Interviews

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"The glass. I can't..."

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Text Interviews

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• Shawn Levy via Tribute^[1]
• Ben Stiller, Hank Azaria, and Ricky Gervais via View^[3]
  • Content warning: The interviewer is misogynistic towards Amy Adams.
  • Click here to reveal the transcript.

    Funnymen Ben Stiller and Ricky Gervais team up again for Night at the Museum 2, the sequel to the 2006 hit starring Stiller as Larry, a security guard at a museum where everything comes to life when the lights go out. The second film sees Larry heading to the famous Smithsonian in Washington D.C., where he’s helped out by Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart and hindered by Hank Azaria as an ancient Pharaoh. Stiller, Gervais and Azaria were recently in London talking about the film – here’s what they had to say about slapping monkeys, stealing mummies and Amy Adams in tight trousers.
    How do you feel about Night at the Museum 3 if all goes well with this? Do you see it as something that can go further or may stop here because it doesn’t get any bigger than the Smithsonian?
    Ben Stiller (BS): I don’t know. The second one, we had to figure out a reason why the movie would happen and I think we figured that out. The third one, the idea of doing a third would be great; I think it would be really fun. It would just be having to figure out something that would sustain itself. I think that there are a few ideas floating around if indeed people want to see a third one. The idea of working with these guys would be great. I don’t think it could get any bigger; it’d have to be different.
    Ricky Gervais (RG): Just a normal museum where nothing comes to life. It’d just be about the admin. Just naturalise it a bit more.
    BS: More realistic.

    You’re known as funny men. Was it an absolute riot on set and if so can you give us some examples. And second question, were you distracted by Amy in those trousers because every male journalist has been talking about them.
    BS: I enjoyed the trousers. I thought she looked great in them and I was happy to be in scenes with her every day. She’s great. We did laugh a lot, but it was great to hang out with people you admire. Ricky, of course, it’s in his contract, he comes over here for 12 hours and does all his work and that’s it for two movies. You were there what, a day?
    RG: Two days. The first time was two days and the second one...
    BS: It was always very exciting. I remember the first one it was very exciting when he showed up because it had been weeks and weeks of just acting with nothing. Like, running away from a dinosaur, there’s no dinosaur. Or running away from Attila the Hun, there were no people to really interact with and then Ricky showed up one day and it was just, oh my god...
    RG: So it was better than nothing?
    BS: Exactly, it was much better than nothing. It was almost too much. After acting with nothing for weeks and weeks, Ricky Gervais shows up and we just laughed a lot.
    RG: In those films, all my scenes were with Ben so it was basically just two days of me trying to put Ben off and I got crazier in this one. The first movie I did blind, not really knowing how it was going to be from the page, and then when I saw the finished one, I said, I get it, just go crazy. And then I went over there for a couple of days and the characters just got madder and madder until at one point Ben stopped the scene laughing and said “That’s ridiculous” and that’s the nicest things anyone’s ever said about my acting.
    BS: Well he just went off on this crazy tangent about what my character was probably thinking or saying and doing a weird cowboy character that was supposed to be me. And it was just so far from reality and no motivation for it what so ever, I just had to say something. It was always exciting to work with these guys and Hank too. Hank and I have been friends for a long time. It was great to just sit around in between takes with Christopher Guest and Hank and all these people who you really just... talking about comedy, like what Chris Guest’s favourite Abbott and Costello routine is. And we all look up to Chris as a comedy god and he’s such a sweet guy and such an interesting person and the fact that he was actually in the movie – I still don’t believe he was in the movie. He came to Sean and said I’d like to be a part of the movie and it’s very exciting to have this group of people and Robin too. Robin I cracked up many many times with.
    RG: No off switch. No off switch. It’s incredible isn’t it? He’s just a machine. And I met Crystal the monkey, I didn’t meet in the first one.
    BS: She. It’s a she. I was not so thrilled. She’s very manly for a female monkey.
    RG: She’s the cleverest monkey in the world isn’t she?
    BS: She’s not that clever. I give her food and she slaps me. And she gets a little antsy at her time of the month too, so you’ve got to be careful there.
    Hank Azaria (HA): I didn’t know that. I was very honoured to be slapped. I didn’t realise it was a she, until you just said that, I thought it was a he. And she really packs a little wallop that monkey. We all were delighted by her – you’re tired of her.
    BS: I’m beyond tired, I think I resent her. There’s just something about it. I have a Pavlovian reaction to getting slapped by the monkey now. The monkey has gone off a Pavolvian reaction to slapping and getting food and then I get slapped and I want to kill the monkey.
    RG: There’s a headline!

    Back to the second question which was: Were you distracted by Amy in those trousers?
    RG: As I said, I only worked with Ben and the monkey and neither of them were wearing trousers which is really weird. They’ve both got hairy legs.

    If the three of you had to take home anything from any museum in the world and think, this is really cool, what would it be?
    RG: Well we stole all those mummies from Egypt, so I’d probably see if I could up that collection. I’d got and steal other things from other countries.
    BS: Something valuable...
    RG: You do that in Supermarket Sweep when you think, where would you go? Straight for the booze. Difficult one isn’t it. I’m into evolution, so I’d probably want Lucy, the first hominid.
    BS: I just went to Egypt and I saw King Tut’s mummy, so I’d take something really cool like that.
    HA: I’d go with the Hope Diamond.
    RG: Can I change mine. I’ll have the pink diamond as well. Who wants some bones? What an idiot.
    BS: Then you could use the diamond to cut the protective glass in other museums and take everything else, so it’d be like the wish that gets you more wishes.

