Las Vegas. Prostitutes. Drugs. Gambling. Addiction. All of it is terribly old hat. But when packaged together with a fresh new spin, the result can be intriguing: A washed-up TV writer (Matthew Broderick) battling his latest addiction to gambling offers to go and find his wife's niece (Brittany Snow), who is currently a prostitute and possibly a drug addict—in Vegas, of course—and he plans on meeting up with the host (Steve Coogan) of his favorite casino in order to sneak in a little secret gambling while he's at it. Thus begins Peter Tolan's Finding Amanda, an entertaining romp through the underbelly of Las Vegas. But the conversation resulting from getting star Matthew Broderick and director Peter Tolan in an interview room together at the same time is arguably even more entertaining than the movie itself. I had the fortune of speaking with them recently as part of a roundtable interview; this unfortunately means that I did not get to speak to either man exclusively, but the conversation that resulted from the mild chaos might be some of the best, er, prattle that some you will probably have read in a good long while. Enjoy!So is it tough for you two to work together? Because clearly you don’t get along at all!
PETER TOLAN: It is a chore, I’ll say that.
MATTHEW BRODERICK: Backbreaking. [Peter laughs] No, we had a very good time. Didn’t we?
PT: Yeah. We had a little bit too good of a time.
MB: It was a… four-week shoot?
PT: I believe so. It was a while ago that we made the movie so we may not remember everything. I just wanted to go on the record saying that! If anyone disagrees, really, go fuck yourselves! [we laugh] There it is. You’re really not going get that refreshing honesty anywhere else, right? Alright. [to Matthew] Stop touching me under the table.
PETER TOLAN: It is a chore, I’ll say that.
MATTHEW BRODERICK: Backbreaking. [Peter laughs] No, we had a very good time. Didn’t we?
PT: Yeah. We had a little bit too good of a time.
MB: It was a… four-week shoot?
PT: I believe so. It was a while ago that we made the movie so we may not remember everything. I just wanted to go on the record saying that! If anyone disagrees, really, go fuck yourselves! [we laugh] There it is. You’re really not going get that refreshing honesty anywhere else, right? Alright. [to Matthew] Stop touching me under the table.
[we laugh] Matt, are you a gambling man like your character?
MB: No, I’m not. I can see the appeal of it but I didn’t learn it, somehow, growing up. I don’t even know how. I’ll bet on a sports game once in a while but I don’t know about odds and all the complex—at the racetrack the bets are very sophisticated. I didn’t even know what I was saying half the time. I was like, “What does this mean?”
PT: Well, we did have a scene where you went to the window and made a bet.
MB: Is that in it?
PT: We cut it. But it was a really long scene where you went, “I want the two to three to five over the six, and then key the seven, on top of the one two three in a trifecta and then backwheel it to the five.”
MB: Why did you cut that?
PT: It looks like you’re going, “Help me, I’m drowning!” [we laugh]
MB: Does it really?
PT: [laughs] No, we just didn’t need it. We didn’t need to see you making bets; we knew you were doing it.
Are there any writers you’ve modeled this on? Obviously you’ve known a lot of writers over the years…
MB: Well, not specifically, except maybe a little bit Peter—he was right there and he did write it.
PT: I did, yeah. It’s painfully about me.
MB: But I wasn’t trying to do an impression of you or anything.
PT: It would be impossible to catch that quicksilver. [we laugh]
MB: It’s true. [laughs] And thank god.
PT: [laughs] "Thank god" is right!
MB: But I definitely think through osmosis and unconsciously maybe I did copy you a little bit.
PT: There were a couple of times where my wife Leslie, a producer on the movie, would go “Oh my god, that’s weird.” The things that you do were—
MB: I have run into some of your friends who say, “A lot of that is Peter, you know. That’s exactly Peter.” But I think that’s just from the script and from being around.
PT: Yeah. I think a lot of it’s the script, really.
MB: Yeah. And the line readings.
