STACK #146 Dec 2016

4 3 2 1 6 5

that I know, or have worked with already. Even if I’ve cast someone that I don’t know, they probably had three castings for me. We’re all confident, we work fast, and it all goes on screen – all that fun goes on screen. I don’t understand these nightmares, where people say, ‘I nearly had a heart attack’ or ‘the studio kept interfering’, or ‘someone dropped out’ or ‘we went over budget’ or ‘we’re three days behind’. So no Apocalypse Now scenarios then? No, I finish at 4 o’clock on the nose everyday. I don’t know how you’d fill a day from 8am to 8pm. I think that’s nervous directors going, ‘I’d better take this shot in case that doesn’t work.

there are some like-minded people who agree. You know what? If you do it your way, and it’s a little peculiar and you don’t water it down and try and please everyone, there’s seven billion on this planet and there’s enough of those to make you very successful and very, very rich and will think it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen. If you water it down and try and please everyone, you’ll end up not pleasing many at all. That’s what I think anyway. Can we talk about the album? I was surprised at the quality of the songs. There are some cracking tunes on it. Are you a prolific songwriter? [Laughs] No. These are all done in character for David Brent for a specific reason, but I don’t sit at home with a guitar on my lap all day twiddling. I have the odd idea. I did these songs over a couple of years. I wrote a couple for The Office and then I wrote one for a Comic Relief sketch on a ten year anniversary, which was “Equality Street”, then I did a couple of little gigs and wrote a few more, and then I wrote a few more specifically for the film. So it was quite gradual and organic. I suppose I’ve written 15 songs over 15 years, so I certainly wouldn’t say I’m prolific. But it’s great fun doing it. And it had to be real. The joke wasn’t they were terrible songs or comedy songs or badly performed, the joke was it was a middle-aged tampon rep singing songs that he knows nothing about. Yeah, but he totally believes in them. That’s right. He believes in them, and that’s what’s funny. He believes he’s doing the right thing. He believes he’s helping the Native American. He believes he’s sorting out the prejudice to the disabled. I think that’s my favourite on the album. You cannot believe the thrill when we do these gigs in real life. I do it in character and people come along, they’re obviously in on the joke, but honestly, ironic or not, you cannot believe the thrill of 4,000 people singing along to [sings] ‘Head on

continued

screenplay and I directed it. But even when I say I wrote and directed it, it’s still collaborative, you know what I mean? It takes 60 people for me to do it my way. When you’re on set, do you make changes to the screenplay on the fly? How much of the film is improv? Not much. In the cold light of day, even though you do lots of improv, when you get it back into the edit the things that survive are usually the things that were in the script, because they’re the things that drive the narrative. So

There’s no right or wrong. I’m just trying to please me

even though the film came in at three hours, most of that hour and a half was probably the ad-libs you lose. Having said that, within each scene I keep the language loose and there’s little surprises that we improv around, but when it comes down to the story, the story is 99 per cent in the screenplay. What was it like working on set? I can’t actually imagine much work getting done at all. It’s fun. Everything I’ve always done has always been fun. Because I only direct my own writing, I’ve lived with it for a year, so I don’t panic, I don’t think I just better ask the studio if I can change the line. I whiz through it. I shoot with two cameras. I cast people

I better do that again’ or ‘let’s do 15 takes of that, just in case. The way I think is, ‘come on people, be confident in yourself’. I only try and please me. If I laugh, then it’s good. Are you a perfectionist? I don’t know, because there’s no paradigm in sort of art, it’s just what I want. It’s what I like. I don’t think there’s anything to compare it to. There’s no right or wrong. I’m just trying to please me. So if I like it, and I find it funny, it’s done. Particularly with comedy, you either find it funny or you don’t. If you do a consensus of what’s funny, you’re going to have every opinion under the sun. So you’ve got to do what you think is funny and hope

stack.net.au