April 2003 A Mighty Wind : Interviews with Fred Willard and Bob Balaban

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Interviewed by Alberlynne “Abby” Harris A Mighty Wind: Interviews with Fred Willard and Bob Balaban Fred Willard and Bob Balaban are part of Christopher Guest’s latest film, A Mighty Wind, which reunites actors from his previous films, Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show. In an interview with blackfilm.com, the two actors talked about their roles in the film. AAH: Where did you get the hair? FW: I think my wife saw a picture of the rock group Journey and they’re kind of aging, and the one guy had dyed blonde hair with black roots, and I said, ‘I like that idea.’ My idea was to get a little earring, I wanted to have a dangling earring, but Chris vetoed that. It was the idea of a guy who wants to keep current. Someone once said they told a writer friend of theirs who said, ‘Yeah, I’m having trouble getting jobs because I’m over fifty, or over forty.’ And he said, ‘Get an earring.’ When you think about it, it’s a good idea. Suddenly you’re like a pirate, you’re 65 years old and you’ve got an earring, AAH: It worked for Harrison Ford. FW: Yeah. AAH: Did you tell Chris about the earring or did you just show up with it? FW: I showed up and his reaction was like that (shakes head). He toned it down a bit in the movie. It was really blond. Ironically, my wife was the first one to get tired of it. She said, get rid of it. But it started to turn white. AAH: You guys have a lot of scenes by yourselves in the film. Can you talk about performing and improvising in that setting as opposed to playing off of another performer? FW: Let me go first because I had most of the individual scenes. You prepare more for that. I didn’t want, when he says action, to start saying, ‘I don’t know, what should I say?’ So I just wanted to come right out of the barrel. But it’s more fun in a way to do ensemble scenes, where you know your background, you know the scene, but you can’t prepare because someone else is going to say something that is going to lead you off. So I prefer an ensemble scene. But you prepare more; I do for one of those interviews with the camera on your face telling about yourself. BB: I think the things where you’re talking to the camera are really important for the movie because since we don’t rehearse, and some of us think about it, and other times we don’t particularly – they are really the only time in the movie you have to be with your character, so you really use them as preparation in a funny way for everything else. The details you start inventing during them, who you’re like, truthfully most of the scenes in our lives are like, hi, I’m here, what’s going on? You’re participating; you don’t really have a chance to figure out who you are. So even if they cut them, they’re like great acting rehearsals for preparation for being in the rest of the movie I think. And they also give a chance for the characters to reveal things that you would never do in front of the people in your life. But as soon as the camera is on we now know that people are just thrilled to have somebody focusing on you and paying attention to you. AAH: How in depth do you go with Christopher about your characters – do you discuss the backgrounds? BB: You’re allowed to do anything you want. I don’t at all. I don’t know that you do (to Fred). Most of us don’t do too much. If we have an idea you could say, ‘Would you mind if,’ but now by number three I think we sort of – mostly it’s what affects other people. If my history is a certain thing that everybody knows, and is going to have to know about, then you have to agree on common stuff. If it’s just you, you could do anything. AAH: I was thinking about you and your brother and sister – was there more of that in the movie, that was very funny and I wanted to know more. BB: There is generally more of everything in the movie. AAH: Did you realize that you had a more diverse background and that your brother left? BB: No. You only need to know if you would be denying it to someone. You can’t be there in a movie saying, ‘I don’t have a brother.’ Oh no, you actually do have a brother. That’s the fun of it, the stuff that you find out during these scenes is so exciting and the fact that you’ve never talked about it, you have complete permission to do stuff. I want all acting to be like that. That’s the goal when you’ve got a script, you read it, learned it, and now forget it and pretend that you’ve never heard any of this stuff, only we don’t have to pretend we never heard of it before. AAH: Isn’t it the basic rule of improv to go with the flow? FW: With me he’s told me what my character is and then I take it and I might change it just a little. Like in this movie he said I owned a comedy club, so I turned him into an ex-standup comic who owned a comedy club. In the last movie Best in Show he actually sent me the tape of the Westminster Dog Show and he said, ‘Listen to Joe Gargiola, he hasn’t really taken any effort to learn about the dog show,’ which really helped me because I listened to that and I just hooked right into that character and expanded it. AAH: Do you think you are in any way responsible for him no longer doing the show? FW: I hope not. He did two more years on it. The only criticism I heard of the dog show was from Joe Gargiola. Like the woman who runs it loved the movie, all the people who show dogs. He said, ‘I think it’s supposed to be funny, but I know a lot of these dog owners,’ he didn’t want to say he didn’t like what I did about him, ‘these dog owners aren’t that crazy, they are all decent people,’ blah, blah, blah. I’ve never met him, I admire him greatly because he was a big league ballplayer which is what I wanted to be and he’s had a great career. I hope I don’t run into him some day and he goes, ‘Come here. Let’s go in the other room.’ AAH: In the previous films your characters have been pretty straight, very quiet – I didn’t think so this time, your character seemed to be a little more outrageous, and had his own problems. BB: I think that having been around a few times before I tried to take a half a page from Fred’s book. And I didn’t realize that during the shooting at one point there were certain things that if my character didn’t prepare for them it would actually be unreal. If you’re talking to 1800 people in an audience and introducing a show, you’d better plan something, because your character would have planned something. I’m happy to be out there drowning, but my character isn’t supposed to be doing it. I suddenly realized, you’re not breaking any rules to plan something. And in other things you don’t plan anything if you don’t want to, and I did tend to do that. I’m glad to hear that I’m somewhat different, I didn’t consciously think of doing that but I also had the wonderful opportunity of being around a number of days. The more days I’m there, I start feeling more comfortable and more at ease and know more things, and then I have a chance to interact with different people in different ways. Christopher scoops out your six best things and puts them in the movie, so there was more stuff to choose from probably this time. AAH: The flower thing cracked me up, did they take you in there and there was that arrangement and you just did that? BB: We had a day of me torturing that poor Michael Hitchcock. Some of the things they do say things, like Fred said, you come from here and this is what you’re talking about. This just said, ‘Bob and Michael’ and it said, ‘flowers,’ and then it would say, ‘on the stage,’ and then we had the food preparation scene where I was especially offensive, but I don’t think that’s in the movie. Literally, we had been together for 8 hours by the time he hit me on the head. I had no idea he was going to do that. It’s so funny, I did have a Freudian slip during it, which is in no way did I mean to call the scenery furniture, but I did. Then Chris said, ‘Say that thing about furniture again,’ and I said what? I was completely embarrassed because it made me look so stupid, but my character would have done that. AAH: Does working on projects like this spoil you for other projects where you have to read a script? FW: I guess it does. I don’t think about it. It’s like two completely separate things. I never compare it. It’s such a pleasure to work in these movies, it’s almost like it’s not really happening. I just worked in the movie American Pie 3, and you’re there at 6:30 in the morning, and you have your sides and you’re in your trailer, you block and you rehearse, it’s almost like two different – I never say, ‘This isn’t how we did it in A Mighty Wind.’ So I never think of it that way. AAH: Who are you playing in Pie 2? FW: I play the father of the bride opposite Eugene, who plays the father of the groom. So that was kind of nice. And Jennifer Coolidge has a scene. It’s like the difference between a basketball game and a baseball game. I never really compare it – do you? BB: I direct sometimes and you start feeling looser about certain things, like if it’s interesting why don’t we go in that direction? Although, truthfully, most things that you’re involved with you must say every word exactly as it’s written. And then there are other situations when you can say whatever you want to. I was in Gosford Park, which I also produced, and at one point we had a very nicely written script and Julian Fellowes, who is a friend of mine who wrote it, and he did a beautiful job. At one point Robert Altman said, ‘You know, since he’s American and Julian’s a British person,’ - I was the only person who was supposed to be speaking American-like, Bob said, “We’re just going to do some telephone calls now, just say whatever you want.” I’m sure that if I weren’t used to doing these kinds of things I would have – for it was like, ‘Oh, good, now I know what we’re doing.’ That I can do. Don’t tell me anything and I can do that. FW: Ever since these movies, a few of the jobs I’ve got which I know come directly from these – the producer or the director will say, “Listen, this speech, if you don’t want to say this, say whatever you want to, which is nice but it’s kind of scary because you weren’t there from the beginning, and a lot of times you have the tendency to go off – BB: And you’re not supposed to be telling jokes anyway. That’s the point of these things. It might end up being funny but you didn’t necessarily do it for that. AAH: What films? FW: Well, American Pie that I just did, directed by Jesse Dylan, Bob Dylan’s son who’s a wonderful director and a really great guy, but he just counted on me a lot to say things, which is fine – in several TV shows I’ve done, I’m trying to think of what – just say something here, we need something funnier here. AAH: You’re not supposed to be doing jokes when you’re in front of the camera, but your character says funny things – how much thought did you give to those beforehand? FW: In this last movie I gave it quite a lot of thought to my character and I fell back on a lot of managers and agents that I’ve had, and my early New York days where comics would sit around a table doing jokes and the managers would have jokes, and so I based it on a lot of that. And I did a lot of preparation, I didn’t want to come in and when he said, ‘Roll ‘em,’ just say, ‘Now what do I say?’ So I prepared a lot for those characters. AAH: You don’t necessarily write it down and memorize it? FW: Oh no, no, no, no. AAH: You have a great ensemble cast, but you don’t work that much together – Best in Show was a couple of years ago. BB: But I’ve worked with many of the people in this in between even in things that you didn’t see. I developed a television series last year and cast – you won’t see it because it didn’t get picked up – but I cast five people from this movie. It’s probably not something I should do too frequently if I want ever to appear in them again. But it was fantastic and we had such a good time, and I have this little sidebar thing where occasionally I produce these little animated things, and I’m always calling on some of the people to do these voices. We end up seeing each other. AAH: I guess my question is when you do a film like Best in Show and then this movie a couple of years later, is it hard to go back into doing improv? BB: No, you have to remember that for us who are used to drop and pick up all the time in our lives, there is no time between. If I worked with somebody 7 years ago and then we’re doing another movie, I must have been in that movie last year. I don’t feel that there’s time passing. You feel it when you look at yourself in the mirror, but I don’t sense it. I can remember every moment of Waiting for Guffman, everything anybody said or did, or what we ate for dinner. And I’ve been on movies for ten months and I don’t even remember who directed them sometimes. If you’re having a good time, time stops basically. AAH: Out of the members of your cast, who are the ones whose skills you really admire? FW: Someone I’ve always admired is Catherine O’Hara, and I realized in Best in Show the scene where they tell her and her husband, Eugene, they have to sleep in the mob room, and she says, ‘Where’s the washroom?’ and he says, ‘Go down to the lobby,’ and the look on her face, suddenly it just brightens a little and I thought that was just so wonderful. I think she’s one of the best actresses in the country, not only comedy. I just think she’s just a step aside from everybody, she’s just wonderful. I just admire everybody and sit in awe and watch them and say, ‘How do they do this?’ BB: You stop thinking of them; I do during it, as different people in a funny way. You just notice that everybody is on this wonderful level and then every once in awhile and it can happen with anybody, a little piece of spark catches fire and somebody goes off, and you just sit there waiting for it to happen. It infects everybody else, I’ve talked about this before, it happens with Eugene Levy, we were (doing a scene of) the press conference and we were all saying very dry things, it wasn’t anything much, nothing had to happen except we had a press conference. And we had to do it many times, usually we don’t do it too often, but because there were 10 of us there and the audience was big – and Eugene had said the exact same thing over and over and over again, he didn’t memorize it, it was just what his character was doing. Then all of a sudden, I don’t know where it happened – it was like take 9 or something – he just started going on this thing, and I can’t tell you what it was. It was just – that’s the most fascinating thing I ever heard. It was funny and weird and went on and on and then it was over and he didn’t do it again in the next take. It’s just this pleasure of knowing that any of us, or any of them, could at any moment do something – it’s a drug basically, that’s what we wait for in our lives is for a mistake to happen or for a surprise to happen, because it is divine intervention. It really is. When he does those things, he may plan certain things but when it’s happening in front of somebody else, we know – if you’ve sort of been around a long time, you can tell the difference between the real thing and almost the real thing. We never get to see the real thing much in our lives, no matter what you see when you see the movie. What we’re there seeing it’s like (?), ‘The real thing just happened right now.’ You can’t believe that you’ve been invited to see that. And it doesn’t happen every time. It’s never bad, and then every once in awhile it’s like oh my God, it’s like a great musician – isn’t it jazz basically? And I didn’t even mention Christopher Guest, because you kind of expect to be overwhelmed by him. He was very flamboyant in Guffman, then the guy with the nuts, now musically, you just take it for granted, so what else is new? AAH: Is there an idea for the next film yet? FW: He says he doesn’t have an idea. I call him every once in awhile with ideas and he’s very polite, I just hope he includes me in it.