Where did you get your inspiration for the story?
PT: The inspiration for it actually happened in real life. My wife and I, one summer, years ago, got a call from a family friend who said they had a child who was in trouble in Las Vegas, and in trouble very similar to this. There was some question of hooking and drug-taking. And because I had gambled quite a bit, and had spent quite a bit of time in Vegas, the person who was calling said “Maybe Peter can go and find this person and bring this person to rehab.” So all that stuff happened in real life. And when my wife said, “Maybe you’ll go,” I thought in that instant, “Hey, great, I get to go to Vegas!” [we laugh] That’s really what I thought! That’s the level of my sickness, and I’m willing to admit it. And in the next instant I thought, “That’s so bizarre and sick; that would make a great movie!” And then I wrote it two weeks later.
Does the girl in question know about the film now?
PT: She does.
And I guess she approves, or…?
PT: She—she didn’t really have much of a say. I guess she knows that this one little incident sparked this other thing. But obviously everything from that point on is fiction, except some of the things in the relationship between the husband and wife. Those things also happened. Stealing the check from the middle of the checkbook? I did that. Look, I’m so proud to admit this to you all. [we laugh] Getting caught with the tickets in the car—and especially running to the bathroom at the racetrack when she calls, that’s what I would really do. And we shot it at Santa Anita and my wife was there. And she was just going—[sighs] “I don’t know. Why am I still in this thing?”
Did you have your own encounter with a pimp while you were in Vegas?
PT: Yeah, none of that actually happened. And I have never paid for sex—I just want to clarify that for everybody. I never paid for sex. Not once. Not even with a coupon.
[we laugh] Peter, since you said before that the story is so largely autobiographical, how did that affect your working relationship in shaping the role—both from the perspective of shaping it and, Matthew, from the perspective of bringing it to life?
PT: Well, we had met years before to talk about a different thing. Which was really just talking about nothing. [laughs] But I knew Matthew’s work, of course. It’s fantastic. Election is one of my favorite movies. And if he would want to do it would be a bit deal to me. There was no shaping on my part. It was just, "This is a sort of a charming guy who’s funny, who can get away with this for a while." That’s all I ever said. The first time I ever heard him read the script was with Brittany. We were casting her. And so I never knew what he was going to do. It was just a wonderfully understated, very wry delivery and I went, “Wow, that’s great.” There was a great sigh of relief because it was so perfect in terms of how it was going to be done. We never talked about it.
MB: No. We both sort of intuited from each other and if there was a problem—we never really had a problem, did we?
PT: Do you remember the one thing you said to me early on? You just shook your head, you looked at the script and said, “That’s a lot of words.”
MB: Yeah. [we laugh] It was. I always wanted to be an actor who was cast in parts where you just say—[in a really deep voice] “I’m goin’ out.” [everybody laughs] “Cut! Perfect! Great work, Bob!”
PT: “Don’t need to see that again! That’s a gem! That’s a peach!”
MB: Yeah, I had to talk a lot. [Peter laughs] But you did say things, subtly. You’re not a confrontational type of director.
PT: No.
MB: But that’s one of the nice things about Peter, because sometimes when someone’s written things and they’re directing them they’re very locked into wanting it to sound how it did in their head or whatever. It can be a hard thing for a director to direct his own words. But I never felt that—it seemed like Peter was directing somebody else’s script, in a way.
