| By Fred Topel
In Theaters June 16
|
You’ll see more of Jack Black than ever before in Nacho Libre. As a Mexican Lucha Libre wrestler, Black squeezes into spandex tights with all his glory hanging over the waistline. Black once joked that he would rather be naked than wear tights, but he has since rescinded that comment.
“No, I think that was wrong,” Black said. “I was wrong when I said that before. I’d like to call this press conference to print a retraction. I would definitely rather wear the tights than be naked because they cover my penis. The end.”
For a man in Black’s condition, taking on real luchadore wrestlers could have been life threatening. Black got a little hostility from one of the tag team midgets. “One of them was probably the best wrestler of all the wrestlers. He had a really busy schedule. I don’t think he liked me. There was a weird thing there. We were rehearsing and he didn’t want to be there. He’d be like, ‘Ah man, I’d rather be in Mexico City doing my next wrestling match.’ He was like the Michael Jordan of the little people’s wrestling association.”
Otherwise, the fighters went easy on him. “Those dudes were cool, actually. It turned out they're mostly sweethearts. I was worried going into it like, 'Oh, man. I'm gonna be wrestling like real luchadores, who have not acted in movies before. They're just gonna be like treating me like one of the wrestlers. They're gonna break my neck, because I'm a sweet, delicate Hollywood comedian. I can't deal with this real athleticism.' But it turned out that I was kickass and there was nothing to worry about.”
The midget fight was still Black’s favorite though. “I had a good experience with Satan’s Cavemen, the wrestlers who came up to my navel and they were really tremendous athletes too. They kicked my ass but good. They flung me around like a rag doll and they punctured my privates, but for the good of the film. And then at the end of the day, I gave them a low five and said let’s rock it.”
After surviving the Luchadores, Black has a few secret moves should he encounter any trouble in real life. “I can perform the Anaconda Squeeze at the drop of a hat. If somebody tries to come at me from behind, I know how to do the Wind-of-the-Land Double-Squat, so they'd better think twice.”
Black also faced a group of child actors. His character is a friar by day in an orphanage, keeping his wrestler identity a secret. “We had great kids. I always like working with the kids. I’ve had good experiences. I’m kind of the Pied Piper of the children. They all want to know what Jack’s doing. I wasn’t sure if my pipe, my pied pipe, worked south of the border, that maybe it only works on American kids. No. It works in Mexico, too. They come following me around all through the land.”
Pairing Black with Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess proved a winning combination as well. “He's definitely drawn to the peculiar and he's got a very quirky strange sense of humor that is unique and that's what he brings to the table, something fresh, which is so refreshing when everything is so cookie-cutter boring now, you know. I loved Napoleon Dynamite. That’s why I reached out to him, as we say in the Hollywood insider’s community. I said, ‘Jared, I’m a fan of your work. I assume you’re a fan of mine. Let’s work together.’ ‘Um, yeah.’”
Clearly skilled at making random nonsense funny in daily conversation, Black said there was little improvisation in the film. “Not a lot of improv. Little nuggets fly in and out here or there. I can’t really remember if I had any good improv’s or not, but it was a fun, collaborative feeling on the set. If I thought of something funny, Jared was always into trying it. So that was cool.”
Perhaps he was spending more time trying to sound like a Mexican than rewriting the script. “I worked hard on the accent, just tried to immerse myself in the world of Mexico. Learned as much Spanish as I could. You know, I lived down there for a few weeks, so I was surrounded by authentic, rich accents.”
He did have time to write the song Nacho sings in his locker room though, in the tradition of Tenacious D. “I write the songs that make the whole world sing. I did write the song in the locker room with Jared and Mike. We all jammed that out together. I was stoked that came out funny. It's my specialty, writing bad songs that are also really good.”
Nacho Libre opens June 16. |
