|
|
| Interview: 'Dirty Love' the Jenny McCarthy Way |
by Peter Sobczynski
Jenny McCarthy spills the beans on bad dates, being both sexy and silly and how the NHL helped bring her new film, "Dirty Love," to the big screen.
I’ll admit it–I just plain like Jenny McCarthy and not just for her considerable blonde-bombshell good looks. She has a flair for broad physical comedy that you just don’t find in too many actresses today and a cheerful willingness to go to any length possible in order to get laughs. Combine those attributes with her obvious physical charms and you have the kind of performer that Frank Tashlin and Russ Meyer would have given their eyeteeth to work with.
Alas, Tashlin and Meyer long shuffled off from both the film industry and this mortal coil and although she has been a celebrity for more than a decade now–first as Playboy’s 1994 Playmate of the Year and later as the original co-host of MTV’s “Singled Out” and as the star of other various short-lived TV shows–Hollywood has never really had much of an idea of what to do with her. To date, her most notable big-screen appearances have been brief and amusing turns in the likes of “Baseketball,” “Scream 3" and “Scary Movie 3.” Taking matters into her own hands, McCarthy decided to get busy and pen a screenplay that would make better use of her charms. (Don’t laugh–she already has three top-selling books under her belt.) The result is “Dirty Love,” a pretty funny gross-out romantic comedy that premiered earlier this year at Sundance and which can now be seen at a theater near you.
In it, McCarthy plays Rebecca, a struggling photographer who gets dumped by her two-timing male-model boyfriend. On the advice of a psychic, she, along with her friends–a wannabe wigger (a hilarious Carmen Electra), a bimbo actress (Cam Heskin) and the nice guy who not-so-secretly loves her (Eddie Kaye Thomas)–sets off on a quest for true love with a series of dates that end with spectacular public embarrassment. One dinner with a magician finds her covered with the contents of the table when he picks the wrong time to make the tablecloth disappear and another suitor turns out to have a kink possibly shared only with Troy McClure. Even when she isn’t on a date, Rebecca seems to court disaster–an emergency excursion to the supermarket for a certain feminine product winds up looking like a high-school hygiene film as directed by Quentin Tarantino.
Yes, these things are gross and I suspect that many of you will find them too repulsive to work as comedy (and the astonishingly clunky direction by John Asher, McCarthy’s soon-to-be-ex-husband, doesn’t help matters much). However, I found myself laughing quite a bit–more so than I did during any recent effort from John Waters or the Farrelly Brothers–for a couple of reasons. First, the gross-out humor, for once, actually has a basis in reality–although it takes it to ludicrous extremes, the supermarket scene is a logical extension of the fears that most women probably have of being in a similar situation (I buy it a lot more readily than the sight of a guy violating a pie.). More importantly, the film has, in McCarthy, a blonde bombshell who isn’t afraid to fully throw herself into the broadly slapstick scenes with cheerful abandon–like Lucille Ball, she is perfectly willing to look foolish in order to score a laugh. “Dirty Love” isn’t perfect but it contains enough goofy go-girl charm to overcome the weak spots and those with a strong sense of humor (not to mention a strong stomach) should find it a pleasant surprise.
Returning to her hometown of Chicago to promote the film, the eternally bubbly McCarthy (imagine talking to a pot of coffee that has just downed a pot of espresso) sat down to discuss the film, her adventures in making it and the difficulties of convincing people that a woman can be silly and sexy at the same time.
So what is it like for you to come back to your hometown to spread the word about “Dirty Love”?
Well, it is a smaller, Sundance kind of movie, even though it is an outrageous comedy, and we don’t have the money to do a big campaign like they do with most movies. It is kind of like how the movie started–we did a lot of legwork to get it made and to get it into Sundance and to get it sold. I’m knocking on fraternity and sorority doors–I’m doing everything because I am proud of it. The reason I wrote it is because there is shit in Hollywood for girls who want to do comedy. Usually it is the funny guy and the straight girl. I love those movies but I want to be the funny guy. I realized about five years ago, when there was a bit of a lull and there was nothing but crappy movies being sent to me, that I needed to take it into my own hands.
