Video Interview The Rocker

Could Rainn Wilson be our funniest interviewee yet? He tried to pick a fight with us, then tried to get us naked, a typical Friday night for Movies.ie then? Check out our video interview…

As he makes the leap from The Office to his first big-screen leading role in The Rocker, Rainn Wilson sits down to talk with Movies.ie 

 

If you should have any doubts about the comic abilities of Rainn Dietrich Wilson, look no further, my friend, than his recent hosting of the American Independent Spirit Awards.

Sure, the man was fab’n’groovy as the lurching Arthur Martin in Six Feet Under, and is fab’n’groovy as the ass-licking Dwight Shrute in The Office: An American Workplace. And Wilson even managed to make a little something out of his fleeting early appearance as a sarcastic shop assistant in the Oscar-winning Juno.

 

It’s Wilson’s spoof auditions for the five Best Picture contenders at this year’s American Independent Film Awards though that showcase best this self-confessed geek’s fine comic talents.

Going ever-so-slightly Christy Brown for Julian Schnabel as he tries for The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, or lecturing Todd Haynes on Bob Dylan’s true significance as he auditions for I’m Not There, Wilson is sublime. That he ends the show by running through the auditorium to wrestle Philip Seymour Hoffman – aka ‘The Hoff’ – to the ground makes you realise this man is the perfect blend of Will Ferrell and Jim Carrey.

“Actually, I’m the perfect blend of Robert G. Wilson and Shay Cooper,” Wilson points out to me, when we met up recently in London’s Soho Hotel. “They are, of course, my parents.”

 

Fair point. Wilson is on a promotional tour for his big-screen lead debut, The Rocker, a comedy somewhere between This Is Spinal Tap and The 40 Year Old Virgin. Wilson plays middle-aged drummer Robert ‘Fish’ Fishman, still reeling from having been turfed out of his heavy metal band, Vesuvius, 20 years ago, and finally getting a shot at the big time by stepping in on sticks for his geeky nephew’s band. It has just about enough good gags, pratfalls and heavy metal parody to warrant your attention.



The Rocker is now showing at Irish Cinemas everywhere!