Eagle Vs Shark

Helio interview

With the exception of the misspelling of Jemaine’s name in the headline, this is a pretty good article. If only for this description of Jarrod “He’s more Napoleon Mach 2 than Napoleon Redux. He’s more settled in his nerdiness, happier with his inner geek, and with a lot more chest hair. As a result he’s a lot sexier, a lot darker and mysterious, and a lot more ready for the kind of romantic comedy that writer/director Taika Waititi thrusts upon him.” Read the whole article at Helio Mag.

New Zealand’s Finest Export: Jermaine Clement Takes America

In Eagle vs. Shark, New Zealand’s latest cinematic export (nationwide from June 29th), Jemaine Clement plays Jarrod, possibly the nerdiest anti-hero since, well, since “Napoleon Dynamite.”

The comparison is an obvious one but Jarrod isn’t simply a carbon copy of Napoleon D. He’s more Napoleon Mach 2 than Napoleon Redux. He’s more settled in his nerdiness, happier with his inner geek, and with a lot more chest hair. As a result he’s a lot sexier, a lot darker and mysterious, and a lot more ready for the kind of romantic comedy that writer/director Taika Waititi thrusts upon him.

Helio’s Marlow Fawcett gets the word, after the jump…

When, at a ‘Be Your Favourite Animal’ costume party, Jarrod delivers the chilling line, “I thought about coming as a shark but then I realized an eagle was better,” there’s both a menace and a softness to his act which engages us more efficiently than Jonathon Heder’s funny but opaque Napoleon.

Eagle vs. Shark is a delightful anti-rom com that clearly comes from a different universe than Nora Ephron, or Howard Hawkes for that matter, and Clement admits to loving the role and loving making the film. For a comedy writer/actor who had done all his own material up to that point, it was great not to have to worry about whether the lines were actually funny. He just had to deliver them.

Of course, there was the small issue of playing opposite Loren Horsley who happens to be the director’s significant other who happens to be one of his best friends. “You always want to kiss your friend’s good looking girlfriends, so doing that in front of Taika, I guess this was a good test of their relationship,” says Clement in his quintessentially Kiwi humour – flat, low-key and naively self-deprecating.

Clement analyzes this a bit further, saying that New Zealanders’ sense of humour, Peter Jackson notwithstanding, has more of an affinity with Britain, while Australia is closer to the US. It must be something to do with the weather because, in the same way that underplaying Brit comedians have rained down upon the sunny Yankee shores like so many bowls of mushy peas and flagons of warm ale, Clement is now storming the States as one half of the comedy duo “Flight of the Conchords”. The other half is Bret McKenzie, who some might confidently fail to remember as a noble but mostly silent elf in Lord of the Rings.

“Flight of the Conchords” started as a way for Clement and McKenzie to avoid taking bad TV gigs. Thinking it would be fun to learn to play guitar and at the same time put some lyrics to their strummings they stumbled upon what seemed to be a winning formula – something they’d yet to achieve back home.

Their eponymous show, which premiered June 17th on HBO, is a musical sit-com based on their stand up routine (the two describe themselves as “New Zealand’s fourth-most-popular folk-parody duo”), and though there is a subplot about robots, the show tracks the trials and tribulations of the duo as they attempt to break into the New York music scene and pick up “hot American” girls. Not surprisingly, most of their songs are about relationships (except for the one about robots), and Clement admits that they “try to take the shine off the idealism of meeting girls.”

He’s not wrong. You can’t get less shiny than, “Business Time”, a Barry White-inspired number about a man trying to seduce his wife:

Tonight we’re going to make love / You know how I know that? / Cuz it’s Wednesday / and Wednesday’s the night we make love / Tuesday night’s the night we go visit your mother / but Wednesday night’s the night we make love….

Next thing you know we’re in the bathroom brushing our teeth / That’s all part of it / That’s foreplay / Then you go sort out the recycling / That’s not part of it but it’s still very important….

That’s romance, folks, and American audiences with an eye on comedy and a sense of humor about their own love lives will be wooed by this Tenacious-D meets Beyond the Fringe.

They’ve already won Best Alternative Comedy Act at HBO’s Aspen Comedy Arts Festival and had their own night on the same cable channel’s “One Night Stand” series. They gave a packed house performance at SXSW’s Comedy Tent, and this weekend will appear at Bonaroo.

Clement generously says that American audiences are “very supportive…very excitable”, then he qualifies that by saying it might be something to do with the accent. Everyone seems to think he’s English which is apparently a good thing. In England, people think he’s a sheep farmer. Back home in New Zealand neither Clement nor McKenzie are really sheep farmers but they are rapidly becoming national heroes.

For now, Clement says, “we seem to have proved the local TV companies wrong, that is until our fellow countrymen work out that our whole act is about making New Zealanders look like idiots.” But this must be another bit of self-deprecating humour. If all New Zealanders are as funny as these guys, I want to move to Wellington.

You can get a sneak preview of the HBO show “Flight of the Conchords” plus sample their hilarious live act on YouTube. Watch out for their second CD out this fall on Sub Pop.

From: Helio Mag