There has always been a sort of mindset in Hollywood that women simply aren’t funny when it comes to broad physical humor or gross-out material and the few time when they have attempted it, such as “The Sweetest Thing,” the results have usually been dire.
That was so horrible. I remember reading that script and thinking that it was funny but it was lacking one huge thing. They wanted to cater to girls but none of those girls were vulnerable or likable and I just didn’t root for any of them. That was when I knew that I had something special–girls could relate to it, you could root them on and I still got to be sexy in it. I didn’t have to be fat with a mustache in order to get a laugh. I still got to show my boobs and make a joke out of it.
There just wasn’t a vehicle for me. I did six pilots that went nowhere because the writing was shit and I realized that I was going to have to do it myself. I never wanted to be a writer and I still don’t–it is grueling–but I had to in order to get that vehicle. I’m hoping that this will open doors for other screenwriters to start writing because even if the movie does great, most guys are going to be writing from their own perspectives and show a man’s point-of-view on love and pain and comedy. How could I expect a guy to write this kind of movie? It would be hard for them. What I am hoping, though, is that they can maybe take a comedy script and change Tim to Tammy and let me do what a guy would do. It was funny because at Sundance, the girls thought that it was a girl movie and the guys thought it was a guy movie. There is a little something in it for both sexes.
Considering that some of the subject matter mined for laughs in “Dirty Love” goes pretty far even by the standards of gross-out humor, are there any places that you won’t go in order to score a laugh?
I never want to make people nauseous. I want to push buttons and maybe cross the line a little bit but I had to do it as a very choreographed dance. When I was shooting that supermarket scene, I knew that it was unlike anything that anyone has ever seen. The voice in my head said that if you make it seem real, it was going to be disgusting but if you make it ridiculous–where it looks like I am losing a kidney in the produce section–then you can get a laugh out of it. That is what I had to do throughout the movie-a little bit of a dance to make sure that you still liked Rebecca.
Since “Dirty Love” is a gross-out comedy told from a female perspective–a potential problem since it is assumed that girls won’t see gross comedies and guys won’t see any female-driven film–and since it was written by you, how difficult was it to get the project up and running?
It was five years of trying to get money. The reason I wrote the other two characters to also be funny was because I thought I might have to step down from the Rebecca role in order to get my own movie made because I knew that I wasn’t a box-office girl. After beating down some doors, I found a little bit of money and took it to get started. The problem was the same thing that happens to a lot of independent films–we ran out of money. When we were shooting the scene with the magician, we were told that there was no more money and that we would have to shut down. I had to pull money out of my account to pay for a week of production, which was insane, and I had about four hours to find $700,000. I called my manager who, thank God, was a hockey player and knew a bunch of professional hockey players and all of them pitched in 50 grand. I have about fifteen hockey players who helped back my movie. Fortunately, we got lucky and got the movie in Sundance and were able to sell it so that they got their money back.
There is also kind of a sweet side to “Dirty Love” despite all the wackiness and broad sight gags . . .
How, I don’t know. When I was writing it, I had no idea how I was going to have all these crazy antics and still have this Hollywood love ending. You don’t see Eddie’s character that much in the movie so I had to make sure that when you did see them together, you saw a little something by giving them a history in a few of the lines that he says in the mirror. That way, I was able to cap it with all the “white pony” stuff that was really never in the movie.
The only way that you can really get away with that stuff is by winning the audience over with the story and having the real moments. The only thing that is really grounding in the movie is Eddie. We got to be crazy but because you believed his heart and his love for Rebecca, I was able to not recognize it for the entire movie and still get away with it.
How much of this film was inspired by your own personal dating history?
None of it is really true because the experiences are crazy–although I was pretty good on Ecstacy–but the bass-in-the-ass did happen to my girlfriend. She had that experience except that in real life, the bass-in-the-ass went to the hospital.
For the record, what was the worst date that you ever had?
It is hard because I have always had a boyfriend. I dated my first boyfriend for six years, my next was four years, the next was four years and I was with my husband for seven years. I’ve never really dated around enough to have many traumatic experiences. I did have one one-night-stand when I was 19 because everyone did that and I wanted to try it. It was a disaster. We went back to his place and he ditched me after having sex in his own apartment. I sat there for four hours.
