For the people involved, being part of a cultural
phenomenon can be as stifling as it is lucrative. That goes double for David
Schwimmer, who played Ross Geller on the immensely popular sitcom Friends for a decade. Not only
was he part of the show's core ensemble, but his on-again, off-again
relationship with Jennifer Aniston played a central plot role until Friends' finale in May 2004. While Friends
made Schwimmer a wealthy international star—each cast member earned $1
million per episode after 2002—it also cemented his association with the
Geller character. But Schwimmer hasn't hurt for work. In addition to numerous
TV roles (including memorable gigs on 30 Rock and Curb Your
Enthusiasm),
he's appeared in many films and onstage, where he began his career as a theater
major at Northwestern University. (He and some fellow alumni founded Chicago's
Lookingglass Theatre.) During Friends, Schwimmer started working as a director. This
month, he makes his big-screen directorial debut with Run Fatboy Run, a romantic comedy about
a schlub (Simon Pegg) who tries to win back his ex-fiancée (Thandie Newton) by
running a marathon. Based on a script written by Michael Ian Black, the film
was shot in London, where it remained the top box-office draw in the UK for
four weeks upon its release last September. Before it opened in the U.S.,
Schwimmer talked to The A.V. Club about the pratfalls of filmmaking, working as a
director, and being that guy from that show.
The A.V. Club: You directed some episodes of Friends. How did you go from
cast member to director?
David Schwimmer: Well, I made it clear to
everyone that it was an interest of mine, and that I was really going to
actively study. So I would mentor with Jim Burrows, this big director, and I'd
just follow him when he was directing other shows as well as ours. I would talk
to Kevin Bright, one of our executive producers, who also directed a lot of
episodes. So I would study, and then finally I said to our producers, "I think
I'm ready to try this. If the cast is okay with it, would you guys be okay with
me trying one?" By that time, it was like a really well-oiled machine, so even
if I were to be a disaster, Kevin was there and everyone was there to have my
back. They felt confident enough that it would be worth a shot. So I went to
each cast member individually, and I was really straight with them, I said, "If
you have any weirdness about it at all, I won't do it. But I would really love
to try this." And each of them was cool with it. After my first one, they
thought I had something, so I ended up doing about a dozen of those, then some
pilots for NBC and Fox. The more I directed, the more confident I became in my
ability.
AVC: Now that you've been away from Run Fatboy
Run for a
while, have you noticed any first-time director's mistakes?
DS: There's definitely stuff I'd do different. The big
thing I learned when we were finished shooting was, there were a couple of
scenes that, before we started shooting while I was working on the script with
Simon, I always thought in the back of my mind, "You know what, we might end up
cutting these. These would be the first scenes to go. I'm not sure if we should
shoot them, but let's do it anyways. They could be golden." Sure enough, when
we started editing the film, the first scenes to go were those scenes. I
realized that I should have been much harder on the script before we started
shooting, especially on a low-budget movie like this. Those five hours that I
used shooting that scene, or another five hours for this other scene, I really could
have used to get more coverage on a scene that was going to be in the movie.
AVC: What sorts of problems did you encounter
as you were filming?
DS: London is completely unpredictable when it comes
to weather. You'll start a scene, and it's a beautiful morning. You get there
at 6 in the morning, set up, you start the scene, start shooting. Three hours
later, it is pitch black and rainy. On a movie like this, we only bought that
location for that day. We can't afford to go back. Luckily, I had this amazing
cinematographer [Richard Greatrex], who knew how to light it and keep adjusting
the lighting and the camera for situations like that. There's a scene in the
movie at the boat pond; Thandie and Simon are sitting on a park bench. The
beginning of that day was beautiful, and by the time we get to the scene where
they're on the bench, it's actually raining behind them. But we built a little
canopy over the actors, and he lit it in such a way and we cut it in such a way
that you hopefully can't tell. If you look really closely and froze in on it in
slow motion or whatever, you'll see that it's raining behind them.
AVC: The original script was set in New York,
but the film was shot in London. What else was changed?
