Crave Online Sundance 2015: Jemaine on People Places Things

[size=150:13pxi8br]Sundance 2015 Interview: Jemaine Clement on ‘People, Places, Things

Jemaine Clement has two movies at Sundance this year, and shares some plans for the new 'Flight of the Conchords' tour.

It was great to see Jemaine Clement at Sundance again. Last year I caught his introduction to the vampire comedy What We Do In the Shadows and finally got to interview him at SXSW. Now he’s back with two films. This interview is for People, Places, Things, a comedy from writer/director James Strouse.

Clement plays Will Henry, a graphic novelist and art teacher who catches his longtime girlfriend and mother of his children, Charlie (Stephanie Allynne), with another man. They split up and while he tries to see his kids, he starts seeing the mother (Regina Hall) of one of his students (Jessica Williams). It is a comedy as the tragedy of the broken family lands Will in plenty of absurd situations, at one point defacing posters of Charlie’s new fiance, painting him with Hitler mustaches and Osama bin Laden beards.

Clement also stars in the comedy Don Verdean as an Israeli archeologist who teams up with the title character (Sam Rockwell) to uncover biblical artifacts.


CraveOnline: I just realized it’s Wednesday, so that’s business time, right?
Jemaine Clement: That’s going to follow me. Yes, every Wednesday for the rest of my life.

Have you ever had two movies at Sundance before?
No, no. I’m really living it up. I’m counting it as two Sundance visits. The other one, Sam Rockwell’s in and he seems to always be here. He’s the lead in Don Verdean. I was saying there should be a Sam Rockwell section of Sundance and there should be a Rockwell award for the best performance by Sam Rockwell in a Sam Rockwell movie.

Did you get the tone of People, Places, Things right away?
I thought I did and it turns out I did. Then I watched Grace is Gone after I read it and went, “Wow, this is heavy.” It made me wonder if I’d read it correctly, but when I talked to Jim, he made it clear that it’s supposed to be funny.

Is it an anti-romantic comedy? There’s no meet-cute.
It’s about a breakup for the most part. You don’t see the characters get together in the end and be happy. It’s more about real life than it is ideal. I know that ideal does happen sometimes. Sometimes people do meet-cute and stay together for the rest of their life as is suggested in the movies, but this is more like a real relationship. I’m surprised it’s come up so much but it is in many ways like a romantic comedy, but the subject is not about a romance really.

He is putting his life back together and part of that might be meeting someone else.
There is a romance. I never do traditional romantic-comedies and I’m also never offered them.

Was the opening scene where you walk in on your wife a fun scene to do, and challenging to get the timing of everything right?
Yeah, it was. I think it probably was one of the more difficult sets. It’s where I meet this other character for the first time in this situation and we have a fight. The day was sweltering hot in there.

What scenes made you break up the most?
I think the stuff with Jessica Williams, sometimes I’d try an improv and she’d just come at me with a barrage of insults. It was always just too much to be insulted that much about the way I look and actually describing the way I look. A lot of it’s not in the film. That was hard to just straight-faced listen to that. Jessica’s always got an answer as well. Whatever you say, she’s got something twice as fast for a comeback.

Do you draw at all and were you doing any of the art in the film?
Jemaine Clement: Yeah, I draw a little and I did the graffiti when he graffitis his love rival’s posters. And the kites, I drew on the kites.

There were about eight or 10 pictures to deface, so how long did it take to do that scene?
It was a lot. It was my main stress of the whole movie was drawing all those pictures, and then when we put them up, I didn’t like them. I was like, “Oh, this isn’t realistic. This guy’s supposed to be much better” because Greg Williams who does the graphic novel art is very precise and his art is really beautiful. I actually quite liked it when I saw it. I was pleasantly surprised.

Were you filmed the whole time drawing those?
No, I did it at home. You know how I was supposed to live in this depressing department? In real life I was in a much, much more depressing apartment with the stuff all over the floor. The first one I tried to do was Hitler and it just wasn’t working. Michael [Chernus] has his part on the other side, and for some reason it doesn’t look right. It took me five goes. I think it wasn’t until I used whiteout, because in the script he just uses a black pen and I couldn’t get it to work. Then when I started using other things, I’m like I’m just going to do it how I want. Then it was okay.

You’re doing a new show for HBO with Bret McKenzie?
Writing, yeah. It may never come on screen but we are writing it at the moment.

I remember the reason you stopped doing “Flight of the Conchords” was the difficulty of writing songs, writing scripts and then performing them. Is this a show that will be easier to maintain?
Hopefully. We’re hoping to have more of a writing team, but so far it’s just me and one other person. It’s me and Taika Waititi so it’s just the same again. But yeah, writing songs, we always had to put two songs in a show so there’s a lot to do. This, we might put music in it if it feels appropriate. A song is a lot of work in itself, recording, going in a studio, doing each track.

There’ve been so many more musical shows since “Flight of the Conchords.” There’s been “Glee,” “Smash,” “Galavant.” Do you wonder how they do it?
I know how they do it. They don’t have the same people doing all the jobs.

Do you feel like you paved the way there?
Well, before us was High School Musical.

Are you working on any new Conchords music?
We’re going to tour the States. The plan is to tour the States later on in the year so every time we tour we write a couple new songs.

When might there be enough for an album?
We have been avoiding recording everything. Even our last tour, we said, “Don’t film it because then we’ll have to advertise it.” The most fun part is just playing to a large audience.