Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Hello, my name is Judd Apatow...

...the producer and cowriter of Walk Hard.

I'm Jake Kasdan, I'm the director...

...cowriter and co-producer of Walk Hard.

I'm John C. Reilly, and I play Dewey Cox in Walk Hard.

I am Lew Morton, executive producer.

That means Lew Morton added more sweet funny...

...if you're wondering what Lew did.

That's right.

It also means that we're all working on the same movie...

...which is good news. We're all from Walk Hard.

So this is the long cut and the short cut.

We're doing the same commentary at the same time.

I guess I'll cut out the commentary...

...from the long cut to make the short cut.

So any enormous leaps of logic will be explained by that edit.

That's right. And we advise listening to both.

Ultimately, it's better to listen to the commentary twice.

And the extended commentary will give you even more comments.

Sorry to interrupt, guys.

Out of the gate, we've just had our first dick joke.

We're about five seconds into the movie.

We're about to redo that dick joke 11 times in the next 14 seconds.

That's right.

So let's start from the beginning.

Jake called me one night and said, "I have this great idea for a movie...

...and I never come up with big comedy ideas.

Shouldn't we spoof these music biopics?"

And I said, "Yeah, let's do it."

And then Jake wasn't so sure...

...whether or not he really wanted to do it, so I had to push him.

-Like, actually do it? -Jake didn't like the idea of...

When you say let's do it, you mean, like, "Tomorrow we start doing that"?

Then I called Jake a few days later and I said:

"Jake, you just have to ask yourself one question:

Do you wanna own a house?"

I just think that story paints me in a curious light, told that way.

And I don't think that's why Jake did it...

...but it really says more about my manipulative ways as a producer.

Well, what's extraordinary about your manipulative ways as a producer...

...and it's not the first time that I've... I call it the Apatow mind trick.

It's a series of three short phone calls where in by the end of them...

...you've made a decision that's gonna influence years of your life.

It's the same way we started working together on Freaks and Geeks...

...which is Judd called and said, "You know, I'm doing this pilot.

You wanna come direct it? It shouldn't be that big a deal.

It'll take a couple of weeks. You should probably just do it."

And by the end of the phone call, you're...

Sort of realise that you've agreed to do it and you're pumped...

...and it does change the course of your life.

Likewise, in those first couple of conversations...

...next thing I knew I was... We were... It was, you know, happening.

Within weeks, we were writing this thing.

About two days after that phone call...

...I got a call from Judd and he told me:

"I think I tricked Jake into doing Walk Hard."

What's extraordinary, it only speaks to my usual reticence...

...in making big decisions.

Judd manages to bypass and short-circuit that thing.

He usually keeps it very casual with the actors.

When he called me, he was, like...

You know, he calls on some other context.

You know, like to talk about Talladega Nights DVD or something.

And I was like, "Oh, hey, hey... " Right at the end of the conversation:

"I was just taking to Jake Kasdan.

We were really laughing about this funny idea for a biopic...

...and we were thinking you would be funny to do that.

But you probably don't wanna do that.

Anyway, I'll talk to you later, man. We'll talk next week or something."

You hang up, "What? Who were they laughing at?"

What are you doing in 2006 and 20077

Dewey just cut his brother in half.

There was a debate about: How can you kill a child...

...and have an audience enjoy it?

There was talk of filming of him falling off a roof.

And then we ultimately realised...

...we shouldn't make it softer. We should go 10 times nastier with it.

And then if he con... If he continues to talk...

...then maybe it's okay because he got cut in half real bad here.

We'd been talking about the possibility that he...

This is such a weird idea.

We'd been talking about the possibility...

...that the brother falls off the roof in the barn...

...and breaks his... The sockets of his shoulders...

...and loses the ability to use his shoulders.

-You remember that Judd? -We thought that...

That was his... His brother's big injury is that, because he's a piano player...

...his arms just hang all day long.

One of us has a BlackBerry that is interfering with the...

Yeah, that's what I was about to say. Mine is not in the room.

-Oh, it's Jake Kasdan. -No, no.

-It's Lew, it's Lew. -It's off. It's off.

I'm innocent.

-I don't know. -Something's going down in this room.

Maybe I have some other transmitting device.

-Then I remember I called... -Maybe by my pacemaker.

