After launching two incredibly successful franchises in Austin Powers and Meet the Parents, Jay Roach became Hollywood's first pick to direct any studio comedy, and yet the Steve Carell/Paul Rudd vehicle Dinner for Schmucks (adapted from Francis Veber's French farce The Dinner Game) is his first theatrical endeavor outside those two series in over ten years. Roach chatted with Movieline about the pros and cons of that kind of success, why he loves a girl with an accent, and what he'd like to see from the next Austin Powers sequel.
Now, the casting for the supporting roles in this movie feels like you got to check a lot of boxes off your "comedians I like" list. Is that how it worked, or were you new to some of these people?
That's a great way of putting it. I suppose Lucy Punch is the one I was least familiar with, particularly as a comedienne, but everyone else I knew, in some way. I'm such a freak for Jemaine Clement and Flight of the Conchords and I watch it with my kids all the time, Little Britain I watch too, and David Walliams came out of that. Zach [Galifianakis] is kind of new to me, but only because I didn't really notice him until The Hangover, and I then immersed myself in everything way before I thought I would get to work with him, just because I hadn't seen anybody work like that. In a way, it was like getting all the funniest people I'd seen recently.
The most surprising casting choice for me was Jemaine, because the people we were looking at for that role [as Rudd's romantic rival] were more stereotypical hunky guys, and it just wasn't making me laugh. A similar thing happened with the Owen Wilson character on Meet the Parents: We had a quarterback frat boy character in that, and it just didn't work until we went a little bit off-center with Owen.
It's so sad when incredibly handsome men aren't funny. You just feel so bad for them, having to go through life like that.
Those poor winners who get all the cheerleaders. No, that's what it was, I thought it would be funny putting Ben [Stiller] against that or putting Paul Rudd against that kind of guy, but it's actually so obvious where it's gonna go, whereas if you get someone like Jemaine, he's got a little more off-center quality and you can't quite predict the attitude that person will take.
How did you cast Stephanie Szostak?
See that's another one, because -- and I say this in a self-critical way -- like many American comedies, there was the possibility that the girlfriend character would fade back into the texture of everything. Although she wouldn't have much screentime, it was essential that Paul Rudd would care so much about her that losing her felt like high stakes. We wouldn't have much time to set her up, and I felt that I needed to get someone who hooked you right away with very little material, and that would be better than going with someone who seems familiar. I'm a sucker for accents, and I have a weird theory that you listen more carefully if you meet someone who has a weird accent -- if you meet a girl, that you might actually be more alert to her personality and more attentive in some weird way. Stephanie came in and auditioned a number of times because she was so unknown that everyone was afraid of going with her.
People were like, "Who?"
They really were. My casting director friends were like, "What? You're not going to go with someone people know? Well, who is she, how do we get her in?" It's exciting. That was a side effect that I didn't see coming, that you cast someone like that and then there's that interest.
Obviously, the lead of the original film is a lot more unsympathetic. How concerned were you -- or how concerned was the studio -- with how sympathetic Paul's character would be?
I love the French film, and I've studied Francis Veber. French farce is different, and there's a different type of comedy that the French love that I studied for Meet the Parents, which I felt was like a French farce. I loved [The Dinner Game], but I felt it teased the audience about a dinner that we could deliver, and I think I would have liked it even more if I could connect and relate to whatever that guy was going through even more. I knew our film would be a little longer because Francis kind of turned his two-act play into a two-act movie, and to have the audience care about that guy for so long, we needed some suspense about which way he was gonna go.
Could you have made the movie with Paul and Steve in each other's roles?
That's a funny question. Hmm.
I think Paul doesn't get enough credit as a character actor.
Yeah, the character he did in Anchorman, the surfer in Forgetting Sarah Marshall...
The jerk in Wet Hot American Summer.
He's done some great character parts. He's hilarious, and he's the kind of guy who's the quote-unquote straight man, but that speech he does in the film about "the me you know and the me you don't know" is a great comic run. He always reminds me of Jack Lemmon in that speech, and that's how I think of him. He's completely physical if he wants to be, and unafraid to be broad, yet he's so straight that he can convince you as a leading man, and he's very attractive. He's got a rare combo of all that best things, including being one of the funniest improvisers around. He and Steve are great together. Steve kind of does that Paul Rudd character in The Office, in a way, so maybe I already made them switch.
How does it feel to have handed off the Meet the Parents series? I feel like we're living in a world where directors commit to doing trilogies of virtually every franchise around--
And I did that on Austin, and I wanted to do that this time around, too. I worked on the script -- myself and my writing partner Larry Stuckey wrote the first draft -- and I was set to do it, and then I got on [Schmucks] and that got extended and the shoot schedules lined up and I just couldn't do it. So I talked Paul Weitz into doing it, and I was glad to hear he was going to. I suppose in a certain way, I was excited to see someone else take a shot at it... I had to console myself with that, since I wasn't going to be around. They got a great script, John Hamburg came back in to rewrite it, and Owen is back for a much bigger turn, which I love. It was painful, but ultimately I'm kind of zen about it because he has to sweat how to pull it off this time, and I don't.
Did it ever get at all frustrating to get locked into so many franchises?
I suppose it did when I was just doing sequel after sequel, but I loved what Mike [Myers] was doing with the Austin films. And then, when I got Dustin [Hoffman] and Barbra [Streisand] to be part of Meet the Fockers, I just couldn't let them go off without me. When I stopped, I'll tell you that the one thing I realized was that [non-franchise] films don't just "come together." I did Recount years ago for HBO, but it's been a long time since I've done another feature. I pay a lot more attention to the packaging and setting-up of projects to make sure they stick together.
So if Dessert for Schmucks comes together, you'd be ready for that, too?
[Laughs] You know, it's funny. I never thought of this as a franchise, but then, I never thought Meet the Parents was something you could do twice, let alone three times. I suppose anything's possible.
Between this and the Meet the Parents movies, would you say that you have a thing for putting a nice guy in a perfectly excruciating situation?
I like comedy that comes from that, that comes from French farce, I suppose. Also, I grew up on Woody Allen films, and that dinner scene in Annie Hall with the outsiders being judged, I think that comedy loves that kind of pain. I think I've gotten addicted to dinner table scenes because you can really lock people into these situations that they can't really escape that easily. The tension of that is enjoyable to me.
But aren't they a bear to shoot because of all the coverage and sight lines you have to shoot?
They are a bear to shoot, but now I've shot enough to know a little bit more how to do them. I know to book a lot of time and get a lot of film. [Laughs]
What is the status of a fourth Austin Powers movie? Do you get any warning on those from Mike?
It's up to Mike. As you know, I don't drive the beginnings of those movies. I talk to Mike and I hear rumors from time to time that it's happening, but it isn't.
So they'll be rumors to you, too, even though you're a key part of the franchise?
Sometimes he'll be busy and I'll be swamped, and I'll read, "Oh, Austin Powers is going. I'll check up." And then they say it's just a rumor. It's nice that there are rumors because it means that people are interested, and I know that Mike's thought about it a lot, but he thought about the first two sequels a lot, and they didn't just happen. It has to be something where he just wakes up with the dream of what it would be and he calls me. I would always be open to it, especially if he goes more into the Dr. Evil world, which I've always felt was ripe for more exploration.