Dark comedy points Jack Black in a new direction
NEW YORK - At an East Village restaurant over dinner recently, after ordering mussels and selecting a white wine, Jack Black proffered a theatrical "Gratzi" to the waitress. He then leaned in expectantly, his gymnastic eyebrows raised, eagerly awaiting a response that didn't come.
"She didn't say 'Prego,' he said, slumping back into the booth, crestfallen.
Black was in town to promote his latest film, "The D Train," a black comedy about a status-obsessed family man organizing his high school reunion. Black had just come from taping the "Tonight Show," where he and Jimmy Fallon remade the music video to the Extreme ballad "More Than Words."
Four years ago, Black starred in Richard Linklater's "Bernie," a comedy about a true-life tale of a beloved small-town Texas mortician convicted of murder. The movie was smaller than Black's normal output ("Kung Fu Panda," "Gulliver's Travels," "Year One") but it was acclaimed. Black, it turned out, is an exceptional character actor.
"I was like: I want to make more of these movies that are weird and cool," he says. "No money because that's what happens when you make a weird movie. I was actively looking for more indie projects because of my experience on 'Bernie."'
In between, Black made a record with his outlandish rock act, Tenacious D, toured and started a comedy-music festival, Festival Supreme. Black started as a theater performer and has more range than he's sometimes credit for. He's equally capable of grandly playing an Internet porn king (in the otherwise lackluster "Sex Tape") as he is discussing Sam Shepard.
But Black's options in the business were also shifting.
"Let's be honest, I've whiffed it a couple times," he says. "And then it's nervous times. And like three years goes by, then here comes another wave. I'm glad I'm catching another wave."
In addition to "The D Train," which came out Friday, Black stars in the upcoming satirical HBO series "The Brink," as well as two animated films: this fall's "Goosebumps" and next year's "Kung Fu Panda 3."
In "The D Train," Black plays perhaps his least likable character. "A total turd," he calls him. To lure the most popular guy (James Marsden) back to the reunion, he piles fiction on top of fiction until it leads to an already infamous bisexual encounter. "The D Train" could be the bromance to end all bromances.
"I just hadn't seen it before," says Black. "I guess that's just it: I hadn't seen it before."
"School of Rock" remains the quintessential Black film. He's bombastic and sweet, a combustible, always-riffing tornado of enthusiasm. But "The D Train" and "Bernie" point toward a new direction.
"What I took away from it is: Stop caring so much about what people think of you," he says of "The D Train." "I'm always stressing. Like: 'Oh god, I hope it's a hit. I hope people like me. The stress comes from: If this doesn't go well, then maybe I don't work again. That never goes away."