Interview: Jay Baruchel
The Sorcerer's Apprentice tells us about Nicolas Cage, his love of horror and his dreams to direct.
I caught up with Jay Baruchel while he was in London to talk about his starring role in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Disney's new magical adventure, but the boyish 28-year-old delighted me with his deep appreciation of horror.
The proud Canadian is known for his loveable geek persona in the likes of She's Out Of My League, as well as voicing Hiccup in this year's smash hit animation How To Train Your Dragon. Associated with comedy thanks to his long friendship with Seth Rogen (the pair were in Knocked Up) and roles in Tropic Thunder and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, however, Jay maintains strong connections with Canadian film productions.
During this exclusive interview about having Nicolas Cage as a wizard mentor, Jay surprised me with his dark side, revealing an ambition to scare the hell out of people with his planned directorial debut Pig. Read on to find out why Jay Baruchel the director is very much something to look forward to!
So, how are you coping being away from your beloved Canada?
I love it here. I mean, this is Canada's grandmother! We share a head of state, you know? So if I have to be outside of Canada, this is pretty close to being home. That being said, I get homesick real easy. I also live with two guys I've known since I was 14, I live four or five blocks away from my mother, and ten blocks from my little sister. I'm a creature of habit, so when I'm home I'll never leave the neighbourhood, so to be on a whole other continent is kinda strange for me!
Is there anything you look forward to while in London?
Oh yeah, I am the one guy who loves the food here, and I had an English breakfast for supper last night, and fuck what everyone else thinks, I'm having one for lunch in ten minutes.
Was The Sorcerer's Apprentice really Nicolas Cage's idea?
It's his baby! He was making a movie a couple of years ago, and thought, I really want to play a wizard. And someone said, what about the sorcerer's apprentice, the cartoon with Mickey in Fantasia, and he was "fucking A"! So the opportunity to make a big gorgeous super-fun family movie is why he came in. It's also a love letter to his dad - he modelled the look, and had the same hair, as his father, who a teacher. Basically, a sorcerer to a bunch of kids.
How did you get involved?
I had worked for Jerry Bruckheimer once before. I was on the only Bruckheimer show that wasn't a massive global hit that was on for a decade! [Just Legal] It was only on for six episodes. But I guess he remembered me, as I was his suggestion, and the director was, "I don't know who the fuck this kid is". So I had to come in and read, and I did two scenes, and I was the apprentice shortly after that!
Did you feel more responsibility working with Cage, knowing it was his baby as such?
For sure. When you get to work alongside someone as special as that - I've worked with some pretty special people - it's always the same thing. It elicits one of two reactions: you either wilt in the presence of greatness, and shrink and fail, or it inspires you and spurs you to be better than you've ever been before, and that's what happened here. The pressure came from having to homage and pay respects to one of the most beloved sequences in film history.
Nicolas comes out with some pretty amazing quotes. What is he like to work with?
He's a lunatic, but so am I! We're two peas in a crazy, nerdy pod. Sometimes you're on the same frequency with people, sometimes you're not. For guys like me, that doesn't happen very often, meeting someone on the same wavelength, and Cage is. We're both really passionate about weird things, we're very private about our home lives - you don't see us at parties or premieres of movies we're not in. I think we approach acting in the same way. To quote him, he calls it "jazz acting", improvising and riffing and finding your own rhythm.
What was the most challenging part to film?
Most of it was, as we shot the damn thing for half a year! I think the hardest stuff for me was the sequence in Chinatown, on a fire escape. I don't like heights, or things that aren't structurally sound. I was on this 6th floor rickety fire escape, hooked up to this harness the stunt guys were holding up on the roof, in case the fucking thing came off. So that stressful. I earned my pay that night! And the whole final sequence in Battery Park, that took two and half months of night shoots. The length of an average movie in Canada was just that sequence. And also the mops coming to life scene. I had a sense of gravity, I didn't want to fail. Not only here, but I didn't want to tarnish Fantasia, because worst case scenario, if I blow it, not only do I blow it here, but every time someone sees the old school cartoon with Mickey they'll say "remember when that stupid kid did that thing". So I had to approach it with this religious reverence.
