'Walk Hard' Brings Down The House

By Katey Rich

I can't tell you much about last night's screening of Walk Hard-- there's a review embargo for a few more weeks-- but I will tell you this: I haven't heard an audience laughing so hard since Superbad. Coming after a long fall of grim (but often great) movies, Walk Hard is the perfect holiday season antidote for grownups, riotously silly but well-made, a thumb to the nose at the pretension and preening that often takes the screen this time of year. Judd Apatow's nonstop hit factory-- the "Apatow uprising," as director and Apatow's co-screenwriter Jake Kasdan put it-- is almost guaranteed to have another success on its hands.

  If nothing else, they deserve to have a hit soundtrack. There are over 20 original songs in Walk Hard, all performed by star John C. Reilly. At a press conference after the screening, Reilly admitted to having no formal vocal training, but in the film he manages to effortlessly channel musicians like Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash and even Bob Dylan. Reilly's character Dewey Cox went through every major phase of rock and roll history, from the teenybopper music of the 50s through the pscyhedelic 60s to bad David Bowie covers in the 70s.

Reilly called the songwriting and recording process "one of the most insanely fun parts of this whole project. To have the greatest musicians and the greatest songwriters there at your disposal, and you're trying to make each other laugh [...] Everyone is so full of joy." Kasdan, Reilly and composer Michael Andrews oversaw a writing team that eventually wrote and recorded over 40 songs, only half of which made it into the film. "We were excited about that possibility [of writing original songs] from the beginning."

Though the film spans so many decades and involved plenty of elaborate wigs and costumes, there was still room for the kind of improv the performers are accustomed to finding on Apatow sets. "There was a little less than what you're used to on Judd's set, but within that there was really a lot of it," Kasdan said. "We would get the scripted thing, but for example, when you have Kristen [Wiig] and John in a scene together, they can go, you let it roll."

"Is the candy house thing still in there?" Reilly asked about a scene in which he tells his long-suffering wife (Wiig) just what he can't provide her. The audience's laughter and applause was enough answer for him. "That was one time, I was just trying to make her laugh, trying to get her to break up in the middle of take. She went with it."

"I was watching a DVD the other day, and it was just all of you guys riffing at each other in that scene," Kasdan added. "It is so crazy. It's like psychedelic crazy."

Wiig mentioned an anecdote from the same scene, in which she and Reilly had to share the first on-screen kiss ever for the both of them (hard to believe given Reilly's 20-year movie career). "I was nervous and she was nervous, and we're both nerds," Reilly recalled.

"We basically just ran at each other really fast," Wiig said.

"Our faces hit like two cinderblocks," Reilly added.

It's worth noting at this point that the laughter during the press conference was about as loud as that during the movie itself. Reilly earned roars when his cell phone rang and he admitted it was his wife calling (he didn't pick it up). "I should pull a Giuliani. 'Hello honey. I'm doing a Q&A but my marriage is the most important thing. Isn't it so funny that you would call right in the middle of a Q&A. I love you. I love you so much, and everyone sees that I love you." Later Kasdan admitted than one of the original ideas was to have Reilly play Cox as a six-year old, by digitally transferring his head to the child actor's body. "Look, when you're going for the Golden Globe you don't start at age 25," Reilly said to wide applause. "You either have to lose 60 pounds or start at age 14." (Reilly's been nominated for a Globe once, for his role in Chicago)

Kasdan said that the idea from the beginning was to make the movie a breakneck, laugh-a-minute comedy, the kind of film where a kid meets his demise in a ridiculous manner within the first two minutes. "I kept saying it should feel like we took an actual great American biography kind of story and hijacked it and put something in every shot that was insane. Otherwise it would seem exactly like a lot of other movies. [...] We could start to see that there's a very fine line between just doing all the movies that you're quoting and not."

Reilly was the man they had in mind from the beginning of the writing process, and it's not hard to see why: Much of the broad parody wouldn't work if you didn't accept that Dewey believes in all the insanity going on around him. Reilly's fierce dramatic chops really do get exercised, even when he's scaling a flagpole in his underwear. "From the first few conversations we knew that we were trying to build this for John to play this part," Kasdan said. "Hardly anyone can do all of the things that he can do."

"I looked at this and said there is only one man who can possibly attempt this, and it's me," Reilly deadpanned. He earnestly added, "Jake is a great director, that's obvious. Judd I'd already worked with on Talladega Nights. This was clearly the fun ride to be on."

Apatow was missing from the press conference, but his influence on everything from the huge array of cameos ("Freaks & Geeks" fans, keep your eyes peeled!) to the film's very existence was evident. Explaining the process of pitching the project, Kasdan said he walked into the room and explained the idea, to which Reilly added, "It should be noted that Judd Apatow walked into the room as well." Kasdan, no stranger to Hollywood influence himself (he's the son of director Lawrence Kasdan), agreed. '"At this point [Judd] can walk in without telling them the idea and it works."

Then Reilly went into an impression of Apatow: "Can I put these bags of gold somewhere while we have this meeting?" And what do you know? For about the 50th time that night, he brought down the house.

Elvis (Jack White) and Dewey Cox face off backstage.