Will Finds A Way - An Interview with Will Arnett
Will Arnett is in very good spirits when I meet him, and he has every reason to be. He's doing the publicity rounds for Blades of Glory, the new comedy also starring Will Ferrell and Jon Heder, which has already grossed around $117 million in the US alone, and can be added to the growing list of Arnett's successes since the demise of the television show 'Arrested Development'. Like many Ferrell movies (Talledega Nights, Anchorman), this one has a pretty simple premise: after being banned from men's figure skating, two rival skaters - Chazz Michael Michaels (Ferrell) and Jimmy MacElroy (Heder) - are forced to join forces as the world's first men's pair.Arnett has third billing as one of the film's villains, Stranz Van Waldenberg. In a brilliantly twisted piece of casting, Arnett's real life wife Amy Poehler plays Stranz's twin sister Fairchild. This isn't the first time they've performed together, as Poehler played Gob's 'accidental' wife in several episodes of 'Arrested Development'. "We try to avoid [working together] as much as we can in a way, we're not a comedy team and so we don't like to blur the line too much between our professional life and our real lives, but we thought this would be a good way to kind of have a laugh and poke fun at ourselves a little bit."
He's dressed smartly but casually and his modest and upbeat demeanour is a long way from the smug, self-important characters he usually plays. Nevertheless I've caught him towards the end of a long day of interviews and he's quite thankful at the chance to be able to have a smoke.
One would think that the line between personal and professional would be blurred when he and Poehler are working together so closely. "It takes a little bit of adjustment because when working on set we have such a shorthand with each other. I might turn to her and say 'stop doing that' or 'I'm going to put my hand there' and then all of a sudden we'd have to check ourselves and go I'm sorry fellow actor, do you mind if I... you know - afford them the same grace you would with someone that you're working with that you didn't know so well."
In the movie they share some of the best lines, and their familiarity with each other is clearly an asset. "Amy and I got to improvise a lot of our stuff, which we were really happy with and a lot of it ended up in the movie, so that was good... that's kind of our favourite way to work."Poehler also has a successful career in comedy, beginning with her work as one of the founders of the Upright Citizen's Brigade. "Amy was a sketch performer and improviser for many years," he says, "so that is really part of what she has always done. She and the rest of the Upright Citizen's Brigade, I would dare to say, are the best improv group on the planet... super funny. But I kind of came into that whole world backwards. I thought I was a serious actor and nobody took me seriously, so I was left with no other choice than to go into comedy". He reflects for a moment, "-either that or just people laughed at me when I was being serious. I didn't really know about that whole world at all and now in my late 30s wish I'd gone into that in my 20s. I went to Lee Strasberg and I thought I was gonna be a method actor... you know when you're young you want people to take you seriously and you have all these really high goals for yourself. Now I have no goals and I'm much looser than I was back then."
Throughout the late 90s Arnett worked at becoming a successful actor, without much success. He did quite a bit of voice over work, including the indie black comedy 'Series 7: The Contenders', and has been the 'voice' of GMC trucks for almost a decade. He was in television pilot after television pilot, and, as I put it simply, things weren't going too well. "Yeah that's a very fair assessment," he laughs. "You know it's a difficult thing, I had a lot of different shows and pilots and TV projects that fell apart in one way or another. If the pilot was picked up we'd do a couple of episodes then get cancelled or I'd get fired or whatever... so I experienced failure in many different ways. But I actually now, looking back, wouldn't have it any other way. I realise if I'd had any success in my 20s I would have fucked it up and now that I'm a little bit older I realise how fleeting it all is. It's all just a laugh you know. And the fact that I get to do this, I have the job that I have and I get to work with these kinds of people... it's all gravy. As we say." He gestures at the room and presumably the country. "You might say it's all vegemite, I don't know."
Like many truly great TV shows, 'Arrested Development' was axed, coming to an end in early 2006. Despite a lengthy string of award nominations and wins, from Golden Globes to Emmys, the show was cancelled due to 'poor ratings'. Many loyal viewers (including this writer) still can't get over how a show of such quality could be cancelled. Arnett clearly also holds the series in high esteem, once quoted as saying that the pilot was "by the far the best I'd ever read and I hope that insults every other pilot I've worked on".