DS: The basic structure and the big, funny scenes that
are throughout the movie, the blister scene and the locker-room scene, the
basic structure was all Michael. It was all the same. Simon's rewrite was
really to Anglicanize it.
AVC: Why did you decide to keep all the
measurements in miles? You hear all these British people repeatedly describing
the race as "26 miles."
DS: Our hope all along was that it would also play in
the States. And we thought we would get away with it being a "Nike River Run."
AVC: That was because the London Marathon was
already being used?
DS: That was a problem. First it was a New York
Marathon movie, and then when it became London, I thought, "Oh, it's going to
be the London Marathon. We'll just ask them for the rights." They said, no, we
can't have the rights—another film tied up the rights. I thought, "Crap,
we have to come up with a marathon for our movie." We actually came up with a
really interesting idea, to plot it around the river Thames, you know, all
these bridges, running back and forth across the bridges. It was kind of a cool
route that we came up with. The thing that gave it legitimacy was Nike, having
Nike's name on it. We went to Nike, and we said, "Can we please use your name
on the title of the race? By the way, we have no more money in our costume
budget. Can you throw us any shorts or jackets or shoes? We will take anything
you guys can give us." They very graciously gave us the jackets the officials
use, those orange jackets. It suddenly looks like a real marathon, when we just
made it up.
AVC: There's a lot of Nike in the film.
How comfortable are you with that?
DS: I wasn't really aware or worried about it. The
marathon's only the last 15 or 20 minutes of the film. No, I wasn't even
thinking about it. I did read one critic in London going, "Oh, it's an ad for
Nike, the movie." That's really unfair! Nike didn't write the movie, and
without Nike, honestly, we don't have a movie. People don't understand how hard
it is to make movies at this budget. To make it out in any way like Nike's the
baddie here is really naïve, because without them, we don't have a legitimate
marathon, and we can't afford to dress people.
AVC: Is it more expensive to shoot in New York
or London?
DS: They're pretty equal in terms of how expensive
they are. I think London's slightly more. It comes down to certain unions. The
unions for the extras in London are extraordinarily strong. If you're shooting
right in London, extras get paid a fortune. I literally couldn't afford more
than 200 extras on the day we have the marathon. I couldn't afford more. I
think I was a little naïve. I showed up, and I was like, "What do you mean,
that's it?" I show up that morning, and I look at my first AD, and I was like,
"Are you kidding? Did anyone else read the script? We have a marathon here!" We
had to really, really carefully choose our camera angles, and recycle extras,
and re-dress, and keep using the same guys. And there are two shots we had that
are crowd-replication shots, like CGI shots to help sell the idea. When Simon
gets to the top of the bridge before the race and he looks at the crowd, that's
CGI. Thank God that plants the seed for the audience, "Oh my God, it's a big
race!"
AVC: What tricks did you use to stretch the
money that you had?
DS: A lot of movie is locations, frankly. Locations
are really expensive, and we had over 50 of them in 35 days. There were several
scenes in [Hank Azaria's] apartment, the beautiful penthouse, and we were there
for three days total. The weather was awful during that whole week we were
there. There's an outdoor balcony scene between Simon and Thandie that I said,
"This is the most important scene of these three days. So I want to try to get
it on the first day we are there. And if don't get it then, we'll have it the
next day." Meaning weather—if it rained outside, we were totally screwed.
This balcony was tiny, and we picked intentionally for that scene to be out
there. I wanted it to be the most romantic scene in the movie. So sure enough,
we go out there to shoot it the first night, and it wasn't raining, but the
wind, I'm not kidding you, was worse than anything coming off Lake Michigan.
Thandie's hair was [covers his face], and you couldn't hear anything. You know
that sound when you get a microphone [in the wind], "Whooosh"? That's all you
heard. We tried shooting this scene, we tried three takes, and then my DP and I
just look to each other and go, "Fuck! All right, let's go back inside and hope
it's better tomorrow." Same thing the next day, and we're like "Goddammit!" On
our last night, finally, the wind calmed down enough to actually shoot this
scene, but we ended up looping that entire dialogue.
