Jack Black

Interview By: Zak Santucci
ZakSantucci@TheCinemaSource.com

When people wanted the famous Jack Black to play the egocentric Carl Denham, 'they were talking about Orson Welles as a model, in that he was young and cocky; some of the elements of his character.' Black sarcastically adds, 'Yeah, and he was a genius.' This is the type of free thinking Black's been known to exude and always follow' he tends to go against the grain. He mentions of Welles, 'So yea, I focused in on the hubris and the drive. Yeah, he (Carl Denham) has all the ambition, and not all the talent, unlike Orson who can back it up. I watched a lot of Orson Welles films. There's definitely a lot of him in the performance, but a lot of other people too. There's a producer who shall rename nameless. Some different power moguls.' A reporter makes a hint that it's a couple of well-known producer, and Black retorts with: 'It's neither of those, it's more of a 'w' producer' alright it's Weinstein, but I'm not telling you which one!'

Jack Black wasn't at the top of his form during this interview, he kept mentioning how tired and out of it he was, but he still managed to deliver the funny. He stayed pretty low on the jokes about how awesome he is (the Tenacious D approach) and stayed a bit more situational, making sure to point out when he was not telling the truth for comedic purposes. 'I told Peter (Jackson), 'I'll do your film, but if you don't cast Colin Hanks, then I walk.'' He then mentioned he was kidding, but brought up that the duo of Colin and Black in Orange County kicked the asses of the Adrien Brody / Thomas Kretschmann duo that's also in King Kong but were in The Pianist together the same year Orange County came out.

Concerning the inherent differences of being in such a special effects laden film, our good friend didn't have too much trouble acting with a blue screen. However, he pointed out not having really done an action film before besides being an extra in Demolition Man. Of getting in shape for action, Black notes, A movie like this makes you run as fast as you can, scream as loud as you can, and do a lot of things to the extreme limits'

'I became quite an athlete in preparation. I went down to UCLA and there was this green field there where nobody goes, and since I'm an alumni I feel like I can do whatever I want, so I'd go there and run around pretending to be chased by gorillas or 7 foot cockroaches. That was my preparation physically and for acting. I'm gonna start a class, an actor's studio called 'running around in a green field'. It's the Jables method. I did yoga.' He later pointed out that all this was true, except he's not teaching a class. One joke that came as he was leaving that he didn't have a chance to deny was that, 'Tenacious D did score King Kong, they're giving credit to that other guy' but trust me. But we got Howard Shore to score the Tenacious D movie.' Honestly, I'd rather see Tenacious D score every movie, ever made, until the end of time.

There was some pressure filming on the same location as The Lord of the Rings after Peter Jackson had just received an Oscar for his work: 'You see graffiti and stuff, and everytime I walked to work I'd see this little thing, 'Frodo was here'.' Despite these similarities, the camaraderie wasn't the same. None of the King Kong cast went out and got tattoos. They had fun, but Jack notes that this movie's a lot darker, the plot itself is a lot more 'every man for themselves.'

But the reason, I jumped at the chance of a Jack Black interview is of course, from how I grew to love him 10 years ago with Tenacious D. Luckily the question came up relatively early: 'The Tenacious D movie, we finished principal photography, I'm really proud of it, it's the first movie I've wrote and produced. I just think it's funny in a way that none of the movies I've been in are funny. Not much makes me laugh, but nothing makes me laugh more than me and my buddy Kyle Gass getting stoned and writing songs in his apartment.' This is already the type of movie I want to see. However, there was some bad news. While I had heard it was coming out in May of 2006, JB (as us fans lovingly refer to him) brought up that it might not come out until the end of August, beginning of September. He says of the delay, 'We've built this movie, we've gone through so many crazy adventures, it's like The Lord of the Rings of comedy. We've gotta end on a massive scale, it's gotta be a big finish. So we've gotta do battle with Satan himself, and make the world explode, or create a new universe. So that has gotta be re-shot.' I've never been more happy to be informed my most awaited movie was coming out three months later. Battling Satan and making sure it's done right seems like the right move for such an eclectic actor.

And this also has nothing to do with King Kong, but I had to include Jack Black's personal plot synopsis of his next movie Lucha Libre. It's a movie penned by Mike White of School of Rock fame and co-written and directed by Jared Hess who directed Napoleon Dynamite. Here's what Black says' 'Actually I'm only half Mexican in the movie. My mother is a missionary from Scandinavia. My father is a deacon from Mexico. And then they both die when I'm two years old, so I'm raised in an orphanage. So I grow up and I'm the head chef at the orphanage and everybody hates my cooking and I say, 'It's not my cooking, you guys don't' give me enough money to buy fresh ingredients.' So I come up with this plan to get money to buy good food for the kids. So I become a luchador, a Mexican wrestler on the side, in secret, cuz it's not God-like. It's not something a man of the cloth should be doing, you shouldn't be kicking people's asses for money.'

But most importantly, Jack Black is excited about his new role in King Kong. He said getting it was 'creamy and incredible'. Which pretty much sums up Jack Black in two words right there.