PT: What are you hinting at!? [laughs]
MB: Well, I mean that in a good way, because you saw it as a fresh thing, not that you were trying to repeat something that—
PT: Yeah. But there’s a trap to that, and it’s interesting that you asked that question, because there were several drafts; it’s not like it just came out and it was perfect, believe me. There were two years of “Is that right?” But it happens, when a piece of dramatic writing is inspired by real life events, that you underwrite stuff that you shouldn’t because you go, “Whoa! Clearly everybody should know that; that’s what real is! It’s my experience!” So you underwrite. Why wouldn’t you? You know everything so well. Then other people go, “What’s this character like, though? I don’t understand. It’s not on the page,” and then I’m like, “Well, it’s my wife! She’s right over there!” That doesn’t help a lot of viewers. [we laugh] And also a big change that happened the first time I met Rich and Wayne Rice [the producers]—we met for dinner here in New York when they were coming on board to do it and they said, “Chat chat chat chat, we love your script, bah bah bah,” and everything was fine, right? And I’d been shooting all night on Rescue Me; I was tired; it was hot. So it was like, “Everything’s fine, oh, happy happy,” and then they went, “We have a problem with your first act.” And I was like, “Oh! This better be good, you fuckers! This better be good!” [everyone laughs] And then they went and said that the thing that I’d just told you my wife said, “You have to go to Vegas and help this girl,” well, they said, “This character that you’ve written, his wife would never send him to Vegas! Never!” And I went, “Oh yeah, you’re right!” And I had to restructure all that first act stuff to have it be that he does it to try to please her as opposed to his big idea. Or hers—it used to come from her! In the first draft it was like, “You go do this thing.” And that would have made no sense for her character. But that’s what had happened in real life, so I’d just gone, “Huey-hoo-woo-huh…”
[we laugh] Matthew, what’s your biggest vice and how does your wife feel about that?
PT: I will answer that. She also likes black hookers.
MB: Yeah. About that. [everyone laughs]
PT: Does that help? Don’t anybody write that down, by the way, because I don’t want to get the call from Sarah [Jessica Parker, Matthew's wife]! [we laugh]
MB: Uh… I don’t know. What’s my biggest vice? I might have a little of every vice. I spread it around. I can’t think of what it is that—am I messy? Not really. I’m pretty perfect. [everyone laughs] I really am. I know that’s boring… so be it. [everyone laughs] I can’t think of it. [to Peter] You know me.
PT: What, your biggest vice? I’ll give you one.
MB: Remember, we’re not alone. [we laugh]
PT: [laughing] Has that ever stopped me? I know; I would say—this is going to sound fantastic; you’re going to love this—that you are too nice to be in show business.
MB: That’s true. [we laugh]
PT: I have seen examples.
MB: I avoid confrontation.
PT: You do. You avoid confrontation and as a result you swallow a lot of anger or upset because you want to be nice, you don’t want to cause a scene, and you take it home with you and it just—
MB: Right. And then two takes in I say, “I don’t know why I’m saying this!” [we laugh] And for months I’ve been saying it in the scene—this never happened to us, but I’ll get there and, take two, the director will give me some little criticism and I’ll say, “Well, I don’t like the whole scene.” [everyone laughs] “Oh yeah? Why’d you never mention that before?” And I say, “Well, I don’t like this whole thing! I don’t like the movie!” [everyone laughs]
PT: “I don’t know why I’m here!”
MB: “Now that you mention it!” So it all just stores up and then—
PT: But I wouldn’t call that a vice.
MB: That’s not a vice. It’s a personality flaw.
PT: Open that can of worms! We’ll be here all night.
You said that you underwrote the script. Does that leave a lot of room for improvisation or do you keep very tight to the script?
PT: You know, I don’t mind improvisation. It can be helpful. But we didn’t do any of it. We cut some stuff, and that’s about it. It came partially from a conversation that we had—in some of the earlier scenes Matthew was a little more flip about Brittany’s character’s situation, about the whole hooker thing, to her face, actually. In that bar scene, remember?
MB: Yeah, and you kept saying, “We might have to cut that.” You shot it that way.
PT: Yeah, I shot one thing that we cut out, but there were a couple other things where we said, “Oh, we can’t. Let’s not go there.” It was just too flip and mean. And I kept justifying it, saying, “Oh, he’s a comedy writer—what’s more important to him in the moment is the joke, not what it means.” And ultimately, I didn’t want to risk it. It just seemed so mean and I didn’t want to turn people off of the character at that point.
