A world of his own
The unpredictable John C. Reilly stays close to home in his latest film ‘Cyrus’
By Carl Kozlowski 06/24/2010
John C. Reilly stripped for laughs in “Walk Hard,” rode an emotional rollercoaster through the world of porn as Mark Wahlberg’s sidekick in “Boogie Nights” and formed the moral center of an array of San Fernando Valley residents in “Magnolia.” He’s also made an utter and hilarious fool of himself along with Will Ferrell in the wildly popular “Talladega Nights” and “Step Brothers.” But in his daring new film “Cyrus,” the Academy Award nominee offers perhaps his best performance to date.
Playing a sad-sack, middle-age loser who hasn’t socialized with anyone but his ex-wife (played by Catherine Keener) and her fiancé (Matt Walsh) since their divorce seven years prior, Reilly imbues the film at first with lonely despair before gradually undergoing a touching and funny transformation into a man who’s willing to stand up for himself and fight for love, even if it means engaging in a bizarre battle with the adult son, Cyrus (Jonah Hill), of the woman he actually loves (Marisa Tomei).
Ambling into a room of the Beverly Hills Four Seasons Hotel, Reilly settled in for a long and thoughtful consideration of his eclectic career. And just as he contrasts big brash comedies with thoughtful indie dramas, his purple suit stood in stark contrast to his furrowing brow as he reflected about his career thus far.
“I was an odd kid, one of six growing up in Chicago,” he says, when asked about how he knew he wanted to be an actor. “I was an imaginative kid who was in my own fantasy world already, and, when I was 8 years old, a friend of mine said, ‘Let’s go over to the park, I heard about something called drama class.’ I really fell in love with it — fell in with that crowd, and playing the acting games and theater games and really took to it and really loved it, and I haven’t stopped since.”
There was no reason to stop, because Reilly quickly found favor with acting teachers and worked his way into the prestigious Goodman School of Theatre at Chicago’s DePaul University. But it was after graduation that his star began to shine, when he was hired by the Steppenwolf Theatre — a collective launched by such stars as Gary Sinise, Joan Allen and John Malkovich — and the troupe took “The Grapes of Wrath” to Broadway.
“I still keep up with theater and every year I try to do something new, like I’ve done ‘True West’ on Broadway again with Philip Seymour Hoffman,” he says. “But I really would like to do something with the Pasadena Playhouse, but they’ve closed the doors on it. It’s a shame because that’s a great place.”
“I just love that Pasadena is apart from the zeitgeist of the entertainment industry. Even though a lot of people in the business do live there, it appears to be apart from the main craziness of Hollywood,” says Reilly. “I like that Pasadena has its own identity as a city, its unique restaurants, the pace of life there. I’m not suited to live in a major, gigantic city, but rather places with small neighborhoods that are their own little world.”
Reilly made his first screen appearance in Brian De Palma’s 1989 “Casualties of War.” But his first big splash came in 1997’s “Boogie Nights,” working a standout supporting role for writer-director P.T. Anderson before stepping up to the central role of “Magnolia” two years later. In that film he played a lonely, devout Catholic cop who endures a plague of frogs falling from the heavens as well as other obstacles en route to finding love with a severely addicted yet sweetly troubled woman.
In 2002, he appeared in “Chicago,” “Gangs of New York” and “The Hours” — all three Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, with Reilly nominated for Best Supporting Actor for “Chicago.”
But it’s “Magnolia’s” melancholy tones — and its characters’ quest for love amid loneliness and despair — that mesh best with the early moments of “Cyrus,” in which Reilly engages in a daring array of comically bad and drunken behavior before meeting the woman of his dreams. In a summer of mostly loud, impersonal and utterly predictable films, “Cyrus” offers audiences a welcome respite of humanity and humor.
“Love saves all. They’re both kind of lonely characters, and they’re in a place where they’ve reached a low point for both of them — certainly my character in ‘Cyrus,’” says Reilly. “What’s beautiful about both characters is that they’re both still finding the courage to love. Even though life has thrown them a couple curves, and they’re in a dark place when it starts, they take the chance on love despite the risk of being hurt or left alone again. I find it interesting when characters do that.”
