Zach Galifianakis :: wild & crazy (with bearish tendencies)

By Tony Phillips -

In Mart Crowley’s 1968, off-Broadway play The Boys in the Band, the "thirty-two year-old, ugly, pockmarked Jew fairy" character Harold declared to the world "give me librium or give

me meth" and his drug-addled manifesto held queers in thrall for decades. Now, more than 40 years later, stand-up comedian turned actor Zach Galifianakis picks up where Harold left off launching two, drug-addled characters from two new films onto an unsuspecting world.

The North Carolina native first rose to prominence playing the pantless buffoon Alan in last year’s sleeper hit The Hangover. A number of smaller roles in high profile projects like Up in the Air and Dinner for Schmucks followed, along with a regular spot on the television series Bored to Death, but It’s Kind of a Funny Story and Due Date are the first projects to capitalize on his Hangover heat and catapult him to leading man status. So it’s a surprise when he walks into a suite at the Waldorf Astoria to talk about both films with a serious case of bed-head.

Zach Galifianakis with a joint on Bill Maher’s show

Washed up soon? "I know that’ll I’ll be a wash-up soon," Galifianakis laughs while addressing his new-found spot above the marquee, "the industry is very wishy-washy. They’ll build you up and they’ll tear you down, but my road to here was as a stand-up comic, an underground -- more or less -- stand-up comic, with no real intentions of being at this point, but it just kind of unfolded that way. I never was much of a go-getter. I just kind of did my thing and then through luck and a little bit of hard work, I get to be in movies and talk about ’em ad nauseum for four straight days."

Perhaps junket fatigue is what lies behind the bed-head. Or maybe it’s difficult tog shake the Funny Story depressive Bobby’s psychotropic haze. His hair could be on a break from the perm his character Ethan Tremblay sports in Due Date. And, of course, a weed hangover can’t ruled out after a recent appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher in which Galifianakis took a break from discussing Prop 19 -- California’s home-grow reefer referendum -- to spark up a splive, an act that was met with wild applause from the in-studio audience.

In It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Galifianakis gets serious, playing a riff on Jack Nicholson’s character in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. A lot has changed since that 1975 breakout performance, and Funny Story definitely takes a softer stance on psychotropic drugs, almost advocating Zoloft for troubled teens, but Galifianakis’ character Bobby is much more immersed in the public mental health care system. Most comics fumble toward dramatic acting, but sometimes get it right, see Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Robin Williams in One Hour Photo. And in a way, its embedded glam rock video notwithstanding, Funny Story is Galifianakis’ stab at what The Village Voice calls "sad-clown legitimacy."

The film Due Date, which re-teams Galifianakis with his Hangover director Todd Phillips, is a much more straight-forward buddy comedy. The hit film ($60 million and counting) pairs Galifianakis with Robert Downey, Jr. in a Planes, Trains and Automobiles take in which Galifianakis plays Ethan Tremblay, a French bulldog toting, Capezio-wearing misfit whose "glaucoma medication" gets he and Downey thrown off a cross country flight and placed on a no fly list. The permed and prancing Tremblay is one of Galifianakis’ funniest and gayest roles yet and certainly, when paired with Funny Story, speaks to his range. Due Date’s tagline is "leave your comfort zone," something Galifianakis seems to know a thing or two about.

"My comfort zone is press conferences," Galifianakis jokes later at a much bigger press day for the film Due Date. The trio on that film’s director Phillips, co-star Downey and Galifianakis, soon break themselves out into movers and slackers. When asked which actor would break first in a scene, Downey immediately classifies himself as "85 times more professional than Zach" while Phillips says "Zach is really just an empty vessel, he just sits and waits."

Zach Galifianakis in Due Date; 

(lower) with Robert Downey Jr.

John Belushi bio-pic?

That may be true, but as a strategy, it seems to be paying off. Google turns up no fewer than half a dozen projects, including the much-discussed Hangover sequel, in some stage of production for next year.

"I’m going to tell you right now," Galifianakis says, "half of those things are not going. It’s crazy. You have a conversation with somebody in Hollywood and all of a sudden you’re doing it. I don’t know where that comes from, but it’s reported that it’s happening and it’s just not true." Of his rumored project entitled Will where he’s to play opposite Paul Rudd, all he will say is "I don’t know if that is ever going to come together, but it is a movie written by Demetri Martin and it’s one of the better scripts I’ve ever read. I hope to get to make it. In this business, there’s a lot of red tape and that red tape has not been made into pink yet, but they’re trying to figure it out."

His Due Date director, Todd Phillips, sheds some light on his Galifianakis as John Belushi bio-pic that’s also hit the rumor mill. "It’s not something that Zach and I have really talked about," Phillips says. "Here’s the deal, I’m not going to Zach with it. Anybody but Zach." After everyone has yet another laugh at Galifianakis’ expense, Phillips gets serious. "The truth is that, like a lot of projects I’m developing, Zach honestly is the guy we talk about when we’re writing it, but it’s so in its nascent stages."

