Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living (26 page)

Coincidentally, Sandra Bullock was one of the executive producers on that show, and I’d known her for a couple of years because she’s old friends with Courtenay Valenti, Pat Roberts’s wife. She was in their wedding party, as was I, and we had run into each other over the years socially. I had done a small role in her movie
Murder by Numbers
, in a small cop scene that got cut down to an even hilariously smaller appearance.

Up close, it’s easy to see why she’s such a success, because she’s always having fun. She did an episode of
Lopez
as my obsessive ex-girlfriend who was also blind. We ended up doing this really hilarious episode together that had a bunch of clowning and physical comedy in it, which was really a blast and felt like another few rotations of the snowball. A short while later, she and John Pasquin were doing a movie called
Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous
, and they were trying to find an unknown (i.e., cheap) actor to play the main bad guy. In other words, it wasn’t a great enough part to spend their budget on any “juice.” So, I had to jump through some hoops and do some auditions for the studio, but I ended up getting this part, which was incredible for me. It was the first big studio movie I ever did, and quite an education. This great guy and superior actor, Abraham Benrubi, was my brother, and we were your classic simple and scary thugs. We had such a gas in a bunch of scenes with William Shatner and Sandra, shooting all around Vegas, in and out of the casinos. At the end of the film (spoiler alert), Sandy ends up beating the shit out of me across the casino floor at Treasure Island. Everything about that job was a dream, but the best part was that I had won the role from my work, further solidifying my snowball.

Shortly thereafter I got a nice part in this movie
Sin City
that Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller made, based on Frank’s graphic novel series of the same name. This came about from a really random audition recorded on video in a room at the Four Seasons, so I never met the directors until I went to shoot it, but I think it went well because things were kind of starting to roll now. I was making a nice living as an actor, still working in TV, guest-star stuff, and more small film jobs. My woodworking was going great. My work and home life made me happy, which then helped me land more and better work, which made me even more happy and confident, and so on.

* * *

I
n 2005, I did this movie called
The Go-Getter
, written and directed by Martin Hynes. It’s such a sweet, beautiful movie and I’m going to plug the shit out of it right here. It’s one of several films I’ve done that went to Sundance, but apparently the timing wasn’t just right, because it should have been a total hit. Premiering a film at Sundance is a huge victory in itself, by the way, especially considering that just shooting a feature film to completion and affording and surviving post-production until you have a ninety-minute work of art that you are proud of . . . well, let’s just say that a film must surmount a row of hurdles immeasurably long and high in order to even reach a movie screen in the first place. This film has Zooey Deschanel and Lou Taylor Pucci and Jena Malone, all doing exquisite work as the beautiful young people that they are, not to mention Maura Tierney and Bill Duke in great supporting turns.

I went in to read for this little part in the movie, and this is something I did a lot—if I was reading for one or two smaller scenes, like the guy at the bus stop, or the guy at the hardware store, or what have you, I’d go through the script and see if there was something else I could reasonably do. I’d go in and say, “I’ve prepared the bus driver as requested and also the thug at the end with the baseball bat, if you’d care to also see me assay that role as well.” At
The Go-Getter
I was reading to play the shitty night manager of a shitty hotel. It was a really fun scene, and it went really well and they were happy. I then said, “I don’t mean to be an asshole, but I also prepared the role of the potter. Can I try that?” And Hynes, the director, a bit befuddled, said, “Uh, yeah. Sure.” In his mind he was thinking, “This audition for the night manager was the best one we’ve seen. I love this guy already.” So when I asked about the other thing he was a bit confused. I then fortunately did an audition for the potter that he also really loved. I left and, as he told me later, he thought, “Oh, boy. What do I do? I love him for both parts.” He went back and forth between the two, and finally the producers said, “Well, give him both parts, then.”

I was working in my shop when he phoned to tell me that he wanted me to do both parts. According to him, I then said, “Excellent. What else you got?” And he laughed and said, “Everything’s cast except I need an accordion player and a trumpet player, but it’s a small part. Kind of nonspeaking.” And I said, according to Martin, “I’ve got your accordion player and I play a little trumpet,” to which he laughingly agreed. The accordion player was Corn Mo, and Martin ended up using both him and his kick-ass song “Angel” in the film. So I ended up with three parts in the movie and we have remained great friends on top of it. It’s a beautiful movie. You should see it tonight, preferably with a date, and I guarantee you won’t be sorry.
The Go-Getter
.