On the other hand, Reilly has used his internal compass to steer clear of the darker roles he’s occasionally offered. While he describes himself as a “loyal soldier” who will do literally anything a part calls for — especially comedic — once he commits to a part, he thinks that having an “anything goes” attitude about dramas would sometimes prove more trouble than the it’s worth.
“It’s not that I seek out a role that reflects my own morality, because oftentimes characters I play don’t,” says Reilly. “But when you sign up for something as an actor, you’re going to have to live in that world for a while and I’ve been offered really dark and cynical parts at times in my life when I just cannot do that. I cannot spend every day being in that dark place where that character is at — someone who’s extremely vicious or evil. It’s more that I look for characters that are as complicated as life is, and illuminates something about human existence.”
“Cyrus” offers plenty of that kind of illumination, while also bringing together the two main strands of Reilly’s career thus far. He gets to be both wacky in moments, like an uproarious fight scene he engages in with Hill’s title character at a wedding gone awry, and subtly menacing in the incredibly awkward and tense showdowns between the men in which each jockeys for Tomei’s attention without her realizing it.
Yet, it also provided Reilly with both his greatest challenges and his biggest rewards, as the writer-director brother team of Jay and Mark Duplass (whose prior films “The Puffy Chair” and “Baghead” were micro-budget Sundance favorites) employed a very loose, highly improvisational on-set approach that enabled the actors to feel they were walking on uncharted terrain nearly every day of shooting.
“The truth is, I improvise things with almost every director I work with. Film is a collaborative art,” explains Reilly. “The screenplay is the road map of what you do, and then you get to the set and custom fit that script to what you’re doing. Some people try to stick as close as they can to the script, sanding off an edge here or there, but other people like the Duplass Brothers will completely toss out the script, saying ‘that was the idea of where we’re heading, now put it in your own words, and we’re gonna shoot in order so we can even adjust what the plot of the movie is going to be.’
“Certainly on ‘Talladega Nights’ and broad comedies, we improvise to keep the jokes fresh. But ‘Cyrus’ was a cool movie to make, because I got to improvise emotionally and not just chase the laugh. I could have anything happen, not just a laugh.”
Prior to “Cyrus,” Reilly’s greatest standout performance was his lead role in “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” in which he lampooned the Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line,” as well as just about every rock ‘n’ roll cliché of the past 50 years. While the movie underperformed at the box office — probably due to the fact it was a R-rated comedy released on Christmas Day — it landed Reilly a Golden Globe nomination and has become a huge cult classic on video and cable.
“It’s amazing how many people love Cox,” Reilly deadpans, as he shifts into a barrage of risqué humor. “I don’t know if I’m amazed by ‘Walk Hard’s’ afterlife, because it’s almost the norm now that a theater release is like a trailer for the DVD and cable and other formats. I think a lot of people found their way to ‘Walk Hard’ because of the love and care we put into it and the music. We recorded music for six months before we made the movie and did 35 songs, which is more than most artists do in their whole career. Musicians and music fans are all over that movie.
“On iTunes, you can get almost 30 songs, and there was a Box of Cox available on the Internet. We did an eight-city concert tour that’s still one of the highlights of my life. Bringing Cox to the people, it was Cox Across America with Dewey Cox and the Hard Walkers. It doesn’t make any sense to walk hard, by the way, but ... it made sense to Dewey. I had a really good band, and it was really just one joyous night after another. I hope we’ll have more Cox in the future. It looks like we’ll never get tired of Cox.”
“I don’t go back a lot and watch myself,” Reilly explains. “I actually got in trouble because a friend once gave me all my movies on laserdisc and I said, ‘Oh I’m sorry, I don’t watch these.’ They said. ‘You jerk!’ But I figure my kids will be able to watch some day and go on an interesting archaeological dig through my life. I think of my own father and the few bits of photos and papers I had to remember him by, and it’s going to be a different story for me.”
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT
Doesn't he look like a cuddly Sock Monkey? He has the voice for it, too!
Parser Claine