Sons of the desert
It’s no easy task taking on the mantle of Hollywood’s most iconic double act. Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly have mastered it quite wonderfully in their new movie, Stan & Ollie. Michael Doherty meets the pair in London
On the face of it, if you were to think of two actors ideally suited to play Arthur Stanley Je erson and Oliver Norvell Hardy, Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly might not immediately spring to mind. Yes, they both have the approximate build (albeit with extra padding, in Reilly’s case), but there’s nothing else about them that prepares you for such a remarkable transformation on screen. Sitting in a fancy London hotel room, the actors are today basking in the morning-a er glow of a sell-out London premiere at which a delighted audience was greeted by the sight of the actors nattily dressed in kilts. It was clearly a nod to the classic Laurel and Hardy feature, Bonnie Scotland (1935), but also to the fact that both men are proud of their Irish roots.
“ ey were green Irish kilts,” explains Steve, whose mother, Kathleen, hails from Mayo. “Ireland is the most important interview we’re doing all day!” adds John, another actor with Irish heritage, who became a social media sensation in 2015 courtesy of his rendition of e Irish Rover, lustily delivered while standing on a bar-room table in Doolin, Co Clare.
It’s one thing taking on real-life characters on screen; you’ve both done that before, but was there extra pressure when those characters are as iconic as Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy?
John C. Reilly: ere are all kinds of pressures at work when you approach a project such as this. One is to get it right physically and be like these people. Another is technically to try to capture the essence of what they did together. So yes, it was incredibly overwhelming and very intimidating but Steve and I both felt we had enough going for us that we were the right guys for the job. Ultimately, you just have to begin with simple things like, OK, let’s get this dance right!
Many actors might rely on the familiar Laurel and Hardy gestures like twiddling a tie or ru ing your hair; was it di cult to present them as living, breathing characters?
Steve Coogan: ere’s a Venn diagram where the real Stan and Ollie overlap with the screen personae of Laurel and Hardy. at bit in the middle where they overlap is the key to this movie. What’s good about their comedy performances isn’t just their technical comedy skill; it’s the humanity that’s going on beneath the silliness.
You always see them as human beings in their movies. at was the real challenge for us. ere wasn’t much o -screen Laurel and Hardy available to work with; a few bits of lm, some bits of interviews and a few phone calls. It was an incomplete jigsaw so it was up to us to complete the picture.
You might assume a lm about Laurel and Hardy will be a straight comedy, but you quickly see the pathos of these two legendary comedians playing to half-empty houses and lugging their own steamer trunks around. You also realise that it’s actually a love story between two men whose lives were so interwoven for 25 years and 107 lms…
John C. Reilly: Yes, and what’s interesting about that is they made all these movies together, but when they weren’t working together, they actually didn’t socialise a lot. Oliver would go out to the golf course and then on to a restaurant with his friends; Stan would go back to the edit suite to try and gure out the movie and write more scenes for the next day. at was one of the stunning things for me about working on this lm. Because the chemistry is so interwoven and intense, you think they must have been linked all of the time, but they didn’t do that in their heyday. It was only when they were down on their luck in the movie business that they had to travel together to do these shows. ey spent every train ride together, shared every hotel and attended every reception. at’s when they were really shoulder-to-shoulder and that’s when they really learned to love each other.
Steve Coogan: It is like a marriage in one sense: all the fun and games in the early years and by the autumn of their relationship it becomes about something deeper and there’s more substance to it. e irony is that they had to tour together because of economic circumstances but their love for each other grew. Towards the end of their days they look around and realise that the only other constant
in their lives has been each other. John, how long did it take you to master Ollie’s famous withering look?
John C. Reilly: Hahaha! Well, I’ve been practicing those faces my whole life! Like you said, everybody knows these trademark gestures but when you’re working on them, the rst thing you realise is that you have to be patient.
e contemporary comedic sensibility would suggest you always do things in a hurry, but it takes patience to hold a stare to camera before you then look over at the person beside you on screen. It’s almost scary, but the more you invest in it, the bigger it pays o . So it’s not just about doing the gestures; it’s about understanding that Oliver’s entire worldview was terribly romantic. He was a real Southern gent. Once you understand the psychological basis for these gestures, suddenly they become very easy to do.
You mentioned the famous dance routine from Way Out West (1937) earlier, can I just say fair play for leaving in the mistake that appeared in the original movie…
John C. Reilly: Oh, I’m glad you noticed. I knew someone would notice! We very intentionally tried to do it exactly like they did it in the movie.
e joke of that dance is that it’s a routine that a child could have choreographed.
Steve Coogan: Anybody who is able-bodied can do that dance. It’s unremarkable, but that’s part of its charm. When you look at the routines of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, you go,
‘Wow that’s impressive!’ You don’t tend to go ‘Wow!’ a er a Laurel and Hardy routine. You just laugh, and a laugh is better than a wow. If these were two men in the real world, they’d be unremarkable men. ey’re just two nobodies.
at’s the key.
John C. Reilly: You’re laughing as if to say, that’s familiar to me, but I could never hang from a clock tower [à la Harold Lloyd in Safety Last!].
ose guys were brilliant comedy performers but there was also something brilliant about Laurel and Hardy’s acting style; and something remarkable about their humanity. ere’s something very beautiful in our story that at their lowest moment, when they think it’s all over, they go to Ireland, where people immediately cried out ‘ ere you are!’ at gave them the wind in their sails. Wasn’t it beautiful when the boys arrived in Cobh in 1953 and those church bells rang out? Steve Coogan: ere’s something strangely lovely that the last place Laurel and Hardy appeared together anywhere in the world was Ireland.
For an audience unfamiliar with Laurel and Hardy, which lm would you recommend for starters?
John C. Reilly: You know what? I’d recommend doing what I did last Saturday when I was having a bath. Put on the computer and just hit the rst Laurel and Hardy Youtube short that looks interesting. I could give you a list of the ones I love – Helpmates (1932), obviously e Music Box (1932) and Brats (1930), which is weirdly subversive. But you don’t just look at a Laurel and Hardy lm. You look at the body of their work. You can’t go wrong, as long as you hit their early stu .
Steve Coogan: I also love e Music Box
(1932). When I was rst in LA, I made a journey to the famous steps. I just stood there as if it was some sort of religious pilgrimage.
John C. Reilly: I used to live about three blocks from there. It’s as well you made your pilgrimage during the day. at can be a dodgy little street at night!
Stan & Ollie opens nationwide on January 11