Rainn Wilson is The Rocker (From Basingstoke Gazette)

Rainn Wilson is The Rocker

3:49pm Tuesday 14th October 2008 in

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IT IS every teenage boy’s dream: becoming a rock god, playing on stage to an audience of screaming teenage girls. It almost came true for drummer ‘Fish’ Fishman (Rainn Wilson) in new release The Rocker – except that he was pushed out of his ‘80s band, Vesuvius, right before their first big hit.

The fictional heavy metal band was catapulted to the dizzy heights of international rock superstardom, and poor Fish, our hero, was left behind: depressed, envious and resentful.

Twenty years later, Fish, now making his living in a boring and thankless desk job that he can’t stand, is suddenly given a second chance. He joins his nephew’s high school garage band A.D.D. Amazingly, they get a strong following and are set to go on tour. The fun begins on the road as two very distinct ideas of music and lifestyle clash. Fish can’t wait to fulfil his youthful fantasies which include: the adoration, the bad behaviour, the crazy excesses of rock and roll, the groupies, and the sweat – all of it.

On the other hand, the teenage members of his band, played by talented newcomers Josh Gad (Matt), Emma Stone (Amelia) and musician Teddy Geiger (Curtis) are much more sensible, droll, low key and pragmatic. They have nothing in common with Fish’s wildness and yet they all get on and learn from each other. Fish needs to grow up; the teenagers need a more positive take on life.

Rainn Wilson, 42, stars in the US Emmy winning show The Office. He studied acting at New York University and began his career on stage.

The actor lives in Los Angeles with his wife, writer Holiday Reinhorn, their son Walter and their pit bulls, Oona and Harper Lee.

Q: What kind of guy is Fish?

A: Fish is the sexiest guy on the planet. He’s a former heavy metal drummer who has been kicked out of his band, right before they go quadruple platinum, becoming massive stars. It’s like getting kicked out of Aerosmith right before they made Walk This Way or something like that. His life falls apart after that. He’s had a series of relationships and dead-end jobs and girlfriends that have gone nowhere. Then he gets a second chance at fame, at redemption, by joining his high school nephew’s garage rock band. They start to take off and become successful. So, you know, it's kind of a fish out of water story and my character is actually named Fish!

Q: So we first meet Fish in the ‘80s in his band?

A: We first see Fish in the band Vesuvius, before he’s kicked out. He’s really down. We see his transformation into a guy who is able to live his dream again and get anther shot.

Q: What is it like working with Peter Cattaneo? Were you a fan of The Full Monty?

A: I loved The Full Monty. I think Peter is able to balance his absurd humour and heart at the same time and do stories with real characters, real situations, working class people going on a journey. He can also get very silly. He’s not averse to people running into doors and falling down stairs and ridiculous sight gags. It is a very difficult tone to balance. I think he is really good at keeping it very grounded and real, but allowing the full absurdity of life to shine through.

Q: How much fun is it playing this guy? Being a rock star is every guy’s dream isn’t it, having that lifestyle?

A: I think my character lives completely for the lifestyle of rock and roll and the thought of rock and roll. He doesn’t care as much about the music. He loves the music, don’t get me wrong, but through the course of this film, he finds out what is important and finds redemption.

Q: Do you identify with this character at all – a man who is still searching for fulfilment?

A: I think I have a lot in common with Fish in that way. I was always an actor and I have always been making a living as an actor, but things didn’t take off for me really until later in life. I didn’t become famous until I was in my late 30s and didn’t become a celebrity until I hit 40. This is really a second life for me as an actor. I had a whole life working in theatre and doing small parts in films and TV for years and years. Now, starring in movies, it’s a very different ballgame. I remember being in New York and I ran into an old friend of mine. We were in A Midsummer Night’s Dream together and she said, ‘Let’s face it Rainn, you and I are never going to be movie stars.’ I remember not being happy when she said that didn’t sit right with me, because I knew I wasn’t going to give up so easily and so early. I wanted to see the acting thing through to the bitter end and do my very best and try to become successful.

Q: What’s the appeal of this story do you think?

A: I always like a good redemption story, and I think it’s a great theme, about a second chance at life and finding yourself, finding what is important in life. That is always a good journey for a character to take. Also, The Rocker is a pretty broad comedy that will appeal to anyone from teens to people in their thirties and older, but it's got a lot of heart. It is all about the character’s quite remarkable journey that is rooted in real life. That real life element is the one thing I loved about Peter Cattaneo. He portrays real people so vividly. In The Full Monty, it was silly and very funny, but it was also very grounded. It felt like it was based in the real world. I really believed that those men who stripped in the film were working-class guys in England. It was wonderful, funny and moving. Hopefully we can get the same kind of balance and tone in this film so that it feels like the story of a real guy who has been left out. He's a little bit of a buffoon, and he's hanging on to the past.

