Invention of Lying press conference
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Ricky Gervais (star, co-writer, co-director)
Jennifer Garner (co-star)
Rob Lowe (co-star)
Matthew Robinson (co-writer, co-director)
Lynda Obst (producer)
LOWE: [re Gervais’s standard outfit of black tshirt and sweat pants] It’s so good to be sitting next to Simon Cowell. [audience groans] They like you – they didn’t like me taking a shot at you.
GERVAIS: Good, they’re on my side.
Gervais and Lowe spot “The Virgin Web Cam Guy,” a local radio reporter wearing a bicycle helmet with a tiny camera atop it to record the press conference
GERVAIS: That’s amazing. Do you sell those?
LOWE: Did I miss the explanation? The Virgin radio head cam. I got a piece of advice. Don’t wear the cam on your head and you won’t be a virgin anymore. [audience laughs] It’s getting ugly and we haven’t even started.
GERVAIS: Ah, what do we care, we’ve spent the money.
GERVAIS: Shut the door – people are getting interview for free!
Were there lies you thought to tell in this film but decided against?
ROBINSON: We didn’t cut anything because we thought it was too offensive or shocking. But we did cut down the amount of jokes because we didn’t want people constantly searching in the background or looking for too many advertisements or commercials. We limited the amount of small lies just so that the ones that were there really popped.
GERVAIS: And so that people could concentrate more on the bigger story. There’s quite a lot going on in the film. It starts out an out and out high concept comedy then it moves to drama and there’s lots of stuff going on. So we had to cut down on the peripheral stuff so that people could concentrate.
In a world without lying there’s no fiction. I play a screenwriter, and the films we make are just things like people reading out the history of the fork. And we had one about the holocaust, and we thought, there wouldn’t have been a holocaust, cause that was based on a lie.
ROBINSON: They would have found someone to kill – it just wouldn’t have been the Jews.
OBST: There was a time during prep when we got so convoluted thinking about what the world would have been like. Would cars all have been the same, What would the art have been like?
ROBINSON: The minute you start asking, Are clothes a lie ..
GARNER: When they wanted to get rid of high heels, that’s where we drew the line.
GERVAIS: Wigs.
ROBINSON: We had stuff on politics, once, but it asked more questions than it answered.
GERVAIS: We didn’t want to bog people down with too many details.
ROBINSON: We also didn’t want people to see any recognizable city. If you see Manhattan and Times Square, you think, hold on, would there be the Twin Towers, would there be this or that
GERVAIS: We wanted to create our own Springfield, our own iconography, so apart from the obvious things, the Coke and Pepsi commercials – which I think Coke should put that out – that would be amazing! The best Coke ad of all time!
ROBINSON: We didn’t get paid by anyone, not even Pizza Hut, and they got like a 40 minute advertisement! I think we got one free pie.
GERVAIS: I did that deal. My lawyer was too late coming in the room – “Did you sign anything?”
What was most outrageous lie you've ever read about yourself on the Internet or in a tabloid magainze?
GARNER: I don’t remember the outrageous ones, it’s mostly just the daily grind of lies that I hear about. I try to flush them.
GERVAIS: I’m not on the same level as these guys, so they don’t say anything about me.
GARNER: They did say you were pregnant.
GERVAIS: That was it. That’s the British parparazzi – they got a photo of me and ran it with a headline saying, “Is Ricky pregnant?
What lie would you like to see about yourself?
GERVAIS: That I killed a man in the ring once, and that’s why I won’t box again. That I fought a shark.
LOWE: That I was secretly married to Ben Affleck.
GERVAIS: I believed it!
You said you steered away from politics, but you didn't steer away from religion. Are you worried about getting hate mail from religious groups?
GERVAIS: I don’t see why we would ever get hate mail. You make decisions all the time when you’re the creative force behind something, and we decided that in this world that’s how religion started. It’s an alternative world and it’s by no means atheist propaganda. I love films about angels, like It’s a Wonderful Life, but I don’t start going, Oh, they’ve come down on one side here.
I don’t leave the cinema with my faith in god or lack of it challenged, and I don’t think that people who believe in God should take this as an affront. It was an artistic choice.
