Jemaine’s monster success
Men in Black 3’s Kiwi star Clement plans new movies
KIWI actor and comedian Jemaine Clement has revealed that he is not only keen to make a Flight of the Conchords feature film, but also a vampire comedy set in Wellington.
Clement, 38, plays a major part in Hollywood movie Men in Black 3, released this week and American reviewers have praised his role as a villainous alien.
The New York Times called him ‘‘a great and eccentric comic talent who has improved every Hollywood movie he has appeared in’’. Clement, speaking at the movie’s New York premiere, said he and Flight of the Conchords partner Bret Mckenzie still hoped to bring the comic music duo to the big screen. But while it will likely have the same cast as their New York-based television series, including Rhys Darby, it will not be the same setting.
‘‘We might be 80s DJS or New Zealand astronauts or in medieval times and we’d be minstrels. It could be really anything . . . it will be a different kind of world.’’
Flight of the Conchords’ first national New Zealand tour begins next month. Ticket sales had been so high, new venues had to be added to meet demand, including Auckland’s 12,000-capacity Vector Arena.
Clement said he had also completed a feature film screenplay with Boy director Taika Waititi, based on their rarely-seen 2006 short film What We Do in the Shadows, about a group of vampires flatting in Wellington who try to fit into normal society while continuing to feed on humans.
Just a few years ago Clement was in the midst of what was then a career high point. After the success of Flight of the Conchords he was cast in Hollywood comedy Dinner for Schmucks.
The boy from Masterton, who had worked tirelessly for years in comedy, was playing alongside big name comic actors Steve Carrell, Paul Rudd and Zach Galifianakis in a film executive-produced by Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen.
Clement was enjoying the wrap party for Dinner for Schmucks when he was approached by two of the film’s producers. ‘‘They said, ‘We’ve got this character we think you might be good for in the next Men in Black film’.
‘‘I couldn’t really turn it down. They told me a little bit right there – that he [the character] was ruthless and well spoken and that’s what they wanted.’’
The result is one of the biggest films of Clement’s career, where he plays alongside Hollywood A-lister Will Smith.
Clement is the chief villain in Men in Black 3 – an alien called Boris the Animal, who speaks with a stilted English accent and has an insect-like parasite living in his right palm that shoots out and attacks people.
Clement’s character has been imprisoned on the moon for 40 years after being captured by Men in Black agent K, played by Tommy Lee Jones. He escapes and time travels back to 1969 to kill the agent. It sets off a chain of events that sees Agent J (Smith) travel back to the 1960s. There he encounters a younger version of K played by Josh Brolin and has to battle both Boris and a 1969 version of the villain.
There are scenes where Clement plays both Borises talking to each other.
‘‘Out of all the scenes I did it was the one I was least nervous about because I only had to do it with myself. There’s always pressure acting against one of those big names. I don’t want to waste their time by messing it up.’’
Clement is explaining this while in a New York hotel, a few hours before the Men in Black 3 American premiere.
He explained there were days when he would have to wait for eight hours in full makeup before doing two hours of filming. He’d spend the downtime talking to crew in different departments and nosing around the sets.
Walking around the set as a monster affected other cast and crew. ‘‘People kind of recoiled when they’d see me. Even just hanging out at the snack table, you could see people sort of back away frommea little. They were avoiding me. But people got used to that and then they would talk to me.
‘‘Then, when I would turn up for lunch without my makeup on, noone would talk to me as they didn’t know who I was.’’
But the leads knew who Clement was. ‘‘A lot of those action sequences take weeks to do, so I spent a long time with Josh Brolin and Will Smith, hanging on scaffolding.’’
And Clement expects to