How big was his apartment?
It was a little apartment. After sex, he asked me if I wanted a cheeseburger and he never came back. I guess he figured that I would be gone by sunrise. Which I was–I did my walk of shame in my heels vowing that I would never do it again.
What about the subplot of the aspiring actress going out on one humiliating audition after another?
That I wrote because when I first got to L.A., I became friends with a girl named Kari and she was that character. She was my friend that basically sought out the people in a crowd to sleep with them in order to get a role. I hated it and despised it but I loved her because of her mentality, “Oh, it’s just a cock! while I had so many morals and standards that I would never do that because I was going to make it on my own. It was such a yin-yang relationship that I had with her. I heard that voice so clearly and I knew so many girls like that so it became easy to write that for her.
Would you ever want to shift gears and do a more serious bit of acting at some point?
I dabbled in it a little bit to see how I liked it. I think drama is very easy while making people laugh is fucking hard. I don’t think it is hard but it is harder than drama. I think people are born to do certain things and I think that there are plenty of Gwyneth Paltrows out there, so why try when I know I can do things that Gwyneth Paltrow can’t do? I feel like I found my niche. I don’t want a fucking Academy Award–I want to make a lot of money and have fun. That is my goal.
Have you always had this broad and bigger-than-life attitude towards yourself?
No. In fact, when I was growing up, we didn’t have a lot of money so it was always kind of sad to see my mom scrape the bottom of her purse. I was always kind of the funny one in the family because I would make light of things. I wasn’t the bad sheep–I would just say funny things to make my mom laugh. At school, it was a Catholic school so I couldn’t do anything but I think that was where I learned to push buttons. I was trying to get around the nuns and see what I could do without getting suspended or anything. When I left Catholic school and went to college, that was when I went “Holy shit, I’m gonna go crazy!” I did and I had fun. I got in trouble--almost got arrested for bouncing checks and stealing food from people–and began figuring out what kind of person I was. Then I went broke at Southern and couldn’t afford it anymore, so I came back here and thought “Hey, I always had that dream as a little girl–why not try?”
I didn’t even go to Playboy on purpose. I went to a modeling agency where they completely rejected me and across the street was the Playboy Building. I decided to go in and talk to a secretary and on the elevator ride up, I was telling myself “My mom is going to die–I can’t pose for Playboy.” When I went in, the lady said I had to send in a Polaroid because no one just walks in. Just then, an editor walked by and asked if I was trying to be a Playmate. I said yeah and he said “We have a photo shoot going on–why don’t you put on a bikini.”By the time I got home, they called and said that I was going to be Miss October. This was all two weeks after I left college.
I had this great plan. I was going to say that I was from Park Ridge and I was going to send my parents on a cruise during the week that it came out. Thank God I did because the press killed me because I was this Mother McCauley girl from the south side of Chicago. I begged my mom for forgiveness and told her that I was going to make it and got in my car and went to L.A. That was when I had to decide to kind of cut the Playboy cord. A lot of girls do the magazine and that is their goal but they kind of get stuck in it and just wind up doing appearances.
I still loving dressing up and having the boots and the hair bleach and there is no reason why I should have to change that in order to tell a joke. Lucy looked fucking great on her show and she still made goofy faces and I figured that I could do that. I had to break down some walls and push a bunch of guys off of me at casting sessions and it was a little bit of a struggle. Then I got on MTV maybe 7 months after moving to L.A. and after I left that, I realized that it was hard to find the right vehicle to show what I can do. I found that on the sketch show I did on MTV but after six years of pilots, you realize that you have to do your own thing. I started writing books and I have written four more screenplays and now I am waiting to see how this one does.
Even after having done all that you have to break out of the standard blonde-bombshell stereotype, do you still have people today trying to fit you back into that mold?
Not as much but it still happens–I get asked to do things like FHM. I never want to deny the sex part because I think it would take away from the uniqueness. I am going to placate it as much as I can while utilizing the comedy aspects of it.
link directly to this feature at http://hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=1601
originally posted: 09/23/05 14:16:57
last updated: 09/29/05 22:27:40
![[printer]](/images/icon/printer.gif) printer-friendly format
|
 |
|
Articles 
subscribe to this feed
