“The Hangover” hadn’t yet been released when actor Ed Helms and writer Phil Johnston were trying to get their small, idiosyncratic comedy “Cedar Rapids” off the ground, but soon enough Helms’ earlier film was becoming the highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever, thus nudging Fox Searchlight toward throwing its support behind the tale of a thirtysomething man who breaks out of his shell at a Midwestern insurance convention.
“It certainly helped,” said Helms, who also served as “Cedar Rapids” executive producer and currently co-stars on “The Office” with fellow former “The Daily Show” correspondent Steve Carell.
The star and writer enlisted director Miguel Arteta, who’s honed his indie comedy coming-of-age chops on such films as “Chuck and Buck” (2000) and last year’s “Youth in Revolt,” and thanks to a scandal involving Iowa’s film tax credit program, Arteta said, “Cedar Rapids” was filmed not in its title town but mostly in a chain hotel on the outskirts of Ann Arbor, Mich.
On Wednesday Helms, spiffily layered in a brown blazer, tweed sweater vest and checked shirt, and Arteta, in plaid flannel, sat down in a nicer hotel than the one in the movie, lunched on stuffed pizza and shared their thoughts on…
Why Helms is drawn to so many naive characters: “I find earnest stupidity, which is often kind of interchangeable with naivete, to be really endearing and funny — because if somebody’s earnest, they’re kind of unimpeachable. It doesn’t matter how misguided they might be. They’re doing it because they believe in it. I’m not as attracted to really duplicitous characters or really creepy kind of underminey characters. I really enjoy someone who’s trying really hard to do the right thing.”
How this thought applies to Helms’ “Daily Show” tenure: “Some of the moments I’m most proud of are the moments where I’m pretending to be ignorant about something or stupid about something and infuriating the person I’m interviewing.”
Helms’ complicated reason for wanting to tell the simple story of “Cedar Rapids”: “I’m going to nerd out for a second, but storytelling is like fractal geometry in that you can tell this giant, epic, sweeping saga of nations at war, and it’s compelling, and it’s dramatic, and then you can dig a little deeper and start to zero in on one person, and then his story or her story becomes this engaging thing, and then you can dig a little deeper and every stage you can keep digging, and the closer you look at anything, the more texture and color that you find. This is a story in which you’re crawling into the minutia of one boring man’s life, and yet it’s so powerful and affecting because we put it under such a microscope.”
Why this story resonated with Arteta: “I like movies about people that seem to have some sort of emotional handicap and are able to conquer it one way or another, usually by putting that handicap at the forefront of the story. The Tim Lippe (Helms’ character) story attracted me from the start as somebody that sees the good in everything, but he needs to learn not to be a chump. What can I say? It’s relevant and interesting to my life.”
How Helms’ improvisation background with New York’s Upright Citizens Brigade played into the creating and performing of “Cedar Rapids”: “The creative process in generating content for a movie is a sort of improv: You just write it all down and keep your favorite parts of it. But then of course once we’re on set, it’s always an exploration. I don’t think it’s very responsible to bring a guy like John C. Reilly (who plays another insurance salesman) to the table and say, ‘Hey, just do these lines.’ That would be a huge waste. I love to improvise. John C. Reilly is one of the greatest all-time improvisers. We found an awful lot during production, for sure.”
Whether this is how Arteta usually works: “This was definitely looser than usual.”
What Helms views as a common misconception: “A lot of people just assume that if you’re great at improvising on stage, then you’re probably great on a TV show or in a movie, but those are extremely different skills. Improvising on a TV show, for example, is kind of about just riffing in take after take and experimenting and finding something that really works. Improvising on stage is sort of being part of this jazz ensemble that’s trying to create something larger than a joke and create an entire show that’s meaningful.”
Where Helms really has sharpened his acting skills: “I think my time on ‘The Office’ has been the most formative in terms of just on-screen acting, be it TV or film. It just takes a long time to reach a comfort level where you really feel like you can be your best and have that base line of confidence to execute well.”
Whether Helms dreamed of being a movie star while growing up in Atlanta: “No, I envisioned being a cast member on ‘Saturday Night Live.’ I just worshipped Eddie Murphy, and I thought he was the greatest, most hilarious thing. I loved his energy, and I just wanted to be a part of it.”
Why having a sex scene in “Cedar Rapids” with “Aliens”/”Ghostbusters” star Sigourney Weaver was “pretty extraordinary” for Helms: “That was my first sex scene ever in a movie, and I couldn’t have had a more gracious and compassionate partner to shepherd me through because I was quite anxious. But of course Sigourney is such a gracious and wonderful person that she sort of took my hand and led me down that path of corruption.”
How “The Hangover” helped convince Arteta he wanted to work with Helms, whom he’d directed in a 2006 “Office” episode: “When I saw ‘The Hangover,’ I realized he’s infusing that character with thoughtfulness that is not necessarily something you find in a big comedy like that. I think it’s part of the reason of the success of that film.”
A key reason Helms thought Arteta was right to direct “Cedar Rapids”: “Miguel was one of the first people to really understand that the way we wanted to tell this story was with a tremendous amount of affection for the characters. Whereas a lot of directors came at it like ‘This is going to be so funny. We’re going to really screw with these guys. What a bunch of idiots these characters are. This is going to be hilarious.’ That was an instant pass.”
Why Helms thinks “Cedar Rapids,” with its compact time frame and characters who bond and grow up a bit, is and isn’t like “The Hangover”: “I think it’s fair to make some sweeping thematic comparisons, but when you see the two movies, that’s as far as the similarity goes. ‘The Hangover’ is at its heart a mystery caper adventure. There’s no mystery in ‘Cedar Rapids.’ It’s a linear story about the metamorphosis of a man-child.”
Why Arteta owes a debt to the Chicago Latino Film Festival: “I came 20 years ago with my AFI (American Film Institute) short film, and it was lucky I did because I saw a movie that was shot by the cinematographer who shot ‘Cedar Rapids,’ and he shot four of my five films, Chuy Chavez. That’s how I started pursuing him, because I saw that movie here.”
What difficult lesson Helms learned inside the John Hancock Center: “On a college trip I was visiting Northwestern, and we had dinner at the top of the Hancock building, and I had to meet some friends later, so I left dinner early and went to the elevator bank and hit the button, and it was taking forever and ever, and I look at the stairwell, and I thought: You know what? What the hell, how bad can it be? And I ran into the stairwell, and I started to just go down the stairs, and it never ended. And I started to freak out.
“I don’t even know where I was in the building; I heard this (cups hands over mouth), ‘Stop running!’ And this speaker voice came on, and they had caught me on a security camera bounding down the stairs, and they were like, ‘Stop where you are!’ I was like, ‘Hello? Who’s there? Someone please help me! I’m trapped!’…I must have made it down probably a third of the way. A security guard came and got me.”
