“It’s a cocktail of zen, Sartre, and nihilism,” Russell says. He talks of the film’s political message against corporate behemoths like Warner Brothers, the studio that is refusing to distribute Russell’s new documentary about the current War in Iraq. But he demurs from answering queries about the film’s relationship with 9/11, an incident that is specifically referred to by Wahlberg’s character.
His silence on the subject seems odd, as Huckabees is a film borne of its times. Its mix of surrealism and inanity (Russell cites Magritte and Buñuel as major influences) reflects what some audiences see in their surroundings today: a world facing fear and the unknown, shaken by seemingly random events and unsure how to proceed.
But to Russell and his cast, these bigger issues seem tangential to the comedy.
“The brilliant thing that David did was send a message through a laugh,” Schwartzman says of the film. The boyish actor sits across the room from Russell, clad in a Brooks Brothers button-down, dress pants and sneakers. “The ideas in the movie are huge messages, huge ideas that we do need to ask ourselves. They are absurd at times. I think the great thing David did was make the ideas easy to understand.”
Schwartzman’s character Albert is a post-puberty Max Fischer, with longer hair, a scraggly beard and none of the charm. Schwartzman opens the film by shouting a stream of obscenities; in person, he makes somewhat less of an impression. He balances his slight, thin build on a couch, sipping a glass of water and at one point sucking on a lemon. Schwartzman’s conversation—when he gets a word in edgewise amidst Russell’s freewheeling monologues—swings wildly from dull stories from the Huckabees set to an extended riff on the legacy of that ’80’s classic, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. His comments are intended to promote Huckabees, but their chaotic nature only serve to underscore the film’s flaws.
On how it transports the audience: “David created a situation where the comedy is like a train, and all the big ideas are like stowaways on that train.”
On the atmosphere on set: “It felt to me like every second was like throwing up a Hail Mary, but with the greatest football team in the world. It’s like, it’s like, it always felt like ten seconds left, you got the ball and you’re down by one, and the whole team felt like Michael Jordan.”
Like Russell’s film, Schwartzman seems unable to fully articulate his ideas, and the result is a cluttered mess of mixed metaphors and hollow insights.
When Schwartzman pauses for breath, the interview turns back to the director.
“Is there enough activist filmmaking today?” I ask Russell, who once worked as for a Massachusetts consumer advocacy group.
“Now I’m in the category of an activist,” he laughs. Schwartzman laughs. The publicists laugh. Suddenly, we’re on the next question. When Russell isn’t interested in a query, he just doesn’t answer it.
“One minute left,” the publicist warns, a hint of urgency in her voice.
Across the hotel room, Russell turns towards me, a mischievous look on his face. “Okay, lightning round.”
“Do you think audiences will go for it?” I ask.
He stares back at me.
“Audiences?” he asks incredulously. “You mean you? We can only talk about we who are in this room. You guys are like pollsters, you always talk about a third entity. I made it ’cause I like it. It makes me laugh.”
He notices my skeptical smile, and laughs again. “He thinks I’m trying to bullshit him,” he says. “All I can do is make a movie that I think is funny.”
And there it is. After nearly a half-hour of spouting pop philosophy, quoting Outkast lyrics (“shake it like a Polaroid picture,” he hums at one point) and waxing faux-political, Russell has finally come clean. The secret behind the tangled existential web of Huckabees is that there is no secret—it makes the director laugh, and that’s good enough for him.
—Staff writer Michael M. Grynbaum can be reached at grynbaum@fas.harvard. edu.