Jenna Fischer Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Forget being merely the side spotlight, love interest, and co-star to the hordes of funny men out there. Jenna Fischer has grabbed the top line. Variety reports that she's signed on to star in a new indie dramedy called A Little Help -- the feature directorial debut for Michael J. Weithorn (creator of King of Queens). Now you may be envisioning what sort of "help" she's going to give or get, but I bet you weren't thinking this: the film focuses on "a recently widowed single mom who reconnects with an old flame -- her sister's husband."

Yes, we're finally going to see her break out and grab the spotlight all for herself. But we get to watch her do it while stealing her sister's husband. Do we need more instigators to tap into that inner paranoia and make male-female friendships, or friendships with exes for that matter, such dangerous territory? This idea was creepy enough in 27 Dresses, and that was pre-wedding shenanigans. (I know there are other sibling/romance triangles out there, but I'm hitting a mental roadblock. Help me out!)

At the very least, I'm eager to see how she handles such a sticky situation. While Fischer is quickly becoming a beloved female laugh machine, she hasn't gotten to stretch this far before. The film begins production in January.

We're getting more Beverly Hills Ninja. It might be September, but it feels like it's Christmas! Variety reports that the film will be the first mainstream Hollywood flick to shoot in South Korea, but it's still keeping to its roots with the simple name -- Beverly Hills Ninja 2. Written by Mitch Klebanoff (co-producer and writer of the original), who will also direct, the terrible idea will focus on "an orphaned boy who wants to be a ninja but becomes involved in a crime in Hollywood while looking for his real parents." One would think Kevin Farley might be the guy heading this sucker, but no it's DAVID HASSELHOFF. Oh yes, try to resist the Hoff going ninja.

Farley, instead, gets a little something different. What do you do after you run with the cliche of "unattractive" girls who can miraculously become hot with the help of a shunned Playboy bunny? Divorced dudes. Variety reports the director of House Bunny, Fred Wolf, is directing a new flick called Divorced Guys. The comedy, which follows a group of divorced guys who go on a road trip to figure out how their marriages failed, was written by Wolf, Farley, and David Spade, who will also star.

Meanwhile, it looks like Michael Douglas is gearing up for another wacky role that could be worth the time. Variety reports that he's going to "play a car magnate with a runaway libido" in a new film called Solitary Man. More specifically, he's a guy who used to be the owner of a chain of car dealerships until "business and romantic indiscretions" mucked things up. Making the whole thing more intriguing -- Susan Sarandon, Danny DeVito, and Jenna Fischer are in talks to co-star. It's not quite as cool as him playing Liberace, but it'll do.

In one of the more inspired viral marketing campaigns that I've come across, um, today, actor Rainn Wilson has apparently taken his co-star from TV's 'The Office,' the lovely and talented Jenna Fischer, hostage in his trunk until his new film, The Rocker, opens to the tune of $18.7 million next week.

Mind you, that's $18.7 million in American dollars, as specified on the initial MySpace ransom post (the Fox-owned MySpace, natch), and Fischer has been promised a peach smoothie for her troubles. Any and all further updates are to be posted instead on the aptly-named blog Free Jenna Now! (the maxim of which is "See a great movie. Save a good person.").

Eric D. Snider reviewed the film at CineVegas, and I can pretty much echo every sentiment he shared then regarding its supposed greatness. Regardless, The Rocker opens on Wednesday, August 20th, while Rainn's trunk opens on Monday, August 25th.

[Thanks to regular reader WW for the tip.]

The parody subgenre once gave us comedy classics like Young Frankenstein, Airplane!, Top Secret!, and The Naked Gun. This glorious tradition has been disgracefully violated in recent years by the likes of the cleverly titled Epic Movie and Date Movie. (As for the latter -- a spoof of comedies? Outstanding idea!) Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a parody of musical biopics like Walk the Line and Ray, marks the pretty damn triumphant return of the spoof film. The movie also marks the return of Judd Apatow, and I'm pleased to report that Walk Hard completes a 2007 hat trick for the man. It easily joins Knocked Up and Superbad to form the unholy trinity of the year's superior comedies.

Starting in fictional rock star Dewey Cox's boyhood Tennessee home and ending some sixty years later after his bouts with women, booze, and pills, the film traces the blood pumping rise...of Cox. (First and last Cox joke, I promise.) The script gets Cox making music quickly, and good thing. I'm not sure why the first ten minutes of Walk Hard were released online as part of the marketing plan, they're easily the weakest scenes of the film. But once John C. Reilly enters the picture, portraying Cox at age fourteen despite being 25 years older (a dig at Kevin Spacey in Beyond the Sea?), it's pretty much smooth sailing.

