You never know where Mike White -- the defiantly square-peg filmmaker behind The School of Rock, Nacho Libre, and Year of the Dog -- might pop up next. One second he's crisscrossing the globe in matching outfits with his gay dad on The Amazing Race, the next he's giving Zombieland audiences an object lesson on the mortal dangers of going pottie in a zombie zone. For his next act, look no further than Gentlemen Broncos, his second collaboration with Utah-based dweebcore auteur Jared Hess, where he plays Dusty, a barechested "guardian angel from hell" to the film's aspiring science fiction writer hero (played by Michael Angarano). We talked to White about that Zombieland cameo, the prospects for his School of Rock sequel, and finding the Zen in Hess's universe of the gleefully absurd.
Why don't you direct more movies? I really loved Year of the Dog.
Well, that was like 2007. Sometimes it takes a while between things. Lately I've kind of been making more choices based on lifestyle. There was a time where I had like, two movies shooting at the same time, and a pilot, and was really burning my candle at both ends. I got really burned out. So at some point I changed my attitude about work, and it became more about using work as a way to have cool experiences, meet cool people, do other things, and not just be like, "I've gotta get my one-sheets on the wall!"
I am going to direct this pilot for HBO that I just wrote that stars Laura Dern, and that will be a big undertaking if it goes to series. And there's other movies I'm going to do, but I kind of was a workaholic for a little too long, and at some point I was like, dude, you better step back and have a life, too.
Do you find producing allows you to be in the game but not quite as intensely as directing a project?
The thing is that there's always stuff going on. In the last year, I wrote School of Rock -- the sequel. That took me -- and I don't know if the movie's getting made or not, I know deals are still trying to get made, whatever -- but you know that took a year to write a draft, get all the notes, do a rewrite, you know. So, you're in the game, but it's the nature of the business. It's the waves. Sometimes you're as busy as you ever are, and sometimes you're not.
What was the last thing the studio told you about the state of School of Rock 2?
At this point I think it's really about -- you know, deal-making is getting really complicated. Everything is still in flux as far as how to structure deals, the way technology is changing and the way people go see movies and stuff. So they were trying to figure out schedules with Jack [Black] and Rick [Linklater] is doing another movie right now, Jack just finished a movie. I don't know. It's out of my hands. I've moved on and I'm writing other things. But I have a feeling at some point I'll be tapped on the shoulder and pulled back into it.
Could you describe your Gentlemen Broncos character? Because I can't.
[Laughs] I think Dusty is some kind of acid casualty. It's Jared's vision and I was the guy with the stache that showed up to bring the albino Slick Rick to life. I don't know. Dusty is like a Guardian Angel from Hell, for lack of a more inspired cliché.
That scene where your albino python, um...
Craps on me.
Yes, craps on you. I wonder if you could talk a bit about how that little bit of movie magic came to life? And also it reminded me of your cameo in Zombieland, which also involved fecal matter, to some extent.
[Laughs] Interesting strain in my performances this month.
It's your Brown Period.
Well, in both cases I think someone's having a laugh at my expense. Because Ruben Fleischer, who directed Zombieland, used to be my assistant, and I think he wanted to pay me back by immortalizing me on the crapper. And I think Jared, too, just got a kick out of it. He has a sort of sadistic streak to him. It wasn't real snake shit, but it smelled as bad, and I was like [he makes a puking face] ready to throw up, and Jared was of course laughing his ass off.
As if the real-world action of Gentlemen Broncos isn't strange enough, you're cast in an even weirder, ultra-low-budget film-within-the-film, shot on a consumer VHS camera from the 1980s. It's like the dark side of Sweding. How serious is the business of shooting something so ridiculous?
I mean this is what I love about movies. One time I was in costume, as Bronco, in this weird robe and sword. And we were out in the desert at this weird, underwater scuba certifying place in the middle of the desert? It's the weirdest place. And you're surrounded by all these extras in costumes and looking around and thinking, "How did this happen?" I mean, it's cool that we're getting paid to do this, but it's never where I saw my life going.
The surreality of it becomes so [intense]. It happened on Nacho Libre, too. Jared just layers crazy on crazy on crazy on crazy. And it was especially difficult being Dusty. Jared wanted Dusty to have no facial expressions, no intonation in his voice. So I have a real python on me, fake snake poop, Jennifer Coolidge trying to crack me up with all her weird shit, and Jared is going, "Don't make a face! Don't make a face!" It was like a Zen meditation exercise.
What's crazy is that it seems like it's a total stoner movie, and yet Jared's a total Mormon and has never drunk or smoked out in his entire life. And when I read the script, I was like, "Dude, this really feels like a stoner movie. As someone who's smoked a lot of pot, I don't think I could have come up with all of this. It's like, where does it come from?
You seem to really enjoy going for it along with him, though. What was it about Jared that initially drew you to him as a collaborator?
I think there's something about Jared that I relate to. He grew up in this Mormon community, my dad was a minister growing up. I didn't grow up in a city. There's something about Jared's stuff, one of the reasons that it crosses over, is that it's born out of boredom. A lot of people mainly in the big cities don't experience it as much, but you get out a bit, maybe into the hinterlands, and long afternoons with not a lot of entertainment -- you just start picking up weird hobbies and doing weird stuff just to fill the time. And that's the kind of stuff that I feel comes out in the Napolean Dynamite world and this world. Everybody has their own folk art, or some creative bent to pass the time.