Frank Oz & Andy Nyman Interview, Death At A Funeral

MoviesOnline caught up with Frank Oz and Andy Nyman at the Los Angeles press day for their new film "Death at a Funeral.” A runaway hit at the Aspen Comedy Film Festival, and winner of the festival’s coveted Cinemax Audience Award, "Death at a Funeral” pushes the British comedy into edgy modern territory – transforming the taboo into the side-splittingly screwball. This sharp, snappy, ultimately uplifting tale about the outrageous perils and unexpected pleasures of family affairs is perhaps fittingly directed by the English-born American.

Oz, who began his career as a puppeteer for Jim Henson and created the iconic Yoda in George Lucas’ "Star Wars” series went on to direct a series of buoyant Hollywood comedies including "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” with Steve Martin and Michael Caine; "What about Bob?” with Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfus; and "Bowfinger” with Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy. He is also the director of "The Muppets Take Manhattan,” "Little Shop of Horrors,” "House Sitter,” "Indian in the Cupboard,” "In & Out,” "The Score,” and "Stepford Wives.”

With "Death at a Funeral,” Oz returns to his roots with an ensemble comedy in which each and every character brings his or her own mordantly funny comic twist. A dignified send-off for a loved one erupts into uproarious chaos when romance, jealousy, in-laws, hallucinogens, dark secrets, life-long yearnings and a spot of bold blackmail all collide in this irreverent British comedy. Featuring an impressive cast, the film mischievously explores what happens on the day when a typically divided family is finally forced to come to terms with each other’s bad behavior, outrageous faults, and unexpected skeletons in the closet.

On the morning of their father’s funeral, the family and friends of the deceased each arrive with his or her own roiling anxieties. Son Daniel (Matthew Macfadyen) knows he will have to face his flirty, blow-hard, famous novelist brother Robert (Rupert Graves) who’s just flown in from New York, not to mention the promises of a new life he’s made to his wife Jane (Keely Hawes). Meanwhile, Daniel’s cousin Martha (Daisy Donovan) and her dependable new fiancé Simon (Alan Tudyk) are desperate to make a good impression on Martha’s uptight father – a plan that literally goes out the window when Simon accidentally ingests a designer drug en route to the service, leaving him prone to uncontrollable bouts of delirium and nudity in front of his potential in-laws.

Then comes the real shocker: a mysterious guest (Peter Dinklage) who threatens to unveil an earth-shattering family secret. As riotous mayhem and unfortunate mishaps ensue on every front, it is now up to the two brothers to hide the truth from their family and friends and figure out how to not only bury their dearly beloved, but the secret he’s been keeping.

Andy Nyman is fast becoming one of the most sought after film actors in the U.K. Since his breakout performance as Keith Whitehead in the controversial cult movie "Dead Babies,” he has been in high demand for film roles around the world. His versatility has meant his career and roles are always remarkably diverse. He has played lead roles in Jon Avnet’s Emmy award winning "Uprising” (NBC) as a polish freedom fighter and in "Coney Island Baby” as a gay French gun dealer.

His latest films include Chris Smith’s cult British movie "Severance” (co-starring Danny Dyer); Rian Johnson’s ("Brick”) eagerly anticipated new movie "Brothers Bloom” (starring Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo); improvised gangster thriller "Played” (starring opposite Val Kilmer and Gabrielle Byrne); London based romcom "Are You Ready For Love” (co-starring Lucy Punch); and a bio-pic of 70’s Dutch Rock Group Herman Brood entitled "Wild Romance.” He also delivers an award-winning performance in the black comedy, "Shut Up and Shoot Me” which is due out next year. Something of a renaissance man, Andy is also a world-renowned magician and the co-creator and co-writer of the hugely popular "Derren Brown” television show. He was recently nominated for a BAFTA for writing "Derren Brown: The Heist.”

Frank Oz and Andy Nyman are fabulous guys and we really appreciated their time. Here’s what they had to tell us about their new movie, "Death at a Funeral”:

MoviesOnline: How did you find this project?