The stars of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story recently made their way to the offices of Columbia Pictures in Manhattan and did some roundtable interviews about the film. The highlight of the day was probably John C. Reilly comparing the film's money -- Willie the Chimp -- to Elvis's pet chimp Scatter and pointing out that Scatter ended up freezing to death in an outdoor cage while the Dewey Cox monkey was given a good home in Northern California after his usefulness came to an end. Other than that, it was pretty much what you might expect -- lots of questions about the life and times of Dewey Cox, the occasional question about the strike and how it's affecting actors, and assorted other tidbits. Here are some samples from the roundtables of John C. Reilly and Jenna Fischer.


John C. Reilly

You have to navigate a lot of different musical styles in this film.

Yeah, it really suited me well, I thought. As an actor I kind of think of myself as a chameleon, you know? Not really someone who plays my own personality. I'm not even really sure what my own personality is. I'm sort of a collection of the characters I've played. So playing all these different musical styles was great for me because rather than having to pick one thing that I was gonna specialize in, I could just go with the times like Dewey does. That was one of the things, as we kind of discover the character -- we recorded the music six months before we made the movie and we recorded something like 40 original songs. After we did a couple of songs we were trying to figure out, as we go from the 50s to the 60s, how is this guy gonna change with the times? Who is he? And I said to Jake that we should just decide what the guy's nickname is, because once we have the nickname then it gives us a guide to where to go with the music. So we kept recording music and it became apparent, the guy's nickname is The Chameleon or The Changeling or The Shape-Shifter. Dewey's almost like this Forrest Gump-like character -- he transforms with the times

How did you decide on what music to include?

Well, it was a few different things. The songs needed to be funny but they also needed to be really listenable, because there's so much music in the movie. We didn't want it to be just silly joke songs that would be tough to listen to, you know? Also, the musicians involved had a lot of pride on the line. They weren't going to just make some thing that sounds stupid. So yeah, we were trying to make stuff sound good and be funny but also be specific to the character, and that's why it was really helpful to have Jake Kasdan, the director, there in the recording studio every day when we were making this music. Sometimes we'd be trying to evoke a certain artist and other times and other times we were just trying to make the song fit into a time period and other times we were just trying to have the song reflect what the character was going through at a different point in the movie.

Monday night I had the privilege of seeing Dewey Cox -- better known as John C. Reilly -- live at The Roxy ("Coxy") Theater on the Sunset Strip. Cox and his band The Hard Walkers put on a hell of a show, tearing through all the hits from Cox's glorious career -- soon to be given the big screen treatment in Walk Hard. Reilly came out of the gate ready to rock, and stayed in character all night. He came off like a cruder, nastier Elvis Presley -- guzzling tequila, repeatedly calling us all "motherf***ers, making a downright overwhelming amount of "Cox" jokes, and asking a woman in the audience if he could grab her breast. And grab he did!

But what about the music? Cox performed nearly every track from the Walk Hard soundtrack, and considering this was his "first performance since 1984," he was in fine voice. Reilly dropped out of tune for a song or two but on the whole he sounded pretty terrific, especially on the strangely affecting Roy Orbison homage "A Life Without You (Is No Life at All)." Other standouts included the Johnny Cashtastic "Guilty as Charged," the rollicking "You've Got to Love Your Negro Man," and the hilariously offensive protest song "Dear Mr. President." Reilly played guitar and harmonica pretty well, but since the actors in Cox's movie band (Chris Parnell, Tim Meadows) don't really play, they had to watch on from the audience -- along with co-writer/director Jake Kasdan and Judd Apatow -- while a stand-in group of musicians rocked the house.

The show closed with a shirtless Cox moaning through the beguiling "Have You Heard the News (Dewey Cox Died)," rubbing his nipples, and throwing down his microphone. I can't imagine anyone leaving the theater disappointed, and if the live show is any indication, Walk Hard is going to be one hysterical movie. Wanna see Cox? There's still a few dates left on the "Cox Across America" mini-tour.

Check out the gallery below ...

After skyrocketing to big-screen fame while playing the girl-next-door-type on NBC's The Office, Jenna Fischer is itching to do what most actresses fear: nudity. Lots of it. While speaking to MTV, Fischer revealed that she's currently working on her own film, one she's co-writing, producing and -- we imagine -- starring in as well. It's an indie comedy -- or as she calls it, "a real ensemble comedy" -- and while she wouldn't give up a whole lot of details, she did reveal two of the stars: "Boobs! You don't see the whole thing, folks, but there's a lot of the ladies in this film that have been hidden under Pam's sweaters for a long time. I also just think the sort of humor of it [will surprise people]. I think we're used to seeing me a little more confined. And this is, like, a bigger, bolder, brassier part ... with a lot of boobies."