Do you have the fantasy bug now you've done your first starring role in one?
I've always had the fantasy bug. When I was a kid, my favourite movies were Never Ending Story, Willow, Legend, and the Sword and the Stone. So if I'm in only one of these movies, believe me, it's not through lack of trying!
You're looking to direct - what have you learnt from all the great directors you've worked with?
I've gotten to go to the best film school on earth. It wasn't something like, I acted and having been on set a while decided I would like to try directing. I've wanted to make horror movies as a kid long before I ever became an actor. I wanted to make all these horror action movies, that was always my passion. Even when I started at 12, my mom said to me, Jay, if you want to grow up and make movies, this is the best way for you to learn. So I've learned what to do, what not to do, how to elicit the best things from actors. I've learned editorial techniques, what's interesting, what motivates the cameraman. You can't help but get better, if only by osmosis. I'm around Clint Eastwood, Ben Stiller and George Miller, Roger Avery and Cameron Crowe. A bunch of incredible people.
I take it you're going to be an actor's director then?
I like to think so! I think at the end of the day, if nothing else, I definitely know what not to say to an actor. "Do it like this", or "hey Jay, come into the editing suite with me so I can show you all the rushes so you can see what not to do".
Is your planned directorial debut Pig still happening?
Oh yeah. That will be the culmination, and hopefully the start, of my life's work. It's my ambition to scare the hell out of people. All art is manipulation, and horror's one of the few mediums that owns up to it. It's the heavy metal or the punk rock of movies. It has one pure intention and one goal - to fuck you up. Just like punk is supposed to hit you in the balls, this will be the same thing. A reimagining of the slasher film with a lot of socio-racial commentary. Because what's best in horror polarises people and makes one person super-uncomfortable and the other super-excited. It's all I've ever wanted to do, so I'm just in the process of finishing writing that. Something I wrote we're shooting at the end of the summer is Goon, a hockey movie, which is my greatest sport in the history of the world. I'm a Canadian boy so it's my religion, and hopefully it'll spur on Pig to get made. I have pretty talented people around me who are pretty interested in helping me make it. One of my best friends is possibly the best director I've ever worked for, a guy called Jacob Tierney. I've done two movies with him now, and he's definitely the best director I've worked for, and he's going to produce it. So if nothing else I'll have really smart talented people to make sure I keep in line.
So is Pig going to be a deadly serious horror, as opposed to a satire?
Oh no, it's not a horror comedy. There's funny shit in it, but the goal is not to make people laugh at all. Stephen King wrote a really neat thing - he's been writing articles in my favourite magazine Fangoria, and he made a great point. It's less so in Europe and Canada, but specifically in the States, that legitimate, true, serious horror, critics shit on because they don't know how to process it. But if it's outlandish and somewhat comedic, it gets alloted into something. Something like the remake of The Last House on the Left, which is absolutely horrifying and gets under your skin, they unilaterally hated it, probably because it touches things they don't like being touched. So, no, to me, it's horror in the tradition of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Exorcist, something that's meant to get to the heart of you. I want to get your adrenaline pumping and to scare the hell out of you, but I also want to fuck your head up too.
What are your favourite horror films?
John Carpenter's The Thing. For my money, that, and 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner, have the greatest effects of all time. It's Rob Bottin, he's just an absolute god of animatronics and make-up. So that, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Exorcist, Poltergeist - that's pretty flawless. And my favourite movie of all time is four movies in one, one of them being a horror movie in my mind, which is Irreversible.
You have great taste. Have you seen Martyrs?
Oh thank you! Yes! That's from Montreal! I'm a Montreal boy, that's a Montreal movie! It's fucking incredible! The opening sequence of that, terrifying. But the scene at the breakfast table... I'm friends with the kid who gets the fucking shit blown out of him. That movie is amazing. And like all great horror, a lot of people hate it, and a lot of people fucking love it. I think that chick [Morjana Alaoui] is an incredible actress, to do that shit. It's incredibly hard.
See Jay as The Sorcerer's Apprentice from 11th August!
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