FRANK OZ: It was a script given to me by Share Stallings, who is a friend of mine and worked with me years ago at Disney. I just laughed out loud and that was it. I was touched by the story. That’s pretty much it. And then SKE (Sidney Kimmel Entertainment) got it and that part was easy when we both said yes.

MoviesOnline: When you do a movie like this, do you shoot each scene separately or do you follow one storyline at a time?

FRANK OZ: I’m sure Andy would have preferred to stay with one story, but he is totally all over the place.

ANDY NYMAN: You’re jumping backwards and forwards the whole time.

FRANK OZ: It’s economic based really. I understand there are some directors who say they want to shoot a story and I don’t know how to do that. The staff tries to schedule in as chronological order as possible, but economically if you are shooting in this direction you have to shoot everything in this direction.

ANDY NYMAN: I’ve done a movie like that once in linear order.

FRANK OZ: How can they afford it?

ANDY NYMAN: Well it’s low budget and that’s how they could afford it.

FRANK OZ: But they couldn’t go back to the…

ANDY NYMAN: No, they just scheduled it like that and it was all very improv based.

FRANK OZ: Did that help?

ANDY NYMAN: Yeah, it kind of helped but it’s different depending on the movie. With this sort of movie, it was such fun anyway that it didn’t really make a difference when you were there and not there. It was just lovely to be around the whole time. So it didn’t make a huge difference. We did have a very good …. Was it a week or two weeks of rehearsal?

FRANK OZ: Two weeks. It was intense.

ANDY NYMAN: Two weeks of quite strong rehearsals and that felt like that gave you, if you were one of the actors, a really clear overview of the whole thing.

FRANK OZ: Remember we did that straight rehearsal from the beginning to the end?

ANDY NYMAN: Yeah.

FRANK OZ: So in this particular movie things are out of order. Most movies are.

ANDY NYMAN: And just keeping it… With a comedy that starts so real and goes so broad, if you don’t believe in the people and you don’t believe that it’s real, you sort of can’t take that journey with them so I think you were always really good at making sure that everything felt very real with the people and it rang true.

FRANK OZ: The most important thing for me in a comedy or a drama is, is it honest? Is it honest to the world in which we are creating? Not to this world right here because nothing is honest in the movie. Even Scorsese is artifice. There is nothing real in a movie ever. So people say it’s more real, it’s not real. There’s nothing real. But it is honest to the world in which it’s created. Like Airplane was honest to the world it created. I remember once saying, "It’s okay to do anything, just be honest.” And I had an idea in the bathroom with Peter (Vaughan) and then you said, "No, that wasn’t honest.”

ANDY NYMAN: Did I really?

FRANK OZ: And you were right. That was a stupid idea.

MoviesOnline: Can you talk about the casting process and how the cast came together?

FRANK OZ: I went to London and auditioned for about a month and a half, I guess. The only person I didn’t audition, but I did meet, was Ewen Bremner, and he was the very first person I cast in Match Point and he happened to be in New York. Besides Ewen, I was in London and I saw a lot of great actors. And the only difference between the great actors I said no to is that they were inappropriate for the roles. These are great actors and appropriate. Andy was frustrating because I knew I wanted him immediately and I had to wait for a couple of weeks because I was supposed to audition somebody else or two other people. But I get them in a room and I read it a few times and screw around, don’t I?

ANDY NYMAN: Yeah. Fantastic audition actually. It’s such a difficult process as an actor when you audition because you never know what baggage the director’s got and you’ve so clearly been a performer because before you even start, you sit down and Frank says,. "Okay, so …” The way it works was we were sent the script and you would choose a couple scenes for your character and you would do them. When we came in, Frank said, "Okay, what we’ll do is you’ll do both your scenes and then we’ll pick one of those scenes to work on and that’ll be it.” And it’s so great to have that, so respectful to have that as an actor because you’re so used to hearing 45 minutes of work with someone else and you say, "That guy sounded really nice.” And then you go in and you’re in and out in 3 minutes and you go, "Oh, I didn’t get that, great, okay.” Whereas this way you know that everyone was getting the same process. You knew you were going to do two scenes and then you were going to work it. So it was a very nice audition from our side.