Galifianakis tries to limit the conversation of films he’s starring in to those he’s seen. Other than that, it’s all conjecture as far as he’s concerned. "You try and work on a couple of projects and hopefully they find the light of day," he says. "A lot of things have to come together for a movie to get made, I mean, a lot. I wasn’t privy to all this. I just kind-of show up. Now I have to have more of a business mind and I don’t have one so it’s hard."

That business mind -- or lack thereof -- even works its way onto the set. Galifianakis jokes that the Due Date shoot began "each morning with a meeting. We’d read the minutes from the last meeting. Todd yells. Robert yells back, ’Let’s get on with the new meeting.’ There was a discussion each morning for about an hour, sometimes longer, but it really helped it. It really did."

His directors on Funny Story, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, tried to keep some of the machinations of filmmaking away from their star. "By the time we get to the set," Boden says, "we’ve written the whole script together for years and we gone through shot listings together." Fleck, on the other hand, likes to leave a little room for ad-libbing in the script. When first asked if the pair allowed improvisation on set, he cut the question off, bluntly answering, "No." He quickly backpeddles, "That was weird right?" Boden nods. "Zach has rubbed off on me," he explains, "I try to be funny and it doesn’t work." Boden adds, "Zach tells him not to try to be funny, but he doesn’t listen."

Zach Galifianakis in HBO’s Bored to Death  

Gay attraction

But is Galifianakis capable of pulling of what Boden and Fleck do, that playful banter that only couples, current or former, can pull off? "Wait," Galifianakis asks, "Are you talking about romantic movies? Are you getting me confused with Denzel Washington? I don’t think that’s ever going to happen." At this point, the elephant, or bear, rather, in the room must be pointed out. You don’t sport a couple of extra pounds and a full beard in Hollywood these days without attracting the attention of the gays.

"Sure," Galifianakis agrees, "but I don’t think there’s a big market for bear gay erotica. A lot of actors end up fat and bearded. I’m going the reverse route. I’m going to lose the beard and lose a bunch of weight, then maybe hopefully I can be considered for the romantic lead."

He’s kidding, sure, but has anyone seen Seth Rogan in his Green Hornet getup lately? Still, even with as many balls as he has in the air, it’s one genre Galifianakis just doesn’t seem interested in. "Those parts are soooo boring," he finally says, "I can’t think of one, besides When Harry Met Sally, that kind of stuff doesn’t interest me. The poor actors are always so bland. All of them, male and female. I don’t think I have to worry about it, but you know what I liked?" Wait for it. "The Notebook," he deadpans.

Okay, enough of this, what about the bears? Galifianakis’ HPQ (honey pot quotient) is running somewhere just south of Kevin Smith, and what’s more, he knows it, enough to groan when Smith’s name comes up. "I’ve been asked to be on the front of Bear Magazine," he says, "but being a straight person myself, it might be a little confusing. It’s such a very specific look. There used to be a bear bar in New York and I was always tempted to go in there. It’s no longer there, but it was on Avenue A and like 4th Street, next to Benny’s Burritos."

When he’s told the name of the now defunct bear watering hole was Big Lug, he echoes excitedly, "Big Lug!" After a moment, he’s able to compose himself, "maybe that was the name of it. Maybe that was the name of it. It was downstairs. There’s never a business that stays in that location, for some reason, but there was a bear club I tempted to walk into to cuddle."

He’s joking, of course, but most of his HPQ is based on an interaction he had with a fan early on in his career. "I was working on a TV show and this guy sent me a fan thing via email through a website to my personal account," Galifianakis explains, "and he said, ’The TV show you’re on, there’s a lot of good-looking, skinny guys, but I prefer chubby bearded sloth-like guys like yourself.’ And sarcastically, I emailed back, ’Oh, all my fantasies have come true. I’m so glad that this happened. It’s always been a dream of mine to be the subject of desire from a Venezuelan doctor, because he was a doctor from Venezuela.’ Immediately I get nine pornographic pictures of him with some other faceless person." The part of the story Galifianakis leaves out is that, reportedly, all in the name of a killer joke, he responded in kind.

And though he lives on a farm, back in his native North Carolina, "about an hour from where I grew up," he doesn’t necessarily consider himself a manly man, despite the feelings of his bear fan base. "I know nothing about farming," he says, "I was living in New York on and off and then in Los Angles, then about six years ago I had this real yearning to cultivate land and grow things so I saved up and kind of bought a place. I just planted a magnolia tree last week and I look forward to seeing how it grows."

But that man thing? "I don’t know about that," he says, "it depends on what your description of a man is. I’m not much of a groomer. I live on a farm, but I’m scared of snakes, so I’m just like Indiana Jones. So somewhat yes, and somewhat no. You know that metrosexual thing that was going on for a little while? That was a Madison Avenue device. That’s not a real thing. So yeah, I’m a little bit of a manly man."

It’s Kind of a Funny Story and Due Date are currently in theaters.








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