Most people know Craig Robinson as a funnyman, who also has a gift for song, piano playing and general smooth-talking. He’s featured as “Grits” in the new film SAUSAGE PARTY and joined the cast of “Mr. Robot” this season, all after an astonishing run as Darryl Philbin on “The Office.” But with his latest work, MORRIS FROM AMERICA, Robinson shows us a side and depth to his acting abilities that have not truly been tapped into until now. He plays a grieving widower and father to 13-year-old Morris (Markees Christmas) in the latest from writer-director Chad Hartigan (THIS IS MARTIN BONNER).
The pair have moved from the United States to Germany, where Robinson’s Curtis has gotten a job as a soccer coach, and both are having trouble adjusted and making new friends, partly because of the language barrier and part because they just aren’t ready to let in anyone new after the death of Curtis’s wife. Morris attempts to be more outgoing by honing his rapping skills, while Curtis struggles to play both father and mother to this growing kid. It’s a touching, funny, and perfectly awkward film, and it’s easily the best on-screening work of Robinson’s career. I had a chance to sit down with Chicago native Craig Robinson and filmmaker Chad Hartigan back in May before the Chicago premiere of MORRIS FROM AMERICA at the Chicago Critics Film Festival, which I help program. Please enjoy…
Capone: Chad, someone probably told you that MARTIN BONNER played at our first festival, and we all loved that movie so much.
Chad Hartigan: I’m so sad I couldn’t come.
Capone: That movie was a deliberately paced, straight-forward film, which was completely appropriate for that character, whereas with this film, the energy is certainly ramped up. Have we stumbled upon your directing style? Do you adapt the feel of the film to whomever the lead character is?
CH: Yeah, exactly. I think because I write the movies too, I can only really get excited about the investment of time if it feels like something I haven't done before. And also, by the time I get through the cycle of making a MARTIN BONNER, which is the direct result of the influence of movies I loved at the time, I started a hunger for something else, and the movies that I’m watching are different, and the music I’m listening to is different, and that informs the next thing that I go into. Yeah, it’s got to come from the POV of the protagonist, I think. The style and the energy and the camera aesthetic—all that stuff.
Capone: What films were you watching that informed this one?
CH: The main influence, one of my favorite movies is A SWEDISH LOVE STORY by Roy Anderson. But then also TOMBOY and GIRLHOOD by Celine Sciamma. I love both of those. GEORGE WASHINGTON by David Gordon Green. There was I think a Norwegian movie called TURN ME ON, DAMMIT! These are all these European coming-of-age films that I loved, but I wanted to mix what I loved about them with what I love about American comedies, and that’s what MORRIS FROM AMERICA is.
Capone: I wish Curtis was my dad, because he is the best dad. Even the way he disciplines Morris is perfect. When you first read this script, what was it specifically about him that you just said, “I want to do this. I can build on this. I can do this.”
Craig Robinson: I felt how much he loved his son. I saw in the dichotomy of him being a disciplinarian and his friend, and it’s like I saw my parents. They’re coming tonight, so I hope they can see it. But the vernacular spoke to me, his dialogue, the way he talks, and I was like “That’s how I talk, especially with the cursing.” And the hip-hop.
Capone: It seems like it was written for you, even though I know it wasn’t. But it really feels like it was.
CR: The more we do festivals, the more I realized how important the Curtis character’s casting was. I went “Oh, alright.” Even just seeing the poster, I’m like “I didn’t know I was going to be on the posters.”
[Everyone laughs]
Capone: Your name is like right up there above the title. I guess maybe with HOT TUB TIME MACHINE, you had that too, but that was an ensemble. This is you and him, that’s it. And he seems a Mini-Me version of you; there’s something similar about the way you talk and his reactions to things. Did you guys get to spend some time together where he could watch you?
CR: No, no. I think it’s a mutual respect for, number one, our silliness, because he’s got these incredibly funny videos on YouTube, and he’s a fan of my work, and he’s just a cool kid. It was easy. Our chemistry was…I know I felt comfortable with him, and Chad knew exactly how to guide us.
