Jason Lee

Interview By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

For a guy who started out as a professional skateboarder and pretty much stumbled into acting with 1995's Mallrats, Jason Lee has come a long way. He's not headlining sci-fi thrillers or demanding $20 million a picture, but even before he became a household name with the successful TV show My Name is Earl in 2005, Lee had been getting steady work for years in a business known for its unreliability. He's appeared in everything from Almost Famous to Heartbreakers to The Incredibles to this December's Alvin and the Chipmunks, in which he takes on the much-beloved role of Dave.

'It was a complete fluke,' Lee says of his acting career. 'I knew that I was very excited to be doing it. I knew that I was lucky and very fortunate to suddenly be on the set of Mallrats in the middle of freezing cold Minnesota. It was a how-did-I-get-here' kind of thing. But I didn't know. I was kind of young, and I didn't know really what acting meant.'

He teamed up with Mallrats director Kevin Smith again for his next role, one third of an awkward love triangle in Chasing Amy. As it would happen, the film almost didn't get made.

'The movie was originally meant to be made for a few million, and Harvey Weinstein [the then-president of Miramax] wanted a different cast,' Lee says. 'Which would've worked, but Kevin had specifically written the roles for myself and Joey [Lauren] Adams and Ben Affleck. And apparently Harvey didn't want to make the movie with us, because he wanted more bankable names, I suppose. But to Kevin's credit, he said, well, I want to make it with these people because that's who I wrote the script for. Give me just $250,000 and I'll make the movie my way. And he did. And he stuck to his guns. And I think the movie made like $13 million bucks.'

The film opened up his career in more ways than one. 'I didn't really know what acting was until I did Chasing Amy, and then after it was a success and people started being a little bit interested, I had to go out and try new things, I did that movie Enemy of the State. Small part, but to go from Mallrats to Chasing Amy to this massive Tony Scott movie where I'm surrounded by cameras, totally out of my element ' each new thing became a confidence-building experience.'

For an actor known for hitting it off with his directors ' aside from his collaborations with Smith, he's done two movies each with Cameron Crowe and Lawrence Kasdan ' he's quick to give credit where credit is due. 'Thanks to Kevin I have a career. I don't know if I would have a career just thanks to Mallrats. Without Chasing Amy I might not be here today. Because Mallrats, as we all know, didn't do very well when it opened.'

So where does Alvin and the Chipmunks fall into all of this' Well, in the twelve years since his Mallrats days, his priorities may have shifted a little bit ' he now has a son that just turned five. It's no fluke that the movie he did prior to Alvin was also a kid's movie; he was the voice of the title character in Underdog.

'I know he likes The Incredibles, but the advantage of Chipmunks is that I'm on camera, you know' ... I took him to see Underdog, and he just kept asking questions. 'How did they get your voice to come out of the dog's mouth' How does the dog fly' Why does the dog wear a cape' Are you inside the dog' Is the dog a costume'''

Alvin has, so far, proved easier. 'He came to the set a couple times,' Lee says. 'He wondered where [the chipmunks] were when he didn't see them on the set. I told him, they're not working today, but they're very cool and you're going to love the movie. So we saw the preview and he got so excited.'

One thing Lee's son is not as impressed with, however, is his day job: 'Yeah, he's a little bored with Earl now. At first when he saw me on TV he'd point at it and walk up to it and touch it. Dada! Now he's just like, whatever. You have a big ugly mustache seven months of the year.'

Alvin meant Lee got to shave away Earl's trademark facial hair, but it also meant acting with three computer-generated chipmunks that were inserted after the filming ' in other words, his job consisted of having conversations with empty space. 'The magic of CGI, right'' he says with a smile.

'Most of the time it tested my patience,' he confesses. 'Because there was nothing there. Other than...nothing. You know, if the space that they were occupying was on camera, I couldn't even have tape marks. The director would say, here's where they're standing or sitting or lying, so I'd just have to move my eye line around and know where they each were. And then there'd be actors off-camera reading the dialogue. It was kind of a nightmare. And I did that for five weeks.'

The finished film, then, was more or less completely new to him. 'Without even realizing it, I just forgot about my own experience of doing it and started watching the movie,' he says. 'Because to me I think they did a fantastic job. I don't know how you guys feel, but to me it felt like [the chipmunks] were there and I was talking to them.'

Currently, Lee doesn't have any real plans ' like most television actors, he and the rest of his My Name is Earl cast are waiting to see what will happen with the ongoing Writer's Guild strike.

'We're all out of work and I don't know when we're going back,' he says. 'We did thirteen [episodes], we were supposed to do twenty-six. So I'm assuming we'll wrap the season as planned, which will be the end of March. So however many we can fit in between two weeks after the end of the strike, which is the prep time that they'll need to get up and running, and the end of March.'

That is, fingers crossed, if the strike ends before March. 'I'm hoping January, but the last one lasted eight months, so who knows,' he says. In the meantime, he's occupied with 'Alvin press, and you know, relaxing. Maybe a little bit of traveling, but I can't go too far in case they call me back.'

If the way he handles himself in this interview is any indication, he'll take whatever happens in stride and with a smile. For now he's content to relax for the holidays and take his son to see Alvin. 'I really like that it never explains why these chipmunks talk. It doesn't go out of its way to explain anything, it just sort of ' as soon as he realizes they can sing, he gets the idea that he can write and they can sing for him. You sing my songs, you can stay here, done, there's no explanation of any of it. I think it's fantastic.'