Mmmm, nothing wrong with "a lot of boobies," says the guy whose wife isn't in the room. When asked who else she'd like to see in the film, Fischer responded, "I hope John C. Reilly will star in with me. Because I would actually like to do every single film with John C. Reilly for the rest of my career." There's something we have in common -- I, myself, wouldn't mind seeing John C. Reilly perform in every single film that comes out for the rest of my life. Love the guy. Always have, always will. And if that's her wish, then she's off to a good start: Fischer currently stars opposite Reilly in the musical comedy Walk Hard (due out later this month), and is also working on a comedy called The Promotion opposite -- you guessed it - John C. Reilly. So look for plenty of Fischer, Reilly and boobies at your local cineplex real soon.

UPDATE: Jenna was mis-quoted in the MTV interview; she does not, in fact, get naked in this new indie feature. I repeat: She does NOT go topless. She was referring to her role in Walk Hard, and the fact that she "shows a lot of chest" in the movie. Not her bare chest, mind you, but her chest. Clothed. Sorry guys. But we still love you Jenna!

Other than a few "f-bombs" and a positive endorsement of marijuana, there really isn't all that much in the new international trailer for Judd Apatow's musical spoof, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story that could be considered particularly controversial. This is a film from the same man who brought us Superbad and Knocked Up, so it's not like we weren't already expecting drug references and potty mouth. Thankfully, in the age of the Yellow Band trailer, anything goes. You can check out the trailer now over on YouTube, or look for it after the jump. Walk Hard stars John C. Reilly as Dewey Cox, Jenna Fischer as his long-suffering love, and Tim Meadows as Dewey's long-time drummer and friend. Jake Kasdan (Orange County) directed and also helped write the script along with Apatow. This time, rather than just riff on the dramatic spoof angle, this one goes straight for the belly laugh. Not necessarily a bad choice, but I still like the overt seriousness of the first trailer (but that could just be me).

So despite not being completely blown away by what I've seen, there still seems to plenty of giggles to be had -- plus you have to love a 'For Your Consideration' ad that has the star flipping off the camera. We've been reporting on the film for a while now, and can you blame us? Now that 'R' rated comedy is finally getting the respect it deserves, it's just nice to go to the movies without a "tween" in sight. Walk Hard was originally set for release this month, but instead the movie hits theaters on December 21.

Cinematical has just received the first official poster for Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (click on the image above for a larger version), the upcoming comedy written by Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan. Do I need to say more, or are you already sold? I mean, if John C. Reilly in a Jim Morrison-like pose doesn't do it for ya, we've got issues to discuss. Essentially, the film will be spoofing all those popular musical biopics, like Walk the Line, etc ..., but I take it the flick will be a major step up from the silly spoofs like Scary Movie and Not Another Teen Movie, etc .. It'll be silly, sure, but check out some of this cast: John C. Reilly, Jenna Fischer, Paul Rudd, Justin Long, Jason Schwartzman, Jack Black, just about every popular SNL cast member in recent years and White Striper Jack White as Elvis Presley.

Walk Hard follows the life and times of fictional music legend Dewey Cox (Reilly) who, throughout his turbulent (yet awe-inspiring) career, fathers 22 kids, 14 step-kids, becomes addicted and subsequently kicks every drug known to man, and falls in love with his longtime backup singer Darlene (Fischer). Somewhere along the way, he also makes friends with everyone from The Beatles to Elvis -- and stars in his own 70s Variety Show. As a big fan of everyone involved, I know this movie is going to kick major ass -- how can it not? Directed by Jake Kasdan (who also helmed the very funny Orange County and comes from the same Freaks and Geeks world as Apatow), Walk Hard is set to sing its way into theaters on December 21.

I'm an enormous fan of The Office, which is probably the finest sitcom on TV right now. It's perfectly cast, right down to the tiniest roles. And when they don't take the character too broad, Rainn Wilson's Dwight Schrute is one of the best characters on the air. (This clip of Dwight contains one of the biggest laughs I got from the boob tube last year). It seems you can't turn around these days without seeing the Office gang on the big screen. Jenna Fischer is in theaters now with Blades of Glory. Steve Carell will be Evan Almighty this summer. Wilson just starred in The Last Mimzy, and today brings the announcement of a new comedy called Girlfriend Experience. In it, Wilson will play "a lonely geek who, in an effort to make himself seem more desirable, hires a prostitute to pretend she's his girlfriend."

Wilson came up with the idea, which has to have been done before at some point, right? He hired Mark and Brian Gunn to write the script after reading Juvie -- written for Michael Scott himself, Steve Carell -- about a man sentenced to a youth prison. The Gunns also wrote the upcoming Mighty Mouse film. You'd think Wilson would be nervous about that title after the absolutely disastrous My Super Ex-Girlfriend, which was among the worst movies I saw last year. Hopefully he'll have better luck with this new Girlfriend. Wilson also just completed work on Juno, a teen pregnancy comedy starring Ellen Page, Jennifer Garner, and my beloved Arrested Development combo Jason Bateman and Michael Cera. Juno is director Jason Reitman's follow-up to Thank You for Smoking. The two must have hit it off, because Wilson is currently working on a script for Reitman to direct. Let it Rainn!