Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with one of my many interviews from Sundance. Already posted was Jack Black and Michel Gondry and in the works we have Ari Gold, Adrian Grenier, Brian Cox, Mischa Barton, Sam Rockwell, Chuck Palahniuk, Clark Gregg and Anjelica Huston. Today I have Colin Hanks for you. I met Colin when I was out in New Zealand watching the filming of KING KONG. We actually met when the very first Bush/Kerry debate was televised and all the American crew, cast and visitors were in one small room watching intently. There were quite a few choice vulgarities directed at Bush and more than a couple of them came from Colin's mouth. As the filming went on, I came to find that Colin was a true blue geek and a big AICN reader. Matter of fact, when I showed up for the interview he looked at my Roland Edirol digital audio recorder and said, "Sound-o-text, right?" So, that coupled with a "Greetings program" welcome tell me that Hanks really is one of us. We talk a lot about THE GREAT BUCK HOWARD, his film playing Sundance, and a little at the end about an interesting sounding documentary Hanks is going to direct. Enjoy the read!
Colin Hanks: Well, this is loud.
Quint: This work?
Colin Hanks: Yeah, no that will work fine. That is some high tech technology, man.
Quint: I know, isn’t that sweet?
Colin Hanks: That’s why I dropped the TRON reference man… you know technology. (laughs)
Quint: Yeah, considering that at the beginning of last year I was still on the old tape recorder with a mini-cassette, I’m a technological marvel. I don’t know if you saw the Sundance preview, but Rav is really looking forward to UNTRACEABLE.
Colin Hanks: (laughs) I saw that. I’m glad. I mean, I hope he likes it. It’s, I think, the way the movie in a strange way really works, so I mean I hope people like it. You know I hope they get some sort of scares. With thrillers I can never really tell…
Quint: Yeah, well that’s all in the editing and sound.
Colin Hanks: I can never tell, but I saw the movie and I liked it. I thought it was pretty good, yeah, so thanks for throwing up a preview for it. That’s nice of you.
Quint: He was so upset that there wasn’t a press screening before Sundance. That’s like his most anticipated movie of the year.
Colin Hanks: Well, I hope I don’t disappoint him.
[Both Laugh]
Quint: Cool, so I guess we should start at the beginning. How did you get attached to the project? I think you were talking about it at KONG, way back when.
Colin Hanks: Yeah, I was. In fact, I read this in 2003, way before KONG or any of that and I read it and absolutely fell in love with it and instantly pretty much called Sean [McGinly] and said “Hey I’d really like to meet with you about this and talk to you about it if you would take a meeting,” and I met with Sean and we sort of got to know each other and we talked a bit and we kind of hit it off. Then that sort of started about a year and a half to two year process to trying to secure financing for the movie. This isn’t a message movie. It’s not a dramatic movie. It’s just supposed to be a delight and it’s kind of hard to get people to pony up money for something that’s just delightful and without a Buck it’s sort of really hard to do, so what we ended up doing is someone suggested PLAYTONE and you know I’m not really ever keen to put anyone at PLAYTONE in an uncomfortable position or anything like that, but it did sort of strike me as something they would make, so I sent it their way. They liked it, which was great and then they helped us from there and then we had some sudden stops here and there in terms of financing and other Bucks, but we have been able to… I’m really happy with the way the movie turned out. I’m really proud of it and really glad that we got John Malkovich doing something that I don’t think he has really done before, so I’m really happy with it and at the end I think it’s still a very delightful little movie.
Quint: So Malkovich, I assume that when he came on that’s when everything kid of locked into place?
Colin Hanks: Yeah. Once we got Malkovich, then it all went from there. That’s when it started to take off, both financially-wise, but then also once we got him and once he had done all of his wig work and costumes, really the movie just sort of ended up taking on a much bigger life of it’s own and to be honest a lot of the funniest moments in this movie is all John improving. He’s one talented man, that’s for sure.
Quint: It seemed at the Q and A yesterday that he’s kind of a crack-up type, which is great because you always assume that, but then he’s also such a serious actor, too.
CLICK IT HERE TO READ ALONG WITH THE NEXT BIT IN AMAZING SOUND-O-TEXT!
Colin Hanks: He’s probably one of the most versatile men I’ve ever met, you know? Because he can do the serious thing, in this movie he’s very funny, but he can talk about anything. I would be sitting off there to the side and all of a sudden I would hear John say “Well you know I must admit I’ve had both, but I do prefer the White Castle Sliders over In & Out, although In & Out makes a very good burger,” and you are just like… I can’t believe…
Quint: You had the In & Out debate with John Malkovich.
Colin Hanks: Yeah, with John Malkovich… “Well, I know Artest is one of the best defensive basketball players of our time…” I’m like “Oh my god. I thought we were just going to be talking about Moliere and stuff like that, this is amazing…”
Quint: Like you would be going over method and talking about Brando…
Colin Hanks: Yeah.
Quint: That’s awesome. Did you have much input in the casting, since you were on so early?