MB: Sometimes it helps to see it with an actual person too. When you see a 20-year-old girl being a hooker and say a flip thing to her face it’s not as funny as it felt.
PT: You know, I have older friends who say to me, “I don’t like your movie.” And I say, “Thank you?”—I appreciate honesty, especially from my friends. I say, “Fine, why don’t you like it?” And they say, “Why didn’t he help her?” I say, “Well, he’s not in a position to help her. He’s too into his own thing.” And she also doesn’t seem to want to be—there’s all sorts of reasons, but there’s this chivalry of a bygone era that for some reason seems ugly in this. I don’t know.
Matthew, even with all of those words in the script, you still decided to go with it; what about it attracted you?
MB: Well, I liked the writing. I thought it was very funny and a good story, an original story, and I just thought it was compelling. And it’s not a part that I get to play often, too, which was nice for me. It’s rare to read a script that you even want to keep reading. In this I really wanted to know what was going to happen. In a way, that’s the basic thing that scripts have to have and sometimes don’t. You know, I wanted to know these people, and I just thought they were good characters. I liked the relationship with the wife, too. I just liked Peter, and I thought it was good.
PT: You know why Coogan did it?
MB: Why?
PT: Did he ever say? He told me. You know, I’m aware of Steve Coogan’s work and had been emailing with him about something entirely different, and I mentioned him to the casting person and she said, “You should ask him to be in the movie!” I said, “Are you crazy!? First of all, he lives in the U.K.; it’s a small part—he’s not going to come over and do this indie thing!” So she sent it to him anyway and he did it—and I was like, “Why? Why did you do this?” And he said, “I did it because of this.” [makes a motion Steve Coogan’s character does often in the film which involves moving the flat of his palm back and forth from his chest to that of a person in front of him]
MB: Yeah. [everybody laughs]
PT: He read that and he said, “I’ve got to do that! Just that!” I don’t know about the rest of it; he just wanted to do that! [laughs] Oh, but we did ad lib some of that, with him going like that [with his palm], but you were also going, “I don’t—what is—I don’t even know what that is!”
[we laugh] How it is written in the script? That motion?
PT: I think it just says, “He makes a motion with a flat palm between the two of them.” It just says it as a parenthetical, making a motion. And you say, “That’s the same thing you have with him!” And he says, “No, it’s different! Me, giving, giving, giving!”
[we laugh] Matthew, has being a father affected your film choices at all?
PT: Clearly not! [everybody laughs]
MB: Not really. I mean, it’s easier to talk me into doing a cartoon voice now. By the way, I don’t mean that glibly; I’ll take any work. [everybody laughs] But, yeah, I always try to do things that I would show a potential son or daughter. I mean—I don’t think so. There’s things that I’m uncomfortable with that I would have been before too. Yes it has.
PT: Aren’t you playing vaguely middle-aged Simba in the next Lion King?
MB: …No, I’m not playing middle-aged Simba. [we laugh] But I have played that role three times now.
PT: Really!?
MB: I don’t know if you’re keeping track.
PT: I’m not.
MB: I’m adult Simba; then I go to a flashback where I’m a younger adult Simba, I think—
PT: Did you make a vocal adjustment for that role?
MB: No.
PT: Oh. [laughs]
MB: And then Lion King 3, I think I’m in.
PT: You don’t know?
MB: I don’t care. [everyone laughs] You know, the last couple I didn’t even read!
PT: Did it over the phone.
MB: “Here it is!” [we laugh]
PT: “That zebra tastes good! Yeah!”
MB: “A sunny glade… a warthog appears… he is smiling… When do I talk? Just tell me when I talk!”
[everyone laughs] Matthew, what’s your ideal role?
MB: Well, I told you. The one that goes—[in a deep voice] “I’ll be right back!” That’s all, really. “My horse needs me!” [we laugh] “I need a shoe”—what’s a horseshoe person called?