CH: I think what also played a factor was, Craig came about like three weeks into the shoot, and for those three weeks, it was just Markees and these German kids, and they weren’t mean to him or anything, but they just didn’t speak a lot of English, and there wasn’t like a big camaraderie between them, and I think Markees felt a little bit like he didn’t have someone to really hang out with until Craig came. Then there was like this flood of like comfort, and he just let himself loose, and the chemistry was helped by that.
Capone: You have a couple really great monologues here. There’s one where you’re talking about the two of you being a team. I love that idea that in order to survive both the loss of your wife and being these fish out of water in a foreign land that you have to be a team. Then of course the speech you have in the car about going to Germany for the first time to find your future wife. People are going to cry their eyes out when they see that. Talk about the importance of that team dynamic.
CR: I need him to be responsible, I need him to grow up, but I also need him to be a child. That is being sensitive to “Hey man, you can’t be winding up in Frankfort, please.” But also Curtis is figuring out that he’s got to lead by example. He’s telling his kid to go out there, know people, have some fun, and he’s just going to work and coming home. He discovers that about himself. “Okay, let me go out there. I’m telling him to make friends, let me make some friends.” It’s awkward, but you know…
Capone: That’s a tough balance as a parent to say, “I’m going to give you more responsibility than a lot of kids your age, but at the same time, you’re also a kid.”
CH: I think in the writing, Morris was always the main character, and I knew that, but I tried to imagine, what if any other character was the star of the movie, what would that movie be? And put as much of it in this movie as possible. So for the Curtis character, it dawned on me about how there are so many movies about kids going through puberty, but how that must affect the parent, because one day you have a kid and the next day you have an adult and it’s like “What the fuck just happened?” If this movie were about Curtis, I think it would be about that. How does he transition from that moment, especially with no other help and no other guidance? That’s what I really tried to make his arc be. That’s what the dynamic between them was hooked on.
Capone: I know you talked about these YouTube videos that Markees made. Is that how you found him? Did he still have to come in and audition to see if he could actually act?
CH: Yeah. We were having auditions and went through a casting director, and none of the real professional kids were that good, so some friends of mine were like check out these YouTube videos, because they had seen them at this comedy event in LA called Channel 101, and I watched them. They’re very broad. I don’t know if you’ve seen them, but Markees is like dressed up in fake beards; he’s playing his own father. They’re like SNL sketches, kind of. You wouldn’t watch it and be like, “There’s the next Robert De Niro.” But there was something about him where he’s very natural and comfortable.
CR: He’s having so much fun.
CH: Exactly. So I had to try and contact him through the YouTube channel and be like, “Can someone bring this kid in?” And try not to seem creepy.
Capone: Did you write his raps in this, or did he come up with that?
CH: I wrote the bad raps [laughs]. “Fucking all the bitches two at a time” I really wrote when I was 12, and that’s something I pulled from my own life. But then in the end when he raps well, we hired a real rapper to write that for us. We’re going to campaign for best original song for “Fucking all the Bitches.”
Capone: I was about to say, it would qualify, right? Send it to all the Academy members. Craig, was this the toughest, most fulfilling acting gig you’ve ever had?
CR: This is definitely the most meat, as far as drama goes. That monologue was like, “I’ve got to get it. I’ve got to do this right.” I was trying to not put too much pressure on myself and keep it natural, and all the while, I took the time to learn it, which was hard. I’m still figuring out how people learn long-ass monologues.
[Everybody laughs]
CR: But it was definitely, definitely rewarding, especially with the reactions Andit was nice to be in Germany, it was nice to make this movie, and then it’s got some reactions that were like icing on the cake.
CH: It didn’t look hard.
CR: That’s what she said.
[Everybody laughs]
CH: I never got the impression that it was tough for you. I think it’s the perfect kind of role because it’s a bit more dramatic, but it’s within what you are well known for. You’re not a teacher dying of AIDS teaching “Hamlet”…
CR: Not tough in that sense.
CH: You made it look easy, is what I’m saying.
