Jason Bateman

Interview By: Michael Dance
MichaelmDance@TheCinemaSource.com

Jason Bateman has been working in Hollywood for more than twenty-five years. While his sister Justine was starring in Family Ties, he was getting regular TV work from Little House on the Prairie and Silver Spoons when he was younger than fifteen. A taste of teen stardom followed (the most memorable of which, for good or ill, is probably Teen Wolf Too), followed by fairly steady but anonymous work in the '90s, mostly TV guest spots.

His career abruptly changed when he landed a little TV pilot called Arrested Development. It was the total dream for any actor who's ever trudged through pilot season: a lead role in a really, really good show that doesn't immediately get cancelled.

"For a while there I think my name got in the way a bit, based on all of the television I was fortunate enough to do," Batemn says. "After a while you sort of wear out your welcome in that environment. And then multi-camera [staged sitcoms with laugh tracks] was atrophying, and single-camera [like Scrubs and Arrested, with no studio audience] was coming up, and no one wants a multi-camera guy in a single-camera show, and so then I was really screwed. I was very surprised to get a reading for Arrested Development, because it really seemed to be the opposite of that which I was known for doing. And fortunately that day I guessed right in terms of what they wanted for the character, and they ended up giving me the part."

Ironically, the show wasn't a success with viewers -- it got through two and a half seasons through sheer force of will with 6 million viewers, pitiful for a network show -- but among fans and critics, the show was a revelation, and one which landed newfound attention on each of its cast members. "Not a lot of people in America were watching the show, but some people here in L.A. were, and they were some of the people in charge of giving out some good jobs," he says. "So I've kind of been able to hit the reset button a litte bit on who I am, and what people think of when they hear my name, I hope, I think, and a lot of that has to do with hireability. It has less and less to do with your talent, I think, I don't mean to sound cynical, but a big part of being hired is what you add or detract from the project as far as pedigree goes, and that show was very well-received. So I'm just trying to take the good roles that are coming my way. I'm just trying to perpetuate that -- whatever it is -- and get another few years of employment out of this tough town."

So far, it seems to be working. During Arrested's run, Bateman landed minor roles in hit movies like Starsky and Hutch and Dodgeball, and after its cancellation in early 2006 he found himself with a slew of new feature-film opportunities. The latest is a major role in The Kingdom opposite Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, and Chris Cooper. It's directed by Peter Berg, an actor and director.

"Peter Berg and I did a few scenes in Smoking Aces, a Joe Carnahan movie," Bateman says. "And Joe wrote this great monologue, and after doing it for a few hours, he said, why don't you get a little looser with the lines and make up some stuff' And I started to make Peter laugh a lot that day. So I guess he saw that I could talk on my feet, or improvise a bit, and I guess he figured that would be perfect for this part."

Bateman's goal was to provide some comic relief without undermining the drama of The Kingdom, which deals with U.S. agents investigating a bombing in Saudi Arabia. "There were a handful of lines written for the character in the movie, but none of the lines were particularly funny, I don't think the character was meant to be funny, but [Berg] figured that bringing some levity could be helpful in this. So I did have to every day kind of be on my toes and find moments to crack wise, but I had to be mindful that this is a drama. I had Jamie and Chris on one side, with a couple of Oscars, and Jenny's got her Golden Globe, and there's this jeopardy that we're trying to maintain in this movie, so let's not be an idiot."

A bit further into the movie, the jokes stop abruptly when Bateman's character is kidnapped. "I kept asking my wife to tie me up; I just wanted to know how it feels, but she wasn't game for that," he says, shrugging and grinning. "But the fact that my character gets kidnapped just sort of dictated how I played my character up until that point. One wants the audience to really have a lot of empathy for this character once he gets kidnapped, because it's this final act of drama and jeopardy. So as much as I was being a smartass in the first part of the film I tried to make him likable too, so people would care that he's bound and gagged. That was fun."

The kidnapping actually ended up being quite helpful for Bateman play the character. "Originally my character didn't get kidnapped, so there was a little less of a purpose for him to be in the movie. And it was just the way that I work, I kind of work backwards from the ending, I look at the finish line and then try to work backwards so that by the time we get to the finish line, it's more rewarding...It was easy, I mean, my mouth was taped for thirty pages of the script. That wasn't originally the plan, that was sort of a last minute thing that I said to the director, and to I think the prop guy, I said, you know, if I'm going to be tied up for thirty pages, then every time you see my character, realistically I'd be screaming and yelling for somebody who could hear me in another room to let me out. And I don't want to do that, I mean, that's just, how many times can you say 'get me out of here!'' So I said, why don't we just tape my mouth'"

A film actor who wants as few lines as possible' "I'd like to pay my dues, and learn as much as I can," he says. It's all part of his goal of longevity. "I did so much television, to be able to leave on that high note, coupled with being invited to this new medium, why not' I'm graduating television and become a freshman in this new medium."

Bateman's future plans include hopefully teaming up with his Smoking Aces director Joe Carnahan for another movie, and he's also recently signed onto the Brad Pitt-led political thriller State of Play. More immediately, he's currently working with Peter Berg again, shooting Hancock, in which Will Smith stars as a superhero. "I am a guy that Will Smith saves in the first ten pages of the film. And then to pay him back, I tell him I'm going to help him revamp his public image, because he's a persona non grata, and he's a drunk, and when he fights crime he creates a lot of collateral damage, because he's banging into buildings and landing on cars, so they don't like him. So as I'm teaching him how to fix his manners and be polite in press conferences, and get him in an outfit and cape, and everything, then he starts making moves on my wife, Charlize Theron, so there's this very dark, weird love triangle. It's very Pete Berg. But you know, it's this gigantic Sony movie, and I'm so fortunate to sort of have this great seat."

Yes, it often seems as though he imagines himself being simply a spectator in the action movies that he's finding himself in. "I've really become kind of awed by these action movies. I saw Bourne Ultimatum the other day, and just felt bad that I was able to just drive away from that and say, 'boy, that was a great movie,' while these guys, the amount of work that goes into action sequences...I really feel like they can charge more, if they want. There's so much work that goes into it. And [with Hancock], there's flying, and special effects, and things are blowing up, and there's so much work."

Working in movies hasn't caused him to forget about his friends from Arrested Development, though. It helps that his co-stars are finding plenty of success too -- Michael Cera, who played his son, just hit it big with Superbad, while Will Arnett, who played his older brother, played the villain in Blades of Glory. In fact, Bateman co-stars with Cera (and Garner, for that matter) in the upcoming indie Juno, although the two have no scenes together.

"Phones work everywhere, and e-mail is great, and Will Arnett is actually in town quite a bit with all of his work. Michael was just in town for the junket and everything for [Superbad], and I saw him for that. You know, we're all really really happy for one another, we had like the greatest time ever doing Arrested Development, and as happy as we are about having careers afterwards, we still miss it, you know, we were all so proud to be a part of that and we were all big fans of the show - and perhaps we'll all get back together again and fire up those characters again in one form or another."

Does he mean -- an Arrested Development movie' Imagine the sound of hundreds of diehard fans' hearts fluttering. "We're all sort of hoping. We'd all be up for it."

Finally, someone asks a question about his sister Justine, who's had a very similar career to Jason's after Family Ties ended, but hasn't benefited from an Arrested-like breakout. "We both get the business, it's up, it's down," he says, noting that she's been taking it easy for the past few years to raise her two young children. "When she was on top of the world in Family Ties, I certainly wasn't sticking pins in a sister doll. It comes and it goes, and if she had been on Arrested Development I wasn't, the shoe would be on the other foot, and consequently, she's out there every pilot season looking for something great."