DEATH AT A FUNERAL is Frank Oz’s latest film in a string of comic gems that include WHAT ABOUT BOB, IN & OUT and BOWFINGER. This British farce about a funeral for the patriarch of a dysfunctional family is filled with hilarious modern twists; the midget gay lover of the deceased, played by Peter Dinklage, attempts blackmail, a son-in-law-to-be of the deceased accidentally takes hallucinogenic drugs and general chaos ensues.
Like many of Oz’s films you fall in love with the wacky characters and laugh in terror as the mess of their lives consumes them. Dread and delight go hand in hand. He’s directed 13 films since 1982, and is very selective about the scripts he chooses. He maintains that most scripts today are written for marketing and big sales, not story and character, so it’s very hard to find something worth his time. His previous film STEPFORD WIVES was a high-budget Hollywood dud that he claims was not the movie he wanted to make. The $100,000,000 budget was a stress-inducing nightmare that overwhelmed the script’s potential as he saw it. Thus it’s no surprise that his latest film is an intimate lower-budget European film.
In researching Oz’s career prior to our interview, I was elated to discover that his talents go well beyond directing. He is also the beloved voice of Yoda, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and yes, the Cookie Monster. As a child of the 1980’s it was hard to maintain my composure. One of the questions I planned to ask was, “What role do you think Miss Piggy would demand if she read the script for DEATH AT A FUNERAL?” but it was far too embarrassing to actually ask.
Frank Oz
Question: So, Death at a Funeral isn’t exactly BOWFINGER.
Frank Oz: No, I like to do as [many] different movies as possible. My preference is to go from different movie to different movie. My preference right now is to look for a drama, a horror movie or a thriller but it’s very, very hard to find scripts that are really terrific.
Q: So what made you judge this script as terrific?
FO: I laughed out loud and also I could sense a real awareness of farce structure and real craftsmanship. Farce is very difficult to write. It’s hell to shoot. The only thing that’s worse to shoot, which I run like hell from, is physical comedy. So I appreciated the craftsmanship. #1: I laughed out loud and I was touched by it.
Q: We’ve got enough of the subgenre of wedding movies, now here we’ve got a funeral movie. Perhaps we need a few more funeral movies.
FO: I always like being subversive to some degree. If it’s not subversive it’s namby-pamby. I can’t stand being goody-two-shoes. Weddings, funerals, whenever you’re in a situation, in my opinion, if you’re in a situation where you have to act a certain way, let’s say in a library or a church or a funeral or a wedding, then the inclination is to not act that way. I remember I had a girlfriend and we went downtown to a deadly serious classical play and we got the giggles. We could not stop giggling and the terrible thing is that we were only seven people in the audience. The more serious they got the more giggles we had.
Q: What moment in this film brought the most giggles out of you?
FO: Oh God we did so much improvising on this movie, so many ad-libs. The thing that we could barely get through, and it wasn’t funny in the movie that much, but it was hysterical when everybody was sitting down for the eulogy and Howard was very angry at Martha because she took his parking place. So the idea of him being that petty while the priest was talking cracked us up. We had to do take after take after take because we just could not hold it together. There were so many times we couldn’t hold it together because it was just hard not to laugh.
Q: How much, in light of the improvisation, did the script offer just a framework?
FO: Oh no it wasn’t a framework. In my opinion, I always say in my opinion because I don’t like to be a director that says, “Well, this is the way it has to be!” Because there is no way it has to be. So, in my opinion you cannot really improv without a great script. You can’t do it. An improv, unfortunately, is sometimes a misnomer to people because they think, oh now I can be free. But the truth is,if you’re going to do it right, you have to do it with rigor and discipline. And terrific actors. That’s what we did. Also, I always ask for the writer to be on the set.
Q: Really?
FO: Always. Every movie I’ve had. Like Paul Ruddnick [screenwriter of IN & OUT and THE STEPFORD WIVES], I always ask for Paul to be on the set. Because I know I always change things on the floor. Cause what’s written, I think the biggest mistake, in my opinion, is people think what works on the page will work on the floor, which means when it’s on its feet. And the truth is, there will be hysterical things that will work on the page, supposedly, and people laugh and it will fall flat on the floor. Or there will be things on a page, “This isn’t funny,” and the actors make it hysterical. Therefore, because one never knows, I’m not smart enough to know, I always play around with the writer, and the actors.
Q: So, how does that work? You call the writer over and say, “Hey this isn’t working.”
