Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: Jason Schwartzman
Jason Schwartzman loves the Suicide Girls. He called out his favorite by name and even mentioned another one by her signature tattoo. It makes sense that he’d be so cultured, coming from the Coppola family. They have high class tastes in film, music and even fine wine (try the Coppola shiraz. It’s delightful.)
Alternative beauty is especially relevant to Schwartzman’s latest movie. In Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Scott (Michael Cera) has to fight his new girlfriend’s seven evil exes. Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) expresses a lot of Suicide Girls qualities, the way she dresses and her different hair colors (three hair changes in the film), though no visible tats. We’ll assume the tats are in the director’s cut.
Schwartzman plays Gideon Gordon Graves, the evilest of Ramona Flowers’ seven evil exes. He’s the final battle for Scott. How cool is that? A Hollywood movie about two guys battling it out over a Suicide Girl? It’s based on the comic book by Bryan Lee O’Malley and directed by Edgar Shaun of the Dead Wright, full of martial arts battles and video game style.
When Schwartzman debuted as Max Fischer in Rushmore, kung fu action wouldn’t have been anyone’s prediction for his future. Everyone grows up though. Now a 30-year-old man, Schwartzman sports a moustache as he makes the press rounds for Scott Pilgrim. He seemed happiest to talk about Suicide Girls though, exclaiming “No shit!” when he heard we were at the table.
Fred Topel: So Ramona Flowers has some Suicide Girls qualities.
Jason Schwartzman: I love the Suicide Girls. I like the girl Radeo. I like Radeo, that’s her name.
FT:
Radeo will be happy to hear that. So you’re really familiar with the Girls?
JS:
I was just talking to my publicist, Matt Labov, because he represents Will Ferrell and I was telling him that one of the Suicide Girls got a tattoo on her thigh that says “Milk was a bad choice” from Anchorman. She [James] has that tattooed on her thigh, because he drinks milk on a really hot day and he goes, "Argh, milk was a bad choice," and that’s what she got tattooed on her thigh.
FT:
Do you go for the Suicide Girls type?
JS:
I went with my girlfriend in high school to get her first tattoo ever when she turned 18. That was the thing she did right when she turned 18. She went and got a tattoo.
FT:
What was it?
JS:
A star, right here [on her thigh], real original.
FT:
How do you like it rockin the ‘stache? Is that just your own thing or for a film?
JS:
I’m doing that for me, for my wife, for us. She said she liked it.
FT:
Do you do a lot of gaming yourself?
JS:
When I was a kid I played a lot of Super Nintendo and Nintendo NES and stuff, but not recently. I want to now. I’m afraid though. I know on some levels it would be addictive for someone like me because I spend a lot of time alone, and that would be so much fun I can’t think about it.
FT:
What were the top five video game you really liked as a kid?
JS:
FT:
With all the video game influence in the film, do you think it plays to non gamers?
JS:
I’ll tell you tomorrow because my mom has never played a video game in her life and she’s coming tonight to see the movie. I’m curious to see it. I’m pretty sure the reaction will be that she will be happy. The best case is that she will be happy, but I think it will be mesmerizing to her. People also love to see stuff that they don’t know anything about, new worlds. I think that people that don’t know a lot about video games will be just like, "What is that?" I think it will be a sense of wonder or something. I think that’s very interesting.
FT:
How about comic books?
JS:
One thing I really love is the R. Crumb's Kafka book. He kind of illustrates the life of Kafka. It's great. Also The Beats. He does a little autobiography of the beat poets [with Harvey Pekar.]
I hate to admit it but I wish all my books in high school were comic books. I mean like textbooks. I can learn and retain it so much easier for some reason when words and pictures, showing it to me at the same time. I mean, it sounds so silly to say but a page of words is daunting when we’re reading about the beats. "Oh, Kerouac?" Now it all makes sense if it's so well done. It’s like right in between a movie and a book.