PT: A farrier.
MB: “Where is a farrier?”
PT: Well, a blacksmith would be the street word, but on the racetrack it’s a farrier.
MB: Yeah. Um, I never know; I just read things and hope. I don’t know what role I would like.
PT: You don’t aspire to some great—
MB: Yeah.
PT: You always play a regular guy. Like an everyman. A freakish everyman.
MB: Yeah. I don’t know, maybe I’ll do a more classic play this coming winter—“he said mysteriously!” [we laugh]
PT: Really? When you say classic you mean one of the classics?
MB: Not quite. [we laugh] Almost! We’ll leave it at that, boys!
PT: “Do the words ‘run through your wife’ mean anything to you?”
MB: What was that!? [laughs]
PT: One of those cheesy British comedies like Boeing Boeing. They’re probably going to come back in droves now.
MB: Yeah. [we laughs] “What, No Pajamas?” [Peter laughs] That’s probably going to come back now. I’m starring in What, No Pajamas? [we laugh]
MB: No, I’m not. I can see the appeal of it but I didn’t learn it, somehow, growing up. I don’t even know how. I’ll bet on a sports game once in a while but I don’t know about odds and all the complex—at the racetrack the bets are very sophisticated. I didn’t even know what I was saying half the time. I was like, “What does this mean?”
PT: Well, we did have a scene where you went to the window and made a bet.
MB: Is that in it?
PT: We cut it. But it was a really long scene where you went, “I want the two to three to five over the six, and then key the seven, on top of the one two three in a trifecta and then backwheel it to the five.”
MB: Why did you cut that?
PT: It looks like you’re going, “Help me, I’m drowning!” [we laugh]
MB: Does it really?
PT: [laughs] No, we just didn’t need it. We didn’t need to see you making bets; we knew you were doing it.
Are there any writers you’ve modeled this on? Obviously you’ve known a lot of writers over the years…
MB: Well, not specifically, except maybe a little bit Peter—he was right there and he did write it.
PT: I did, yeah. It’s painfully about me.
MB: But I wasn’t trying to do an impression of you or anything.
PT: It would be impossible to catch that quicksilver. [we laugh]
MB: It’s true. [laughs] And thank god.
PT: [laughs] "Thank god" is right!
MB: But I definitely think through osmosis and unconsciously maybe I did copy you a little bit.
PT: There were a couple of times where my wife Leslie, a producer on the movie, would go “Oh my god, that’s weird.” The things that you do were—
MB: I have run into some of your friends who say, “A lot of that is Peter, you know. That’s exactly Peter.” But I think that’s just from the script and from being around.
PT: Yeah. I think a lot of it’s the script, really.
MB: Yeah. And the line readings.
Where did you get your inspiration for the story?
PT: The inspiration for it actually happened in real life. My wife and I, one summer, years ago, got a call from a family friend who said they had a child who was in trouble in Las Vegas, and in trouble very similar to this. There was some question of hooking and drug-taking. And because I had gambled quite a bit, and had spent quite a bit of time in Vegas, the person who was calling said “Maybe Peter can go and find this person and bring this person to rehab.” So all that stuff happened in real life. And when my wife said, “Maybe you’ll go,” I thought in that instant, “Hey, great, I get to go to Vegas!” [we laugh] That’s really what I thought! That’s the level of my sickness, and I’m willing to admit it. And in the next instant I thought, “That’s so bizarre and sick; that would make a great movie!” And then I wrote it two weeks later.
Does the girl in question know about the film now?
PT: She does.
And I guess she approves, or…?
PT: She—she didn’t really have much of a say. I guess she knows that this one little incident sparked this other thing. But obviously everything from that point on is fiction, except some of the things in the relationship between the husband and wife. Those things also happened. Stealing the check from the middle of the checkbook? I did that. Look, I’m so proud to admit this to you all. [we laugh] Getting caught with the tickets in the car—and especially running to the bathroom at the racetrack when she calls, that’s what I would really do. And we shot it at Santa Anita and my wife was there. And she was just going—[sighs] “I don’t know. Why am I still in this thing?”