Colin Hanks: Not so much input, but Sean was nice enough to include me at the table. Obviously I was pretty involved with finding a Valerie, because that’s sort of very important.
Quint: For the chemistry?
Colin Hanks: Yeah, because it’s tricky and we are very lucky with Ms. Blunt, because her character is only in the second act and while the second act is always the longest act, that’s only part of your movie and so we really needed that to really pop out, because that could have otherwise had been a sort of generic inserted sort of character. But the little things like George Takei, that I’m going to take full credit for that. I got George Takei, because it was a very tricky thing. It was originally supposed to be another member of the original STAR TREK who will remain nameless and we had him and then we had Buck making the “May the force be with you” joke, and I really didn’t want to lose that joke…. I really didn’t want to lose that joke, it’s like the geeky boy in me like “you got to have that joke, because it shows just how clueless Buck is” and so I said “Well, what about George Takei?”
Quint: He even messes up the reference.
Colin Hanks: Which is even better, too.
Quint: “May the force be in you!”
Colin Hanks: It’s a little subversive humor if you would.
Quint: I love how he always calls it “THE STAR TREK.”
Colin Hanks: “THE STAR TREK,” and in fact in one take he had actually said… when you first meet Buck, he actually says “Who is perhaps best known for his portrayal of THE Sulu on THE STAR TREK…” Which I loved, but I guess you really only needed one.
[Both Laugh]
Quint: You don’t want to over do it. One of the big talking points is that you got your dad to actually play your dad in the movie, but I love seeing that in the movies. I love it when Martin Sheen plays Emilio Estevez’s dad or the Douglas’s when they do it… It gives a realism, because you can have the stuff like the family pictures at the beginning with everything working out. Was that always thought of for that or was that…?
CLICK IT HERE TO READ ALONG WITH THE NEXT BIT IN AMAZING SOUND-O-TEXT!
Colin Hanks: No, it’s really strange how sort of organically it just kind of happened. Once Playtone got involved and we would have these conversations about who would be who… and I had no intention of asking him to be in the movie at all, he just sort of volunteered. I think I said this at the Q &A, I think solely that we could capture the argument that we never had. (laughs) With that I just said “Yeah, of course. I’m not going to turn him down; I think that would be great.” For me personally, I’m glad that it’s just two scenes, because I really wanted those… if we were going to do it, I wanted it to be kind of special and I didn’t want it to be a huge thing, like… I didn’t want it to be a WALL STREET kind of thing or something like that where it’s all a string of a bunch of scenes, so I was happy that we were just able to have two… the before and after…
Quint: You don’t want it to feel like a gimmick, like that’s the gimmick of the movie.
Colin Hanks: Exactly, and you know this is one of the things that I’m sort of very on, is that I don’t want that to be… I understand that is going to be a main point for a lot of people, I totally get that, but I really don’t want people to get the impression that he is in all of the movie and it’s sort of hard to maintain that, it’s sort of hard to say “Oh no, he’s kind of only in two scenes… they’re good scenes, but don’t…” I think the last Golden Globes that was televised, that was his “and next seen in THE GREAT BUCK HOWARD…” I was like “Oh no! The whole world is going to expect him to be in this movie and he’s only in two scenes.”
Quint: I remember when the trades hit with it…
Colin Hanks: That was a big deal, yeah.
Quint: I remember I was updating then, so I was like “Oh, that’s interesting.” When you see it in that context, you know, it didn’t say “small role” or “bit role,” it was just…
Colin Hanks: And it’s fine, you know. People will talk about it and that’s cool, I just want to try and lower… not lower their expectations, that might be the wrong phrase, but at least temper them a little bit.
Quint: Not expect a starring big role. “This is my movie.”
Colin Hanks: Exactly. It’s not a “father-son road pic.”
Quint: You have the assistant niche covered now with KONG and this movie…
Colin Hanks: Yeah, I know.
Quint: So what’s next?
Colin Hanks: Well, I sure would love to do something that involves a character that’s a little bit more confident, that’s for sure, but yeah I mean after this with the assistants and then wanting to be a writer, I’ve sort of created the rules “no more writers; no more assistant roles.” There are a couple of things that might be going on this year that I’m sort of looking forward too that I really hope happen. I’m going to direct a documentary which is really cool.
Quint: That is cool.
Colin Hanks: It’s still very early on in the process, so I can’t really talk about it, which is a shame, because it’s all I want to talk about.
Quint: “Feel good” or “depressing” or…
Colin Hanks: More of a sort of fascinating… it pretty much involves the demise of the music industry and a specific person/entity within that music industry that I think encapsulates all the mistakes that were made, but then there’s also just an amazing story, so I’m going to start work on that, which probably means that I’ll get a whole bunch of other jobs and I’ll be very busy this year, which is a good thing, I’ll take it.
[Someone comes up and mentions that time is almost up]
Quint: I think that’s about it.
Colin Hanks: It was nice seeing you and thank you so much for covering the movie.
There you have it. I have a few more interviews still in the works. Stay tuned! -Quint quint@aintitcool.com
