Jack Black having time of his life with The House With a Clock in its Walls & Gust Van Sant’s Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot
FROM heading down “risky roads” in his “wild younger years” to feeding his boys cookies for breakfast: the evolution of everyone’s favourite funnyman, Jack Black.
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IN recent years, he’s been king of the kids, topping the box office with Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and ruling school holidays with Kung Fu Panda and Goosebumps. And that crown remains firmly on Jack Black’s head with his latest magical movie adventure, The House With a Clock in its Walls.
Some are heralding it as ‘the next Harry Potter’, which has Black knocking on the nearest wood he can find.
“I hesitate to say, ‘Yes, this will be the next franchise!’,” he defers. “I don’t want to jinx anything.”
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Based on John Bellairs’ spooky 1973 kids’ novel, The House With a Clock in its Walls follows 10-year-old Lewis who is sent to live with his eccentric uncle — played by Black.
Lewis discovers that his uncle is a warlock and that the mysterious tick-tock noise emanating from his strange old house is the result of a curse placed by its previous tenant. Picking up the family knack for sorcery, Lewis joins his uncle in the race to stop the countdown to evil, with a little help from the good witch next door, played by Cate Blanchett.
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“It’s a really great kids’ allegory,” says Black. “It’s got that great scary story of evil witches and warlocks versus good witches and warlocks.”
In a move that will tilt that crown to the side somewhat, it’s a scary story of a very different kind that Black is telling in his second movie release this month, Gus Van Sant’s Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot.
Set in the 1970s and based on a true story, Don’t Worry explores the darkest corners of addiction and the role art can play in pushing back that darkness.
Black plays Dexter, a hard-partying drinker who meets Joaquin Phoenix’s John at a party, before embarking with him on a fateful booze-fuelled car ride. John is rendered a quadriplegic, while Dexter walks away without a scratch.
“I have experience in the world of addiction,” Black says candidly, no trace of humour in his voice. “Alcoholism is in my family so I know personally what that is about and I myself also struggled. In my wild, younger years I’ve definitely gone down some risky roads and I’m very fortunate to still be alive, to be honest with you. I partied pretty hard, and man, I definitely had a very robust, ridiculous, idiotic period in the ’80s.”
The old ‘tears of a clown’ adage has befitted many a famous comedian, but Black, who first began performing professionally as a teen, never needed Dutch courage to put on a show.
“I don’t think I ever used drugs and alcohol to build courage to go onstage. In fact, I learned early on that I was paralysed by paranoia if I partied right before going on,” he says. “For me, partying was a search to find a really good ecstatic state that maybe would make me finally feel whole and fill the emptiness.”
Black, 49, jumped at the chance to work with Van Sant.
“I never write letters but I wrote to Gus Van Sant years ago to tell him how amazing I thought he was, and how his movie Elephant blew my mind. Then I heard nothing back,” he laughs. “Ten years went by and I thought, ‘I’m an idiot. He thinks I’m doing that ass-kissing thing’ — which was true, but I do genuinely love his films.
“Then I get a f---ing call from my agent to say, ‘Gus Van Sant wants you to play in his movie’. And I’m thinking, ‘My letter worked!’”
But was the role the director had in mind for Black a compliment?
“Dexter is very different from anything I’ve played. He’s kind of the devil,” Black says. “The very first line (in the script) describes him as ‘an annoying blowhard’. So I realise Gus must have thought, ‘Who can I get to play this? I know, Jack Black!’
“So it was a mixed bag for me: the joy of getting to work with my hero, then the horrifying realisation that I’m a perfect annoying blowhard.”
Don’t Worry is based on John Callahan’s 1990 memoir about his journey to sobriety during which he discovered a gift for drawing. The wheelchair-bound Callahan became a successful cartoonist whose edgy work made him a folk icon in his hometown of Portland, Oregon.
Black is as effusive as critics have been in regards to Phoenix’s performance.
“I come from a place of extreme fandom. Not only am I in love with Gus’ filmmaking style, I was in heaven because I’m partying with Joaquin Phoenix, whose work was introduced to me via To Die For. I’d never seen a kid in my age range who was that good.”
Black’s days of filling the void are well behind him. His life now is all about family as he raises sons Samuel, 12, and Thomas, 10, with his wife Tanya Haden. What kind of a dad is he?
“I try to enforce some level of discipline, but I am probably a little lax in that department if I am being honest,” he admits. “I try to keep them doing their homework before they have any screen time, and to bed because the mornings are so torturous if we don’t get to sleep on time.
“But do they have cookies for breakfast?” he asks. “Maybe, sometimes.”
THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS IS NOW SHOWING.
DON’T WORRY, HE WON’T GET FAR ON FOOT OPENS THURSDAY
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