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By Matt Patches June 3, 2010 |
Jump ahead to...
Michael Keaton on being risky (and why it doesn't always work).
The bromantic Rob Riggle and Damon Wayans Jr. blame an extra for farting.
Adam McKay and Chris Henchy think The Other Guys might be the funny French Connection.
Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg deliver comedy on a silver platter.
Michael Keaton may have been off the map for the last few years, but he seems readily prepared to make sure 2010 is the year movie-going audiences get their Keat-On (he also voices Ken in Toy Story 3). In The Other Guys, Keaton plays Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg's by-the-books captain who doesn't mind taking them down a notch or two - a role that gives Keaton plenty to play with.
Have you ever done a role where you've been allowed to improvise so much or do so much ad-libbing?
Michael Keaton: Well, not this much, no. The first feature film I did, Night Shift, I improvised quite a bit because I would improvise at the audition, so sometimes I would return to the original lines and then when I was on set I would improvise even more. But not to this degree, and also you have to always remember to... well, you don't have to I guess, [laughs] but you try to do it within character and also to stay on story. Here we take exits and go off the road a little bit, but I'm sure that Adam [McKay] will in editing pull back and get it on the road. Because you still have to tell the story.
Did you ever feel like any of this stuff will actually be used?
Michael Keaton: [laughs] Well, you know what, these guys are so good. All these guys are so good. This cast is so unbelievably funny, uniformly funny, that, hell, if you get 11 percent of this stuff, I think that's great. I would think a good deal of it would be used myself.
Has there ever been a moment where you've gone against your instincts and you found it actually did work.
Michael Keaton: Yes, yes, but it's not so much that you go against your instincts, so much as someone, a director, hopefully - as opposed to some guy on the street saying who says, 'you know, I was watching and I thought you f*cked up that one scene terribly' - that will show you something, or tell you something that opens up, and that's the most fun.
Are there any examples you can give of that?
Michael Keaton: Well to some degree, to a large degree I would say Much Ado About Nothing, where [Kenneth Branagh] would see - things for me always work best when someone says, 'OK, yes, if that's what you want to do then, how about this? And how about here? And come back to this thing.' And that happened with Kenneth Branagh on Much Ado, but also what happened was, I, and it turns out a lot of the actors, not just the Americans, had to learn, literally because it was Shakespeare, what does it really mean. What is the interpretation? What is he trying to say? And then whatever spin you want to put on it. And because I took a rather unusual take on the character, Kenneth would occasionally go - so you had to know, 'what does it mean?' This guy knew it inside out, and he'd give you that plus more.
Sometimes in Clean and Sober, [director] Glenn Caron did a few things where I thought I just knew, and I was right on, and he would say, 'no, nuh uh.' And I always want to be the guy who can do the job, I find that a challenge. He was right in several scenes, and I'm sure it's happened other times.
