For the people involved, being part of a cultural
phenomenon can be as stifling as it is lucrative. That goes double for David
Schwimmer, who played Ross Geller on the immensely popular sitcom Friends for a decade. Not only
was he part of the show's core ensemble, but his on-again, off-again
relationship with Jennifer Aniston played a central plot role until Friends' finale in May 2004. While Friends
made Schwimmer a wealthy international star—each cast member earned $1
million per episode after 2002—it also cemented his association with the
Geller character. But Schwimmer hasn't hurt for work. In addition to numerous
TV roles (including memorable gigs on 30 Rock and Curb Your
Enthusiasm),
he's appeared in many films and onstage, where he began his career as a theater
major at Northwestern University. (He and some fellow alumni founded Chicago's
Lookingglass Theatre.) During Friends, Schwimmer started working as a director. This
month, he makes his big-screen directorial debut with Run Fatboy Run, a romantic comedy about
a schlub (Simon Pegg) who tries to win back his ex-fiancée (Thandie Newton) by
running a marathon. Based on a script written by Michael Ian Black, the film
was shot in London, where it remained the top box-office draw in the UK for
four weeks upon its release last September. Before it opened in the U.S.,
Schwimmer talked to The A.V. Club about the pratfalls of filmmaking, working as a
director, and being that guy from that show.
The A.V. Club: You directed some episodes of Friends. How did you go from
cast member to director?
David Schwimmer: Well, I made it clear to
everyone that it was an interest of mine, and that I was really going to
actively study. So I would mentor with Jim Burrows, this big director, and I'd
just follow him when he was directing other shows as well as ours. I would talk
to Kevin Bright, one of our executive producers, who also directed a lot of
episodes. So I would study, and then finally I said to our producers, "I think
I'm ready to try this. If the cast is okay with it, would you guys be okay with
me trying one?" By that time, it was like a really well-oiled machine, so even
if I were to be a disaster, Kevin was there and everyone was there to have my
back. They felt confident enough that it would be worth a shot. So I went to
each cast member individually, and I was really straight with them, I said, "If
you have any weirdness about it at all, I won't do it. But I would really love
to try this." And each of them was cool with it. After my first one, they
thought I had something, so I ended up doing about a dozen of those, then some
pilots for NBC and Fox. The more I directed, the more confident I became in my
ability.
AVC: Now that you've been away from Run Fatboy
Run for a
while, have you noticed any first-time director's mistakes?
DS: There's definitely stuff I'd do different. The big
thing I learned when we were finished shooting was, there were a couple of
scenes that, before we started shooting while I was working on the script with
Simon, I always thought in the back of my mind, "You know what, we might end up
cutting these. These would be the first scenes to go. I'm not sure if we should
shoot them, but let's do it anyways. They could be golden." Sure enough, when
we started editing the film, the first scenes to go were those scenes. I
realized that I should have been much harder on the script before we started
shooting, especially on a low-budget movie like this. Those five hours that I
used shooting that scene, or another five hours for this other scene, I really could
have used to get more coverage on a scene that was going to be in the movie.
AVC: What sorts of problems did you encounter
as you were filming?
DS: London is completely unpredictable when it comes
to weather. You'll start a scene, and it's a beautiful morning. You get there
at 6 in the morning, set up, you start the scene, start shooting. Three hours
later, it is pitch black and rainy. On a movie like this, we only bought that
location for that day. We can't afford to go back. Luckily, I had this amazing
cinematographer [Richard Greatrex], who knew how to light it and keep adjusting
the lighting and the camera for situations like that. There's a scene in the
movie at the boat pond; Thandie and Simon are sitting on a park bench. The
beginning of that day was beautiful, and by the time we get to the scene where
they're on the bench, it's actually raining behind them. But we built a little
canopy over the actors, and he lit it in such a way and we cut it in such a way
that you hopefully can't tell. If you look really closely and froze in on it in
slow motion or whatever, you'll see that it's raining behind them.
AVC: The original script was set in New York,
but the film was shot in London. What else was changed?
DS: The basic structure and the big, funny scenes that
are throughout the movie, the blister scene and the locker-room scene, the
basic structure was all Michael. It was all the same. Simon's rewrite was
really to Anglicanize it.