![\"cyrus_1sh\"](\"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/cyrus_1sh.jpg\" "\\"Cyrus:")
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Even when he\u2019s dressed smartly with a sleek black shirt and dark sports jacket,\u00a0 his snazzy straw hat lying on the table nearby, John C. Reilly<\/a> can\u2019t help but elicit one adjective he just can\u2019t shake: craggy.<\/p>\n Perhaps it\u2019s his hound-dog eyes or maybe it\u2019s his mop of curly hair. Or it could be his distinctive voice, reminiscent of Tex Avery\u2019s Droopy Dog character. \u00a0Whatever.\u00a0 The guy looks like he just rolled out of bed.<\/p>\n Talk to him, however, and you soon learn that not every picture tells the correct story. The 45-year-old Chicago native and alumnus of the Windy City\u2019s revered Steppenwolf Theater Company turns out to be smart, witty, down-to-earth and perceptive when it comes to acting. Perhaps you sort of expect the latter, since he\u2019s been performing for 22 years, 21 years in the movies, beginning with small parts in two 1989 Sean Penn films; Brian DePalma\u2019s Vietnam drama Casualties of War and the comedy We\u2019re No Angels with Robert DeNiro.<\/p>\n Now, after all those years and all those roles\u2014as clueless hubbies in The Good Girl, Chicago and The Hours, as trusted sidekicks in The Aviator, Boogie Nights, The Perfect Storm and Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby, and as bad guys in Gangs of New York and The River Wild\u2014comes something completely different.<\/p>\n In Cyrus, a new dark comedy by Jay and Mark Duplass<\/a>, pioneers of the so-called no-frills, improvisational \u201cmumblecore\u201d movement, Reilly, regarded by many as an expert \u201ccharacter actor,\u201d is given a rare chance to play a lead in a movie. He\u2019s John, a sad sack divorced editor whose only friend is his remarried ex-wife (Catherine Keener<\/a>). At a party, in which he performs a drunken impromptu version of Human League\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t You Want Me,\u201d John attracts the attention of Molly (Marisa Tomei<\/a>), a pretty single woman charmed by John\u2019s vulnerability. Things click between the two, and John starts believing he may have met the perfect woman. Then he discovers she has a son named Cyrus (Jonah Hill<\/a>). John also finds out that Mary and the 21-year-old Cyrus \u2013 who is a talented musician and seemingly mature beyond his years\u2014have a very unusual relationship. It is this mother-child union, in fact, that threatens John\u2019s relationship with Mary, and, thus, his hope of future happiness.<\/p>\n Like the 2007 Judd Apatow-produced rock music spoof Rock Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Cyrus offers Reilly the rare opportunity to star in a film. But this time, things were quite different behind the scenes than what Reilly was accustomed to.<\/p>\n \u201cI had seen The Puffy Chair,\u201d says Reilly during a stop in Philadelphia, referring to the Duplass brothers\u2019 first film, a road movie regarded as the seminal effort of the mumblecore movement.\u00a0 \u201cMy wife (Alison Dickey) is an indie film producer and she met them at a couple of film festivals. She said I was going to love those guys, they work in this improvisational way, you have to see The Puffy Chair.<\/p>\n \u201cI saw the movie and told her to tell them I\u2019d love to work with them, to tell them to find something for us to do. They took it to heart, they wrote the script and we met. They said, \u2018We wrote this character for you and they said if you want to do the movie, great. And if you don\u2019t want to, we\u2019re not going to make this movie, were going to do something else. We tailored it to you.\u2019 That was really flattering. So I said, \u2018Yeah. I guess I\u2019m doing it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The Puffy Chair was made for $10,000 and, while the budget on the Duplass brothers\u2019 next production (Baghead) grew, Cyrus cost only a few million to make, a fraction of most movies these days.<\/p>\n Reilly thinks the secret to their filmmaking process and the art of keeping costs down is \u201cbeing brutally honest every day by trying to get the actors to talk each other every day, a lot of improvisation and you had to be open to the story changing. It seemed like we needed to tell the truth in another way. If anything seemed phony or canned or too movie-ish, they said, \u2018Let\u2019s try it another way.\u2019 They said, \u2018You play the character now, what do you think you would you do?\u2019 \u00a0So they would trust my instincts.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s different than most movies. With most movies you get a script and do it. In movies in which I improvised like the ones with Will Ferrell, it was within a framework. You do the scripted version once or twice, and if it\u2019s working well, then we\u2019ll start to riff or change things. But these guys, they won\u2019t rehearse. They didn\u2019t talk too much about what was going to happen in a scene.\u201d<\/p>\n Says Reilly, most scenes in Cyrus were completed in one or two takes, without written dialogue.