Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear Interview, Ghost Town

MoviesOnline sat down with Ricky Gervais (“Extras,” “The Office”) and Greg Kinnear (“Little Miss Sunshine”) at the Toronto International Film Festival to talk about their new movie, “Ghost Town,” directed by David Koepp.

In the comedy "Ghost Town," Bertram Pincus (Gervais) is a man whose people skills leave much to be desired. When Pincus dies unexpectedly, but is miraculously revived after seven minutes, he wakes up to discover that he now has the annoying ability to see ghosts. Even worse, they all want something from him, particularly Frank Herlihy (Kinnear), who pesters him into breaking up the impending marriage of his widow Gwen (Téa Leoni). That puts Pincus squarely in the middle of a triangle, with spirited results.

Here’s what the two actors had to tell us:

MoviesOnline: Ricky, people think anytime you open your mouth, you’re going to be hilarious. Is that tough to live up to?

Greg Kinnear: It’s got to be intimidating.

Ricky Gervias: No. You’re pretty intimidating though.

MoviesOnline: The director, David Koepp, said you had rules and there were some things you would not do because you did not want it seen on screen.

Ricky Gervais: Oh no. The kiss scene was actually a very specific thing that we changed. It just ended and I thought well, what does that mean? Does that mean happy ever after? And what we wanted to do was come up with something that was really iconic and different. My favorite ending of a film is at the apartment when they just sit there and she says, “Shut up and deal,” and it’s great. What we came up with I wanted to be a really classy line because it just doesn’t prove anything, like okay, everyone does that. What we came up with was “It hurts when I smile.” “I can fix that.” I thought that was so much classier than just this thing that doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t prove they lived happily ever after. It’s just nothing. So that’s not a rule. Nudity certainly is a rule and you do not want to see this [laughing, pointing to himself]. [to Greg Kinnear] What were the other rules?

Greg Kinnear: Try not to break more than 30 per cent of the time.

Ricky Gervais: [laughing] That’s it. Yeah. I’ll only ruin 30 per cent of the takes.

Greg Kinnear: Honestly, the most difficult thing about Ricky is he literally, if it’s funny and it’s happening and it’s cooking, he just can’t help himself.

Ricky Gervais: I know.

Greg Kinnear: All of a sudden he’s just laughing which is great. I guess it’s the ultimate compliment, but it also means [shouting] “Cut! Start over! Reload!”

Ricky Gervais: If something’s funny, I laugh.

Greg Kinnear: Do you do that on the show?

Ricky Gervais: Of course. If someone says something funny, I laugh. If I’m directing and someone says something funny, even in the line, I’ll laugh. So yeah. The other thing I say to directors is I’m not a real actor. It’s their fault if they’ve spent the money. They can’t have it back.

MoviesOnline: This is the first time you’ve had a big role just as an actor.

Ricky Gervais: [laughing] Yeah.

MoviesOnline: You didn’t write this. You’re not involved in the making of it. You’re kind of the hired hand.

Ricky Gervais: That’s right. That’s exactly right.

MoviesOnline: Why this?

Ricky Gervais: Best script I’ve read in 5 years is the simple answer, and it was very me. It was very what I do and I just thought I’m the best person for the job here. You rarely are. You read scripts and it’s arbitrary. I can think of 50 [other] people than me, you know. And I’d rather be the creator. Sometimes something comes along and you think, “I’ve got to do this.” And it was very collaborative as well. David let me change things like that and the script ideas and obviously character points and then he let us ad lib on the day.

The first day me and Greg were in the bar and we were just going crazy all over the place laughing. David was laughing. He was ruining takes. And after 2 hours, David came over and said, “Do you think we could do one take in the script?” And we went, “Yeah. Okay. We’ll do one.” But all the ad libs are in and I think peppered through. I mean, in the cold light of day, the lines are great and it’s 90 per cent what’s on the page. But it’s the other little 10 per cent that brings it to life and you can see the chemistry and the actors enjoying themselves.