FRANK OZ: I was fortunate in that I had a great depth of talent in England, a tremendous depth of talent of trained actors. I was very fortunate.

MoviesOnline: Could they have made a funny movie like this out of the Chiva House?

FRANK OZ: Chiva, that’s that drink, isn’t it? [Laughs]

ANDY NYMAN: Yeah, yeah. Chivas Regal.

FRANK OZ: Okay, so you’ve got one Jew and you got a half a Jew here. Osnowitz is Polish Jew, but I don’t know that much about Chiva House. So one of you explain it to me?

ANDY NYMAN: It’s the mourning after Jews die. The only difference is…

FRANK OZ: No, Jews are not funny.

ANDY NYMAN: [Laughs] Jews, we don’t do comedy. You don’t have an open casket, of course, which makes a huge difference.

FRANK OZ: I went to a wake once which I personally liked better. I had a girlfriend and there was an Irish family and the wake was there and we were all having drinks and right here was the casket with the body showing. And I thought that was kind of cool because usually in funerals I’m shocked. You go to the funeral and then you go to the reception and then you start talking about sports and business and not about the guy who just died. Wait a second, what about this fellow? So I kind of liked the fact that as odd as it may seem, everybody was having drinks and sitting around the coffin and the guy who could be seen. It was like he was part of the party.

MoviesOnline: What about those photos you had to come up with that Peter produces?

FRANK OZ: [Laughs to Andy] You didn’t see those photos, did you?

ANDY NYMAN: No.

FRANK OZ: The truth is I wanted them to be shocked so I asked my production designer, Michael Howells, who is gay, to get me some real strong gay porn. And so what they are looking at, and I only saw some of it, but every time we did a new take we slipped in a new gay porn thing.

ANDY NYMAN: Had Matthew seen that?

FRANK OZ: [Laughs] Oh yeah.

ANDY NYMAN: No, no, no. Did he know that before the shot?

FRANK OZ: No, but he knew every take he was going to see some guy sucking some guy’s cock or getting fucked in the ass or something.

ANDY NYMAN: [Laughing] Oh my God. That is so brave.

FRANK OZ: So it was the same thing for Rupert. He said, "Oh!” It was the first time he ever saw it. Did you know that?

ANDY NYMAN: No! I didn’t know that. But his reactions are so great.

FRANK OZ: I knew we couldn’t get a reaction like that otherwise. Michael had this great porn around so that was all real. You didn’t know that?

ANDY NYMAN: No, I can’t wait to see those moments.

FRANK OZ: Every time it was a new piece of gay porn. The prop man had all the gay porn photos and he would put a new one in there every time we’d do a new take.

MoviesOnline: Andy, what was your reaction when you first saw the movie?

ANDY NYMAN: Just delight really. From our point of view, it’s so difficult when you make a film and you go through that whole process and then it’s away from you for six months and then you sit and watch the thing eventually and there’s so many hopes and expectations and memories of what the shoot was like and you see it and it’s like, "Yeah, it’s alright.” This was just such a joyous, joyous time and from our point of view, which is all you can judge it from, that felt like it really translated. It just felt so warm and human and funny despite it being big at times. Also, at the end of it, I think that that eulogy is a remarkable piece of writing and Matthew’s performance is just extraordinary. To have gone from that level of hysteria to something that’s so erudite and kind hearted I think is a real testament to Dean’s talent as a writer. I think he’s just massively talented. It was a great feeling to see it at first. Thank God it’s just funny and it felt really wonderful.

MoviesOnline: How did you go from all the Muppet magic and voicing Yoda, one of the most beloved characters of all time, to directing?

