Blessed with boyish good looks and unerring comedic timing, Paul Rudd is one of the most reliably funny actors working today - and yet it feels like he's taken for granted. Perhaps people are waiting for him to land that perfect romantic lead or play a Depression-era drunk who raises a discarded litter of kittens. Maybe it's because what he does seems so effortless. Regardless, Rudd is the goddamn goods. Respect must be paid.
And sometimes the movies are good enough to deserve him. This is certainly the case with David Wain's WANDERLUST, a very funny film about a couple (Rudd and Jennifer Aniston) forced to give up their dream New York City apartment (i.e. a super-cramped studio in the West Village) when their income gets completely zapped. Unable to provide for themselves, the duo hit the road and wind up in Elysium, a commune where people are free to follow their bliss. It's a great unburdening at first, but once the concept of free love is introduced, they begin to question their commitment to the "intentional community".
Working once again with his pals Wain and Ken Marino, Rudd is completely at ease as a white collar type disillusioned with the ruthless corporate world. It's a slightly more frantic character for Rudd, closer to kind of nervous underdogs Jack Lemmon used to play in his prime. There's also a little George Segal to what Rudd does, but he's more classically handsome than either of those guys. I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say I truly believe Rudd has all the tools to be one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. Watching him deftly banter with Aniston in some of WANDERLUST's early scenes, I couldn't help but wonder what Rudd might be able to do in a Coen brothers movie - besides win an Oscar.
When I interviewed Rudd at last week's WANDERLUST junket in Los Angeles, I tried to professionally convey my admiration for his work while also conducting a serious interview. I'm pretty sure I failed miserably. Fortunately, Rudd is as witty as he is onscreen, and incredibly insightful about his career and his craft. He also knows a lot about Elvin Bishop, which, in this day and age, must be commended.
Mr. Beaks: How are you holding up?
Paul Rudd: I'm kind of tired.
Beaks: You guys had a premiere last night.
Rudd: Yeah. I've never done that before.
Beaks: I've talked to people on the morning after their premiere. Very lively. Not that I'm implying you're hungover...
Rudd: I'm not hungover. I'm just generally tired. But I'm always generally tired. I don't remember the last time I really had energy.
Beaks: We're getting old.
Rudd: Yeah.
(Pause)
Beaks: So let's start on that dour note.
Rudd: Yes, let's talk about our mortality. How are your bowel movements these days?
Beaks: Frequent.
Rudd: Good. So your bran intake is excellent.
Beaks: I think so. (Laughs) I should probably be more mindful of my time. So... in talking to Ken and David, I've noted that this film feels like a riff on LOST IN AMERICA.
Rudd: Which is one of the greatest movies of all time, I think.
Beaks: And you've been thrust into the Albert Brooks role. But this is tailor-made for you. Even when you're being asked to do some outlandish stuff, you seem incredibly comfortable in this role.
Rudd: I've worked with David so much. He's one of my best friends. As is Ken, who I've also worked with many times. David's got a very specific sensibility, and I love it. The challenge is sometimes trying to marry that with a movie people want to finance. (Laughs) And trying to find a happy medium, where it's like, "This works in a mainstream way, but isn't some banal, shitty comedy." In a way, I'd be more comfortable if we were doing something for nothing, and it was just super weird. That I'm really comfortable with. Trying to make it work on a larger scale is a little harder. I've also worked with Judd a lot, but Judd and David had never really worked together.
Beaks: About seven years ago, it felt like there were still separate comedy groups. There was the Apatow camp and The State camp and so on. Now it's just one incestuous glob of funny people.
Rudd: I always say that the Venn Diagram has turned into one brown circle. Everyone kind of knew each other back then, but Judd's turned into, like, the mayor of Comedyland.
Beaks: Do you have a sense of where you fit in there?
Rudd: I think a lot of people are just friends. You want to do something, and you ask your friends to do it [with you]. I'm happy to be friends with both of them, and have been able to work with both of them. And the styles in which David and Judd have worked are always morphing and changing. Something like WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER was pretty tightly scripted. And then Judd's influence on so many other people, of how to actually shoot these things, has not only affected other directors, but other actors as well. I tend to like to go into scenes not knowing what's going to happen. I liked that back in the WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER days, too, but that wasn't the norm. It's always evolving, and probably will continue to.
