This is Jason Segel taking a break from making a movie to talk about a movie he made while on break from his twenty-four-episode-per-year TV show. And when he returns to work on the movie he’s making now (which he also wrote), there’s still the matter of finishing the other movie he made (i.e. wrote, starred in and executive produced) while making the sixth season of the TV show – which will begin production on its seventh season soon.
The movie he’s talking about now practically qualifies as a vacation: unlike FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, THE MUPPETS or the currently shooting THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT, Segel only had to act in BAD TEACHER. His character, Russell Gettis, is an easy-going straight man to Cameron Diaz’s titular hellion, Elizabeth Halsey; he mostly just watches in amused disbelief as this woman shamelessly games the public school system for her own personal gain. In most films, Russell would be the decent guy who gradually draws out Liz’s kindness; in BAD TEACHER, it’s enough for him to get her to stop embezzling money in order to pay for a top-notch boob job.
Segel’s played the nut-job before (most memorably as Eric, Carla Gallo’s insanely possessive boyfriend on UNDECLARED), so it’s fun to see him hang back and set up talented comedic performers like Diaz, Justin Timberlake and John Michael Higgins. It must’ve been a relaxing change of pace from being involved in nearly every facet of a film’s production. As Segel explains in the below interview, his part was shot out quickly, which allowed him to get back to acting in another movie or writing another screenplay or resurrecting the Muppets or whatever it is he does in his “down time”. Living the dream is hard work.
This is an important year for Segel. If THE MUPPETS is a massive box office success, he’ll have a significant creative say in the further adventures of Kermit and the gang. That’s not just living the dream. For anyone who grew up in ‘70s and ‘80s, that’s as good as ruling the world. No pressure, man.
Segel was in a surprisingly great mood at the end of a long day of press when we had our little chat.
Mr. Beaks: This movie is a lot of fun.
Jason Segel: Oh, thank you very much.
Beaks: I love how everything has branched out from FREAKS AND GEEKS and UNDECLARED, and you guys have all gone on to make your own films. When you get together it just feels like such an easy fit, like there’s a short hand.
Segel: There is. This system, not that it’s rocket science, we have been honing for like fifteen years now, and all of us, even the satellite members of that group once people branched beyond Judd, we all maintained those lessons that we learned from that core group.
Beaks: It’s interesting in this movie. I was saying to Jake that this felt more tightly scripted, and he was like “No, there was definitely some improv in it.” But it seems like I’m not seeing that anymore. It feels like you guys do have it down to a science in that it it’s just organically [growing] out of the script.
Segel: I think, in fairness, the writing is also getting better. We are becoming more experienced writers, and so, as silly as it sounds, you start to incorporate some of that improv technique into the actual writing.
Beaks: That’s what I was wondering. As you write now, you can almost anticipate the runs that may happen on set.
Segel: That’s right. I don’t know what Jake’s process was on this, because I wasn’t behind the camera, but… when Nick and I do a movie together, and Rodney Rothman is our producer, we are all students of Judd; we arrive with sheets and sheets of alt dialog that is, just as you said, sort of anticipatory of what runs might come and so we have already explored those joke avenues. It expedites things, because our budgets are pretty low respectively. We are shooting pretty fast a lot of the time, so we have learned to try to narrow down that amount of time we spend just riffing off the page.
Beaks: Low because of the rating? Is that hedging because of the R rating?
Segel: No. Part of our big sell when we first started to the studios was “We can give you a movie cheap that will make you a ton of dough.” And so we tried not to take advantage of the idea now we could ask for bigger budgets. We like the idea of still kind of having the underdog status of “We will go in and give you a movie relatively cheaply that will make you a boatload.”
Beaks: And those are the kinds of smaller stories that you are interested in telling then, right?
Segel: Absolutely. There’s no reason to have a budget inflated just for the sake of saying “We had a big budget.” Our stories are fairly simple and so they are really character based and so the money that we do use we try to put on the screen.
Beaks: And stepping into a movie like this where you are just the actor, how does that feel?
Segel: Sure, well this was a unique experience in that Jake called me and said that he thought I would be great for this part, I was in the middle of doing the TV show and he was like “Man, we can board this down to like nine days.” I think it was like nine days I worked on it, so I just popped in and had fun. My role was fairly easy, I must say. I’m kind of the straight man in this, so I just sort of popped in and said what I imagined the audience was thinking.
Beaks: There is that sense of like “What exactly does he see in her?” - aside from the fact that Cameron is just naturally magnetic.
