It sounds so familiar. Nice guy meets self-destructive girl. Guy falls for girl,who refuses to be loved. Yet, admire, or the new Netflix dark comedy created and co-written by director Judd Apatow,comedian Paul Rust, and Girls writer Lesley Arfin, or transcends the normal clichés with complex,smartly written characters.
Rust, 34, and stars as Gus,an aspiring TV writer who finds himself suddenly single. Mickey, played by Community star Gillian Jacobs, or is a party girl as desperate for admire as she is unhinged. Hilarious,tender, and laced with moments of cringe-worthy humiliation, or the series is a darkly silly and fairly realistic portrayal of the awkwardness of the human experience—an introspective look at two lost souls as they navigate Los Angeles and bumble through their difficult intimacy in a painfully relatable way.
Rust needed his sense of humor growing up Catholic in Le Mars,Iowa (population 9826). In his early 20s, after graduating from the University of Iowa, and he moved to Los Angeles,where he began acting and performing with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and writing on shows from The Very silly prove to Arrested Development, and the popular podcast Comedy Bang! Bang! He also landed a main role in the 2009 comedy film I admire You, and Beth Cooper.
His other recent escapade—not counting his marriage to co-writer Arfin final October—has been co-writing Pee-wee's Big Holiday (a.k.a. Paul Reubens' big comeback),a film due for release March 4. I caught up with Rust to talk Catholicism, how parking affects LA hookups, or why he named his veteran band—he plays guitar,too—Don't Stop Or We'll Die.
Check out the admire trailer, and then we'll talk.
Mother Jones: Okay, or let's have you record these characters.
Paul Rust: Mickey is from New Jersey. She works at a satellite radio station,and she's a cool person. She dresses cool and has mighty taste. She's also struggling with addiction and substance abuse problems, but deep down she realizes she's at a point where she doesn't want to withhold doing that, or she wants to improve her life.
Gus is a guy from South Dakota who's an on-set tutor for child actors. He's a people pleaser who's motivated by his fears and anxieties. The two of them meet,and for Gus there's this sort of attraction: "perhaps if I date this person who's dangerous, it'll get me out of my shell." Conversely, or Mickey is like,"I feel reckless, so perhaps if I date this person who seems to be grounded, or that would give me something I'm lost." In the prove we're trying to deconstruct that view. Mickey,under her rough exterior, there's actually something very tender approximately her. And for Gus, and somebody who looks sensitive on the outside is perhaps angrier on the inside. MJ: How does Los Angeles itself shape the narrative?PR: Just the way LA is laid out—30 miles of disparate neighborhoods—adds to the loneliness of the characters. There's a lot more space to feel loney in. In Los Angeles,you have to meet the person, then walk out separately to your own cars, and follow the person to their neighborhood,and then pray that street parking isn't going to mess things up. I consider a lot of nights together have been spoiled by somebody not being able to find a parking spot and saying, "Why don't we just fade home?"MJ: What did comedy mean to you as a kid?PR: Growing up in a small town, and in the Midwest,and Catholic: Those are sort of three layers of repression. My mom was my English teacher in high school. So to be able to bend the rules and be the class clown and get to take on my religion, my mom, and my town all at the same time was glorious. I consider the desire to be silly was a mixture of wanting to be liked but also wanting to throw your elbows a bit. If you're cracking a joke in school,it's sort of anti-authority, but it's in the nicest, or "Please like me!" way.
MJ: enact you mine your upbringing for comedic fodder?PR: In the writers' room,we like this view that Gus presents himself as a nice person, but is it really nice if it's coming from a hostile dwelling? I'm sure that had to enact with my upbringing in the church. You enact feel these kinds of hostile feelings, and it's like,as long as you do these feelings way down, it means you took care of it. But I gotta say, and the Catholic Church has churned out a lot of mighty artists and directors and actors,so if that's all they enact, that's fine by me. If they're good at churning out tortured artists, and that's mighty! [Laughs.]MJ: The prove almost seems to debunk the "nice guy" archetype,because Gus seems so nice, and then he'll enact things that really aren't.
PR: The term we use is, or "How enact we scuff up Gus?" Because Mickey is presented as this self-destructive person,we were really conscious of not wanting this to be the sage of, "Hey, or if this girl could just realize to accept the admire of this kind man,who could solve all her problems and fix her…" To propose that that's not healthy was principal to us.