I hate to admit it but I wish all my books in high school were comic books. I mean like textbooks. I can learn and retain it so much easier for some reason when words and pictures, showing it to me at the same time. I mean, it sounds so silly to say but a page of words is daunting when we’re reading about the beats. "Oh, Kerouac?" Now it all makes sense if it's so well done. It’s like right in between a movie and a book.
FT:
How much fun did you have playing the bad guy?
JS:
It was really fun. It was really scary because when I showed up I guess they shot the Katayanagi twins after I shot my big sword-fighting scene. But, for the most part they had shot all the exes, I think, in chronological order so I kind of showed up toward the end. It was really scary for me because Edgar was showing me a bunch of stuff they had edited together and it was like, "Look at this!" and it was all so great. It was just kind of like a thing I was thinking to myself, "This is a really great opportunity for me to ruin his movie." It’s like I’m coming in at the end and what if I f*ck this up, and I didn’t want to be too much. I didn’t want to be cliché, you know? These things were floating around in my head. So I was just asking so many questions like, "What do you want? Where do you want Gideon?" Edgar and Bryan were so helpful to me, and one thing Bryan said was great was, "Just remember this whole movie is through Scott Pilgrim’s eyes, so you don’t play Gideon Graves as if this was in the real world. Don’t think like that. Approach it as you play how Scott sees Gideon. Be his idea of the worst nightmare ex-boyfriend." So that’s really where I was coming from, like who would I hate to meet if my ex-girlfriend was like, "This is my ex!" I would hate someone saying like, "Hey!" and being nice, trying to help me, and being really sweet.
FT:
What was Edgar's direction?
JS:
Edgar said he saw Gideon as passive-aggressive. Well, to me that’s a tricky thing to play because there are some passive-aggressive people where you can tell they are passive-aggressive instantly, and then there are other passive-aggressive people where you don’t realize it until it's too late. I asked Edgar about that. "How overt do you want his douchey-ness?" I hate to say it. It was tricky, because it’s not like you're going to meet him and go, "Oh, he’s a great guy. Obviously you know he’s got to fill this role of the seventh evil ex. He’s got to be that, but where do you want it?" He came up with this great thing which was kind of like 10 is evil Satan, one is just a great person, a wonderfully sweet guy with really no evil at all and then we would do different takes of different levels of it just so he had it. Then in the editing room he could kind of put them together. Although I don’t like to watch myself, one thing I can see that Edgar did was take one take where I’m a real cocksucker asshole and another where I’m sincerely nice and it makes Gideon seem unstable, which I like.
FT:
What was the average number you ended up at? Were you more of an 8 or a 2?
JS:
I would think I was more like a six, six or seven.
FT:
Was it difficult being a musician in a movie with music and not actually drawing on that talent at all?
JS:
Did I want to run in there and play in the scenes?
FT:
Did you ever have that impulse watching everyone else having a good time?
JS:
Totally! I’m glad that I wasn’t because it’s very hard, as you’ll find with any musician, to just make them stop playing. Alison Pill was sitting at the drum set for so many hours and I was like, "That is the exact person who should be behind that drum set for 12 hours." If I had a guitar in my hand it would be so distracting. Anytime there was an instrument around, it’s not like you want to show off. It's fun. You want to get your hands on them. It's fun. It’s hard to be around instruments and not play them.
FT:
There was a big Scott Pilgrim experience at Comic-Con. What was it like to be amongst your fans, and be there without your publicists and manager and just be in the middle?
JS:
I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about that. When I was in my band, you play and then you take your instruments off stage and then go hang out in the bar and drink with everybody. It never seemed like there was much of a difference. I just went and got a bunch of shirts made and people were like, "Can I take your picture?" I think it’s a different thing for someone like Robert Pattinson because I heard people will try to grab him and really try to hold him and rips his clothes. I’ve never experienced anything like that, except at home.
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World opens August 13.
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World opens August 13.
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