| By Fred Topel
In Theaters May 12
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If you can’t wait until Entourage premiere on June 11, you can get your Jeremy Piven fix in Keeping Up with the Steins this weekend. The frequent movie sidekick takes the lead in a family comedy about the competitive world of Bar Mitzvahs. Piven’s own Bar Mitzvah was a modest affair.
“My Bar Mitzvah was perfect,” Piven said. “It was in my basement. There was no theme. I can’t believe I even did it and made it. I was not the most successful Bar Mitzvah student. I was probably the worst Hebrew student of the bunch, mostly because at the time I was playing football and if we would win, which we actually did a lot, the team would go to McDonald’s and celebrate. When you’re a kid, that’s huge. So instead of McNuggets and apple pie, I was learning Hebrew. So religion came to me in a very kind of awkward way.”
Now that he’s older, Piven appreciates the achievement of becoming a man. “It’s a rite of passage which I wish we had more in this culture. You go to other cultures and you have a lot of them. It’s important to have these. Ultimately, you’re supposed to be responsible for your actions by the time you take your Bar Mitzvah which is very young for all that stuff. When you’re that age, I was trying to make out with Melissa Bruce to be honest. That’s what I was trying to do. Hopefully I was going to get lucky.”
Piven’s simple party was hardly the stuff of Hollywood comedies. The Steins throw a Titanic themed reception complete with a rap artist performing Hava Nagila. To compete, the Fiedler’s rent out Dodger Stadium. Piven plays Adam Fiedler, another Hollywood agent, but the actor never worried about comparisons to Ari Gold.
“It’s not about job really. It’s about the character itself that was so different. The energy was so different. So that was fascinating to me and he’s got this beautiful family. He had a terrible Bar Mitzvah and he’s doing everything he can not to repeat the same mistakes with his son. And he’s obviously trying too hard and is overinvested, and that’s what parents do sometimes.”
Through all the outlandish party plans, Keeping Up with the Steins has real family issues at its heart. Adam’s father (Garry Marshall) has been absent for all his grandson’s life, so young Benjamin (Daryl Sabara) secretly invites grandpa to the shindig in hopes for a reconciliation. Adam deals with his abandonment issues in the most wisecracking way possible.
“That’s what I thought was an interesting little challenge within itself. Sometimes [those issues] are not funny but you have to make jokes at times as well to kind of sidestep the pain. That’s what these characters do and that’s real. It’s the backdrop of the Bar Mitzvah and the competitive world of the Bar Mitzvah at that, that’s when you can hold up and watch a story about among other themes, abandonment.”
In real life, Piven has a healthy view of competition. “I’m so proud of other people’s success, I really am. I’m really happy to own that feeling. I think any time you start letting other people’s success get to you is when life is going to be a very long, strange, hard road. So I’m not in competition with my neighbors, no.”
Keeping Up with the Steins was made before Entourage shot Piven from supporting character actor to frontline comedian. Now, a world of new choices has opened for Piven’s career.
“I do have more choices now than I ever had in my whole life, that’s for sure. And now, there are lead roles that are available to me. To be able to bounce off and play off of females’ energy and explore relationships and all that stuff is so exciting to me. A lot of times I’m creating a lot of the energy and the madness that people are playing off of. Then they get to grab the girl and ride off into the sunset and I thought, you know what? Because I’ve done all the rest of it, I can add all that energy and what not and round out and flesh out a guy that gets to run off into the sunset.”
In Entourage’s third season, Ari is beginning his own agency after falling out with his boss last year. With his client Vincent Chase (Adrien Grenier) now the superhero star of Aquaman, Ari is in pretty good shape. “Actually, we’re exploring it right now which is really great. It’s not what you expect this season from him that’s for sure which is so fun and great to play.”
With nearly three seasons of Entourage under his belt and his role as an agent in Steins, Piven has become even closer to his own representation. They get a kick out of his portrayal of their craft and even give him tips to make it more authentic. “They’re complimentary about it. One of my agents shows me his super secret special tie knots that I use. His name is Michael Kieves and he works at CAA and he’s let me into the world of his ties. He taught me this special knot which makes it really fat. It’s an authentic agent knot so little things like that make me believe that I’m a good actor. If I can get specific like that and the way that they deal with each call or clients or big picture stuff or deals and blah blah blah, all that helps me.”
Keeping Up with the Steins opens May 12 and Entourage comes back on June 11. |
