Gosling lives dream by drawing laughs
Canadian Ryan Gosling tickles funny bones as a bumbling private eye in crime comedy
As a put-on, Ryan Gosling once told a few inquiring minds he relied on two acting styles: the Daffy Duck method and the Bugs Bunny approach.
The funny thing is, Gosling’s hapless private detective in The Nice Guys is like a human version of Wile E. Coyote.
In Shane Black’s 1970s-set crime comedy, Gosling, 35, plays a stumbling, bumbling investigator who teams up with Russell Crowe’s tough-guy enforcer. Their job is to find a missing girl, which might be part of a high-level conspiracy.
Of course, Black was the writer who brought us the Lethal Weapon cop series in the 1980s and ’90s, bringing together the unlikely twosome of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. As a writer-director, he followed that up with the 2005 caper farce Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer.
Crowe and Gosling continue his casting trend, but it is Gosling who does a great deal of the comedy heavy lifting, ranging from expert pratfalls to well-timed one-liners.
Besides Wile E. Coyote, the Canadian actor recalls the antics of Charlie Chaplin, Peter Sellers and in one sequence Lou Costello from the duo Abbott and Costello. The truth is Gosling’s early take on his character convinced Black to add more laughs and subtract some thrills in rewrites.
“Right, he’s blaming it on me” Gosling says. “Actually, I read the script as a big opportunity to explore the physical comedy that I grew up on and love so much.”
So far, preview audiences are reacting in a positive way, including a recent Cannes Film Festival pre- miere crowd. Amazingly, Gosling improvised most of the winning antics during filming. Especially entertaining is a sequence involving Crowe’s thug interrogating Gosling’s detective on a toilet in a bathroom stall.
“I was nervous the first day,” Gosling says, “because the first day was that bathroom scene.”
The actor had a general idea what he would do, but ended up collaborating with Crowe on specific movements with encouragement from Black.
“We immediately started having a very serious conversation about the stupidest thing,” Gosling says. “I had my pants around my ankles but I thought, ‘ This is going to be OK.’ ’’
It turns out Black “was gracious” about adjusting the tone for The Nice Guys and Crowe “was always supportive and helpful.”
Indeed, the writer-director got into the swing of things during what Gosling calls a “Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid-type shootout” when one throws the other a pistol.
“Shane said, ‘You know, they always catch the gun in movies, but maybe this time it just goes through the window.’ ”
Other witty bits occur between the private detective “as a ditzy dad” and his more mature daughter (played by Angourie Rice).
“Shane wrote that like a motherson dynamic between what should have been a father-daughter dynamic,” says Gosling, a real-life dad to two young girls — Esmeralda, 1, and newborn Amada — with actress Eva Mendes, 42.
“Angourie is more mature than most adults, and it worked well.”
So have Gosling’s string of comedy flicks, starting with 2011’s Cra- zy, Stupid, Love, last year’s The Big Short and now The Nice Guys.
“It is an element of luck that these (comedy) things come to you at the right time,” he says. “I was over the moon when I read The Nice Guys script, and I thought, ‘Oh, I have a chance to really do these things I grew up on.’ ”
Meanwhile, there’s the Blade Runner sequel directed by Quebec filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. Gosling will star with Harrison Ford in the new production set to begin filming this summer.
Gosling smirks a little when he’s asked about the movie: “Just so you know, there’s a sniper on the roof over there,” he says. “If I say anything, it’s over.”
More seriously, he offers some sidestepping Blade Runner thoughts.
“First of all, as a fan of the film, it was just exciting to me that Ridley (Scott) and (Ford) wanted to extend the story,” Gosling says of the director and star of the original film.
“Then when (Villeneuve) came on to direct the second film, I thought that was an amazing idea, because I’m such a huge fan of his.”
The reality of the challenge is clear, though.
“I’ll be honest,” he says. “It’s scary because I have such a respect for Blade Runner that I hope I can do it justice.”
Whatever Gosling’s doing these days, it seems to be effective. But he has no master plan.
“I think if you agonize too much, that’s a sign,” Gosling says. “The thing that happens without too much agonizing is always the right choice.”
I was over the moon when I read The Nice Guys script, and I thought, ‘Oh, I have a chance to really do (the physical comedy) I grew up on.’
If you didn’t already know it, then the roller-disco font in the title and the severely distressed Hollywood sign on the hill should tell you that this is 1977 Los Angeles. It’s a time and place where a porn star named Misty Mountains can crash her powder-blue sports coupe through a living room of kids. And does, in the first scene.
This literal breakneck opening sets in motion a tale as shaggy as ’70s carpet, though not as soft. Ryan Gosling stars as Holland March, private eye, hard drinker and single dad to the hilariously precocious Holly, played by 14-year-old Angourie Rice.
Holland is investigating an alleged post-mortem sighting of Ms. Mountains by the woman’s elderly aunt, whose unreliability as a witness is nicely counterbalanced, in Holland’s eyes, by her ability to pay. The case has him tracking down person-of-interest Amelia (Margaret Qualley), whose name might as well be MacGuffin.
Along the way he crosses paths with enforcer-for-hire Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe, sporting a six-pack — of doughnuts). Jackson has been sent to beat up Holland, but he soon decides to join forces with him. He’s convinced that Amelia is in danger, and his nice-guy streak can’t abide that.
The Nice Guys was co-written and directed Shane Black, whose career includes a few directing credits (notably Iron Man 3), and some for writing, (Lethal Weapon, Last Action Hero), but whose most personal project, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, combined the two. That very funny 2005 film helped revitalize the career of Robert Downey Jr., provided a showcase for Michelle Monaghan, and did little to help Val Kilmer, though not from lack of trying.
The Nice Guys is cut from the same cloth — another mismatched-buddy comedy whose success rests on the chemistry of its co-stars. Fortunately, Gosling and Crowe have it; Crowe apparently gained those extra pounds to create a better Abbott-andCostello vibe with his co-star.
Gosling has the best lines, even though they’re not always kind to his character. He gets the last word when a little girl gasps that he just used the Lord’s name in vain, replying that it wasn’t in vain, it was very useful. But he comes off as a doofus when he gets rhetorical in the face of bureaucracy: “You know who else was ‘just following orders?’ Adolf Hitler!”
Crowe is often reduced to rolling his eyes and throwing punches, but he handles the straight-man role without complaint. Supporting players include Kim Basinger as a justice with a possibly hidden agenda, Keith David as a dangerous thug, and Matt Bomer as an even more dangerous one — certainly more than his name, John Boy, would suggest.
The film does a nice job of recreating 1970s L.A., from its fading, failing beauty to the city’s smog problems. (An important subplot revolves around, of all things, vehicle emission standards.) And Black gets bonus points from this critic for resisting the urge to film the ol’ upward shot of palm trees waving over the boulevards, something from which not even Terrence Malick in Knight of Cups could hold back.
Some viewers may find the violence a bit much, although it does lean toward the cartoonish. And for a film featuring a porn star as a major character, there’s remarkably little to worry about on that front.
Best of all, it’s funny. It’s fair to say that in this instance, Nice Guys finish first.