It’s got to be funny. If you’re not laughing in a comedy, I think you’re in trouble. There’s got to be something there because people pick up subliminally. It’s not about the lines and where you stand. It’s about nerves and certain little tics and things. Everything you do is non-verbal.

MoviesOnline: Greg, how do you feel about comedy? Do you think it’s subliminal? How do you feel your way through?

Greg Kinnear: Oh I don’t know. I don’t think too much about it. I always feel like for me as an actor… I look at it much more actorly than Ricky does. I’m just a character and I’m trying to be as truthful as I can. I think trying to push or make something funny is the first step in not making it funny. I think particularly with this script there was a really nice… for god’s sake, I’m dead. And yet the character is dealt with in a very honest way. He’s a pretty straightforward guy. He’s really trying to get something done and there’s this guy who happens to be alive that can help him out. It was all written out with ideas and motivations there for me to follow a pretty straightforward character. He might as well have been alive in a way. I thought that was a testament to David’s script. You know, there are lazy scripts out there that are just put together.

Ricky Gervais: Oh right. There are some scripts that are pointless. It’s just like we don’t need another film. There’s enough talent in the world. Don’t make something just for the sake of it.

Greg Kinnear: This is something in the zone where it could be that but I really felt like he’d found something, kind of a nice way of platforming the idea of the dead being involved in comedy and kept the special effects, as he said earlier today, to a limited degree which was nice. So we weren’t dealing with a bunch of green balls and I didn’t have a bunch of suction cups on my fingertips. There was none of that. It was just a pretty straightforward movie.

Ricky Gervais: No balls on the face. That’s your rule, isn’t it?

Greg Kinnear: [laughs] You’re right. That’s one of the rules. And yet, for all that, there’s a lot of heavy lifting. Even though it’s a comedy, there’s some really major emotional stuff going on. For all your claims to not being an actor, you’re doing a pretty good job of it.

Ricky Gervais: Thank you.

MoviesOnline: Given the constraints of Greg’s world where you can’t really interact with anyone else except Ricky, and given the constraints of yours where you have to carry the heart of the film for long chunks of time, how do you deal with that complexity?

Ricky Gervais: Well the worst thing for Greg obviously is no one can look at him. I had the easiest job as an actor.

Greg Kinnear: I have that in all my movies so I’m used to that.

Ricky Gervais: Yeah. But I think it’s worse for the people in the scene when he’s got a speech because I can look at him as long as I make it look like I shouldn’t have, but they can’t. If you’re not meant to be there and we’re talking and you talk, your instinct is to just for a split second you want to look there and you’ve got to stop yourself. So it’s very hard acting with Greg when you can’t see him, but you get used to it and the important thing is do people understand what’s happening in the story? And once it’s gone through and he’s a ghost, done, then wherever he is, people remember that I’m the only person that can see him. And I think the best scene for that is when we’re having the curry and he’s in my ear and that’s real fun when I’m trying to have a conversation and he’s going, “Punch him. Kick his self-righteous teeth in.”

Greg Kinnear: Yeah, that’s true. It took about 6 weeks until we would do a scene and I wouldn’t have to look at him and go…and now the movie’s over and you still won’t look at me. [laughs] But the other weird thing about being a ghost that I didn’t realize how screwed I was until day 2 of shooting was…I kind of came in and sat down with him. There was this bar and I kind of moved the chair around and David came over and said [whispering], “Uh, you can’t move the chair. You’re dead, you’re a ghost, you can’t move anything around you.”

Ricky Gervais: He couldn’t make a noise.

Greg Kinnear: I couldn’t pick up a straw. I couldn’t do anything. It was horrible.

Ricky Gervais: We had to lay on the bed together and they put a board under it because you couldn’t make the sheets move. So yeah, it was just little things like that. You couldn’t interact, but you did have clothes on and a Blackberry.