Did you have your own encounter with a pimp while you were in Vegas?
PT: Yeah, none of that actually happened. And I have never paid for sex—I just want to clarify that for everybody. I never paid for sex. Not once. Not even with a coupon.
[we laugh] Peter, since you said before that the story is so largely autobiographical, how did that affect your working relationship in shaping the role—both from the perspective of shaping it and, Matthew, from the perspective of bringing it to life?
PT: Well, we had met years before to talk about a different thing. Which was really just talking about nothing. [laughs] But I knew Matthew’s work, of course. It’s fantastic. Election is one of my favorite movies. And if he would want to do it would be a bit deal to me. There was no shaping on my part. It was just, "This is a sort of a charming guy who’s funny, who can get away with this for a while." That’s all I ever said. The first time I ever heard him read the script was with Brittany. We were casting her. And so I never knew what he was going to do. It was just a wonderfully understated, very wry delivery and I went, “Wow, that’s great.” There was a great sigh of relief because it was so perfect in terms of how it was going to be done. We never talked about it.
MB: No. We both sort of intuited from each other and if there was a problem—we never really had a problem, did we?
PT: Do you remember the one thing you said to me early on? You just shook your head, you looked at the script and said, “That’s a lot of words.”
MB: Yeah. [we laugh] It was. I always wanted to be an actor who was cast in parts where you just say—[in a really deep voice] “I’m goin’ out.” [everybody laughs] “Cut! Perfect! Great work, Bob!”
PT: “Don’t need to see that again! That’s a gem! That’s a peach!”
MB: Yeah, I had to talk a lot. [Peter laughs] But you did say things, subtly. You’re not a confrontational type of director.
PT: No.
MB: But that’s one of the nice things about Peter, because sometimes when someone’s written things and they’re directing them they’re very locked into wanting it to sound how it did in their head or whatever. It can be a hard thing for a director to direct his own words. But I never felt that—it seemed like Peter was directing somebody else’s script, in a way.
PT: What are you hinting at!? [laughs]
MB: Well, I mean that in a good way, because you saw it as a fresh thing, not that you were trying to repeat something that—
PT: Yeah. But there’s a trap to that, and it’s interesting that you asked that question, because there were several drafts; it’s not like it just came out and it was perfect, believe me. There were two years of “Is that right?” But it happens, when a piece of dramatic writing is inspired by real life events, that you underwrite stuff that you shouldn’t because you go, “Whoa! Clearly everybody should know that; that’s what real is! It’s my experience!” So you underwrite. Why wouldn’t you? You know everything so well. Then other people go, “What’s this character like, though? I don’t understand. It’s not on the page,” and then I’m like, “Well, it’s my wife! She’s right over there!” That doesn’t help a lot of viewers. [we laugh] And also a big change that happened the first time I met Rich and Wayne Rice [the producers]—we met for dinner here in New York when they were coming on board to do it and they said, “Chat chat chat chat, we love your script, bah bah bah,” and everything was fine, right? And I’d been shooting all night on Rescue Me; I was tired; it was hot. So it was like, “Everything’s fine, oh, happy happy,” and then they went, “We have a problem with your first act.” And I was like, “Oh! This better be good, you fuckers! This better be good!” [everyone laughs] And then they went and said that the thing that I’d just told you my wife said, “You have to go to Vegas and help this girl,” well, they said, “This character that you’ve written, his wife would never send him to Vegas! Never!” And I went, “Oh yeah, you’re right!” And I had to restructure all that first act stuff to have it be that he does it to try to please her as opposed to his big idea. Or hers—it used to come from her! In the first draft it was like, “You go do this thing.” And that would have made no sense for her character. But that’s what had happened in real life, so I’d just gone, “Huey-hoo-woo-huh…”
[we laugh] Matthew, what’s your biggest vice and how does your wife feel about that?