ROBINSON: I wrote this to take down on organized religion in particular – Greek mythology. Zeus is not real, and I don’t believe in him, and I don’t think anyone else should. But that was the only one. It’s in no way bashing religion. I think the most heroic lie Ricky tells in the whole film is the one he tells to his mother.
GERVAIS: I am an atheist, and when my mother was dying if she had asked me is there a heaven, I would have told her yes.
ROBINSON: At the end of the film Ricky tells Jennifer that it was a lie because there has to be honesty between them.
GERVAIS: At no point do we say that there isn’t a god in this world. We just say that [these] people haven’t thought about it or discovered it yet. Mankind was told about it, whether you believe it or not – at some point someone told someone else that there was a god.
GARNER: Isn’t it great if it does start a conversation—a conversation can be controversial or not, but religion is something worth examining and your faith is something worth questioning talking about. I think that if this movie asks that of people, that’s not a bad thing – that’s part of what art should be there for.
ROBINSON: It asks questions, that’s all. We’re not out to offend anyone. My father’s a very religious man and he loves the script. It’s all good fun. It’s all done in a spirit of asking questions.
GERVAIS: It is a taboo, and in our world there are no such thing as taboos, so it plays in that. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about if you only ever tell the truth. Mahatma Gandhi said there is no higher god than truth. And he was religious!
ROBINSON: I think lying does give you the ability to choose for yourself because if you have that grey area between honesty and lying you can decide for yourself on anything, between art and love and ..
GERVAIS: That’s one of the big themes of the movie as well, that a world without the ability to lie isn’t as good a world where you can lie and you make moral decisions on when you should and shouldn’t, and that’s what makes us moral people—having those decisions and coming down on the right side.
What is the biggest lie you've ever actually told?
GERVAIS: I sort of lie all the time, but it’s to protect people’s feelings. ”Can you come to my baby’s christening?” “Oh, I can’t, I’m busy.” You don’t say, “Oh, that doesn’t sound like a great day out.”
ROBINSON: Or, “I don’t like babies.”
GERVAIS: “It’s a little fat thing, looks like Winston Churchill, I don’t need to see yours.” That’s what makes you a nice member of the human race, that you can chose when to make a good lie. [t the Virgin Web Cam guy] I think your that’s brilliant.
Jennifer Garner, does having kids change things?
GARNER: I haven’t worked for a year. I was pregnant when I made this, and very green. Then I took a year off, and worked for a week on Valentine’s Day. And now I have nothing planned. So definitely the frequency has changed, cause before I worked years without a single day off. Roles that I would take, I think I would work a lot more, so I have to really love something to feel it’s worth uprooting the family. Also, my husband and I try to shift back and forth. So there’s a million things that go into work now for me
Do you worry about your kids seeing your movies?
GARNER: I really choose roles for me – they’re going to have to understand that this is what I do
Did filming this make you wonder how many lies you're being told in real life, or even on set?
GERVAIS: You’ve go to take the rough with the smooth. If you start believing everything you hear – you know inside when someone’s being kind and someone’s being cruel, when someone’s just being honest, and that’s why you surround yourself with people you trust. I think by definition you don’t know if you’re gullible or not. But if you trust everyone once, what’s the worst hat can happen? That’s what I think, anyway- maybe I’m a schmuck.
ROBINSON: I’ve heard from some people that when they came out of the film it was like they were on a truth drunk – you see the whole world through a funny tint for a few days.
GERVAIS: We had to decide what was right and wrong. It’s charged with morality, and sometimes we had to tone it down because we didn’t want to come across as preachy. It’s sill fun, just an hour and a half of escapism and entertainment at the end of the day, it’s not propaganda, it’s not a documentary. But you have to go through the mill and come out on the other side to decide what you believe, in the film or not. It’s a house of cards – everything collapses. As long as its got an internal logic you’re fine. But you start looking too much and it all falls to pieces.
Ricky Gervais, how did this movie go from being about religion to being about your looks?
GERVAIS: I know what you’re thinking – it’s a defense mechanism. Get in there before anyone else does! You could be right! I think that’s what comedy is, getting in there first.