FRANK OZ: Jim Henson was the one who gave me all the opportunities. Without him I wouldn’t be here. I gave myself about 10 years to learn directing. I never went to film school. As a performer all my movies, that was my film school. I asked grips and DPs questions and I stayed over night in editing. And Jim eventually asked me to co-direct Dark Crystal and that was my real training ground. That was huge. It was $26 million, which would be about $200 million now. I didn’t direct that movie. I helped Jim direct his movie. He was very kind to give me the credit. So it was a gradual kind of thing over the years.

MoviesOnline: How did you become a voice over actor?

FRANK OZ: Damned if I know. It was a sick, warped thing. I was a sick, warped child. It was an accident. I didn’t want to be a puppeteer, never. And I did it from 11 years old to 18 because I made a little bit of money and also I was a self-effacing guy with very low self esteem as a kid and I wanted to express myself. Looking back on it now I can see this. I didn’t know it then. But if I was doing a show and it was rejected, it wasn't rejecting me, it wouldn’t hurt me. They would reject this thing in front of me. That was a safe way to express myself. Then I went to journalism class and I wanted to be a journalist for 6 months, then Jim asked me to join him part-time in New York when I was 19, and I did and I had no intention of staying. And it just kind of happened that way. Life pulls you in directions.

MoviesOnline: What was the dynamic like behind the scenes?

FRANK OZ: [to Andy Nyman] This is the only time you don’t have to be honest. [Laughs]

ANDY NYMAN: It was lovely, truly fantastic. I’d just come off a shoot of another film called Severance and I thought that’s probably the happiest thing I’m ever going to do and that was great fun so I thought wow. Never going to do a film that’s more fun than that really. That was great. Well you know how when you have your first love and you think ah, this is proper love, and then you eventually end up with the person you marry, and then you think, "I can’t believe that I actually thought that was love.” Well that’s sort of what I felt. I couldn’t believe I thought Severance was fun because it was difficult. Again, you’ve got 13 lead characters, a full ensemble of very experienced actors, all with their own egos. There was never any problems and nothing other than "Are we going to get through this scene without laughing?”

FRANK OZ: Oh God, yeah. I just saw a lot of outtakes for the DVD.

ANDY NYMAN: Did you?

FRANK OZ: Oh god, they are so funny. He could barely stand up sometimes. It was just hysterical. He and Matthew were the worst.

ANDY NYMAN: Yeah. I think we fell in love a little bit.

FRANK OZ: Matthew could barely talk at times with this guy. It was hysterical. I know our job sometimes is to tell the press we had a good time on the shoot, no matter how much we hated each other, and make sure we buffalo the press and tell them we had a wonderful time and respected each other. But honest to god we had a great time! That’s part of the reason I did the ending credits that way, the reason where they saw the pictures, I’ve said this before, but part of the reason is because I wanted people to see how much fun we had. Movie making is hard work, but it doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. We’ve got these great actors, just great.

ANDY NYMAN: I will say the actor’s disease generally is that you’re half way through a job and you start saying, "Have you been up for that thing yet? Is it…? I haven’t heard a thing. I’ll call my agent. Have you heard about so and so?” "No, what’s going on?” By the time you’re half way through a job… This is the only job I’ve ever done where you’d be two weeks from the end and people would be going, "I just don’t want it to finish. I do not want this to end.” From Matthew to everyone just sat around a bit mopy. We’ve only got two weeks left. It felt like summer camp or something. It was just great. And again it does sound hard [to believe]… That really does come from you as much as anything because you so set your ego aside. It absolutely comes from the top. It’s like anything. If the person there sets the tone for everything and that’s what it was truly like.

FRANK OZ: It sounds sickening, doesn’t it?

ANDY NYMAN: It does. It really does. It sounds revolting.

FRANK OZ: It was 13 actors and me and we had dinner together and we had a great time! We really should say something else because it sounds disgusting.

ANDY NYMAN: Boring, those stories! But it was lovely. I wish every job was like this.

MoviesOnline: Can you talk about the bathroom scene between Andy and Peter? How much of that was improvised?