Greg Kinnear: Originally I had pitched it to David, I wanted Frank to be getting ready to light up a cigarette when he gets hit by a bus and the whole time he can’t. I don’t have the lighter, you know? So I always had the cigarette. I really wanted that but smoking is not loved in movies these days so it switched over to a Blackberry which was fine too.

MoviesOnline: Ricky, I couldn’t help but think about the podcast when I saw that scene about how your character dies for 7 minutes while having a colonoscopy.

Ricky Gervais: Well, the Karl Pilkington thing. Yeah. That’s funny, isn’t it? That’s weird.

MoviesOnline: Is that just a coincidence?

Ricky Gervais: Yeah. I didn’t write that. Just to explain, we did a podcast with Karl and Karl was explaining the rules of death like he thinks this is gospel. He said “When you die and you go to heaven, you’re in the exact clothes and position you were on the point of death.” And I said, “But what if you’re having a rectal examination and as the doctor was up there, you both died?” He went, “Oh, I’d hate that. Just go around heaven with your doctor behind you.” [laughs] No, it’s a total coincidence.

MoviesOnline: The podcasts have been great. Are you going to be doing any more?

Ricky Gervais: Yeah. I feel the same way. What’s the secret of the podcast? I say “Find yourself an idiotic shaving chimp.” It’s Karl Pilkington. I don’t even know why we still call it the Ricky Gervais Show. It’s basically me and Steve feel like we’re some sort of Victorian discoverers who’ve got the missing link and they’re taking him ‘round to go to the world, go look at this. Prod it and it talks. And when it talks, it talks gold. He’s amazing. I’ve never met anyone like him. He’s the funniest person I’ve ever met genuinely. And people say, “Is he real?” My answer is always the same, “If he’s not real, he keeps it up 24 hours a day from when he wakes up.” On one podcast he said, “Susan, right? She’s stopped me watching programs just before I go to bed.” And I said, “Why?” “Because I woke up this morning and said, ‘Is time travel possible.’” [laughs] And I just loved that. As soon as he opens his eyes, he’s talking about that shit.

We’ve got the new series, the final series coming out on the 16th of September. It’s four ½ hours all at the same time. It’s series five.

MoviesOnline: Why is it the final series?

Greg Kinnear: Why do you always have to end everything? Can’t you just keep something alive, keep it going? Why do you have to put a period on everything? Keep your senses flowing, stream of consciousness.

Ricky Gervais: Well, maybe I’ve got that…what’s that thing? Compulsive neuro-…?

Greg Kinnear: Success.

MoviesOnline: You don’t want to wear out your welcome maybe?

Ricky Gervais: Definitely that. Certainly with TV. Certainly with film.

Greg Kinnear: Season 12?

Ricky Gervais: We don’t want to overstay because I’ve been let down.

MoviesOnline: That’s why Fawlty Towers is so classic.

Ricky Gervais: Exactly. And that’s why we spent so long in The Office because we heard…

MoviesOnline: You don’t want anymore?

Ricky Gervais: I totally agree. Well the thing with the podcast is I also like to know that it’s the end. You know I like that. Myself and Stephen have always had one eye on the legacy. We like the fact that okay, that’s it now. That’s finite and that’s forever. And there’s something cleaner about that. It’s nice to know definitively that that’s it. I don’t know. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Well there is -- bad teeth.

MoviesOnline: Do you ever think of legacies with your careers?

Ricky Gervais: [referring to Greg Kinnear] He does anything. He does it for the money. Doesn’t even read the script sometimes.

Greg Kinnear: It means I don’t care about the legacy. I don’t actually. I really don’t. I mean obviously it’s not lost on me that in movies I do seem to have a long life.

Ricky Gervais: I only drink Coke.