* * *

I
had found my stride. I could go in to casting sessions with confidence knowing that my weirdness was appealing to the right people in the right way. I had cottoned that it was only going to be every thirtieth director or so who was going to get me, because the other twenty-nine were looking for tits or blond hair or fast talking. Or I don’t know what. Juice? You just have to find the people who are on the same page as you are.

To my great delight, Megan then got cast in Mel Brooks’s
Young Frankenstein
on Broadway, so we went to live in New York at the drop of a hat. I’d always wanted to live there, anyway, at least for a spell. I was frankly tickled pink. I took a bag of tools, as I knew I was going to find a shop and build my first canoe. While there, I ended up doing this movie with Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst called
All Good Things
. It was a really interesting, cool project, directed by smarty extraordinaire Andrew Jarecki, who, once again, cast me off of a videotaped audition. I am still awfully grateful for the continued votes of confidence like that which kept me in the game.

A whip-smart friend of mine from the Chicago days named David Cromer, who has since become a very successful Broadway director, had a musical called
Adding Machine
at the Minetta Lane Theatre downtown. It was a great show, and I ended up replacing a guy (the handsome Jeff Still) for a couple of months. It was such a savory musical, easily the best thing I saw during my time in New York besides
Young Frankenstein
. It boasted incredibly original music by Joshua Schmidt as well as a succinctly scripted book, adapted by Schmidt and Jason Loewith from the 1923 play by Elmer Rice. Once again, my Chicago theater community was paying dividends, this time in the form of an exceptional musical in New York City! (Especially exciting because I had been given to understand that if one can make it there, then one can make it anywhere.)

Right before New York, I had been cast in another indie movie called
Patriotville
, a fine title later changed to the terrifically generic
Taking Chances
. Rob Corddry was the main bad guy—he played the mayor of this town, and I was his sheriff. I was a HUGE fan of Rob’s from
The Daily Show
and I was really quite starstruck to meet him and subsequently work with him. We had so much fun together, we two white jackasses. It was really the first time I learned that I could substantially improvise, as it was the first project I had worked on where they wanted us to make up funny stuff to augment the script. Rob and I did, along with the rest of the cast, including the resplendent Justin Long and Missi Pyle, and oh my god, he made me break (crack up) so hard. That guy is so wickedly smart and funny (which is now even more common knowledge since he’s brought
Childrens Hospital
into our lives). I really hit it off with Rob and we became good friends.

Later on, when I was in New York, he sent me the first scripts for
Childrens Hospital
and was hinting pretty heavily that he wanted to see if Megan would be interested in playing the role of Chief, which of course she did. She read it—at the time it was a web series, like five or ten episodes. She said, “I don’t care what it is, this is the funniest thing I’ve read in years. I want to do this next.” So, thank providence, we both got involved with
Childrens Hospital
.

* * *

C
asting directors, after
George Lopez
, had begun to say to me, “I saw you on
George Lopez
. I didn’t know that you do comedy.” Again, it’s as though they were saying, “I didn’t know you specialized in identifying precious gemstones.” I said, “Yeah, I perform entertainment. That’s what I do. Comedy is included in that.” Even Megan wasn’t always considered a person who “does comedy,” even after
Will & Grace
, because she was from the theater and not a sketch or improv background. It was unbelievable.

I had known Amy Poehler way back in the early nineties in Chicago, and we had remained friends across the years. Through Amy and Rob Corddry I knew of the Upright Citizens Brigade, or “UCB,” Theatre in New York. I called up Amy and said, “Where do I start? What class do I take? What do I do?” and she said, “There’s a couple of shows we do that are specially designed for actors to play in, and you don’t need to know the ways of improv. Come on down.”