Beaks: But it seems like everyone is making comedies like Judd now.
Rudd: Yeah, and some of what has helped that is the change from film to digital. It doesn't cost as much. Judd has always shot that way. When we shot THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN and KNOCKED UP, we where shooting on film, and he burned through film way more than I'd seen anyone do. But now that it doesn't cost that much because it isn't film, you can let the cameras go longer. So now people are willing to say, "Alright, now that we've got what was scripted, let's play around and see what we can come up with." It's just not as cost prohibitive. And I've worked so many times with guys like Seth Rogan, Joe LoTruglio and Jason Segel... it's now established that this kind of fucking around is the way we like to work with each other.
Beaks: Do you ever miss just going in with a set script and knowing nothing is going to change?
Rudd: (Laughs) Believe it or not, I do! And I still do that. But it's weird. There are so many things I'd like to do, but over the last several years I've primarily been doing this. It's been years since I've done a play, and I haven't had a substantial dramatic role in a while. I would like to do more of that now than maybe I wanted to a couple of years ago. But I just like this way of working. I like the spontaneity. I think that if you know what you're trying to accomplish in the scene, and what information needs to get across, I think it can be a liberating, creatively fulfilling way of working. It's not like I'm trying to do a Christopher Guest movie every single time. When you do a play, you don't do that at all - and I love it! I guess this is a really long-winded way of saying each thing is specific, and I would approach it differently depending on what it is.
Beaks: You have a very particular persona and style of delivery, and, at the risk of kissing your ass...
Rudd: No, kiss away! It'll prepare me for the day to get ripped apart by the other journalists!
Beaks: It's just that you've been performing at a very high level for some time now, but, honestly, I think you get taken for granted. Do you ever feel that way? And do you ever feel limited?
Rudd: You know, as a kid, when I would listen to people interviewing actors on TV, they'd always say, "Why did you choose this part next?" And I remember thinking back then, "Did they really choose? Who really gets to choose what they do next?"
Beaks: But you do get to choose on some level, right?
Rudd: I don't get to choose as much as you think. There are things that I'd like to do that people wouldn't think of me for, or I'm not an A-list [star]. It could also be a studio I haven't worked with before. The other thing, too, is I don't know if I strategize in the way that I should, where it's like, "Okay, I've done this. Here's one where I play the everyman who gets fucked over and is trying to navigate his way through it, so I should look for the serial killer role next. I should really shake it up!" That's probably smart, but I don't think I've ever been wired that way. I'm just like, "That was a fucking blast. Oh cool! I'm doing another one with all my friends! This is fun!" I mean, it's not that I'll just take whatever job comes next. I'm actually pretty particular. But I want the experience to be fun.
It's a fun job. We're all fortunate to be able to do this for a living, and the experience of making a movie should be a blast. I happen to find making comedies more fun than making intense dramas, because I get to work with really funny people. There's also a lack of pretension that comes with it that I kind of like. My favorite kinds of comedies and movies are the ones that don't work 100%. I like movies where you're like, "That sure had some misfires." (Laughs) It just feels more honest and genuine. You know what I mean? Movies that aren't impressed with themselves. And god knows I've been in movies with some misfires. But you hope for the best each time. There have only been a couple of things where I did something because I needed to pay rent. But most of my career has been doing the things I like, that have some integrity for me. And they don't always work out.
Beaks: It's interesting you say that, because you were in a recently in a comedy that didn't work all the way through, but I still loved - which is HOW DO YOU KNOW. It's very sweet and genuine, and has several amazing scenes that only James Brooks could pull off.
Rudd: Well, thank you for saying that. It was an amazing experience for sure to work with those people. But I look at movies like MACGRUBER or HOT ROD... I saw them in the theater, and I went crazy. I just think they're such funny movies. And I love that spirit of "Hey, we think this is funny." They take really big swings, and it's really funny and endearing.
Beaks: Speaking of really big swings, your mirror scene in this movie is...
Rudd: Gross.
Beaks: Amazing. I could've watched an hour of that.