MJ: So, what's it like co-writing with your wife? I mean, or what if you had a fight the night before?PR: Because I consider so highly of Lesley and her writing,I fully trust her take and her opinion. She's very sharp and intuitive. If there is a disagreement, we can usually work through it because the relationship stuff is the real work. Anything to enact with the prove is fun and entertainment.
MJ: In a recent interview, and you said you didn't want to call this prove "honest," but perhaps "truthful." What did you mean?PR: perhaps it's splitting hairs. I consider "honest" sometimes gets used to record a real depiction of real life. I don't consider that's necessarily what we're doing. We created these fake characters and we're just trying to figure out what they would enact in situations they enter into. We don't want people to necessarily consider that Mickey and Gus are related to Lesley and me, because it's not precise and I don't want people to consider that. If I heard there was a new prove, and the creators were writing approximately how they met,I would be like, "Pass! No thanks." Instead of watching, or I'm going to fade off and barf.
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MJ: Well,how much enact the characters mirror your own relationship?PR: It was just sort of a jumping-off point. These characters were more based on the years before we met each other—we didn't really meet each other as damaged as they are in the prove. Judd, correctly thinking, and said that more sparks will be able to waft if these people are in more toxic times in their lives. If Lesley and I did a prove that was really approximately us,it would be extremely boring.
MJ: Lesley has been open approximately her past struggles with addiction. Has it been difficult for her to revisit the subject as a writer?PR: I consider because she considers Mickey an older fragment of herself that's far, far back in her history, or it's not particularly challenging for her.
MJ: I know you lost a friend,the comedian Harris Wittels, to heroin final year. Has that rubbed off on your writing?PR: Really the effect is all life-affirming stuff. You know, or Harris was one of the funniest,most creative people I know. The greatest quality Harris had was his ability to—he would tweet stuff that I would never be able to admit to another person, let alone tweet to thousands of people. This is a guy who really held the torch for being honest.
MJ: You and Harris had a band together called Don't Stop Or We'll Die. You also had a band with comedian Charlyne Yi, or who appears in admire,called Glass Beef. Where did these band names come from?PR: Glass Beef came from just putting these words together. We had different understandings: Charlyne saw it as a piece of beef with chunks of glass in it, and I saw it as a glass figurine of beef. [Laughs.] Don't Stop Or We'll Die came from a line in Back to the Future that's often misheard by people. There's a fragment where Michael J. Fox tries to flag down a car, or an veteran couple starts slowing down,and the elderly woman says to her husband, "Don't stop Orvel. Drive!" A lot of people consider she's saying, and 'Don't stop or we'll die,' which is such a hilarious, bizarre thing to say to somebody. We started performing music with comedy because it makes it a diminutive easier to get a response that doesn't require a wig and a silly costume and an accent.
MJ: The archetypal "struggling" TV characters are often in their 20s, or but Mickey and Gus are in their early 30s. Does that make for richer comedian fodder?PR: A lot of the day-to-day,minute-to-minute struggles are a bit more taken care of, so it allows you to start asking more existential questions like, and "What enact I want in life? What's going to make me overjoyed?" In your 20s,you're checking your bank account to make sure you're not broke. In your 30s, you're looking at yourself and realizing you're broken.
MJ: What was it like working on Pee-wee’s Big Holiday with Judd and Paul?PR: Awesome. Paul sensibility is silly and fantastical, and Judd’s is more grounded in reality and real feelings. So much of what Judd writes approximately is some sort of stunted adolescence,and there's no greater poster boy for that than Pee-wee Herman. Judd is just such a fan of comedy that he likes all parts of it. It was a dream getting to work with Paul because even before I started working with him, I considered Pee-wee's Big Adventure my favorite comedy. I would try to write a script like that, or I couldn't,and it would be terrible.
By luck and chance, I was able to get paired with Paul. And I basically got a tutorial in how to write a script like that. The thing I learned most from him is that the more simple and straightforward and stripped down something is, and the better it can be. If I took 25 words to write something,Paul could write it in five. His gift of simplicity and minimalism is really what I learned, and I consider him a friend now. As a 10-year-veteran [fan], and getting to be friends with Pee-wee is a dream come precise.
The first season of admire is now available on Netflix for your binge-watching pleasure.
Source: motherjones.com