Jack Black stars in the whimsical comedy, Be Kind Rewind. He plays a man who is magnetised after breaking into a power plant and accidentally erases every single video in his best friend’s store – with extraordinary repercussions. The two pals set out to make their own home made versions of iconic films, from Driving Miss Daisy to 2001: A Space Odyssey, with no money and no expertise – a process dubbed sweding. Amazingly the new versions of the classics become huge hits with the locals. Danny Glover, Mos Def and Mia Farrow also star in the movie.
Directed by Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), Be Kind Rewind is released on February 22.
Here Jack, 38, discusses making the film, working with Mos Def and Mia Farrow, fatherhood and when his band Tenacious D will release their next album.
Q: What was it about the script and the film that you found so appealing?
A: “I had taken a meeting or two with Michel Gondry (director) 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. Then he called me and said he had an idea for a movie. I went over to his hotel and he had made a homemade 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’ve presented me with a turd on a stick and I would have said ‘let’s make that into a movie’, because I am such an admirer of his work.”
Q: When did you become a fan of his work?
A: “I got turned onto 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. It was one of the best movies I had ever seen, I guess because it resonated on a different level.
Q: What is the movie all about – is there a theme?
A: “For me, this is just a celebration of creativity. If it is saying something about the industry, it's that anyone can make a movie. Even though movies seem brilliant often when you watch them, it’s not impossible to make them yourself.
Q: What was it like working with Mos Def?
A: “Mos Def was great to work with. We shared a sense of humour and a passion for music. He is a fellow musician and works at his own pace. No one is going to rush him into a characterisation; he lets the character breath and is very real. I learned a lot from him. He’s very much a method actor, he wants it all to be grounded and that was good for me since I am so crazy with explosive energy and I think we complimented each other nicely. I am kind of surprised we never wrote any songs together or anything, that's the only regret, we didn't have more time to jam, that would have been cool if we had started a band.”
Q: What about Mia Farrow?
A: “Well she’s legendary. She told us so many great stories and she was so free talking about her life. I never felt weird or strange asking questions, because she was happy to talk. She had great stories about Frank Sinatra and Salvador Dali; what a crazy life she has had. I kept thinking ‘are you lying? Are you fibbing?’ But I don’t think she was.”
Q: Did you have an imaginative mind as a child?
A: “I sweded The Million Dollar Man endlessly, I was bionic all the time. 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 would think I was bionic, because my logic was that I was trying to hide my bionics from them.
Q: What was it like recreating those legendary films that you ‘swede’ in the movie?
A: “It was really good fun recreating them because Michel asked us not to re-watch any of the old films. I had not seen some of them at all. I said ‘I have to watch Driving Miss Daisy once so I can recreate it.’ He said ‘No (French accent) no you have seen zee commercials, you know basically what eet eez’. That is not a very good imitation of him. But he was right, I kinda knew that Jessica Tandy was a grumpy bitch and that Morgan Freeman was teaching her some lessons somehow, so we just winged it and he (Michel) liked that, because then your foggy memories of the film you are repeating make something now something fresh - which is a lot more interesting than recreating a movie, shot for shot. The characters didn’t have time to go back and research so why would we? That was also the logic.
Q: What was your favourite sweded film?
A: “I loved doing Robocop. That was a dream come true for me; I love that genre, sci fi/ action, that’s what I loved as a kid. I loved Terminator, the naked Schwarzenegger standing up slowly.”
Q: Did you think about sweding your own movies?
A: “We did do a version of the old King Kong, but that doesn't really count. 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 (Danny Glover’s movie).”
Q: Do you think of yourself as a character actor or as a lead actor?
A: “I've been getting mostly lead offers recently, but I feel like a character actor. I just finished a military film with Ben Stiller where I am a character in an ensemble cast, it was fun to go back to that.”
Q: Were there any funny moments you can recall?
A: “Well I remember Mos playing piano in between takes and I would go ‘wow that’s a groovy jam, I wish I could think of some lyrics for it’. We could’ve been a really good band.”
Q: Are you planning more albums and tours with your band, Tenacious D?
A: “We’re going to do more, we have been trying to write, but the songs are so stupid. We're not ready; we need a couple more years I think. I'm thinking that 2012 will be the year when we release of our next album. We've got one good song, that’s it and I’m not gonna tell you what it's about – because I'm afraid someone's gonna steal it.”
Q: Have your movie choices and roles changed since becoming a parent?
A: “I was gonna make ‘Babykiller 5000’, it’s 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, 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.”
Q: Is fatherhood fun?
A: “Yeah it has been really fun, my 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 5am today and I handed her our son and said (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, and the problem is, I love to play video games late at night and I stay up too late. Anyway my boy is very, very cute. And it’s not just because he’s my son that I’m saying it.”
Q: How much work and perseverance did it take to get to where you are now – with great roles in interesting films, was it a struggle?
A: “I’ve worked in film since 1991. I did Bob Roberts with Tim Robbins; I had a lot of small parts that tided me over until the year 2000 when I did High Fidelity. Before that, there were nine years when I was just treading water, and going back and living at my mom’s house rather than getting a real job. Just hoping, waiting, trying. But once I got High Fidelity things were pretty good. I don't live at my mom's anymore. I’m sure she appreciates that. She still keeps my room ready, just in case! So if Be Kind Rewind is a total flop, I can go back to her house.”
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