Best known as leading man Michael Bluth on the cult-phenomenon TV show “Arrested Development,” Jason Bateman has moved to a larger screen, both directing and starring in the raunchy spelling bee comedy “Bad Words.”
Bateman sat down with The Eagle’s Tam Sackman to discuss his experience as a first-time director.
E: How has your experience as an actor translated into directing?
JB: Well, as an actor you have a very good seat to see the complexities of the process. That helped me tremendously in trying to navigate how complicated the process is. You’re often exposed to a lot of problems and things that are broken and as an actor you’re part of the solution during the process. But sometimes you have to be a little political about how you suggest a fix or answer but as a director you’re obligated to come up with an answer. It was nice having the responsibility of having to answer all of those questions and fix all of those problems. It demanded that I use all that I’ve observed and soaked up. It was kind of like all of the acting was going to college, and when you come out of college you want a job. That’s, to me, what directing is. It demanded that I use everything I’ve learned.
E: So do you think that you’re more critical of your own acting when you’re directing?
JB: Equally. I’m always doing my acting knowing that at least one person is going to be watching it. And I know that that person is going to have a very critical eye, and is going to be watching for the slightest bit of communication. And so it lets me be very subtle, because I’m performing for that audience. So I just did it the same way. Between action and cut, it just felt normal, like I was just doing my acting. Then, at cut, it was time to assess whether we got it right, and that judgment was up to me, for a change, as opposed to somebody else. That was daunting but gratifying. It was a good challenge.
E: You often play a regular guy who gets thrown into crazy circumstances, like in “Arrested Development” or “Identity Thief”, but in “Bad Words” you’re a not so regular guy who creates these circumstances for himself. What do you get out of breaking that typecast?
JB: It’s a nice change to be the antagonist instead of the protagonist. But there is a bit of a transition in the film where he becomes a little bit more of a protagonist as opposed to the antagonist. And perhaps you start to empathize with him at an equal level or maybe even more than some of the other people around him, for some of the audience. I thought that was really creative by the screenwriter. As you said, I’m practiced at playing the guy who is unsure, the guy who is flawed and is vulnerable and is wounded. I knew that to make this film and this character tolerable, you needed to show flashes of that. So I have a few of those tricks up my sleeve, where he can say something nasty when he’s Guy Trilby, but then I can throw in a Michael Bluth look, and it might be like, “oh, well that guy didn’t really mean that. He’s just being petulant.” So maybe there was a cocktail there that made it go down a little easier.
“Bad Words” is in theaters now.
tsackman@theeagleonline.com
