Patrick Wilson
Tags: movie, Barry Munday, actor, barry, munday
Back in March, Barry Munday played the South by Southwest Film Festival. The independently made comedy got its first laughs from the audience in Austin, and spent the week looking for distribution. Patrick Wilson plays the title character, a ladies man who loses both testicles in a freak accident. He finds out the last woman he ever slept with, Ginger (Judy Greer), got pregnant. So with his last chance at fatherhood, he tries to make things work with Ginger and become a family man.
There are lots of romantic comedies about mismatched couples trying to work things out. Just this month Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel do it in Life As We Know It, as the typical high maintenance career girl and the slacker dude. Barry and Ginger don't fit into such neat categories, so it's hard to describe Barry Munday in a sound bite. You have to experience it like the SXSW audience did.
Barry was a ladies man, but he wasn't cool like Barney Stinson or Joey Tribbiani. He was a player but not sleazy, inappropriate but not rude. Ginger has stringy hair and glasses but never takes them off or lets down a pony tail. She has her own style but she's not trying to prove any points. Her family is definitely a hurdle for Barry, but they don't give him lie detector tests like the Fockers.
This month, Magnolia opened the film in theaters, or it's available for download on Xbox Live, Playstation, Amazon and VUDU. Back in March, Wilson and his costars were working the festival to present the film. Sitting in front of perhaps the only movie poster to feature his own awkwardly grinning mug, Wilson tried to help analyze the tone of Barry Munday. Perhaps it was even more elusive than the timeline of Watchmen or the morality of Hard Candy.
SG:
How do you identify the rhythm of this type of comedy?
PW:
I guess the closest would be like ‘70s kind of style. As far as the film or the style of a lot of one angle, one shot, it takes a lot of confidence to not be told. Certainly Woody Allen can nail it, whether it’s that or Harold and Maude, I think those types of comedies fit the style the best as far as the film look and the way it’s cut.
SG:
Interesting. I wasn’t even thinking of the camera and editing, but the dialogue.
PW:
I think because it’s all built around character. I think you see the relationship, you see their style, you see how Barry and Ginger look and act, just their physical appearance so a lot of it is situational. And then there’s a lot of just out of nowhere Billy Dee Williams is like, “I don't think men should wear makeup.” What does that have to do with anything? There’s a lot of those kind of non sequiturs that are really just character oriented so it’s not necessarily telling you, “Now you have to laugh.” A lot of lines that land situationally I thought were great that I didn’t see when I was doing it. Nothing was funny about it. One thing about Barry is he doesn’t really have a potty mouth but the fact that I think I have one line where I say, “Who the fuck is Ginger Farley?” That got this huge response. It’s funny because I never thought of it as a funny line but I think it was a very sort of human line.
SG:
Is it that he’s sleazy without being vulgar?
PW:
I think the thing was, I never played him or saw him as sleazy. Certainly in the fact that he hits on a lot of girls, but he is a good spirit. He would never make fun of anyone. There are sleazebags that are like, “I’m not going to hit on her because she’s ugly.” He’s a great spirit for as douchey as he can be. It’s hard not to like him at the end of the day. I think you have to pull for him. He’s awkward in his body. That was the fun of playing him.
SG:
Were there some lines you knew would be funny, like calling his daughter’s name during sex?
PW:
Right, right, yeah. I haven’t done a lot of comedy, at least on film, but I knew I got along with [director] Chris [D'Arienzo] really well. I knew our style and I knew the people that I was basing Barry on and taking from the book [Life Is a Strange Place by Frank Turner Hollon] and really from Chris and trying to put my own humor into it, I didn’t know who would find what funny and I still don’t. I was interested to see how it played and I thought it played unbelievably. It played better than I expected. Even with sound that wasn’t great, it’s hard to hear some of the dialogue, that’s a testament to the flick I guess. [People said,] “I thought it was funny. I found it hilarious.”
SG:
Was it important that the movie gets over the sex thing and explores what it really means to lose one’s testicles?
PW:
Yeah, look, the tagline of this movie, the logline I kind of describe it, it’s a hard sell. It’s sort of odd. I think what struck me about the book and about the story was that’s your set of circumstances that you see happen pretty early on in the movie. You sort of work in opposites. Okay, if this is a story about either the most disturbing way to tell a love story or a quirky way to tell a love story, or as far as Barry’s arc about what it is like to become a man, then what is the absolute extreme to take away his manhood? Because I’ve done other films where it’s a metaphorical emasculation but this was very literal and physical. When that’s your setup, you actually get over it pretty quickly. You get more involved in their love story I think. It’s not about we’re going to show the gross shot to get the “Ohhh” reaction. It’s not that kind of movie.
SG:
It's not There's Something About Mary.
PW:
Which I think is funny, the Farrelly Brothers are hilarious, but it’s not that style.
SG:
Did you enjoy playing the early scenes of Barry’s lame “game?”