Rudd: (Laughing) Well, there probably is an hour version of it.
Beaks: David said you did that on the first day of shooting?
Rudd: Yeah, that was our first day.
Beaks: How was that set up, how were you directed, and, in going that far, did you ever feel like you were losing your mind?
Rudd: I'd worked with some of the crew before, so they knew what to expect. But the majority of them were like, "What the fuck is this?" They were looking at their pages of what we were supposed to shoot that day, and none of that's in it. In the script that David and Ken wrote - which is hilarious - they have Justin saying, "I just made love to your wife. She has an exquisite pussy." (Laughs) The script to this movie was way more subversive. And the only thing that was scripted [for the mirror scene] was, "My wife has an exquisite pussy? I have an exquisite erection. Would you like to see my erection selection?" But that all got cut out. So now when you see me say, "You have an exquisite pussy," you're like, "What!?!? Where did that come from?" And then it just developed into this whole thing about my dick, and it just seemed... I don't know, stupid. And that was the second scene we shot. The first scene was me sitting on the toilet taking a shit. I was like, "Man, we're really hitting the ground running here! We're not easing into anything!" And then Jordan [Peele] comes in, and he starts making up this thing about "The Sioux Indians believe that when a fece leaves a man..." When he started talking about the singular of feces, I couldn't get through the scene. I just started laughing my head off. So to go from the "fece" to my dick, I think people were like, "What are we shooting?"
Beaks: I also loved the bit in the car where you're singing "Black Water" and "Jesus Is Just Alright".
Rudd: That was another thing where we had so many ideas. There's a scene where we bought fireworks. But, yeah, we were always singing Doobie Brothers songs; we brought one CD with us, and it was The Doobie Brothers Greatest Hits. (Laughs)
Beaks: So David and Michael are writing their WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER sequel. Have you caught wind of what it's about?
Rudd: They've been pretty tight lipped. I know that for years we've talked about it, but they really are legitimately thinking about stuff and writing. I'm a huge fan of both of them, and I love it when they write stuff together. I love STELLA. I don't know what it's going to be, but it'll be weird.
Beaks: Where do you think your character is?
Rudd: I have no idea. But here's the thing: will it be later, or will it be the first day of camp where we're all ten years older? We were all ten years too old to play those parts anyway, which is part of what was so great about it. But there's something great about a forty-year-old playing a seventeen-year-old. But I legitimately have no clue what they're doing.
Beaks: I'm not fishing. I'm just curious as to whether you've thought about what your character is doing ten years later.
Rudd: Well, they did this thing at the end, and it got edited down a little, where we all meet ten years later. It's briefly at the end of the movie, but we shot a lot more of it. I just remember Andy worked for the city, but you didn't know in what capacity. He's also getting money from the city because he got part of his toe cut off. He also had a perm. He looked like Mickey Thomas from Jefferson Starship. I remember I had a mustache and curly hair. (Laughs) It's Mickey Thomas, right?
Beaks: Pretty sure. [Beaks note: It is.]
Rudd: I just know that Mickey Thomas actually sang "Fooled Around and Fell in Love," and Elvin Bishop, who gets credit for that song, only played keyboards.
Beaks: I did not know that!
Rudd: Well, now you and your readers know. I can't wait to get on the site and see what Elvin Bishop comments come in.
Beaks: There is a vociferous Elvin Bishop contingent there in the talk backs.
Rudd: That's true. And isn't Elvin Bishop performing at Butt-Numb-A-Thon this year?
Beaks: Well, that was supposed to be a surprise and you just kind of blew it.
Rudd: Goddamn it. That was uncool of me.
Beaks: It's actually going to be an Elvin Bishop-themed year. All movies with Elvin Bishop songs. So that'll be BOOGIE NIGHTS and...
Rudd: That's it.
Beaks: Pretty much.
Rudd: God, I hope Elvin Bishop is still with us. Otherwise this might be tasteless.
I can happily confirm that Elvin Bishop is sixty-nine years old and still rocking.
WANDERLUST is in theaters now. Get out and see Paul Rudd talk about his dick in this seriously funny movie.
Faithfully submitted,
