'Rewind' recalls actor's youthful creativity

By Brandy McDonnell

Published: February 22, 2008

LOS ANGELES — Comic actor Jack Black believes his lunch choices — on this particular day, a Cobb salad with ranch dressing — indicate he is becoming more sensible with age.

"I'm getting more mature because now, when I order lunch, I just think about how I feel after I eat it. That was never a consideration in my youth,” he said, giving an assistant his lunch order as he entered a small room full of reporters last month at the Four Seasons Hotel. "I want to feel good. If I eat a cheeseburger and fries, it tastes so good at the time. Then afterward, I feel like, ‘Oh, what did I do. Why?'”

Known for his manic energy and raucous sense of humor, Black, 38, comes across as surprisingly mellow. But he got to channel his frenetic humor and childhood habit of playing make-believe into his new movie, "Be Kind Rewind.”

Written and directed by Michel Gondry ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”), "Be Kind Rewind” centers on best pals Jerry (Black) and Mike (Mos Def). Mike works for his surrogate father, Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover), in his dilapidated video rental/junk store named Be Kind Rewind. The Passaic, N.J., store, which Mr. Fletcher claims is the birthplace of jazz legend Fats Waller, offers only VHS tapes and is suffering in the DVD era.

When Mr. Fletcher goes on a trip, he leaves Mike in charge, with a warning: Keep Jerry out of the store.

The klutzy local oddball, Jerry works as a mechanic and lives in the junkyard next to the power plant, which he believes is killing him with microwaves. When Jerry tries to sabotage the plant, he ends up with a magnetized brain.

Slipping into the store to visit Mike, Jerry accidentally erases all the VHS tapes with his magnetized mind. Desperate to keep the few loyal customers coming, the friends begin remaking, or "sweding,” many of the erased films, from "Ghostbusters” to "RoboCop” and "Driving Miss Daisy” to "2001: A Space Odyssey.” The remakes, with their homemade costumes and ramshackle sets, become local hits.

Making the "sweded” films for the movie captured some of Black's childhood creativity.

"I did little plays. I did little performances but never on film. That was never my medium as a child. I had a tape recorder. I did a lot of radio plays. But yeah, it definitely reminded me of childhood. ... It's just pretending,” said Black, sporting spiky blond hair left over from filming the upcoming comedy "Tropic Thunder.”

The actor has gained a large following starring in comedies such as "School of Rock,” "High Fidelity” and "Nacho Libre” and as lead singer of the comic-folk-rock band Tenacious D. But he has branched out in the past few years to more dramatic roles in "Margot at the Wedding” and "King Kong”; the latter gets a hilarious low-budget makeover in "Be Kind Rewind.”

Black thinks his high-energy shenanigans are a good fit with Gondry's singularly surrealistic story and style.

"(He's) more inventive I'd say than any director I've worked with. If he wasn't directing films, he'd be in a laboratory inventing, you know, crazy animatronic dolls or something. He's super-creative,” Black said.

The French filmmaker designed the homespun costumes for the remade movies, including tinfoil clothes for the "Ghostbusters” sequences and the heavy "RoboCop” uniform crafted from car parts.

"He said don't rewatch any of the films, and I said, ‘But I haven't even seen ... some of these films ever. I never saw "Driving Miss Daisy.” I should watch it once just to get ready to re-create it.' And he said, ‘No, even better,'” Black said, imitating a French accent. "He liked it better when it was really half-a--ed and not even close to the original. I think that was the point. ... We were remaking them, but then they were different movies after we were done.”

Gondry said he allowed the actors to express their ideas, and Black even ad-libbed the word "sweding,” which becomes the film's term for the remade movies. In "Be Kind Rewind,” Jerry tells customers the tapes are custom-made in Sweden to explain the increased wait time and cost.

"The word ‘sweding,' I came up with the word, but I was thinking of like the (blue) suede shoes,” Gondry said. "I think it translated into sweding, like the country, or maybe I misspelled it and he (Black) talked about the country. That was improvisation.”

Working with Gondry, including deciphering his thick French accent, was a challenge, Black said. Sometimes the director would stand perfectly still, and the actors could almost see a new idea or approach to a scene formulating in his mind.

"The images in his mind that he conveys, I don't even need to really know what he's talking about until I'm in the middle of it sometimes,” Black said, replaying both parts of a conversation between him and Gondry that approximates what took place during their sweding of "Rush Hour 2.”

"(It's) like, ‘What do you mean?' ‘Just go up onto the monkey bars. Climb on the monkey bars as if you are fighting.' And I'm like, OK, and I do it, and then only later do I realize, oh, there's a miniature world underneath me. That's what that was, (when I was) like, ‘Why are there toys underneath the monkey bars?' And then I see the playback ... and oh, I see.”

Black, who shared that he and his wife are expecting their second child, considered what movies he would like to swede.

"When I was a kid, I loved the sci-fi/action genre the most, so I would've gone further into those kind of movies. Like I would have wanted to do "The Terminator” as the naked (Arnold) Schwarzenegger. Da da dum dum dum,” he said, imitating the film's theme music. "I would have wanted to do ‘The Shining.' That's not sci-fi, but I like all the old (Jack) Nicholson movies — ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' to get my sweded Oscar.”

Travel and accommodations were paid for by New Line Cinema.

Comments