Q: Can you say something about your style of comedy?

A: A lot of comedy to me is about commitment. I am definitely part of the commitment school of comedy where you throw yourself in 100 % and enter the character. You are not standing back and commenting on the character or winking or being better or more superior to the character or the comedy. You can’t be afraid to make a fool of yourself. I hope that never changes for me.

Q: What is it like working with Christina Applegate?

A: She’s amazing. I thought she was the best thing about the film Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and I say that as a good friend of Steve Carell. I thought she brought such charm and humour and reality to that movie. I was so excited when she signed up for this project. She’s incredible. She has a light touch with comedy and she makes it seem so effortless and real at the same time. We had a lot of fun together. I was totally intimidated though, because she is so much hotter than me. I was thinking: ‘How are audiences ever going to believe that a girl like Christina Applegate would ever fall for a guy like me?’ We tried to make that a little more believable – because I win her over through humour and having a good heart and hopefully we can succeed at that and we won’t get laughed out of the multiplexes.

Q: What was it like meeting Pete Best who has a cameo in the film? Of course he was the Beatle who left the group before they became huge – so there are parallels to this story?

A: It was amazing meeting a rock and roll legend who is famous for what he didn’t do rather than what he did do. That’s very interesting. But he is such a nice guy. He seems very strangely at peace with the whole Beatles situation and he has a great sense of humour, we had a lot of fun together.

Q: Can you talk about your relationship with the kids in the band?

A: It’s interesting. I did a movie recently called The Last Mimzy and I worked with a six year-old and a nine year-old. Now Teddy and Emma are both 19, so that is a different kind of kid. They are just on the verge of adulthood, but they have all that youthful energy. They down Red Bulls (drink) by the gallon and they are bouncing off the walls. It is no accident that our band is called A.D.D. But they are really good fun. We all got on immediately and it’s very collaborative. It is a lot like the set of THE OFFICE. We say, ‘Let’s try this’ or, ‘You try that’. People are giving each other notes; there is not a preciousness about it. It is just about coming up with the right tone for comedy.

Q: What about your own musical experience as a drummer?

A: I had not played the drums till three weeks before shooting started. I began taking lessons with my drum teacher, Stuart Johnson. He was playing me a lot of Led Zeppelin and White Stripes and a lot of the real basic drumbeats. We worked on simple drumming, but then he also coached me on the specifics of heavy metal drumming. That is a whole art form to itself.

Q: How much fun is it?

A: Great fun, they bought me a set of drums and I set it up in my garage and I started cranking it out. It is so much fun; it is exhilarating. My five year-old son loves it. He comes over and sits down on the stool and plays the drums next to me. He says, ‘They are Walter’s drums, not Dada’s drums’ and he won’t let me on the drum set. We were playing along to classic rock tunes. It has been amazing. We’re playing AC/DC, music like that, and then learning the actual songs from the movie. That’s what I have spent most of my time doing. The good thing is that I read music. I played a lot of music as a kid, I played piano and clarinet and bassoon and saxophone and xylophone and lots of different eclectic instruments, so Stuart just charted out the drum parts of the music.

Q: What music are you into yourself?

A: I grew up in white trash, blue collar suburban Seattle and it was all classic rock all the time on KISW in Seattle. It was all Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin and The Who and The Rolling Stones. Then I discovered punk around 1981. But there was no place in Seattle to find it. In 1981 I first heard The Clash and Elvis Costello and The Police who I love. That opened my eyes. I got into a whole different world of music, punk and new wave and rockabilly and all kinds of crazy alternative music and I still really love alternative music. That’s what I listen to most of the time. I really love Wilco and Nirvana and Arcade Fire – there are too many bands to name.

Q: Can you discuss Fish’s style and costumes?

A: There is a great range because he goes from heavy metal to the drab life, when he’s working in dead end jobs. Then he gets his second chance at rocking on the road, so he wears heavy metal outfits of his own creation with leather and glitter and leopard print and that’s been a really fun part of the process.

Q: Did you ever dream of rock stardom yourself?

A: I did. I think everyone, even movie stars, dream of being in a rock band. It has definitely been my dream. I was in the world’s worst high school rock band. I sang – even though I had a terrible voice. We had a band called ‘Collected Moss’. We were awful.

Q: How much are you enjoying your current career success?

A: It’s great. I had been working and making a living for 12 years before Six Feet Under but that really opened people’s eyes to what I was capable of doing. That series created a lot of incredible opportunities for me. I’m so grateful for that job and I am having a fantastic time – I hope it continues.

The Rocker is on general release from Friday, October 17.