<\/p>\n \u201cThey gave us a lot of freedom\u2014almost too much freedom for my taste,\u201d he admits. \u201cYou know, it\u2019s a little easier day at work when you have to memorize something and do your best with it.\u00a0 It\u2019s almost like a screenwriting process when you\u2019re improvising that much. But it turned into a really original feeling, a cool movie I was really proud of.\u201d<\/p>\n Getting ready to shoot a day on Cyrus, Reilly claims, was also unique. \u201cMy only preparation for this movie was thinking, \u2018What do I have to do to prepare today?\u2019 I just have to prepare to feel totally unprepared. You just have to get into a good mood and let the creative juices flow and don\u2019t get hung up on things or angry at anything or hold on to things. You just let go and surrender to the moment and forgive yourself for not feeling prepared. And that was the same way with the directors.\u201d<\/p>\n Like the recent Ben Stiller starrer Greenberg, Cyrus can be deemed \u201can uncomfortable comedy,\u201d because the humor stems from edgy situations and character traits that make the film\u2019s principals\u2014and the audience\u2014uneasy.<\/p>\n With Cyrus, there is an added squirm factor because of the bizarre, intimate relationship between mother Tomei and son Hill. \u201cThe heebie jeebies were intentional,\u201d confesses Reilly. \u201cWhat makes peoples\u2019 skin crawl is that they are acting a different age than they are. She\u2019s treating this 21 year old like he\u2019s 12 years old and you can still hug mommy and there aren\u2019t little checkpoints \u00a0along the way, like maybe I won\u2019t walk around the house in my underwear anymore or maybe I won\u2019t walk around naked when my mom is in the shower.\u201d<\/p>\n Reilly has been a busy actor for most of his career, juggling studio and indie movies with occasional stints in theater (he played Stanley Kowalski to Natasha Richardson\u2019s Blanche DuBois in a 2005 Roundabout Theatre Company production of A Streetcar Named Desire) and television (he\u2019s made cult waves as Dr. Brule, a demented medical expert on Adult Swim\u2019s trippy cable access spoof Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!). Already in the can are We Need To Talk About Kevin, about how a mother copes with her teenage son\u2019s killing spree, directed by Lynne Ramsay<\/a> (Ratcatcher) and Cedar Rapids, a satire about the economy and downsizing starring Ed Helms from Miguel Arteta<\/a> (The Good Girl).<\/p>\n With all this varied work, one wonders if Reilly has any interest in going behind the cameras himself.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a clich\u00e9 for an actor to say it (that he wants to direct), but definitely,\u201d says Reilly, a DePaul University graduate. \u201cI\u2019ve made 50 movies by now and you start to say \u2018I know what to do.\u2019 Like I\u2019ve been on Martin Scorsese<\/a>\u2019s set and Woody Allen<\/a>\u2019s set and Terrence Malick<\/a>\u2019s set and Paul Thomas Anderson<\/a>\u2019s set and the Duplass brothers\u2019 set and I\u2019ve seen how to do this. I\u2019ve been doing it for 22 years. So, yeah, it\u2019s a natural progression.\u201d<\/p>\n To prove he\u2019s serious about getting behind the camera, Reilly recently optioned a manuscript that has yet to be published. He also has had some experience with writing, working on Step Brothers and Dewey Cox, and is looking forward to doing more of that in the future. Reilly believes one of the steps for an actor to becoming a good director is simple, but something not all actors do.<\/p>\n \u201c\u201cYou have to be ready to step away from the camera as an actor,\u201d relates Reilly. \u201c I\u2019ve been directed by actors behind the cameras in the past. They\u2019re like \u2018I want to do it,\u2019 but they\u2019re not doing it\u2014I\u2019m doing it! There\u2019s a leap to be made there. And I really respect the director a lot. \u00a0It\u2019s not something every actor can do naturally. It takes preparation and it\u2019s a lot more work, too, and it\u2019s a big, big time commitment.\u201d<\/p>\n The actor counts his films with Martin Scorsese, Gangs of New York, playing a corrupt constable, and The Aviator, in which he plays a close business ally to Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio), two of the more memorable experiences he\u2019s had in the business.<\/p>\n \u201cBeyond being the consummate director, it was like watching a great painter with the technical understanding of what camera movement and specific lenses do to an audience,\u201d recalls Reilly. \u201cHe just has an innate understanding of it (filmmaking) as a technician.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s probably the only person I\u2019ve worked with as deep an understanding of film history within the context in which he\u2019s working. If he refers to something, it\u2019s deliberate. There\u2019re no accidental references. \u00a0It\u2019s an education working with him. You have to keep a pencil in your pocket all the time because he talks really fast and he\u2019ll start rattling stuff really fast. \u2018Did you see Black Narcissus…da-da-da.\u2019 You have to write things down so you can have Martin Scorsese film festivals when you\u2019re done.\u201d<\/p>\n