Daniel Radcliffe hits the gas for ‘Swiss Army Man’
Film is ‘beautiful, gross and juvenile’
No movie made more noise at this year’s Sundance Film Festival than Swiss Army
Man. And by “noise,” we mean wet, prolonged, resounding farts.
In the indescribably offbeat comedy (opens June 24 in New York and Los Angeles, expands nationwide July 1), Daniel Radcliffe plays a flatulent talking corpse named Manny, whom castaway Hank (Paul Dano) finds just as he’s about to hang himself. Riding Manny’s body like a jet ski with farts as his propulsion, Hank cruises back to the mainland.
And that’s just in the first 15 minutes. As the title suggests, Hank uses Manny as an all-in-one tool to get home: wielding his arm as an ax, mouth as a water faucet and erection as a compass. All the while, the unlikely pals muse on love, loss, sex and friendship.
If you think the premise sounds bizarre or repulsive, you’re not alone: Swiss Army Man (the debut feature of Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) prompted many to walk out when it premiered in Park City, Utah. It’s a response that Radcliffe was shocked by at the time but now finds immensely satisfying.
“It was the most bemused Q&A of people like: ‘ Why did you do this? What is this?’ ” recalls Radcliffe, 26, who also appears in this weekend’s Now You See Me 2.
For the former Harry Potter star, it was the surreally sweet message of celebrating and accepting one’s weirdness that drew him to the project.
“The idea that you can make a film that is so beautiful and reflective, but also so gross and juvenile, seemed so exciting,” Radcliffe says. “I didn’t know if it’d be possible to pull it off, but upon meeting the Daniels, you think, ‘If somebody’s going to be able to do it, it’ll be these guys.’ ”
Radcliffe knew Dano before signing on. (His girlfriend, Erin Darke, co-starred with Dano in Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mer
cy, and Radcliffe had worked with Dano’s girlfriend, Zoe Kazan, on romantic comedy What If.) “Paul recommended me,” Radcliffe says. “I don’t know what it was about me that made him think I was perfect to play this guy — I’m not going to ask.”
Says Scheinert: “We knew the role would be demanding and require someone who has a positive attitude, because we (couldn’t have) a diva on set being told, ‘Your butt’s going to do this and now you’re going to do that.’ ”
Hopping on Skype to discuss the script, “the first question (Radcliffe) asked was, ‘Can I do all my own stunts?’ ” Kwan says. “It felt like he was really excited about the role for the same reasons we were.”
Among the most challenging sequences, Radcliffe says: lying in the frigid waters of the Bay Area, having to jerk and twist as if he were passing gas.
Typically, a director was “standing off-camera, making fart noises and (I reacted) to the intensity and length of them,” Radcliffe says. “But because I was in the waves, I couldn’t hear anything, so our director was essentially conducting, and I had one eye on him as he was building and building it. It was very high-tech.”