AVC: The film opened in the UK months ago. Is
that a good test for how it'll do here?
DS: I should be so lucky it does as well here. Simon's
a big star over there. It was number one for a month, but I don't expect that
at all here. I'm realistic about it. I hope it does respectably well here; I
hope word of mouth travels. The best it could do is something like Juno.
AVC: Are you less interested in acting these
days?
DS: No, not at all. I just did this movie with Rod
Lurie; he's a writer-director, and I played Kate Beckinsale's husband in this
political thriller. Now I'm looking for scripts to act in and to direct. The
thing about directing is that this was a year and a half of my life, so it kind
of takes me out of the acting game for a while. I'm always looking for a good
role.
AVC: Do you still get the most satisfaction out
of theater?
DS: I thought that until directing this movie, and I
have to say, that this is the first time in my life that I had the same kind of
fulfillment that I have working with my company in Chicago. I really, really
enjoyed the process from beginning to end. Even though post-production was like
five months long, the whole process with the editors, the main editor and his
assistant, the producers, and Simon, and the testing and the screening, and
working with the composer. Getting to record the score at Abbey Road, where The
Beatles were, you know, using John Lennon's microphone. Every step of the way
was kind of enchanting.
AVC: You had an embargo on doing TV after Friends. Could you see
yourself coming back to that?
DS: I never say never, but I'm really enjoying the
freedom I'm having right now. Being able to go do a movie in London or being
able to do a play in New York or a play here. A regular series role is a
seven-year commitment. Right now, I'm just not prepared to do that.
AVC: You've said it wasn't until you wrapped Run
Fatboy Run
that you started thinking about the end of Friends.
DS: I think I went right in maybe intentionally, I
don't know, maybe as a defense mechanism, so I wouldn't have to deal with the
reality of missing everyone. I literally went from filming our last episode of Friends to the next weekend, I
was in Atlantic City filming this independent film, Duane Hopwood. From there, I went to
doing a play on the West End for four months, then Madagascar, then a play in New York,
then Big Nothing
with Simon. Ultimately, I just want to keep busy, keep working.
AVC: Do you think ultimately, that was a good
way to deal with it?
DS: I'm really happy with those choices. I didn't
really want to be sitting around come next September twiddling my thumbs. "I
could be on that show. Remember me?"
AVC: Because it was so popular, you said you
wanted to do other things. Are you actively trying to get away from being Ross
Geller in people's minds?
DS: No, I stopped trying to do that. There was
actually a period when I was trying—when I did Band Of Brothers. I thought, "Surely this
will dispel some of that thing." But even after that one, I read a review or
two that was like: "It's Ross in the army!" I basically threw my hands up. I
was like "Okay, if you really think that's the same character, then either you're
insane, or I'm just the worst actor that ever was." I didn't really think that
I was the worst actor that ever was, so I just said to myself, "Stop thinking
about it. You can't change people when they want to think something, or when
they want to believe something." So I just decided then, I was just going to do
what I wanted. For some people, it might take 20 years and a certain role that
they finally go, "Oh yeah, he can do this. He's not just that character." For
some people, I might be 70, and they'll still be thinking that one thing. I'm
just done trying to figure it out.
AVC: Well, at least it's been four years. It's
not as present on the pop-culture radar.
DS: Yeah, it gets easier every year. By the way, it's
a role on a show that I'm incredibly proud of. It's not embarrassing or
anything. It's not the issue at all. I just think that with time, things will
change.
AVC: Some people get caught up with being on
television, like they have to prove themselves on film or onstage to feel like a
real actor.
If Friends
ends up being what people associate with you most, are you going to be okay
with that?
DS: Yeah, I don't spend any energy about what other
people think. I mean, I'm 41; life's just too short. I started in theater. I
did theater professionally for seven years with my company before I started
doing Friends. I
was waiting tables and doing theater. If people see that I'm doing a play after Friends,
and they think, "Oh, he's just trying to do theater and act," they just don't
know me, and I don't care.