Jack Rewinds to Star in DIY Movies
By Rob Driscoll
AS A child, Hollywood funnyman-to-be Jack Black’s vivid imagination had him "starring" in his own, home-made movies – without a camera in sight.
"In my mind, I was pretending to be the bionic man – and I guess I was making my own version of The Six Million Dollar Man," recalls the 38-year-oldstar of High Fidelity, School of Rock, King Kong and Nacho Libre.
"I put wires up my sleeve, and I wanted the wires just to peek out a little bit, so that if any kids noticed my wires, I would say, ‘It’s nothing, it’s nothing!’ They’d think I was bionic, because my logic was that I was trying to hide my bionics from them.
"All kids love to pretend to be different characters and recreate scenes from comic books, movies and TV, so that’s a natural thing. The only thing was, I didn’t have a camera, so I didn’t videotape myself doing anything."
That heart-warming world of innocent, low-budget make believe is now back in Jack Black’s world, though this time around, a sizeable audience can share it. For in his latest movie, Be Kind Rewind, Black can be seen dreaming up his home-made, ultra-cheap versions of famous movies – only this time, he actually gets to make them.
This is the latest film from cult, French visionary director Michel Gondry, who won an Oscar for the screenplay of his chattering classes hit Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – and Be Kind Rewind is as quirky, off-the-wall and original as you could hope to expect.
Black stars as Jerry, a man who is magnetised after breaking into a power plant (don’t ask) and accidentally erases every single video in the local rental store Be Kind Rewind minded by his best friend Mike (Mos Def). Faced with livid customers wanting to hire more movies, plus an imminently returning proprietor (Danny Glover), Jerry and Mike set about recreating the most-requested films with a camcorder, assorted friends and neighbours, and a backyard full of junk.
Among their resultant DIY masterpieces are Ghostbusters, Driving Miss Daisy, Robocop, Rush Hour 2 and even 2001: A Space Odyssey. They call the process "sweding" – for no clear reason other than adubious excuse to customers that these "special" films are being imported from Sweden. To their astonishment, the "sweded" films are big hits with the locals – but inevitably, their extraordinary adventures in cut-rate movie-making have dramatic repercussions.
For Black, the chance to work with director Gondry was one he grabbed enthusiastically; in fact, he agreed to the project without even reading a script. "I had taken a meeting or two with Michel before he talked about Be Kind Rewind, because I wanted to tell him how big a fan I was, and that I really wanted to work with him on something," says Black. "Then he called me and said he had an idea for a movie.
"I went over to his hotel, and he had done a home-made comic book with crayon drawings of the characters and the video store, and he had written a few lines of dialogue and the basic story.
"It looked like really good fun. So I did not have a script – I just said yes to his comic book.
"No one had ever presented a movie to me like that before, it was very original. But he could have presented me with a sausage on a stick, really, and I would have said ‘Let’s make that into a movie’, because I am such an admirer of his work."
Black was already a major fan of Gondry’s work as a music video director. "I initially got turned on to him through Bjork’s music video, and then I got his collection of music videos on DVD- and then, of course, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was the film that really blew my mind," says Black.
"It was one of the best movies I had ever seen, I guess because it resonated on a different level. It gave me the kind of feeling of ‘all we are is dust in thewind…. Life is so fragile and always slipping away, the hourglass of time’. No one had captured that idea so beautifully before."
Black’s natural penchant for spontaneous lunacy and running on the hoof with the craziest of ideas meant he relished making the mini movies within the movie of Be Kind Rewind – often on an extremely tight schedule. "It was really good fun recreating them because Michel (Gondry) asked us specifically not to re-watch any of the old films," says Black.
"I had not seen some of them at all. I said to Michel, ‘I have to watch Driving Miss Daisy once, so that I can recreate it.’ He said (Black adopts a French accent), ‘No, no, you have seen zee commercials, you know basically what eet eez!’
"But he was right, I kind of knew that Jessica Tandy was a grumpy bitch and that Morgan Freeman was teaching her some lessons somehow, so we just winged it and Michel liked that, because through your foggy memories of the film you are making something ‘now’, something fresh – which is a lot more interesting than recreating a movie, shot for shot."
Black’s favourite film to "swede" was Robocop. "That was a dream come true for me," he laughs. "I love that genre, sci-fi and action – that’s what I loved as a kid. I loved The Terminator too."
Would he have contemplated "sweding" some of his own movies? "Well, we did do a version of the old King Kong, but that doesn’t really count," smiles Black. "No, that would have been strange to do my movies. It would have been a joke within a joke. It would have taken people out of the movie and been distracting.
"That’s why we didn’t do Lethal Weapon, because it stars Danny Glover – and he plays the boss of the Be Kind, Rewind video store."
It’s no surprise that it’s music that initially drew Santa Monicaborn Black to the talents of Michel Gondry. For alongside Black’s successful big-screen career as a comedy actor, there’s also his other day job – Tenacious D, the spoof band he formed in the late 1990s with fellow musician/ comedian Kyle Gass, which found its way onto the big screen in Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny, in 2006.
Black’s first big movie break was appearing in 1992′s political satire Bob Roberts, as the guitar playing fan of the eponymous singer-cum-activist played by Tim Robbins. Since then he’s appeared in a string of music-related movies, from High Fidelity (as a superior record shop assistant) to School of Rock (as a down-at- heel heavy metaller who tutors a class of kids and turns them into a prize-winning rock band).
He now even has a musical wife, the cellist Tanya Haden. They have a 20-month-old son, Samuel, and are expecting their second child later this year. Black is clearly relishing fatherhood. "It has been really fun," he says, his face literally lighting up. "Our son gets up so early though, he wakes up at five in the morning.
"Right now, my wife is mad, because I got up at 5amtoday, and I handed her our son and said (he affects a sleepy voice), ‘I gotta work today, you take your son and I’ll make it up to you tomorrow,’ and then I went back to sleep.
" And that doesn’t go over well, I have to do better. The problem is, I love to play video games late at night and I stay up too late. When I’m working on a movie, though, there are no late-night games because I’ve got to wake up at 5 am to go to work."
It looks like Black will have to get used to lots of early mornings, as career-wise, he’s at a veritable peak. Next week he plays a rare straight role in the drama Margot at the Wedding, co- starring Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh; for Black, such "unexpected" roles that go against his wacky comedy guy image are more than welcome.
"I like to step outside my expected vibe," he says. "And my Mom loved The Holiday!"
The upcoming animation feature Kung Fu Panda, with Black voicing the titular kick-boxing animal hero, might suggest he’s changing his target audience since becoming a parent, though he insists there is no specific game plan.
"I was going to make Baby killer 5000, a futuristic robot holocaust film! No, seriously, nothing has changed. Not at all. If I were a tough action dude like Steven Seagal, then it would be a dilemma, or if I was working on a movie where I had to break someone’s arm … backwards. If that’s what I did for a living, then maybe I would have to rethink my career. But luckily I don’t."
Be Kind Rewind is on general release. Margot at the Wedding is released next Friday
(c) 2008 Western Mail. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.