Stewart wants to make us laugh ... and think
Irresistible
Available on video on demand
Jon Stewart’s sophomore film, Irresistible — a satirical comedy about a small-town mayoral run — is a lot funnier than his first outing. His directorial debut, Rosewater, tracked the harrowing story of Canadian Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari during his unlawful imprisonment in Iran.
“I do hope in general that you laugh more than you would at an Iranian solitary confinement movie,” Stewart says about Irresistible, which he wrote and directed. “But ... they are similarly themed in that they both represent dysfunctional processes of the state, and of the media, and of the uncontrollable systems that rise up around us that lose sight of what their purpose should be, rather than just entrenching and enriching themselves.”
Irresistible is a funny bait and switch that stars Steve Carell, for whom the role of Gary Zimmer, a Democratic political strategist, was written; Rose Byrne as the Republicans’ strongwoman; and Chris Cooper as the conservative-in-a-liberal’s-body unwitting mayoral candidate for a fictional Wisconsin town, Deerlaken. The film focuses on the absurd amount of money poured into the often callous and corrupt political system of the United States. A big part of Stewart’s talent is the ability to break down complex subjects into comical sequences that make sense no matter what side you’re on.
“I got into this business to make things, to do standup, to be creative,” Stewart says over the phone from New Jersey, where he has turned his home into an animal sanctuary he runs with his wife.
Topics like corruption and campaign finance “are things that I’m interested in, and the hope is that (I’m) able to do it deftly enough that other people find it interesting or engaging.”
With the current global issues knocking on everyone’s door, it’s not the easiest time to be releasing a film.
“It feels like I’m walking into an inferno with a Fresca,” says Stewart, whose proliferation of analogies during this interview might rival Shakespeare. “I’m just the guy in a huge disaster scene going, ‘Anybody want a Fresca? It’s crisp and bubbly; it’s refreshing. Anybody?’”
Byrne grows humble about the movie releasing at all. “It’s the least of our worries. I’m just incredibly grateful for the people that have been going to work, saving lives and protesting among all of this horrendous stuff that’s been happening. It’s such a tipping point in history ... I hope people see this and they want to go out and vote ...”
Audiences last saw her on screen as Gloria Steinem in FX’s miniseries Mrs. America.
She said it was interesting to go from Steinem to Brewster and see “this reverse-engineering history of why we are where we are today, which is Irresistible, and the rise of that cult personality, of divisive politics and of the 24-hour news cycle.”
Stewart’s hoping people think about the corruption accepted as status quo. “For 16 years (on The Daily Show), I felt like I was doing the weather ... I started noticing cyclonic patterns. Those cycles became deeper and wider and more powerful and (left) destruction in their wake. I felt like I just wanted to step back and do a climate movie about that system as opposed to doing the weather.”