on it, it’s a movie I
really wanna make. It’s a great character. It’s almost like a homage to
great 80s teen movies – like Weird
Science.
It really harkens back to that stuff – but in the best way. It follows
that model. It is a tip of the hat to all those movies but it’s really
good – its super, super, super funny. Every draft I’ve read has made me
laugh – I can’t say that for a lot of scripts. About nine months ago
Mitch Hurwitz from Arrested
Development
came and did a pass on it and they did a great job … on an already
great script, so now, more than ever, its super-tight; super packed
with jokes… it’s one of the funniest scripts I’ve ever read.
I’m all
for someone opening the door on those kind of projects again.
I think the film will be helped a lot by Superbad
– it’s going to go back and revitalize those good teen movies. I think
there’s been a lot of movies that have the veneer of funny but don’t
actually have hard jokes in them. I don’t want to bash any TV shows but
there’s TV shows that people think are so funny but I can’t work out
where the laugh is – there are no hard jokes, I’m always like ‘what’s
funny about that? Give me one example of a funny joke in that!’. Will
Forte and I did a movie called Brothers
Solomon,
that Bob Odenkirk directed, and it’s a super funny script… really hard
jokes. That’s kind of what I want to do now. Lets get funny!
Do you
write?
I don’t write per say but I might help with jokes and so on. I did that
on a film called Friendly
Skies, which I might make, about a flight attendant. It’s
a really funny movie. It’s been a really fun process.
BLADES OF GLORY
is now showing at Cinemas
ARRESTED
DEVELOPMENT SEASON 1-3 is now available on DVD
|
