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, a job he despised.
“I saved him,” Christensen says, and Hvam
doesn’t disagree. The duo made over 50
episodes of sitcom
Langt fra Las Vegas
(
Far
from Las Vegas
), which revelled in finding
humour in awkward and unpleasant sexual
situations – not the behaviour you’d expect
from hosts of family quiz shows. “I used
Deal or No Deal
to get money, power and
fame,” explains Christensen. “And I used
that money and power to have the freedom
to do what I wanted.”
The next thing he wanted was
Klovn
,
something entirely different, both for
the pair and for Danish TV. The episodes’
plots are planned in some detail, but the
individual scenes are improvised. The duo
admits US sitcom
Curb Your Enthusiasm
and its semi-improvised scenes are a huge
influence. Like Larry David in
Curb
, the
comedians play exaggerated versions of
themselves, playfully subverting public
perceptions (Casper the ladykiller, Frank
the nerd) and creating excruciatingly
embarrassing comedy in the process.
“
Klovn
is about being male and 40,”
says Christensen. “They shouldn’t have
any problems in the world. They have
money, wives, good lives, but they create
problems for themselves.” After six seasons
on the small screen, they decided to make
a movie. “We left behind the little stories
and wrote a big story with an emotional
core,” says Hvam, whose on-screen persona
invites his girlfriend’s nephew (a brilliant
performance by young actor Marcuz Jess
Petersen) on a male-bonding road trip
in some places. “In Norse countries whole
families watch
Klovn
together.”
“Except for the Swedes,” Christensen
adds. “They’re smarter, more beautiful,
more ethically correct than anybody else.”
While promoting the film in the United
States, the first time the duo had worked
outside Scandinavia – “It felt like starting
over,” Christensen recalls, “we loved not
being famous” – they noticed jokes about
homosexuality and abortion caused greater
offence than in Denmark. Perhaps it’s not
so much American conservatism as it is a
confrontational streak in Danish comedy.
After all, when Lars von Trier, whose
Zentropa production company made
Klovn
, was thrown out of the 2011 Cannes
Film Festival for saying he could relate
to Adolf Hitler, he said the problem was
a fan in Danny McBride, writer and star
of sitcom
Eastbound & Down
. McBride is
now remaking
Klovn
for US audiences. The
pair have had a fewmeetings with him and
they’re confident he’ll do a great job with
the film, although it’s out of their hands.
McBride isn’t the only big-name
comedian to have discovered
Klovn
. Sacha
Baron Cohen loved the film and reportedly
flew to Denmark to hire the pair to write
the script for his upcoming movie,
The
Lesbian
. “It’s based on the true story of a
Chinese businessman who offered US$65m
[NOK398m] to any man who could marry his
lesbian daughter,” says Christensen. “Which
poses a challenge because how do you make
that a happy ending? It’s obviously difficult
to convert a lesbian and at the same time we
want somebody to get the money.”
The pair say they won’t change their
writing style even though it’s a Paramount
movie with a big budget. They had no
interest in writing a movie for somebody
else but say they couldn’t refuse an offer
from Baron Cohen. Other than that, they’re
giving little away.
The interview ends with beer on the
balcony and then more beer in the park.
As a game of boules gets underway,
Christensen is master of ceremonies,
cracking jokes, rolling balls and being the
life of the party. There’s sun, beer and good
company – it’s the most beautiful day in
Copenhagen, and Christensen and Hvam
are enjoying themselves.
If this were a movie, something dreadful
would be about to happen.
casperchristensen.com, frankhvam.dk
with Casper to prove that he’s responsible
enough to be a father. He isn’t, obviously,
and Casper’s determination to turn the
trip into the “Tour de Pussy” in spite of the
girlfriend at home and the child in the back
seat, leads to innumerable genital jokes
and inevitable, entirely deserved disgrace.
“We had kids of 10 and old ladies of 80
asking us for autographs at screenings
in Denmark and Norway,” says Hvam,
suggesting that setting new lows for gross-
out depravity isn’t necessarily a turn-off
“We don’t intentionally try
to provoke people”
international journalists not getting his
Danish sense of humour.
“We never understand the problem with
what Lars did because it’s obviously a joke
and nobody got hurt,” says Christensen.
“Danes are certainly hard people to
offend,” adds Hvam. “But we don’t
intentionally try to provoke people. We just
do whatever we find funny.”
Their sense of humour may occasionally
get lost in translation, but
Klovn
has earned
a cult following in the US nevertheless – and
n
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