Steve Carell and Paul Rudd in 'Dinner for Schmucks.'
Comic icons Paul Rudd and Steve Carell team up for Dinner for Schmucks, their first feature together since Anchorman, and a film that's loaded once more with eclectic, quirky characters. Schmucks centers on Rudd's character, a businessman on his way up the corporate ladder, who's invited to an all-important dinner with the company's execs. Their idea of fun is their frequently held "Dinner for Winners," where each person has to bring a special guest with some kind of ridiculous talent. Rudd is asked to participate in the dinner and to bring a guest (Carell). Although he's against the idea, he agrees in order to win the favor of his higher ups.
Last December, Fandango was invited to the Dinner set, where we got to watch the cast film a few hilarious scenes, as well as meet the crazy bunch of dinner guests. Read on for our full report, including interviews with Rudd and Carell…
Meet the Schmucks
Right after a late lunch break, the cast trickled back to the make-up area for touch ups. One actor wore an enormous beard that made him look like a real-life Davy Jones, complete with tentacles neatly combed and shaped like a candelabra. Another actor sported a tight-fitting track suit and dark sunglasses. There was also a dummy sitting on a nearby table fashioned as a caricature of Joan Rivers.
Some of the "schmucks" were also present, bringing their own brand of hilarity to the scenes. From the things they wore to the absurdity of their "specialties," the guys were all undeniably A-list comedy kings. We met a few of them, who revealed a few snippets about their characters:
Steve Carell stars as Barry, an IRS auditor who’s an
amateur taxidermist on the side. When he’s not auditing, Barry's dressing up dead Stewart Littles in historical outfits for dioramas.
Although Hangover funnyman Zach Galifianakis wasn't on set that day, Larry Wilmore, who plays one of the heartless execs, says this about Galifianakis' mind-reading schmuck: "He and Steve together just do some funny "idiot-a-idiot," just going at it mano-a-mano. I wish he really was an idiot, so he could do this all the time."
The guy underneath the Davy Jones beard is actually Rick Overton (from The Informant!), who plays a beard champion. He cooked up a back-story about his character on the fly: "My job is, I dip toothpicks in mint for diners…I tried woodworking, and I realized, I'm so busy doing it, my beard was growing. I had to get it out of the way, so I started to sculpt it off to the side and looked into the craft of bearding…" His character can't eat anything at the dinner because his beard is so massive, so he spends the entire night drinking through a straw—and getting into other liquor-induced shenanigans.
Chris O’Dowd, from
Pirate Radio, reveals this of his skin-tight, track-suit wearing schmuck Marco: “He’s a
blind swordsman who thinks he’s going to compete at the next Olympic Games as a fencer… When I think of Olympics and European, I think of ’70s and ’80s track suits, so this [outfit] seemed appropriate.”
We also met up with Octavia Spencer’s pet psychic, who spoke to us in character as Madame Nora. The screenwriters say she snagged the role by impersonating a lobster being put to death via boiling pot—hilarious yet disturbing. At $75 per half hour, Madame Nora will let your pet take over her body a la Ghost. "You allow the animals to come out and talk to their owners themselves," she insists. "Now it’s up to the owner to interpret in some cases, because people don’t really understand bird language. I’m still trying to decipher it." And she's never wrong, she claims. "You have a parrot," she tells one reporter (although the reporter doesn't). "You had one in your past life. And your parrot in your past life was married to my brother."
The Joan Rivers dummy, named Dianne, stars as the wife of real-life ventriloquist Jeff Dunam, who's been practicing his craft for 40 years. He actually sculpted Dianne himself. "There could be a wardrobe malfunction that could cause this to get a higher rating – a PG-13 or R – so, she's anatomically correct," he says. "I'm the only schmuck in this entire movie who actually does for a living what he plays, so I'm the only real-life schmuck."
Filming the Funny
The funniest scenes we saw on set included Marco, the blind swordsman. At one point in the dinner, the schmucks figure out they were invited to be ridiculed. Insulted, Marco decides to seek revenge. "I turn off the lights, or what I think I’m doing is turning off the lights, to make it a fair playing field, but I just turn off a single table light," O'Dowd explains of his character. "In a world of darkness, everybody is blind. I think they can’t see me, but they’re just stepping out of the way as I thrash myself about the room."
With Marco on a blind rampage and all the other guests running around, things quickly turn chaotic and it becomes difficult to tell schmuck from exec. While Bruce Greenwood and David Williams are in character, comically arguing about the disaster the dinner has become, Marco inadvertently cuts off William's finger. At the dinner, there happens to be a vulture trainer schmuck who's brought his pet vulture, which sees the severed finger as a tasty treat. As all these things are unfolding, the quirky characters spout one-liners, and from what we saw, it looks like a well-written comedy that's a far cry from the original French farce.
We watched Jay Roach (director of Meet the Parents and Fockers) as he worked with quiet energy on the scenes. He and the crew spent 15 minutes debating whether to use sugar glass or real glass for a tray of champagne glasses tossed to the floor. (He chose real glass, for what would end up as a five-second shot.) The screenwriters with their Macbooks were also present to give their opinion or do a quick revision. Carell said it was a collaborative environment where the actors didn't need to censor themselves. "I think all the cast trust him implicitly and within that, you have this freedom to fail," Carell says. "You have freedom to try things and they could be way off base or they could be better than what you've been doing. But you get the chance to experiment, and you trust that if you're trying something that doesn't necessarily work, it won't go in the movie. He's not going to fall in love with something that's horrendous and put it in."
Rudd agreed. "We would do several takes and he would play it back and there would just be a moment. He'd say, 'That right there… Yeah, I think that's the right thing, too.' I just felt really comfortable with him steering the ship."
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