He laughs when I ask if he really said that, and I wonder if he's had it quoted back to him many times since. "Oh, what an awful thing to say! Yes I said it; I was kind of goofing around. I mean, I don't want to insult anybody, I really don't ... it was a truly remarkable pilot script, [as were] all the scripts on that show. I couldn't believe the writing was so strong week after week after week. [Creator and writer] Mitch Hurowitz is truly a genius and I think it'd be very difficult to do - especially in TV - anything that would stack up against the writing. It was a special show."
One would think that it might sour his appreciation of any future scripts that come his way, financial incentives notwithstanding. Did the show ruin comedy for him? "No it hasn't ruined it. I think to a certain degree it may raise the bar a little bit," he says, then becoming sidetracked: "... my internal bar, if I have one, and if I don't I should get one. I don't know where they sell them... god... I have a lot of work cut out for me. Yeah you know it is a little difficult where you've worked on something where the calibre of writing is so high, but there are plenty of really funny writers out there. I finished a movie [The Brothers Solomon] with Will Forte that's coming out in September in the States that was probably the funniest movie script I ever read. I'm gonna start work on a couple of different movies over the course of the next year or two that are all, I think, very good strong scripts, so I try not to compare, and appreciate them for what they are."As with many of his 'Arrested Development' co-stars (Jason Bateman, Michael Cera, David Cross), Arnett has been busy with comedy features ever since the show's demise. From Let's Go to Prison (with Dax Shepard) to the upcoming Hot Rod and Will Ferrell's next film, Semi-Pro, it seems that the powers that be have decided on his trademark genre. For the guy who started out dreaming of high calibre dramatic roles, things haven't really gone the way he might have expected. "I quite seriously don't have a plan. I just want to work with people... who make me laugh and want to work on material that I think is funny and that I hope other people think is funny. That's really it. I have no burning desire to win an Oscar, or for anybody to say, you know, 'he's the greatest actor of his generation.' None of that stuff really matters to me anymore and it's quite freeing really because I'm not hung up on anything."
It seems I've caught him at the perfect moment in his career. It's at the stage where he's getting leading roles and where every next move is a step up. "It's exciting man, this whole thing is... Potentially doors open for me and [there are] so many opportunities to work with just tonnes of talented people. I just finished my second movie with Will Ferrell and I have a tremendous amount of admiration for him as a performer and as a person too. I'm really lucky and there's no other way to look at it."
The phrase 'Will Ferrell movie' should almost have a trademark of its own. Ferrell's involvement seems almost to guarantee box office success. As an outsider it's hard to imagine what it's like to be involved in a comedy that somehow costs US$60 million. "Yeah you gotta kinda let them [the producers and executives] worry about it," Arnett says. 'I'm starting to produce a couple of movies that I'm gonna be in so I suppose I have to start thinking about that a little bit more. I'm just doing it simply because I'd like to have a little bit more control over the material, you know, right from the beginning all the way through to the released, finished product. But there are people who are designated to do that and I don't want to ever get too caught up in that. I'm not necessarily a businessman per se, I'm just a dumb actor..."
I'm sure the lack of editorial control to which he refers has frustrated many an actor. "There were definitely things throughout the movie that I wish had been expanded a little bit. Reality is that Amy and I played the villains, and if anything was going to suffer in terms of not making it into the movie it was going to be our stuff. There were times where our incestuous relationship was played up more, especially during the middle of the movie, and I think they had to pare it down a little for a broad audience... and I wish that things like the JFK/Marilyn performance [by the Van Waldenbergs] had been expanded but what can you do? I'm happy with the movie and it's done well and in this case I'm not in the position to complain."In Blades of Glory this 'dumb actor' (and his colleagues) spent months training to become proficient enough on the ice to pass as figure skaters. They worked with former Olympians and trainers both on and off the ice in order to skate well enough to suspend the audience's disbelief. He can't help but admire figure skaters, despite the fact the film is essentially making fun of the sport. "What they do when they're on the ice, and the preparation that goes into it, the determination, is quite remarkable. I don't know if I'd have the staying power to do something like that... but it was - in that short spurt - fun for us."
He certainly seems to have the determination when it comes to padding out his résumé. In the past couple of years Arnett's workload has grown exponentially, averaging at least four or five movies a year. Poehler's career is also skyrocketing, so it's no wonder they'd take up the opportunity to work on the same feature, if only to spend some time together. Of course, he doesn't seem to have much of a problem with the heavy workload. "We haven't had a lot of time off. But, you know, I spent 15 years smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee so I'm good. I'm good to go out there and work..."
Interview by Stuart Wilson, 8th June 2007
Blades of Glory opens in Australia on 21st June.