PW:
Lame but successful. He’s about quantity over quality, I’m not going to lie to you. Yeah, that’s very fun. That was a lot of fun to shoot those few scenes and I think that’s actually really cool how Chris sets it up to where you get in the first five, ten minutes exactly who this guy is. Then you don’t need to keep showing that so you’re not putting it on. That’s him. That’s who he is and if anything, towards the end of the movie, you wanted to still have those kernels of who Barry is in the movie, like “maybe it would be pretty rad to be an architect” because in some ways he changes drastically and becomes a man. In other ways he doesn’t change at all because that’s kind of who he is. We were very conscious both with Barry and with Ginger. It’s not about all of a sudden the ugly duckling becomes beautiful and starts to wear makeup and clothes that fit her. That is so not what this movie is about and I love that.
SG:
What’s annoying about those movies is they’re pretty damn cute before they lose the pony tails.
PW:
Of course. It’s always such a gimmick. Judy’s a very pretty girl but what was really fun was she just would sort of show up to set. So much about her acting and putting on the glasses that she wore as Ginger, those were very specific in what she chose. It wasn’t about let me put this mole on because moles will make [me ugly] like you see in a lot of movies. I think that’s what we liked. Yes, this is a romantic comedy but we’re not going to all of a sudden Barry’s going to go to the gym and shave his goatee and get a six pack.
SG:
Did you change your posture to stick your tummy out?
PW:
Yes, the posture is absolutely put on. I shot this right after Watchmen so the weight that I had gained for Dan for Watchmen, I just said, “You know, we should just keep some of it on. This is who I am right now.” And it worked. I thought it sort of fit, that sort of getting a little soft, physically trying to style-wise hold on to the last time he thought he was cool which was probably 1992, now with the rugby shirt and braided belt, but I liked to keep the weight on. Plus I knew there were some scenes where I was either shirtless or the love scene. No, no, no, let’s make these real people and not be vain about how we look.
SG:
Do you see this as a romantic leading man vehicle?
PW:
[Laughs] I mean, look. At this point you never know what a movie’s going to do or what reaction it will have. Is this a romantic comedy? Absolutely. Is it just a very quirky comedy? Yeah. That’s who he is. I don’t look for anything other than what it is. I’m so glad that this was the festival that it premiered because I just thought this is a great audience for it. Plus the music in the film is unbelievable so with this crowd, look, Austin’s slogan is “Keep Austin weird” so the fact that we’re sort of a quirky movie and it’s such a great music town, we’ve got an incredible score to this movie, song selection. It fits great.
SG:
Do the music choices fit your taste in music?
PW:
Yeah, that was something that we sort of liked the rock he was into. We got into indie rock. Chris and I, he’s a supreme music nerd so we both go very deep into our rock knowledge and trivia. Me specifically with more heavy metal but there’s a little of that in there. His knowledge of Whitesnake was fun.
SG:
What are you into, the hair bands?
PW:
Yeah, I was. I’m a die hard Van Halen fan which is sort of not hair metal but yeah. Look, I was in high school in the late ‘80s and graduated in ’91 so the rise of the hair bands, I used to go see Cinderella and Winger[/url in concert and all those kinds of bands. It was important actually for Barry that that was the last time he felt really important. You don’t really feel like he has that many friends anymore but he’s still fighting the good fight.
SG:
Have you become a family man?
PW:
Oh yeah. I have two kids. Absolutely. My wife and I have been married five years. Even since we shot this I’ve had another child.
SG:
How was your game back in the day?
PW:
My game was terrible. I mean, I dated a lot but it was usually people that I was around circumstantially. I was never good at a bar. Actually, that was kind of fun about Barry to go and scope people at a bar, the Bennigan’s type restaurant. I was never good at that actually.
SG:
In a small town Chili’s[/url, Barry is the stud.
PW:
Yeah, look, hey, it works for him. He’s not unsuccessful. I think that’s what’s kind of so endearing about him. You know, he’ll hit on lots of people. He’s good to go. He is successful at being a ladies’ man.
SG:
But he's got to be the most colorful interesting character there.
PW:
Sure. He knows how to talk. He and Donald, Shea [Whigham] who I think is just hilarious and awesome in the movie. They’ve got a good thing going.
SG:
Have you seen the ultimate fully extended Watchmen?
PW:
Yes, I love it. I was so excited to see the Black Freighter stuff put in because I thought it was so great in the novel. I mean, the first time I saw just the director’s cut I was really happy with the Hollis stuff put back in. It was really so important. Zack [Snyder] hated losing that stuff, especially with his death and Dan’s reaction to it. I was so glad when the director’s cut came out.
SG:
Even I haven’t done the four hour version yet.
PW:
Four hour is quite a monster. It takes a little while.
Barry Munday is now playing in select theaters and available for download.
Barry Munday is now playing in select theaters and available for download.
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