Greg Kinnear: [laughs} They do last, especially the ones that resonate seem to have some timelessness to them, but I don’t think about that. I really don’t. And yet I love all the great classic actors like Jimmy Stewart. I still see their movies and I think “My god, how fantastic to have that.” I was up at the Telluride Film Festival and Jean Simmons was there and it was so cool to meet her. She’s like 83 or 84. Laura Linney was giving her a film retrospective up there and they were playing scenes from Guys and Dolls, Spartacus, and everything. I never had a chance to ask her regretfully whether or not that was a good thing looking back or a not good thing. I don’t know. It’s like you look back and go “Oh, all those years.”

Ricky Gervais: When she was in Kiss.

Greg Kinnear: What!?

Ricky Gervais: When she was in Kiss.

Greg Kinnear: Or whether she looks back and thinks “Wow! I have all that. I have all those memories and they’re all saved and how great to be able to look back.” Time will tell. I’ll get back to you on that in about 60 years.

Ricky Gervais: I think memories are great. I think memories are important. I think I want to be one day in a bath chair boring people about how much fun The Office was. That’d be good. I’ll go, “Nurse….”

MoviesOnline: Have you seen the Quebec version of The Office?

Ricky Gervais: Yeah, I’ve seen them. Is it good? Obviously it looked great. Is the original version in Canada as well?

MoviesOnline: Yes, it’s the original BBC version.

Ricky Gervais: Oh good, because someone was thinking of making a French Canadian version of Extras with home grown, sort of famous people in Quebec. It’s a huge industry.

Greg Kinnear: It’s certainly possible. It’s way bigger than the English Canadian movie industry.

Ricky Gervais: Apparently it’s as big as the rest of Canada put together. What’s the population of Quebec then. Is it just ridiculous?

MoviesOnline: What do each of you have coming up next?

Ricky Gervais: He’s got a film coming out a week after this.

Greg Kinnear: I do. Two weeks after this Flash of Genius opens. And I’m working on a Paul Greengrass movie in England but that’ll be for next year. It’s a thriller with Matt Damon. We’re not stuck together I’m happy to report. It’s called The Green Zone. So that’s me. And young Richard?

Ricky Gervais: I’m just in the middle of finishing the film I directed called This Side of the Truth which is me and Jennifer Garner, Rob Lowe, Jonah Hill, Christopher Guest and Tina Fey. And I’ve just finished a script.

Greg Kinnear: How’s Christopher Guest? I’m never met him.

Ricky Gervais: He’s amazing. He’s the nicest, charming, intelligent, he’s just lovely and so smart, just so smart.

Greg Kinnear: Does he joke around?

Ricky Gervais: Yeah. He jokes around but he does it in a way sometimes…like if you’re in a restaurant, right, and he’ll be talking very low and a waiter’ll come up and he’ll go “Whoops!” and he’ll pretend to joke and the waiter’ll go “Sorry” and he’ll respond “It’s okay. It’s okay.” He just does it for his own amusement. It’s just really sweet. It’s really funny.

Greg Kinnear: But the poor waiter. He scared the poor guy.

Ricky Gervais: Yeah! Oh, it’s funny. And then I’ve just finished the script with Stephen which we film next summer, a feature called A Man From the Pru which is a period piece about a group of twenty-somethings. Can they escape their small town stifling mentality? In a comedic sense, it’s a return to The Office. It’s a very naturalistic piece and you’re laughing at the attitudes and the things people say. Again, it’s sort of more of a drama but it’s a drama like Dying or Billy Liar. You know, there’s funny aspects. It’s probably a little more realism than Ghost Town or This Side of the Truth obviously.

MoviesOnline: Do you find it harder or easier to transpose that sensibility to feature length?

Ricky Gervais: A film’s harder than TV because you’ve got to do everything in an hour and a half and you’ve really got to keep their interest. An hour and a half is a long time whereas half hours it’s easier and you’ve also got that common consciousness and you’ve got that momentum and you can start where you left off. And the second series of anything is the most exciting because you’re writing with all the expectations and the input and you know. The first script you write, you don’t know who’s in it. The second script you’re writing for mine and Freeman.

“Ghost Town” opens in theaters on September 19th.