The percentage of comedy talent that comes to light today through the pipeline of the UCB is staggering. My first performance of a show they call
ASSSSCAT
included an improv cast that will blow the mind of any comedy nerd reading this today. The show was hosted by Amy, Seth Meyers, and Horatio Sanz, who then played in the scenes with Jessica St. Clair, Jason Mantzoukas, Rob Huebel, Lennon Parham, Scott Adsit, John Lutz, Tami Sagher, Brian Stack, Miriam Tolan, Paul Scheer, Christina Gausas, Tim Meadows, Chris Gethard, Bobby Moynihan, and Jack McBrayer, for cryin’ out loud, and I’m sure I’m forgetting a couple!

So, during my time in New York in 2007, I started doing these shows with this insane bunch of talents and that was it. Megan came around as well, and suddenly—poof!—we both “did” comedy! Between the UCB and Corddry and
Childrens Hospital
, both Megan and I were suddenly welcomed into this community of “comedy” people. They hailed from the UCB Theatre and also from a show from the nineties called
The State
, as well as tried and true institutions like Second City, ImprovOlympic, and the Groundlings. All of these people with whom I had done comedy shows in New York moved out to LA at the same time that Megan and I moved back home, so suddenly everything funny was being cast from this pool of chuckle-smiths that we had sort of stumbled into. Fortunately, they welcomed us with open arms. It’s a very nurturing community, unlike other artistic cliques (lookin’ at you, Oscar winners). There’s not a lot of competition happening so much as people stating, “I’m going to do a show and I’m going to need eight of you. I’m thankful I know this circle of the best, funniest, filthiest people, because I always have the best quality to choose from.”

In 2008, I’d just gotten back from New York and my first audition was for a one-line part in some movie George Clooney was producing. I’d worked with him on that live
ER
and he was super friendly to me. He had wanted to cast me in a small role in his movie
Leatherheads
but I had had a conflict. He’s known for, among other obvious things, this crazily heroic talent for remembering everybody—I saw him at a party seven or eight years after
ER
, and he remembered that we had stood around a big pot of soup backstage singing “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” together. It had been chilly and breezy in the soundstage, because they had the enormous “elephant doors” open, and a bunch of actors and crew standing around a steaming kettle of chowder had just felt very maritime to us. When I saw him at the party years later, he pointed at me and said, “‘Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.’” And I said, “Well, do I blow you now, or should we step into a more private chamber?”

Although George denied me the opportunity to provide him with an oral pleasuring upon that particular occasion, I decided I’d go read for this new film anyway, as I’d found out Grant Heslov was directing, and I knew he was an ace. I went in to read for this one-line part, and it was just the fucking casting hallway from hell. The role was small and not great, so the assembled talent was not the finest crop of produce one might have hoped to assemble. I had prepared a “bit” with a pair of glasses that I was planning to impishly remove before pronouncing my one line. It was just on tape for the casting lady, and it wasn’t even the lady, actually, it was the lady’s assistant. Unimpressed by my terrific “bit,” she said, “Are you going to do that with your glasses? Don’t do that.” To which I said, “You know what, I’ve got this one line. This is the bit I prepared. I’m just going to do my bit.” So I did my bit. I stood my meager ground and pulled my glasses off to say the line, and I went away and I never heard anything further from them.

A couple of months later, Megan and I were vacationing up in Calistoga in the Napa Valley wine country. Out of the blue, I got a call from my agent: “Hey, you got that Clooney job, and your first scene is in Puerto Rico night after tomorrow.” I said, “Oh, the one-line thing? Jesus, okay.” They said, “But the good thing is that George Clooney is playing the lead. He’ll be in your scene with your one line.” That was sounding better.

The film business can be hilarious in that one day you’re totally unemployed, on vacation in a remote California town, and the next, a production can send a car for you to scoot you over to San Francisco so you can fly to Puerto Rico at the drop of a hat. So I flew to Puerto Rico and I got hustled right into a trailer to be dolled up. There was kind of a buzz around the base camp, like something extra exciting was going on. I finished hair and makeup and put on my eighties army fatigues, and I went into the room in a school where we were shooting, and would you looky here. My scene was with George Clooney, and also these two other guys, Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges. And me. Just the four of us. I thought, “Well, shit. I’m glad I went to that stupid one-line audition. If I ever write ‘a book,’ this’ll make a good story.”