Capone: I gotta ask about Carla [Juri, who plays Inka, Morris’s German tutor], because it took me forever to realize it was the same woman from WETLANDS. Is that where you first saw her? The character is interesting because I was afraid that she was either going to be some sort of mother figure for Morris, which wouldn’t have been appropriate, or he’d have a crush on her, but she’s not either. She’s like a teacher and a big sister. What did you want from that dynamic?
CH: I did see her in WETLANDS, and I was like “This girl’s incredible. We’ll never get her.” And at that time, I thought she was German.
Capone: Yeah, she’s got a bunch of things coming out in the next couple of years. She’s going to be huge.
CH: Yeah, she’s in the new BLADE RUNNER movie. But then coincidentally, a few days later [after seeing WETLANDS], I saw that she signed with UTA for her American stuff, and I’m in UTA, Craig’s in UTA, so I was like might as well send her the script, you never know. And as it turns out, she loved it and she had this kinship with Morris because when she was 15, she went to New York on an ice hockey scholarship, and she didn’t speak any English, and this was upstate New York, and she felt totally like a fish out of water, and felt like she knew that experience, so she really wanted to do the movie, which was great.
And with that character, I wanted there to be someone who represented that middle ground. Markees can’t talk to Craig about girls, and he can’t talk to this girl about his dad, so there had to be like this other person, this other character that fits in. It’s actually similar in MARTIN BONNER, where the main prisoner character can’t talk to his mentor, so he gravitates toward Martin. I think I’m just attracted to having that other person be an outlet. And I wanted to try and give her her own life and not have her feel like she just exists for Morris’s benefit, so she has her own life going on in the movie too.
Capone: Tell me about shooting in Germany. Was there a mirror experience to what your character is going through in his life and what you guys went through shooting this movie there?
CR: They run things like here, except if we’re supposed to get out at 5pm, we get out at 5pm, like boom, end of the day. But yeah, it was like a Hollywood set, everyone was super nice, and they speak English, so they were very accommodating. It was amazing. It was like Heidelberg and then Berlin. Heidelberg is this nice, quaint, old town. I guess Berlin is too, but Berlin is like where you go sin.
CH: Berlin is actually very diverse. Heidelberg, not so much.
Capone: I actually have a cousin that is here just for the festival from San Francisco, but he was an a=Army brat, and his family moved every three years. The only time I was ever in Germany was on an Army base in Heidelberg when they lived there, and we went to visit.
CH: That base isn’t there anymore. I actually didn’t know that. At the time, I didn’t know that Heidelberg is actually a bit more accustomed to Americans than some other cities in Germany because of that base.
Capone: I first saw this film at SXSW, and another film I saw there was SAUSAGE PARTY, in which you do a voice. Even in its vastly unfinished form is amazing.
CR: Amazing. Unbelievable.
Capone: I keep showing people the red-band trailer, and I’m saying “No, it’s even worse than that.”
CR: I love that they don’t show Nick Kroll’s character in the trailer. It’s such a surprise. I hope they don’t do it later on down the line with a new trailer, but it’s like man, what a nice thing it would be to go in not knowing where there movie’s going.
Capone: And you actually are in a movie, I think you already shot it, that the Duplass brothers wrote?
CH: TABLE 19.
Capone: Is that them?
CR: Yeah.
Capone: They didn’t direct it.
CR: Yeah, Jeff Blitz did. See, I didn’t know who originally wrote it, but I think it’s getting finishing touches and all that. But that comes out January 20, the best time to put out a movie.
CH: That’s MLK weekend, isn’t it?
CR: Pretty much.
Capone: Tell me about what you’re doing in that.
CR: I’m in an almost loveless marriage with Lisa Kudrow. And we get sat at this table—the reject table at a wedding party. You’ve got Stephen Merchant, Anna Kendrick, June Squibb, and Tony ,Revolori. So it’s a lot of sitting at a table.
Capone: It sounds like a play almost.
CR: Almost. True that.
Capone: Alright, I’ll see you tonight. Thank you so much.