PT: I will answer that. She also likes black hookers.
MB: Yeah. About that. [everyone laughs]
PT: Does that help? Don’t anybody write that down, by the way, because I don’t want to get the call from Sarah [Jessica Parker, Matthew's wife]! [we laugh]
MB: Uh… I don’t know. What’s my biggest vice? I might have a little of every vice. I spread it around. I can’t think of what it is that—am I messy? Not really. I’m pretty perfect. [everyone laughs] I really am. I know that’s boring… so be it. [everyone laughs] I can’t think of it. [to Peter] You know me.
PT: What, your biggest vice? I’ll give you one.
MB: Remember, we’re not alone. [we laugh]
PT: [laughing] Has that ever stopped me? I know; I would say—this is going to sound fantastic; you’re going to love this—that you are too nice to be in show business.
MB: That’s true. [we laugh]
PT: I have seen examples.
MB: I avoid confrontation.
PT: You do. You avoid confrontation and as a result you swallow a lot of anger or upset because you want to be nice, you don’t want to cause a scene, and you take it home with you and it just—
MB: Right. And then two takes in I say, “I don’t know why I’m saying this!” [we laugh] And for months I’ve been saying it in the scene—this never happened to us, but I’ll get there and, take two, the director will give me some little criticism and I’ll say, “Well, I don’t like the whole scene.” [everyone laughs] “Oh yeah? Why’d you never mention that before?” And I say, “Well, I don’t like this whole thing! I don’t like the movie!” [everyone laughs]
PT: “I don’t know why I’m here!”
MB: “Now that you mention it!” So it all just stores up and then—
PT: But I wouldn’t call that a vice.
MB: That’s not a vice. It’s a personality flaw.
PT: Open that can of worms! We’ll be here all night.
You said that you underwrote the script. Does that leave a lot of room for improvisation or do you keep very tight to the script?
PT: You know, I don’t mind improvisation. It can be helpful. But we didn’t do any of it. We cut some stuff, and that’s about it. It came partially from a conversation that we had—in some of the earlier scenes Matthew was a little more flip about Brittany’s character’s situation, about the whole hooker thing, to her face, actually. In that bar scene, remember?
MB: Yeah, and you kept saying, “We might have to cut that.” You shot it that way.
PT: Yeah, I shot one thing that we cut out, but there were a couple other things where we said, “Oh, we can’t. Let’s not go there.” It was just too flip and mean. And I kept justifying it, saying, “Oh, he’s a comedy writer—what’s more important to him in the moment is the joke, not what it means.” And ultimately, I didn’t want to risk it. It just seemed so mean and I didn’t want to turn people off of the character at that point.
MB: Sometimes it helps to see it with an actual person too. When you see a 20-year-old girl being a hooker and say a flip thing to her face it’s not as funny as it felt.
PT: You know, I have older friends who say to me, “I don’t like your movie.” And I say, “Thank you?”—I appreciate honesty, especially from my friends. I say, “Fine, why don’t you like it?” And they say, “Why didn’t he help her?” I say, “Well, he’s not in a position to help her. He’s too into his own thing.” And she also doesn’t seem to want to be—there’s all sorts of reasons, but there’s this chivalry of a bygone era that for some reason seems ugly in this. I don’t know.
Matthew, even with all of those words in the script, you still decided to go with it; what about it attracted you?
MB: Well, I liked the writing. I thought it was very funny and a good story, an original story, and I just thought it was compelling. And it’s not a part that I get to play often, too, which was nice for me. It’s rare to read a script that you even want to keep reading. In this I really wanted to know what was going to happen. In a way, that’s the basic thing that scripts have to have and sometimes don’t. You know, I wanted to know these people, and I just thought they were good characters. I liked the relationship with the wife, too. I just liked Peter, and I thought it was good.
