James Marsden and Jack Black star in the offbeat comedy “The D Train.”
Everyone gets to be the hero of his or her own story. But to just about anyone who isn’t “The D Train’s” Dan Landsman, he’s not only no hero — he’s also an almost-pathological liar with no moral compass and extremely questionable priorities. Oh, and he’s a lousy dad, too.
“Horrible, horrible,” says Jack Black, who plays Dan. “But that’s what was funny to me, too. I only really laugh at stuff I haven’t seen before, now.
“You don’t see a lot of movies where the hero is sort of unlikeable and not someone you’re really rooting for. The formulaic starting point of all comedies, for the most part, is the character is someone you hope achieves his dreams and goals.
Needy, pathetic
“This guy is a piece of s— and you don’t really root for him. He’s kind of like a Rupert Pupkin in that way. He’s super-insecure and very needy and pathetic. It’s difficult to watch him. The desperation, the scenarios he’s in are difficult to watch.”
The “King of Comedy” reference is apt. Dan is a fabulist, a fantasist whose epic quest is to persuade one Oliver Lawless, the most popular guy from his high school days, to come to the 20-year reunion. That’s it.
Dan has a steady job with a compassionate boss, a supportive wife and a son who, against all reason, looks to him for advice. But all of that is pushed aside in his quest to get Lawless ( James Marsden), a handsome actor whose most impressive credit is apparently one national commercial, to appear to be his friend. Dan dreams the prize for that tri- umph will be the admiration of those who ignored him as a teen. This is one hero who craves worship.
“He’s so scarred, emotionally, from his experience in high school where he wasn’t getting what he needed from the rest of the kids,” says Black. “He’s carried that with him all these years, and it’s shaped who he is.
“He’s got so much, this family he just doesn’t see because he’s always thinking of what he’d rather have.”
It’s a farce setup seen countless times, especially on sitcom TV. What sets “D Train” on another track is that it goes there — Dan’s willingness to do anything to land Lawless takes him to unexpected stations. Lawless may be a minor thespian, but he’s a thoroughly debauched libertine who makes Russell Brand’s Aldous Snow (“Get Him to the Greek”) look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms.
And unlike ordinary Hollywood fare, this Sundance entrant lets some of the not-sohilarious consequences of Dan’s behavior have their impact. It draws less influence from “My Best Friend’s Wedding” than from the Coen brothers.
“I don’t think of it as a traditional farce,” says Black, tired but game in a Four Seasons suite in Los Angeles, speaking deliberately. “There was some stuff that was hard to communicate, like little pieces of china, some of the scenes were so subtle.”
Late in the film, Lawless goes out partying without Dan despite staying in Dan’s house.
Black says, “I’m up all night thinking, ‘Why didn’t he go out with me? Why wasn’t I invited?’ I’m insecure as I’ve ever been, and he comes home with this woman he met in a bar and they’re making love and I come in and I say, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, I really need to talk to you right now … What’s going on? Did I do something wrong?’
“There was a delicate emotional life of the character that was tricky to navigate.”
Major productions
Black, star of such major productions as the “Kung Fu Panda” movies, “Tropic Thunder” and “Gulliver’s Travels,” has also had the opportunity to work with iconoclastic directors such as Richard Linklater (“Bernie,” “School of Rock”), Michel Gondry (“Be Kind, Rewind”) and Stephen Frears (“High Fidelity”), as well as to toil on shoestring budgets. So a quick-and-dirty 22-day shoot like “D Train” was no problem for him:
“Doing indies is like going back to the theater in that you only have a short amount of time and a lot of dialogue to remember and an emotional landscape to traverse; it’s satisfying in that you’re really acting your ass off.”
Black had previously worked with Marsden on an episode of “Touched by an Angel” about 20 years ago, but says the two had “not kept in touch, not once, not at all.” Still, of that episode, which he had forgotten about until he was asked by a reporter about it and thus watched it on YouTube, he says, “There may be glimmers of magic there, that you might notice.” Oh, there are. But Black says perhaps the best part of working on this particular indie was acting with San Francisco native Jeffrey Tambor (recent Golden Globe winner for “Transparent”). Tambor plays Dan’s
technologically clueless boss, a touchingly trusting man.
“He’s one of my favorite actors of all time,” says Black. “He’s so natural, organic. He is the master of just being present. Little mistakes and foibles — he lets it flow. You don’t get that feeling he gets it the way he wants it and does every take the same. He is the opposite of that. ‘Let’s see what happens here.’ It takes a real kind of courage and relaxation; it’s a high-wire act he’s doing. I was really trying to study him, emulate him. I don’t know how he does it. I’d like to take a class from him, really.”
As to Dan, who might have benefited from some of that courage and relaxation:
“We’re all guided by our terror that people won’t like us,” says Black. “In the end, who the f— cares what people think of us? This tragic character has gone through this incredibly humiliating experience and comes out stronger at the end. Hopefully that’s what people will take away from it.”