And then, I remember I called Judd up one night and I said:

"You know, if he didn't fall off the roof...

...and instead, it was like they were playing a game...

...and he got cut in half."

And Judd said, "Well, that's the other way to go.

He gets cut in half with a machete on the third page.

That's the other thing we could do."

And he says it as though that's like... There's a book somewhere...

...and one of the options is cut in half with a machete on the third page.

-There's a Syd Field book. -We should go that way.

Now, John, when you first heard this idea...

...I know that you were concerned.

And for a while, you were pitching, like, a Everly Brothers-type...

Yeah, well, that was sort of the Sophie's Choice for me...

...was I had some designs on an actual biopic...

...which I was gonna do in a really cool way...

...that was not like regular biopics.

It was all gonna be inside his mind.

Yeah, and I had been looking for years.

The brother wasn't gonna get killed till page 10.

You know, I was gonna do it, like, in snatches...

...and not make it linear and just, you know...

Like the Dylan one.

Yeah, well, I guess. Not really, I haven't seen that one, but...

Anyway, yeah, I wanted to do, like, a story about two brothers...

...that sang together, and that's how I met Jack White.

-Really? -Yeah.

Because I had this idea and I was searching for someone...

...to play the brother who could sing with me, who could sing harmony.

And then I thought, "He wants to get into acting"...

...from that part in Cold Mountain.

And Renée Zellweger, my friend, knows him.

I got his number and called him.

And that's when my first conversations started with Jack.

And what is his number?

In Detroit, it's 6... No.

And can we be his friend?

So when you called him for a movie, it was kind of like...

We talked a couple of times already about working together maybe...

And, yeah, so the well was primed.

Now, here's one thing about this scene that's interesting...

...which is this bluesman is the legendary Honeyboy Edwards.

And he's been doing this for quite some time.

He's written a lot of amazing songs.

He was personal friends with Robert Johnson...

...who died in 1934...

- "We were old friends." -Which gives you a sense that...

And Honeyboy is actually one of the experts on Robert Johnson...

...and I believe he is now in his...

He's about 94 years old...

...which we should all, you know, aspire to be.

Fuck that. I wanna aspire to be 15 years old.

-That's true too. -I'm gonna see...

And here comes a scene where I get to play 15 years old.

Or 14 actually, in this one.

It's a lot of action back there, kids juggling.

-That's the world of a talent show. -The rest of the talent show.

That's always the big issue with a movie like this is:

How young will the lead actor think he can play?

We always thought it was really funny...

...that the sort of fictional...

That the attitude of the filmmakers, of us...

...was that it's the most important movie ever made...

...and that the performance is the most important performance of all time.

And, therefore, it should start at the youngest possible parameter...

...beyond what seems even possible, really.

This girl was the sweetest.

She was actually a really great little tap dancer.

And she was nervous.

Jake made her tap, like, a seven-minute routine...

...to get that six seconds.

To find the best six seconds.

I wanted something to pick from.

This is always a mystery joke, that Matt Price gets a big laugh...

...on the "ladies and germs," that I know...

It's a mystery joke.

It's pure charisma. It is pure Matt Price charisma.

It's pure comic charisma.

When we started this, Jake and I did a little film festival...

...where we watched all of these movies:

Great Balls of Fire, The Buddy Holly Story.

We even watched the Marilyn Monroe movie...

...where Norma Jean is played by one woman...

...and then Marilyn was played by another.

Mira Sorvino and Ashley Judd...

...each playing different aspects of Marilyn Monroe.

Fighting in conflict and fighting with each other in every scene.

And a lot of what's in the movie came from that initial film festival.

The one that made me laugh most...

...was erotic dancing in the African-American night club.

That really made us laugh in Great Balls of Fire that there was...

How the movie opens...

...which is, that's what's happening on the wrong side of the tracks.

It starts with the kids walking across train tracks.

And you see, they look in a barn window...

...and that's what's going on.

I haven't heard a word you're saying. I'm transfixed by this performance.

-I understand. -This musical performance.

There really is no comment I can make here.

This is the first... No, it's not.

Yeah, there is no comment to make. It's the first nothing.

-It's the only time. -We all... We have our first vomit.

Yeah, exactly, that's our first puke.

There's Kristen Wiig, for the first time in the movie.