Ricky Gervais has conquered everything he’s tried his hand at in the entertainment world – except maybe that early pop career. He’s written two of the best sitcoms of the decade, become a terrific stand-up and grabbed more awards hardware than several Peter Jackson franchises. So, now he’s turning his hand to directing. We sat down with him recently for a chat about what he’s got planned for his feature directing debut, This Side of the Truth, a comedy he’s co-directing with Matt Robinson and in which he stars with Jennifer Garner, Rob Lowe and Jonah Hill.
“It starts off maybe 50,000 years ago and you see all these hunter-gatherers – very real and naturalistic, not funny cavemen – and you see their grunts translated, so it’s the beginning of mankind,” he told us. “Long story short, lying never gets invented and you cut forward to the modern day and it’s somewhere like Springfield [from The Simpson] and nobody lies. I’m the first guy who develops a gene for lying. So I lie and everybody believes what I’m saying, so I’m Superman. I’m invincible. I can do whatever I want. It’s one of those ideas where you wonder why nobody’s ever done it before. It’s so simple. It’s such a great world for comedy and scope and drama and moral dilemma. But mainly it’s funny and naughty and sweet”.
The movie becomes, in essence, a romantic comedy between Gervais and a sweet, credulous character played by Garner. Gervais says he chose Garner for one specific characteristic: “Wholesome. She’s wholesome. I don’t want to give too much away, but there are a couple of things there [in her] that we can deconstruct. The way she talks in the film is like someone out of [the musical] Oklahoma! But in a framework where it becomes a nasty dog-eat-dog world, it’s really interesting to see someone like that. And, of course, she’s good”.
Though he could easily phone-in some gross out comedy with a few celebrity cameos and make millions from it, Gervais says he’s not interested in making that kind of film. Nor is he interested in becoming a big name director “who blows $100 million”. He’s had plenty of offers to make movies, but he says they’ve been the wrong ones.
“I want to make The Apartment, I don’t want to make Team America,” he insists. “Team America’s one of the funniest films I’ve ever seen, but I don’t want to make that. I want to make The Apartment or When Harry Met Sally or Play It Again, Sam. There’s someone better than me at doing Borat and Team America – there’s someone better than me at making The Apartment too, actually, but I love that Trojan horse. I love the idea of starting off spikey and then everything being alright. I love that kind of comedy… I’m always trying to make something classic. Even though The Office looked like this drab, miserable thing, we gave them a nice ending”
Ricky Gervais making something like The Apartment? That excites us. If you’ve seen the final episode of The Office and the final speech of the Extras Christmas Special, you’ll know that Gervais has a real talent for combing cynicism with underlying sweetness, and often romance. It’s good to hear that he’s not going really broad for the big screen, because the premise sounded like it could go that way. The statement that he wants to make a Billy Wilder type movie just got us a lot more hyped about this.
What do you think?