Actor John C. Reilly first caught our eye in the role of fading porn actor Reed Rothchild in Boogie Nights, and we've never looked back. That wasn't his first appearance, of course; Reilly also made memorable appearances in What's Eating Gilbert Grape and was terrific in Paul Thomas Anderson's first film, Hard Eight. He's since gone on to cinema stardom, which is gratifying because he's the kind of authentic, hard-working, unglamorous actor you root for.
Throughout his versatile career, Reilly appeared in big-budget comedies like Talladega Nights and the surprisingly not bad Step Brothers; and in unpretentious indie films like Cyrus, The Extra Man, and now Terri, a strange and funny story from director Azazel Jacobs about the unlikely friendship between an oversized teen misfit and the garrulous but well-meaning vice principal (Reilly) who takes him under his broken wing. Check out the trailer below; Terri opens tonight at Angelika and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. We recently spoke with Reilly about the movie, how he creates his characters and, perhaps most importantly, shoes.
I watched Terri over the weekend and I thought there was a lot of interesting stuff. The one that really sticks in my mind is when the kids are partying at the shack. That just kept getting crazier! Yeah. The shed.
The shed, right. These kids are each such interesting performers. How involved were you in the process of making the film? My wife was one of the producers, so. There's that. I was there for casting the parts of the people I had scenes with, you know, like Chad and Terri. So, I wouldn't say I was really part of the making of the movie other than the usual stuff I was involved in as an actor.
Were you there when they were shooting that scene? No, I wasn't. In fact, few people were. I think they really locked down the set so that it was super private and intimate so that the kids would feel...
What was your reaction to it when you saw it? That scene? That scene was fantastic. The time that it took to tell that, you know, how that scene unfolds, it was really cool. It reminded me, I think everyone has those moments in their life where you're an adolescent and suddenly you're unsupervised, and there's a little booze around or something. It reminded me of times like that.
I don't remember the character's name, but the kid who plays his friend—sort of... Bridger Zadina. Where did he come from, because he is really interesting. Has he done movies before? He's done some stuff. He's only sixteen, so I don't know that he's done all that much. He's from, I want to say Wisconsin or Minnesota. He's a really interesting kid. He grew up on a llama farm, forty acres with llamas. He's into Civil War reenactments. He's a history buff. A pretty intense little kid. As far as where they found him, it was just the usual channels of casting people in LA.
What made you interested in this film and want to do it? I think that the first thing was, Patrick [DeWitt]'s writing. He wrote the manuscript for the novel that he was going to write, that had all these characters in it, and then they decided that it would make a great movie, so Patrick just scrapped the book stage and went right to the screenplay. So that was the first thing that drew me in. And then this mentor character, I found really interesting. I've always been someone who's connected with people younger than me. I like the fact that the character starts out as this very confident, seeming voice of authority, and then you literally watch him slowly crumble into this person that's going to realize that he's struggling as much as the kids are. And I like the honesty of that.
Did you relate at all to Terri's experience as a kid? I didn't have anything that made me look particularly weird but I was into plays, and made me somewhat of an outcast. So, yeah, I can relate. You know, I think the truth is, the majority of people out there feel like outcasts in one way or another, especially in adolescence, when your body is exploding all over the place and your perception of the world is changing pretty drastically, and I think even kids who are the popular kids feel alienated in some way. But uh yeah, I did feel like an outcast, but I was in a group of outcasts, called "the play people." I had company, I wasn't a loner.
Did you have a mentor like Terri had? I've had various mentors over the years, yeah. Mostly drama teachers, you know, people who were in charge, whether it was the chorus I was in, or a director of a musical...A lot of different people. Even a guidance counselor in high school, I didn't say much to him but it gave me great comfort knowing that he was there.
Another scene that you weren't in that I thought was amazing was the scene with the hawk. That was just incredible. Getting the hawk to actually do that. The thing with hawks is you know, they can only eat so many mice per day. And I think they expected it to eat maybe one, at the most two. So we got lucky. Jacob told me it was a pretty incredible moment when it swooped in, because it's this wild animal, pretty much, and it is somewhat trained to return to its trainers arm, but whether it was going to go for the mice, that was a bit of a question mark. They used two takes and multiple cameras and luckily got it all, including Jacob's reactions, his reaction to the hawk swooping in on the animal.
I was watching that hawk intently with my jaw dropped and then I realized I had the same expression on my face that Jacob did! [Laughs] Well, good!
I live in New York and one of my greatest regrets is not going to see True West with you and Philip Seymour Hoffman. And, I remember him saying he'd love to do it again, but only with you. Would you ever consider reviving that or doing some other theatrical project with him or anybody? Yeah, I would love to, you know. He's one of the greatest people out there. And that experience that we had together I think, to this day, is still in the top three experiences of our acting careers. It was a challenging and brilliant piece of writing, and switching roles like that was a pretty incredible way to experience a play. There was some talk of us doing it in London, but once you break up the band, it's pretty tough to get everyone back together, but who knows. We'll see.
When's the last time you did theater? Let's see. It's been a little while now. I was in a few little reading type things out in LA, I think it was Streetcar on Broadway.
Do you miss it? I do! Yeah, I really do. I almost had something set up this past year and then it fell apart at the last minute, so. It's tough, There's a limited number of places you can do shows on Broadway and the real estate situation is very competitive. But uh, yeah, I would certainly hope to soon, it's always something I'm looking into.
What are you working on now? What do you have coming up? I got a bunch of movies coming out right now, over the next six months or so. Terri on July 1st and then I made a movie with Roman Polanski called Carnage, based on a play God of Carnage. That comes out in the fall, and then I have a small part in this crazy comedy that these guys Tim & Eric made called Tim & Eric's Million-Dollar Movie.
Those guys are crazy. Yeah. And I'm in another movie with Tilda Swinton, We Need To Talk About Kevin, that just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. It's a really intense drama about a family with a kid that has a really troubled life, and ends up doing some terrible things. It's a pretty intense look at the relationship between the mother and the son, and I play the kid's father.
When you are considering a project, is there something you look for that you can articulate? Can you articulate what kind of work you like to do? You pretty much go by instinct when you're reading a script, whether it grabs you or not. If it seems like the dialogue is written in such a way that it sounds like people actually talking as opposed to screenwriters doing exposition about what's supposed to happen in the story. It's a knack not everyone has, but it's the first thing you look for. That the dialogue seems believable, if it seems like something that will be a challenge, if it's something different than what I've done before. Just trying to keep mixing it up so that people don't see it coming, you know?
I seem to remember you saying that when you are creating a character, the shoes are very important? Yeah, that's one way into somebody, you know. It makes a pretty big difference. The costume in general, I tend to focus on that a bit. The clothes make the man to a certain degree. At least I feel the clothes have a lot to do with the performance.
With the character that you play in Terri, what was it about the clothes that worked for you and got your imagination going? I wore some real sensible shoes that are fancy but comfortable. You know, looks like a dress shoe but it's actually more like a gym shoe on the inside of it, because you're walking up and down the halls. Cell phone, clip for the walkie-talkie. ...We were supposed to impart some sense of authority to the kids, but on a vice-principal's budget. So that's the look that I have in the movie.