• Steve Coogan via View^[4]
  • Click here to reveal the transcript.

    Actor Steve Coogan is perhaps most famous for his iconic role as Alan Patridge, but his various film credits include In The Loop, Tropic Thunder and Marie Antoinette. In Night at the Museum 2 he reprises his role as Octavius, the miniature Roman emperor who gets mistakenly shipped to the Smithsonian along with his cowboy friend, played by Owen Wilson. When he was recently in London, Steve took some time to speak with View London's Jeremy Tiang about Night at the Museum 2’s subtle homoerotic subtext, working with a green screen and riding to the rescue of Owen Wilson on a giant squirrel.

    How does your relationship with Owen Wilson mirror the relationship of Jedediah and Octavius in the film?
    Steve Coogan (SC): That's interesting. Well, my relationship with - I do have a not entirely different relationship with Owen Wilson in reality, to Octavius and Jedediah in the film. We're both very good friends. We're not quite as melodramatic as the characters in the movie, but I think I look out for Owen and he'd look out for me in the way that Jedediah looks out for Octavius, and vice versa.

    So you'd ride to his rescue on a giant squirrel.
    SC: Hypothetically speaking, if it was necessary, and there was a giant squirrel to hand, and that was what was required, and Owen needed my help, I would ride to his rescue on a giant squirrel, yes, I can honestly say that I would do that.

    It seemed that Octavius liked Jedediah a bit more than Jedediah liked Octavius, in a Brokeback Mountain kind of way. Was that something you two worked out?
    SC: There was a certain kind of subtext, what those of a discerning view might read as a subtle homoerotic subtext. If those people read that into it I certainly wouldn't argue with it, I think that's a very subtle observation. There's certainly a lot of deep male bonding that goes on between them, and yes, Octavius has a certain fascination with Jedediah because, of course, he wouldn't meet people as irreverent as that in the world of the Roman Empire, I think people were a bit more formal in their behaviour, so that slightly gauche, throwaway attitude that goes with being a cowboy fascinates Octavius, and he finds it quite alluring.

    Did you do your scenes all in green screen? Were you actually opposite Ben Stiller, or was it just the two of you?
    SC: Just the two of us, just myself and Owen, we did all our stuff on green screen. Ben of course I met before we embarked on shooting, so I sort of talked about the script with Ben and the director. I knew what it was going to look like when it was all put together - I saw Ben saying his lines on screen. But the only person I only worked with in the space was Owen.

    Do you find it easier or more difficult to do green screen?
    SC: It's easier in some ways, because you're isolated. It's slightly artificial, but it's more controlled. It's far better to be in a situation, being able to communicate properly with actors, in something that resembles reality. You have to act harder with green screen.

    Were there any scenes cut from the film that you were sorry to lose?
    SC: Not really, no. Not for me. We were there for five days, and more or less everything we shot ends up on screen. So I'm pretty pleased that the work effort I put in versus screen time - I came out of it pretty well.

    Which was your favourite scene in the film?
    SC: I liked the scene with Jonah [Hill] as the security guard, where Ben has an argument with him. That's my favourite scene. And I'm not in it! So that shows how modest and humble I am.

    What is your next project?
    SC: The last thing I shot is a new movie for 20th Century Fox called Percy Jackson the Lightning Thief, and I play Hades, god of the Underworld, and – I'm very excited about that – Rosario Dawson plays my girlfriend, Persephone. It's quite a glamorous role. I play it like a rock star, I've got a big huge rock star's mansion in the movie. I wish I had one in real life like that, but I don't. It was a lot of fun, a lot of special effects. I turn into a big monster in it, so in some ways I get a bit more to do. It was a bit more fun than Night at the Museum. That's the next big thing, a big fantasy movie.
    And I'm doing some smaller movies, for a slightly different kind of audience to Night at the Museum, and I've got film projects here that I'm doing in the next year, I'm doing something for HBO, so a few little things that are all going to be happening over the next twelve months.

Text Interviews

Entrevistas de Texto

• Cast Interview via Lady and the Blog^[2]
• Ricky Gervais via Huffington Post UK^[5]

John Bernthal at Atlanta Comic Con 2024

Interviewer: Ian
Ian: What was your favorite part of filming Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian?
Bernthal: Alain Chabat, the guy who played Napoleon.

Laura de Pascale via Instagram

Interviewer: YDraigAur (16 December 2024)
YDA: I love your unused character designs for Night at the Museum so much!! Their outfits are so accurate, which as someone who's into ancient Egyptian textiles I really appreciate! Can I ask what research you did when creating them?
Ladepas: I really appreciate knowing that someone out there can see all the details I put into those designs even though they didn’t end up being used in the movie! I used a few references, including a book called Pharaonic Egyptian Clothing (sadly out of print, but there are digitized versions online) which outlines the construction of garments in ancient Egypt. I also used a book about the tombs of Thebes. It has a lot of good quality pictures of the frescoes inside the tombs so I looked through those trying to match the info from the first book I mentioned but mainly to look at actual images of how the Egyptians of the time dressed. The third, albeit minor research source I went after was the creator of the “History of Ancient Egypt” podcast Dominic Perry. I had specific questions about certain things, especially as to clothes worn by different family members within a royal family. And since he’s an Egyptologist, he was able to give me a clearer sense of what to look for. That’s pretty much it! Oh yeah, also, I looked a bit at the designs in Prince of Egypt, but not as much as going straight to the images of the actual temple frescoes.

References

Citaciones