Anaconda's Jack Black & Paul Rudd talk their LONG friendship

ODN

The comedy legends have teamed up for the 'aggressively dumb' monster horror reboot, but their friendship goes back way further than that. Report by Nelsonj. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn

Transcript

00:00Story!

00:02It's another ending story!

00:04That's some of my favorite stuff, is the dumb comedies

00:07where it's so dumb, it's aggressively stupid.

00:10It's a fine line between fan and stalker.

00:12Yo, what's up, Johnny?

00:13It's lovely to see you.

00:15We've never met.

00:16Jack, I interviewed you on Zoom once.

00:17I was very nervous.

00:19I was excited and nervous because I wanted to tell you

00:21how much I loved Tenacious D.

00:22I remember sat in my living room waiting for the camera

00:24to go and, like, sweating my palms.

00:26Very lovely about it.

00:27Oh, good.

00:29Have you ever seen us live?

00:30I haven't seen you live.

00:31No.

00:32Not yet.

00:33Yeah.

00:33Not yet.

00:34We had a great show at the O2 last time we played London.

00:37It was really amazing.

00:38I'm one of the lucky people who actually saw it.

00:41I've seen Tenacious D a few times,

00:42and I went and I was there in the beginning

00:44when you only had a few songs.

00:45That's the way it was meant to be seen.

00:47At Largo.

00:48There's not supposed to be anyone in the audience.

00:51You're supposed to be, and you were, yeah.

00:53I was in that audience, yeah.

00:55Yeah.

00:55I was going to ask how long you guys known each other,

00:57because you guys have been around the block a few times.

00:59We go back to the 90s.

01:00I remember Jack in, like, Neverending Story 3.

01:03People don't talk about that anymore.

01:05Around the same time as Clueless.

01:06Yeah, that's ancient.

01:07That's a great movie, though.

01:08That's a good, like, threequel as threequels go.

01:10And that one you cannot find.

01:11The only way to see that is if you go on eBay and get a videotape.

01:16Or if you were brought up in the 90s

01:19and things were just kind of repeated cyclically on terrestrial TV.

01:22Yeah.

01:23And then you know you get one hit a year, at least.

01:25It's going to be on there sometime.

01:26Story.

01:27Exactly.

01:28It's a never-ending story.

01:30Do you guys go that far back, or when did you first kind of hook up,

01:34start moving in the same circles, et cetera?

01:35I met Jack right after he was in Bob Roberts.

01:41It was his first movie.

01:431992.

01:44And one of my very first auditions.

01:46And it was, like, around the time of that movie.

01:50Because I saw it.

01:51I was like, who is that guy?

01:52And then a few weeks later, I had an audition.

01:53And he was in the waiting room.

01:54We were both auditioning for his part for, I don't even remember what it was.

01:58But I was like, oh, my God, it's the guy from Bob Roberts.

02:00And I went over and complimented him deservedly,

02:03because he's hilarious in the film.

02:05And we would always kind of run into each other at different events or things.

02:11We had some mutual friends.

02:13But I'd say those first several years, I was just kind of a fan.

02:19And it's a fine line between fan and stalker.

02:23Yeah.

02:24He might have been like, hey, that's the guy from the Nintendo advert.

02:26Was it Nintendo?

02:27It was a Nintendo advert.

02:29Yeah.

02:30But if he, I never heard that.

02:34He cuts it close to his chest.

02:36Yeah.

02:37You played it cool, Jack.

02:38Well, we hung out at, there was an Anchorman event.

02:41And we did like a charity reading of Anchorman.

02:44That's right.

02:45And we hung out a little bit there.

02:47And I think that's where we made the rainbow connection.

02:49Because after that, I think, we started communicating on texts.

02:53Once in a while there'd be a text.

02:55Yeah.

02:56Yeah.

02:57And that's when I came and saw you on Broadway in The Shape of Things.

03:04And we hung out a little bit backstage.

03:06And then, yeah, we kept in touch.

03:09And then I was like, hey, I'm going to be in the School of Rock is on Broadway.

03:14Do you want to go see it?

03:15Do your son want to go see it?

03:17I'm bringing my son.

03:18And we connected there.

03:19I'm glad you guys have come back together.

03:20And then it was like, we've got to work together, man.

03:22Oh, it was really the best.

03:23To make this thing happen.

03:24That was actually really fun, going to see School of Rock on Broadway with you.

03:27Broadway.

03:28With you.

03:29Because talk about a theater that starts to mumble and murmur and get excited.

03:33Let's talk about getting excited.

03:34Let's get on to this movie before I run out of time.

03:36Oh, my God.

03:37Hurry up.

03:38I'm going to echo Steve Zahn's words on this.

03:41This is the dumbest Christmas movie I've ever seen.

03:44And it does make you think, like, I've got to talk about that.

03:47The chair scene with the peeing on the spider bike, which was never referenced again.

03:53It felt very improv-y.

03:54It's funny that he says the chair scene, because there is no chair.

03:57It's like a human chair.

03:58It seems actually so well.

03:59Yes.

04:00The chair was in my mind.

04:01Why don't we get these kind of silly cinema comedies as much anymore?

04:05Has superhero movies, no offense, and streaming kind of killed them dead?

04:11Or are we waiting for a comeback at the start of a kind of resurgence and commands?

04:15The walk hard, Dewey Cox story, which is a great movie you guys read together.

04:18Well, you know, the thing is, it's scary to be dumb.

04:21And that's some of my favorite stuff is the dumb comedies, where it's so dumb.

04:26It's aggressively stupid, and it turns into genius comedy.

04:30But it's not the easiest thing to do.

04:32You might just be dumb.

04:34Yeah.

04:35So, you know, there's a little science involved in turning that dumb to smart.

04:41And I really love it when I see one, and it doesn't always work.

04:45I like it when there's some misfires in a big old comedy, because it undercuts any pretension.

04:51It's just, oh my God, the only thing that this movie is concerned with or cares about is trying to make me laugh.

04:58And whenever I see something that's just like, it only wants to make you laugh, I'm on board.

05:03I love that.

05:04And I certainly hope that they start making more and more comedies, because they always have.

05:10And that's kind of what, when I'm really bummed out, or happy, or really anything, that's kind of what I want to watch.

05:16Yeah.

05:17Well, this certainly made me laugh a bunch of times.

05:19It is one of those things.

05:20It did feel improv-y.

05:21Like, some people on the stage just go, I'm going to try this now.

05:23And we're going to try this.

05:24And we're going to try this.

05:25And you're like, Christ, how did this get signed off to go on screen at times?

05:28But there's a beauty in unabashed stupidity.

05:31Yes.

05:32And I look forward to a lot more of it.

05:33Gents, thanks for giving me some of your time.

05:36Merry bloody Christmas.

05:37Merry Christmas.

05:38And I'll see you down the road.

05:40Absolutely.

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