Bateman directs, acts in ‘Ozark’
Drama fueled by his understated acting style
NEW YORK - In his new drama series “Ozark,” Jason Bateman doesn’t aim to make waves as Chicago financial adviser Marty Byrde — more like ripples that leave no one around him untouched or unexposed.
When not advising clients on their 401(k) plans, Marty launders cash by the millions. But now he’s jammed up with the South American drug cartel he cleans that money for. So he and his family bolt for the Missouri Ozarks, a safer base of operations where he hopes to make things right before the Byrdes end up dead.
The intoxicating saga that powers the 10 episodes of “Ozark” (just released on Netflix) is full of unexpected twists and is fortified by a splendid cast, including Laura Linney as Marty’s accomplice-wife and the mother of their two kids.
The drama churns around Marty, yet, for Bateman, this starring role was just his means to a more compelling end: the role of director.
Now 48, Bateman began his acting career in childhood on “Little House on the Prairie” and “Silver Spoons,” and is perhaps best known as a member of the flakey Bluth family on the cult comedy “Arrested Development.” (Next month, he reunites with his fellow Bluth loonies to shoot a new cycle of the series for Netflix.)
But after decades on camera, Bateman found an even greater passion. He directed (not just acted in) a pair of features: “Bad Words” (2013) and “The Family Fang” (2015). He wanted more of that.
That’s where “Ozark” came in. He signed on as its executive producer with plans to direct all 10 episodes. (This proved logistically impossible; he directed the four that bookend the season, passing the reins to others for the middle six.) His acting job was secondary. The chance to direct “was the draw,” he says.
A yearning to direct? What actor doesn’t hear that siren call?
But what makes Bateman’s case a bit different is his attitude toward acting, and how, in “Ozark,” that less-is-more policy informs his performance.
Though slammed with one fearsome challenge after another, Marty responds in mostly microscopic ways. The audience can tell things eat at him, but it’s mostly buried deep beneath the surface. Marty seems so disconnected from his feelings the viewer is obliged to do the connecting for him, to fill in the blanks Bateman sketches out. The viewer is summoned to help Marty feel.
This is Bateman’s kind of role.
“The characters that I’m always drawn to play is ‘us,’ ” he says — “as a proxy who shapes the experience for the audience.” Even in his signature role on “Arrested Development,” his character, Michael Bluth, serves as the audience’s surrogate — the sanest member of this clan who shares and shapes viewers’ wonderment at the lunacy whirling around him.
“Acting changed for me a while ago when I started to become disenchanted with pretending to be other people,” Bateman says. “I’m not interested in tricking you into thinking I’m somebody else. My challenge with acting has now changed into a different goal: to give me another hand on the wheel, along with directing, to steer the audience through the story.”
“Acting changed for me . . . when I started to become disenchanted with pretending to be other people.”
JASON BATEMAN STAR AND DIRECTOR IN ‘OZARK’