Jack Black says he’s back on goofy comedy beat, but adds he’s mellow so don’t yell at him anymore.

By Melissa Michaels

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 2/18/08 — Jack Black is back at being funny – this time in “Be Kind Rewind” where he re-creates famous takes from films for a mentally impaired customer at the local video store. It’s a great vehicle for the versatile comedic actor and his co-star Mos Def who deliver performances reminiscent of the old 30′s slapstick comedies.

It’s very Laurel and Hardy,” said Black, an SNL alumni who has had success with a range of film genres like “School of Rock” and “King Kong,” though lately has been more of a counterpoint in the romantic semi-comedies “Margot at the Wedding” and “The Holiday.” Black tells Hollywood Today that his attraction to the film. “It was a very simple story about these two guys from kind of a run-down neighborhood. The friends start up this business re-creating old movies with zero budget, and it becomes a hit. It resonated with me — I was like, man, I can see that. I can see this being funny AND emotional.”

Picked up at Sundance, “Be Kind Rewind” hinges primarily on the dynamic of Black and fellow musician/actor Def (“The Italian Job,” “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”). Their chemistry was essential as it was for any of the great comedy duos — and instant, according to Black. “We hit it off right away. When we were rehearsing, everything seemed to fit together well, very complimentary. ‘Cause he’s very real, and his acting style is very kind of relaxing, he breathes into his characters. Mos doesn’t rush into anything, he’s very grounded and all the motivations are very believable — so my stuff tends to be a little more explosive and ridiculous. So together we make a good yin and yang.”

However, the explosiveness is limited only to Black’s characters, as he explains, “People come up yelling at me — thinking that’s going to make us best friends. No, not really into that. I’m pretty mellow.”

Written and directed by Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”), the film deals with imagination and its lack of boundaries, as Glover tells us, “He finds a truth that crosses those boundaries of that pragmatic realism that we often deal with. He shows us another way – an imaginative, creative way of thinking, of seeing our lives. I loved Einstein’s statement of ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge’.”

Black said he agreed to the film based on Gondry’s rep. “He didn’t have a script when he came to me. He had like a home-made comic book that he drew with crayons – and a couple lines of dialogue. But since he’s him, if he had a turd on a stick, and even if he wrapped it in a sweat biscuit, I would still do it.”

On the set, Gondry had some tricks Black was unsure of, (like hanging from a jungle gym over a bunch of little toys, as Black gives his best French accent, “Just get up there, and pretend you are hanging on for dear life!!”). But when he saw the playback, he understood the vision. “Don’t let his sort of messy appearance fool ya. He’s got it all worked. It’s a little haphazard at times, like a child’s room, the toys are strewn about, but there’s a method to the madness.”

A term of the film often used is dubbed ‘sweding’, defined as “re-making something from scratch, using whatever you can get your hands on.” After Jerry, (Black), unknowingly magnetizes himself trying to destroy a nuclear power plant he thinks is causing him harm, he visits his friend at the video store and accidentally erases the entire stock of VHS tapes. The two then hatch a plan to appease the customers by ‘sweding’, one by one, the entire stock.

“I’d like to go back and re-do the old Jack Nicholson movies. I love “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “The Shining”. Just the kind of guys that aren’t really workin’ in the fabric of society. He did that the best. Those are the characters I like to play too — so those would be fun to do. He (Gondry) never wanted to do any of the movies I was in, because that would have taken you out of the movie. We didn’t do any Lethal Weapons for that reason I assume.”

One of the charms of the film is the plot has a sense of community as the townsfolk must band together to save the local video store, which also happens to be the birthplace of the great jazz musician, Fats Waller. Black talked a little about his own musical project, Tenacious D. “We’ve been writing. We have a new song called ‘Deathstar’ — and hopefully George Lucas will not sue us. So, we only have 13 more songs to write, so the album should be out hopefully in the 10′s. 2011-2019.”

Glover said his upbringing made him comfortable in the neighborhood aspect of the plot. “I’m 61 years old. I lived in the same neighborhood since I was 11 years old. When I go to the zoo, when I go to the Japanese Tea Garden, when I go to the aquarium, those are things that I did every step of my life you know. When I went in grammar school, or junior high school, or took my daughter there, it’s associated, there’s some kind of memory there. When I began to think about Mr. Fletcher, I began to think about that memory. So I’m using myself.” said the co-star of the “Lethal Weapon” films as well as a series of politically-oriented pictures.

Glover took the opportunity to talk about the presidential race as it concerned minorities as well “What does the first black this, the first woman that really mean? What does it really mean when you look at the condition of a situation like Jenna, Louisiana, when you look at the birth mortality in Washington D.C. or South Bronx, or when you look at what’s happening in the inner city schools, or urban schools, or the whole school system, or when you look at what’s happening with black unemployment, what does it really mean? You know what I’m saying? Are we just — bullshitting ourselves?”

He swung his argument back to Hollywood, stating “Right now, this year, who is the biggest box office star in the world. Will Smith. He’s overstepped Cruise, and everybody else. But what does it really mean?” I think if Martin Luther King was here today, he would say ‘I don’t think it means that much.’’

Glover wasn’t the only one with a serious political agenda off camera during the shoot. “Mostly, on the set, the one who really got heavy was Mia (Farrow). She was talkin’ Darfur, and it was gettin’ heavy. I was like, oh, man. That IS serious. It was pretty impressive. I was pretty blown away by her commitment to that cause.” Actress/activist Farrow was partially responsible for Steven Spielberg pulling out as creative director of the Beijing Olympics over the Chinese support of the Sudan government behind the Darfur crisis (see related HT story).

Be Kind Rewind is set for A Feb. 22 release from New Line Cinema