I’ve always done that, I think it’s funny. I think as a comedian—I think of myself as a comedian acting, as opposed to an actor—I think a comedian has to let the world know he doesn’t take himself seriously. I think as soon as a comedian starts trying to be cool or macho or believing his own hype, he ceases to be funny, because comedy’s about empathy, and you’ve got to be the underdog as a comedian. All my favorite people, like Laurel and Hardy, I love them because they’re precarious, because they fall over.
I try to remind people that I’m no threat, I’m not taking myself seriously. I’m falling over for your amusement.
ROBINSON: Our touchstone was always Jack Lemmon in The Apartment. Which is the greatest loser comedy of all time.
GERVAIS: I agree. It’s that long line of people like Bob Hope, the putzes who would laugh in the face of adversity. Woody Allen. It’s funny because he knows his lot. Some people are funny because they’ve got a blind spot, like David Brent, he doesn’t know what an idiot he is. And we laugh at him. Someone like Woody Allen knows his lot’s bad, so we laugh because he’s angry and surrounded by idiots. But at the end of the day they’re still the loser you like. So – I’ve forgotten the question. Why do I say I’m a fat loser? Because I am!
Can you tell us about any extras that will be on the DVD?
GERVAIS: We’re nearly finished – we’ve got the most expensive DVD extra ever. I think it cost about $3 million. The caveman prequel.
LOWE: Most fun I’ve ever had as an actor;
GERVAIS: It’s a seven minute prequel that shows how this evolution happened as compared to the real evolution – and I do want to tell American that evolution is true! It’s the only bit in the film where everyone is there (Gervais, Lowe, Jeffrey Tambor, Jonah Hill, Louis CK, Karl Pilkington), amazing sets, all these costumes, CGI - it’s actually the budget of a British film, that we just stuck on the DVD!
Will there be deleted scenes?
GERVAIS: I remember when we were first doing “The Office,” it came in long and we had to cut ten minutes, and I was depressed. But now I love cutting stuff, because nobody knows what they’re missed and it just makes the thing tighter. The terrible thing would be not to have enough stuff to cut anything. But it just makes the thing stronger. And there’s the DVD and YouTube, so nothing’s wasted, really.
ROBINSON: Also Jen really annoyed the hell out of Ricky one day, and that’s on there.
GERVAIS: Oh, ok, this isn’t neuroses, this isn’t me being precious, or being a diva, I just need it quiet when I’m acting. I’m not a real actor, so anything puts me off. I don’t want the cameraman chewing gum I don’t want people sniffing or –
GARNER: Breathing!
GERVAIS: Right – I can hear an ant walk over a cotton ball. So one of the last days Jennifer Garner started the day by blowing a bubble with bubble gum! And I went [horrified face] “What the fuck is she doing?!?” And her cel phone rang – they were taking the mickey out of my neuroses.
GARNER: Ricky, you asked the focus puller if he could leave cause he was in your eyeline! And we told you, He’s pulling focus! You said, do you really need to be there? We said, you won’t be in focus without him! This is the way a camera works!
GERVAIS: Well, put the camera in focus and walk away! And what do you mean check that hair in the gate? Check it before we you come out! I’m not a real director! Can’t they just press the button and walk away?
Ricky, was it hard for you to cry in the scene where your mother is dying?
GERVAIS: I can do that but I can only do it once, because once you’ve cried , you feel better. I told everyone this is one take. I know I can do it, and I know I can only do it once. Some people find it hard to laugh realistically – that I can do naturally.
GARNER: Sometimes I do sometimes I don’t. I have used eyedrops before.
RL If it’s supported by the story, if I can put myself where the character is. When I got hit in the balls in TOMMY BOY I cried.
As a first time director did you have any jitters?
GERVAIS: I had an anxiety dream a week before shooting and that was it. It was really weird – the first ad wouldn’t shout. I suppose that’s me admitting that I really couldn’t do it myself and that I needed the support of everyone to be on their best game to get through it. But it went well, we really enjoyed it and we wrapped early. And the cast – every day was a joy, every day I would look to see what scene w were doing and who was going to be there. It was like I won a competition. The cast is incredible. We were worried at one point that it was going to be overwhelming.
You were complaining at the beginning of the press conference about everyone else being late. Are you anal?
GERVAIS: They were late! It was 10 o’clock, I was here at 10 o’clock, I said let’s start! [referring to his outfit of sweatpants and a t-shirt] When you sleep in the things you’re going to wear, you’re there.
