All Phil Foster (STEVE CARELL) wants is to spice up his weekly night out with wife Claire (Tina Fey).
But instead of a fun evening at a hip Manhattan restaurant, what he actually gets is a night on the run from the mob.
STEVE CARELL (The Office, The 40-Year-Old Virgin) stars in the rib-tickling action-comedy DATE NIGHT.
My Movie Mundo sits down with the funniest, most likeable man in comedy to talk about his own worst date night, Mark Wahlberg’s pecs, and his penchant for Cyndi Lauper.
Action-comedy Date Night is the first time Steve Carell and Tina Fey have worked together
MMM: You’re best known for your work in front of the camera, but you also have credits as a writer on The Office and The 40-Year-Old Virgin to your name. When do you feel most at home – acting or writing?
Carell: I don’t know if I feel comfortable in either place, but it’s fun to be able to do both. I haven’t done too much writing recently because I’ve been acting so much. But with any luck in the next year or so I’ll be able to start jotting some ideas down.
MMM: The chemistry between you and Tina Fey, who plays your on-screen wife, is so effortless in the film that it looks like you’ve worked together many times before, but Date Night is actually the first time. Did you know each other before the movie?
Carell: No, just in passing. We came from the same improv theatre in Chicago, Second City. I worked there a few years before Tina did, and we had met each other on several occasions but we definitely didn’t know each other well.
MMM: In the film’s production notes you describe your own date nights as follows: “Sometimes the worst part of date night is actually leaving for the date – when you see your babysitter sitting down, getting all cosy, turning on the TV. That sometimes seems much better than the night that lies ahead.”
Carell: That’s true. I think Tina actually has said the exact same thing. My wife and I… our best date nights involve staying in, ordering a pizza and watching TV.
Sometimes you’re just so exhausted from everything that has transpired that week that the last thing you want to do is go out and have dinner or talk. But I think it’s important.
Tina and her husband use the term ‘rallying’… to gain the strength and the wherewithal and the energy to go out and do it. And I never regret going out and actually experiencing some private time with my wife. It’s nice, because I like her.
Even Fey was shocked to hear that Carell's own worst date night was a Jethro Tull concert
MMM: What’s your own worst date night experience?
Carell: Well, I went on a triple date with two of my older brothers to a Jethro Tull concert. I think the rest speaks for itself. It did not work out well and ended with a handshake.
MMM: What lengths have you gone to to please your other half?
Carell: Easy, easy! [Laughs] Reality television. I was not a reality TV fan, and my wife loved watching certain reality shows, and I have since fallen in love with those shows just by virtue of repeated viewings. I have become involved with the characters, and the relationships. So it turned out well.
MMM: On the evidence of Date Night, Little Miss Sunshine, and Get Smart, it looks like you have something of a problem in moving vehicles. What was the chase scene like to shoot?
Carell: It’s in my contract that there has to be some sort of crash in every movie I appear in. It’s fun. And that vehicle is extremely fun, the R8. That was a pleasure to smash into another car.
MMM: Do you do any of your own stunts?
Carell: All of them, except the ones that are dangerous. The most dangerous stunt that we had to do was when the kids jump on us at the beginning of the movie, because little kids, as you know, are wild cards. And they have extremely sharp elbows and knees. So we were bruised more from that scene than anything else.
Carell goes casual while Fey gets dressed up for their big night on the town
MMM: There’s a scene in the movie where you and Tina do a pole dance together. What was it like filming that? And what scene did you find most fun to shoot?
Carell: It was fun because we were improvising and clearly we didn’t know what the hell we were doing.
The scene that made me laugh the most as we shot was the scene with James Franco and Mila Kunis. When someone turns to you and says: “Zip your vagina”, which is an improvised line, and you just have to go with it, that is a great gift to give another improviser.
So that was a lot of fun. And they were both extremely adept at coming up with new and different things. And then I got to say it to Ray Liotta, which has always been a dream of mine. [Laughs]
MMM: Mark Wahlberg, one of your co-stars in Date Night, spends the entire movie shirtless. Was it intimidating spending so much time next to his pecs?
Carell: No, I wouldn’t say that. I will say that he had a great sense of humour about sort of poking fun at his own image. And was I intimidated? Why no, of course not. I don’t want to be attractive, it’s nothing I strive to look like or be. [Laughs] So yes, in fact I was.
MMM: Did the comic ability of some of the dramatic actors you worked with on the film surprise you?
Carell: Something I thought Mark Wahlberg did so well in this, and he’s known for being a dramatic actor specifically, was that he didn’t try to be funny. And I think that was key.
The character didn’t need to be funny. He was funny because he took himself seriously, he took the situation seriously, and did not put on a shirt. But he never commented on it as a character, and I think that’s a real credit to him as an actor, that he understood that that’s what was funny and yet he never pointed to it.
I think some dramatic actors feel pigeonholed and want to bust out and do a comedy and do something funny. But the inclination at times I think is to try to be funny, as opposed to just playing the character, and be assured that the comedy will follow suit.
"No, you zip your vagina!"
MMM: In the movie you mention Cyndi Lauper as a fantasy figure. How long have you been a fan of Cyndi Lauper and has she heard that line yet?
Carell: I hope she does hear that line, because that’s the only reason I said it. I want to put it out in the ether, and see what happens.
I have always been a big Cyndi Lauper fan. I remember a time when people were choosing sides between Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, and I was a Cyndi Lauper guy, I have to say. And I still am.
MMM: Were there any alternatives to that line?
Carell: There were but I don’t remember. That was the most pure. That one came from the heart. [Laughs]
DATE NIGHT IS OUT ON DVD NOW
By film journalist Jan Gilbert