FO: I just say, “Hey, this isn’t working.” We throw back and forth and some of the actors throw things back and forth. Christ, DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRALS, I remember we didn’t have an ending and Steve [Martin] and I sat for like six nice dinners in Nice making up this ending and on the day of the shoot we didn‘t have it written down almost. We’d say, “Michael you say this. Steve you say this.” It was a huge fucking chance. But it worked.
Q: When you look at your films they are really about two people interacting. This movie is about an ensemble. Was it refreshing to do an ensemble piece and was that an element of why you wanted to direct it?
FO: Not really. The reason you see more movies with two people is marketing. Studio heads, to a great degree, do that because they can get two stars. So it’s very unusual that you get a movie with 13 people, not one except for Daniel, Matthew MacFadyen, is the lead. I never thought about the ensemble aspect. All I thought about was how funny it was and I liked the through-line. You guys in the audience you don’t care what though-line is. To me it’s a very serious through-line. It has to be on a serious spine or else you’re not going to care and the laughter isn’t going to be as good. So to me the movie is only about Daniel becoming the man his wife always thought he was. Nobody gives a shit about that, they don’t care, for me it was really about that and about being funny and I loved these characters. It wasn’t about ensemble work. I was very fortunate the writer of this was so smart, because what an actor wants is wanting. An actor wants to want. It’s so clear and basic about any acting. And he wrote a movie where everybody is selfish. Everybody wants something.
Q: The fact that it’s set in England, is there something inherent to making the movie in England….
FO: Well you can’t escape the fact that it’s written by a British person.
Q: There is something about it being English.
FO: The main thing is they have something to loose. If you’re lower class you have nothing to loose. The more upper-class you go the more you have to loose and the more you try to hold down. So they are upper-middle-class. In America you can’t do that because we don’t give a shit, we just say whatever we want to say.
Q: There is a political correctness.
FO: A social correctness. It’s not really true in England. There are people, even upper-middle-class who are just as gregarious as Americans. But that’s the stereotype and in order for this movie to work, one did have to have archetypes.
Q: I’m curious about the taboos. There is the homosexual affair, etc. How do you think this movie deals with it differently, in a contemporary way than if it was made 30 years ago?
FO: There’s a lot of stuff written 30, 40, 100 years ago that’s smart. If you approach something smart I don’t’ think it really has to do with a time period except that you have to mirror your own time period and environment. But I think if you’re really smart it’s a timeless kind of thing to me. As far as the gay element, honestly it’s such a non-issue to me, it’s kind of woven through our society now.
Q: What was your direction for Alan Tudyk when his character was high? How did you keep that ball in the air?
FO: A lot of that was improved. I play.
Q: Was there stuff you had to take out?
FO: Absolutely. I always overshoot. We shot more than necessary and the first couple screenings we put everything in and it was just stilly, it wasn’t funny. So I took a lot out. Less is more to me. As a result, the few times you see him were better because there is less. I really just play on set. I play and I push. I ask them to improv and I push really hard. I get them to the point where they’re not even thinking and that’s where the edge comes.
Q: And then there is the matter of the cast, getting the right ensemble, the right balance of great actors. It must have been a bit of a trial to get the right mix, the right soup together.
FO: I was very fortunate because these actors they’re all trained. I auditioned all of them. I don’t do it by tape, I sit there in the room with them and I play. You can tell the difference between a trained actor and a non-trained actor like that [snaps]. 10 seconds when you audition them, you can tell immediately. These actors were all trained so I could bring them up and down and things like that. The key person here was Daniel. Because what I hate, when I see comedies, is sweat. I hate seeing people trying to be funny. I don’t want to see the effort. So Matthew, when he read it to me, he was subtle and real and I think everybody had to meet that. That helped a great deal. I was very lucky, I mean I didn’t get 13 people and cast them together. I cast one person and then another. I didn’t see them together until the first read through. So you just hope. I did this mentoring at Sundance years ago, and we were talking about “Directed by” and I’ll repeat it because it’s true, it shouldn’t be “Directed by” because you’re not really directing as much as hoping that things will be okay. It should be “Hoped by”.
Q: How do you know when to stop, especially when a take is finished? How do you know “Oh! That was it!”
FO: I always ask myself that. [I’d ask], “How do these guys know when something is good?” before I started directing. I guess it’s purely visceral. It’s “Oh! That’s the one.” That’s all I can tell you. My mind’s not working. It may be a laugh or it’s pure honest and touching or I believed it. I guess I believe it, whether it’s comedy or drama. It’s totally here [taps his chest]. I have no say.
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