PT: You know why Coogan did it?
MB: Why?
PT: Did he ever say? He told me. You know, I’m aware of Steve Coogan’s work and had been emailing with him about something entirely different, and I mentioned him to the casting person and she said, “You should ask him to be in the movie!” I said, “Are you crazy!? First of all, he lives in the U.K.; it’s a small part—he’s not going to come over and do this indie thing!” So she sent it to him anyway and he did it—and I was like, “Why? Why did you do this?” And he said, “I did it because of this.” [makes a motion Steve Coogan’s character does often in the film which involves moving the flat of his palm back and forth from his chest to that of a person in front of him]
MB: Yeah. [everybody laughs]
PT: He read that and he said, “I’ve got to do that! Just that!” I don’t know about the rest of it; he just wanted to do that! [laughs] Oh, but we did ad lib some of that, with him going like that [with his palm], but you were also going, “I don’t—what is—I don’t even know what that is!”
[we laugh] How it is written in the script? That motion?
PT: I think it just says, “He makes a motion with a flat palm between the two of them.” It just says it as a parenthetical, making a motion. And you say, “That’s the same thing you have with him!” And he says, “No, it’s different! Me, giving, giving, giving!”
[we laugh] Matthew, has being a father affected your film choices at all?
PT: Clearly not! [everybody laughs]
MB: Not really. I mean, it’s easier to talk me into doing a cartoon voice now. By the way, I don’t mean that glibly; I’ll take any work. [everybody laughs] But, yeah, I always try to do things that I would show a potential son or daughter. I mean—I don’t think so. There’s things that I’m uncomfortable with that I would have been before too. Yes it has.
PT: Aren’t you playing vaguely middle-aged Simba in the next Lion King?
MB: …No, I’m not playing middle-aged Simba. [we laugh] But I have played that role three times now.
PT: Really!?
MB: I don’t know if you’re keeping track.
PT: I’m not.
MB: I’m adult Simba; then I go to a flashback where I’m a younger adult Simba, I think—
PT: Did you make a vocal adjustment for that role?
MB: No.
PT: Oh. [laughs]
MB: And then Lion King 3, I think I’m in.
PT: You don’t know?
MB: I don’t care. [everyone laughs] You know, the last couple I didn’t even read!
PT: Did it over the phone.
MB: “Here it is!” [we laugh]
PT: “That zebra tastes good! Yeah!”
MB: “A sunny glade… a warthog appears… he is smiling… When do I talk? Just tell me when I talk!”
[everyone laughs] Matthew, what’s your ideal role?
MB: Well, I told you. The one that goes—[in a deep voice] “I’ll be right back!” That’s all, really. “My horse needs me!” [we laugh] “I need a shoe”—what’s a horseshoe person called?
PT: A farrier.
MB: “Where is a farrier?”
PT: Well, a blacksmith would be the street word, but on the racetrack it’s a farrier.
MB: Yeah. Um, I never know; I just read things and hope. I don’t know what role I would like.
PT: You don’t aspire to some great—
MB: Yeah.
PT: You always play a regular guy. Like an everyman. A freakish everyman.
MB: Yeah. I don’t know, maybe I’ll do a more classic play this coming winter—“he said mysteriously!” [we laugh]
PT: Really? When you say classic you mean one of the classics?
MB: Not quite. [we laugh] Almost! We’ll leave it at that, boys!
PT: “Do the words ‘run through your wife’ mean anything to you?”
MB: What was that!? [laughs]
PT: One of those cheesy British comedies like Boeing Boeing. They’re probably going to come back in droves now.
MB: Yeah. [we laughs] “What, No Pajamas?” [Peter laughs] That’s probably going to come back now. I’m starring in What, No Pajamas? [we laugh]
That is entertainment. You can find out more about Finding Amanda by visiting its IMDb page, but don't assume that we are done here: come back tomorrow and we will have a lovely roundtable with costar Brittany Snow!
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