I’ve always been hung-up about lateness – I suppose I was always early because I didn’t want to be late, but then if anyone was late they were even later cause I was early! I just think, I can’t believe anyone wouldn’t rush to see me!
What are the top three things that bug you?
GERVAIS: Lateness, people chewing loudly – oh, here’s number one, people who do this [makes a Felix Unger sinus clearing noise into the microphone]. I’ve got about nine - we don’t have to stop at three. Whistling, Twitter.
How did you divide up your duties as co-directors?
GERVAIS: We didn’t divide duties up. It was the same as with Stephen Merchant [Gervais’ partner on “The Office” and “Extras”], we were always both in the room, and we had one simple rule, we didn’t compromise. One veto and something was out. So everything in that film we both like. We worked really well together and we fill each other’s gaps. That’s not a euphemism.
ROBINSON: When a Brit makes his first film, there’s a rule that there has to be a Jew involved.
GERVAIS: He wanted to put on the posters, “From the creator of “The Office” and “Extras”, and a Jew.”
What was your most memorable experience of having someone tell you the truth about something you didn't want to know?
GERVAIS: When I was 8 years old, I was doing Bible studies and I loved Jesus, he was my Superman, he was better than God because he was a man, he was kind, and my [older] brother Bob came and asked why I believed in God? And my mother went [warning voice] “Bob…” So I knew she was hiding something. And I thought about it and thought about it, and within an hour I was an atheist. That was something he felt he had to tell me. And then he went, “The Easter Bunny’s dead.”
Is it true that you laugh a lot on set?
GERVAIS: All the time. Jennifer thinks I only ruin good takes, on her side. If someone says something funny, I laugh. Just because I heard the line 15 times before, or I even wrote it, it doesn’t matter.
GARNER: or if you even said it! It’s amazing – this is the man in charge, he wants the footage in the camera to be the stuff that you’re going to use, he’s encouraging you to improvise, you toss something out there and on top of your line in an unusable way he ruins the take with a cackle that is completely of another world. On the one hand you’re happy because there’s nothing better than making Ricky laugh – he has the bet laugh in the world, you know it’s genuine., it’s like a badge of honor to make him laugh. But on the other hand you’re like, I’ll never do it that well again!
GERVAIS: [looking abashed] I never knew she felt like that.
What can you tell us about your HBO series that will be starting in January?
GERVAIS: It’s a 13 part animation of the podcast I do. I’m really excited because the world is going to get another Homer Simpson., But unlike Homer, who you can never meet because it’s 20 writers and an actor doing a voice, Karl Pilkington is real. It’s so much funnier because it’s not scripted, he’s not an actor, he’s just a strange little round-headed oddity. I just want Karl to be famous because she’ll hate it – I want people to be shouting at him on the street that he’s got a round head, because that’s what friends are for.
How did you get so many famous people to appear in small roles in this movie?
GERVAIS: We cast all our favorite actors and comedians of the moment, simple as that. Christopher Guest was a big influence on me, the biggest influence on “The Office” – straightforward steal of his style. We saw Louis CK on YouTube, and he’s the best stand up in America. We cast one night at dinner, and got everyone we wanted.
ROBINSON: I think they feel like it’s a day off for them, like chilling out for the day.
OBST: Philip Seymour Hoffman had just come off from a playing a pedophile
GERVAIS: I didn’t know him at all – I called his agent, and was told, well, he’s very busy, can you send an email about the part? So I sent this email that said, Dear Philip, please be in my new film., there’s no money as I’ve spent the entire budget on testicular implants. But don’t think of them as my testicles, think of them as our testicles, And the agent called back and said he laughed at that.
MR Ed Norton made up about 75 percent of the lines that are in the film. He came prepared, he had a character, he used a Boston accent, he added a lot. That was originally about a 15-20 second scene.
RG There was no plan B – raining would have screwed the film up.
What did you learn from your first film as a director?
RG? What did I learn… [laughs] Nothing at all. I went there with a theory of doing it and kept to it, right or wrong.
I’m in awe of people who do their jobs well, who have a pride in their work, from the actors you see to everyone whose doing a little piece of design.
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