ANDY NYMAN: Yeah, with pleasure. For years I’ve had scatological fantasies. Peter Vaughan is just amazing. The man is amazing.

FRANK OZ: He’s an incredible pro and the sweetest man.

ANDY NYMAN: Yeah. I’d been a fan of his. I don’t even know how well you know him over here. At home he’s part of the fabric of… As an actor, you’ve grown up with watching Peter Vaughan from Straw Dogs, the first time I ever saw him. It’s one of my favorite films ever. He’s just extraordinary in it. And there’s all the TV stuff he’s done over the years. So I was just so excited to work with him. He was just amazing. There he is, an 82 year old man who’s an amazing actor, who’s happy to have his trousers and underpants pulled down again and again and again – wants it real, does it real. So you’ve got all that going on. This is one of my heroes and I’m pulling that all down and then you’ve got the joy of the chocolate mousse. It was just brilliant to shoot and fun to shoot but quite a hard scene to shoot because it’s a very claustrophobic little room. You’ve got to get all the lights and the cameras in there. It was a boiling hot summer so it was just shvitzing.
FRANK OZ: Even though it was a written scene, the actual performance of the scene, you could not, when you are in such extraordinary desperation, which happens in farce in the middle of the third act, you can’t really do lines, so a lot of that was improv with Andy and Peter. Also that whole thing with Randy and the reverend at the end, that was improv. So a lot of stuff is, again, with the writer there, but you take those scenes and when you go to work in the morning as a director you think, "Oh Christ I hope this work because I’m not going to do it like the script. I know it’s going to be kind of dicey, but what the hell, let’s try it.”

ANDY NYMAN: It’s also exhausting as well. It’s not like working down in a mine but because you’re at that level [of performance] for 8 hours. "Can you hang on a sec, we’re going to have to do that again?” And you have to go back into that kind of … without faking it. When you read the script, again as an actor going back to the moment when you go to audition, you read it and again it’s a rare script and you laugh out loud when you’re reading it. You’re thinking how amazing if you get that part. What an amazing set of scenes. And then when you go in and get it and then to actually be there filming it. I love what I do so much. I’m always incredibly happy to work and happy to be doing great stuff so it was just a joy.

MoviesOnline: You’re both a magician and an actor, which came first and how do you put your magic together?

ANDY NYMAN: The magic is pure hobby.

FRANK OZ: He’s also brilliant at it.

ANDY NYMAN: Thank you. It’s a hobby 100%. I do it at a level…

FRANK OZ: [interrupting him] You did direct Derren Brown and you got the Olivier Award so it’s not like…

MoviesOnline: It sounds like it’s more than a hobby.

ANDY NYMAN: I won an Olivier and I was nominated by BAFTA this year for this TV show that I’d written, but in my head, precisely because you said it’s so easy to freelance and you’re married and you’ve got two kids and you need to make a living, it’s easy to kind of get dragged in different directions. I’m very tunnel vision about all of that so in my head, the magic – even at the level I do it at – is just a great hobby that allows me to not go and do acting work that I just don’t want to do anymore, to just pick and choose. As an actor, that’s just incredibly rare and liberating to have that.

MoviesOnline: What was the most difficult thing making this film?

FRANK OZ: You’ll see in the outtakes on the DVD how impossible that was sometimes. The truth is, compared to living in Iraq with suicide bombers nothing is hard. But I guess the challenge, which is exciting, is how to make the film in one room with sometimes going outside, how to make that not claustrophobic. And so there were little things I did, that you don’t know about, that gave it a sense that there is more movement and air around. That was challenging visually. And the other challenge, as it always is, but in this case essentially is to have every single fucking moment alive. And with the actors I had and with the writer, and with the pace going up, and using Andy as an example, he came in and entered in one scene, and then three weeks later we shot him and I had to remind him this was three weeks later, but he only entered 15 seconds ago. So things like that, and that, but I guess the hardest thing is to make every single moment true and alive. And pace it, that’s the most important thing. But with these guys, it was great.

”Death at a Funeral” opens in theaters on August 17^th.