Segel: Yeah, of course. I think you catch it in glimpses, which is why [Diaz’s] performance is so good. You get the sense that if her character just dropped her façade and all of these walls, she would actually be a really cool chick. She likes to smoke weed and she’s real laid back, and I think my character’s goal is to try to bring that out of her and let her shed the asshole side of her.
Beaks: And just a little less superficial.
Segel: Yes, exactly.
Beaks: You talk about being very comfortable within these smaller types of films. Having now had the experience of a big production in THE MUPPETS… how did that feel, and is that something that you would be willing to do again?
Segel: Yeah! You know, it’s all based on the actual project for me. The only guideline I go with in picking stuff is if it scares me. I like to do stuff that makes me feel challenged and nervous; I love the feeling of “I hope I’m capable of doing this,” because it makes you work really, really hard, you know? One of the great luxuries of having a TV show is that I know that I have a steady job. I do have a bit of a safety net. But one of the things about doing a TV show for that long is you become very, very comfortable. We know how to do that show now: we show up, and we do it, and we all go home and live our lives. That’s a great thing to have. But when I get a break, I like to chase that other feeling of “Oh, this is terrifying,” because I’m not terrified of the TV show.
Beaks: And you work a lot.
Segel: I work a lot, yeah.
Beaks: Do feel yourself thinking, “Maybe next hiatus I’ll take it easy,” or is this just what you love?
Segel: It is what I love. I think in order to really feel comfortable taking a break, I would need the TV show to be done. Because the schedule of the TV show allows me to do one movie a year basically, and the rest of the year I’m writing. I’m very aware of how fickle moviegoing audiences are; you take a year off… that really means two years in between movies. That scares me, you know?
Beaks: Are there different types of characters that you are looking [to play]? Would you be a sociopath?
Segel: I would like to play a villain. I think I would be a really good villain. What I do now is I walk the line between charming and creepy, and I tend to land on the charming side. I would like to do one where I get to land on the creepy side.
Beaks: You got there with Eric.
Segel: I did. I got there with Eric.
Beaks: And that’s kind of the energy I would like to see again. (Laughs)
Segel: I would, too. That would be really fun. The Batman villains get to have a good deal of charm in addition to being scary, so something like that would be amazing. It’s what Gary Oldman always did amazingly, too. You almost were rooting for his villains, you know?
Beaks: I’ve got to say I was fortunate enough, right at the end of production, get on the set of THE MUPPETS.
Segel: Oh cool!
Beaks: You weren’t around, but I fulfilled a life long dream by meeting Kermit the Frog.
Segel: It’s pretty magical, right?
Beaks: Yeah.
Segel: That’s so cool.
Beaks: I was amazed how, as the interview with Kermit started, [puppeteer Steve Whitmire] disappeared, and I just talked to Kermit. Day to day working on that film, was that magic always there?
Segel: Absolutely. You see that phenomenon you are talking about most when children come to set. You would be hard-pressed to get the child to even acknowledge the puppeteer when those puppets are up. With adults, it took a little bit longer and they had to revert to their childlike side. But pretty quickly, within five minutes, they were just looking at the puppet. It’s really remarkable, and that’s the magic of those puppeteers. It’s sort of a shame that their job is to become invisible. They are the most talented people; they are actors and they are writers and they are musicians and contortionists and improvers. They are amazing. I can’t say enough about them.
Beaks: When I write up my [set visit], I really want to single the puppeteers out.
Segel: That’s awesome, man. I think you are going to be really happy when that movie comes out. We have tried to do honor to that legacy.
Beaks: I’ve just got to say it was the “big” Muppet day that I was there. They were doing they big number for the opening of the show.
Segel: Oh, so you got to see the Muppet Theater also? That was pretty cool, huh? That freaked me out. That was an amazing moment.
Beaks: I mean, it’s a dream I think so many of us had growing up, and you got to realize it and bring it back. As you are watching the film come together, how do you feel?
Segel: I’m really, really excited. Post-production for me is one of the more nerve-racking times; it’s equally as intense as preproduction, when you are getting the script ready. Now you’ve got all of the components to work with, and you’ve got to fit this jigsaw puzzle together, but everyday it gets better and better. I think it’s going to be great.
That's exactly what I want to hear. My two-part trip to the set of THE MUPPETS will run very soon. Until then, I highly recommend getting out this weekend and checking out Jake Kasdan’s BAD TEACHER. It opens June 24th. Leave the little ones at home.
Faithfully submitted,
