Most people on this side of the pond might recognize veteran English comedian Richard Ayoade as the oddball techie Moss on the Britcom The IT Crowd, or as the odd man out from the 2012 A-list sci-fi comedy The Watch (he was the gentleman who was not Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn or Jonah Hill). Hes established himself as a novel comic presence onscreen, gravitating toward characters that feel several beats off from the norm and dont mesh with their environments.
Communitys Critical Studies: Celebrating the 21st Centurys Greatest TV Episode
Behind the camera, however, Ayoade has become a specialist in the art of syncing. His debut feature, Submarine (2010), took Wes Andersons visual quirks and used them to make a coming-of-age film that could not have felt more provincially British. The Community episode he directed a double-helix homage/parody of both Pulp Fiction and My Dinner With Andre felt completely unique while sticking to the shows in-house style. (Some have called it the 21st centurys greatest TV episode.) And with his latest film, The Double, Ayoade loosely filters Fyodor Dostoevskys story of a clerk (Jesse Eisenberg) whos life is overtaken by his more confident doppelgnger (also Jesse Eisenberg) through a Kafkaesque dystopia of tyrannical bureaucracy and perpetual nighttime.
Rolling Stone talked to the 35-year-old writer-director-actor about his new movie, working with alt-rockers and why people are fascinated with Beyonc.
Youd been working on The Double before Submarine, right?
Yes. People dont merely read Dostoevskybecause hes like cod liver oil or something. Hes an incredibly popular writer, and his work doesnt feel like its aged.I think thats a feature of a genius writer. He was interested in what makes people tick, and thats the same as it ever was in some ways, hes the opposite of what films seem to be interested in, which is just stimulating your neural sensors. So his books feel completely contemporary, the concerns feel contemporary. The humor feels contemporary.
When we were making Submarine, there was no sense, certainly that this would be a popular film. There is no real coming of age genre or teen genre in England. There are a couple of films, like Kes andGregorys Girl. Its not like in America, where there are a number of teen films. Youd have people saying, No one watches teen films. This isnt commercial. With The Double, however,there was no sense of, Its Dostoevsky, thats difficult.I was never made to this feel like I was asking to film 70 Million Flies Do a Death Dance or something.
The Double takes place in what seems to a be a much more constructed world than Submarine a kind of dystopian alternate reality.
We had a great production designer, David Crank hes just doneInherent Viceand worked with Jack Fisk.It was filmed in an abandoned business estate about an hour outside of London; we made a lot of things from things that were there.Those computer banks, a lot of them were real. We augmented some of the elements, but they were based on real things, like in the sorting office; in England, they have those cubicles. Those things exist.
Theres no daylight in the film at all. That felt like function of the story, that kind of paranoia. Also, the humor is quite black, and it feels like it plays better at night. When I think of Dr. Strangelove, I dont see much daylight there, apart from the planes at the start. It feels that its night, that kind of crazed-ness. Those kind of delusions seem to be dispelled by sunlight. After Hours is another example of that kind of humor.
What was it about the books doppelgnger idea that resonated for you? And what was behind the idea of the double showing up up and no one notices him?
I suppose its just one of those things that is unexplainably funny. In the same way, I always found amazing this sketch in The Phantom of Liberty, the Luis Buuel film, where the parents come into the classroom and say, Weve lost our daughter. The teacher goes, This is terrible! and the daughter just wanders up and says Im here. They keep going, Well, where is she? and I dont know, and then they go through the whole day searching for her, with the daughter still there going, Im here!
Theres something that either gets you or it doesnt, and I just find it to be a brilliant idea, like KafkasMetamorphosisis, to me, a brilliant idea.Its a very fundamental thing about your sense of self, which everyone is involved with on a minute level, all day long: how they carry themselves, how they want to be seen, what words they choose, how they dress, how they interact, how they look. Its such a constant, and this is just a brilliant metaphorical working-out of what makes you unique, if at all.Why are people so interested in Beyonc versus some other person? That seems to be the predominant fascination with our culture, picking out these people who are worthy of absolute slavish obsession.
Especially now that you can follow them on Twitter or Instagram. Im so close to Beyonc! How come shes her and Im me?
Yeah, its an odd thing as well. I was reading Slavoj iek, who wrote abouthow its odd when a politician tries to be human. Its a betrayal, because they are their office. They have to say these things because this is their job. As soon as they pretend to be like us, they are definitely lying. So in a way, the more real someone tries to be, the more phony it is.
Theres also a corollary in films, which is that I find the more real a film tries to be, the more phony it is. I havent seen Captain Philips. Im sure its great, or whatever. But the idea that you feeling the movement of the lens makes you feel its more real you knowing someone is handling the camera makes you feel it is realistic, even though that is obviously making you aware that its a made thing. Its not whether the building looks like the kind of building you would live in. The fact that you can, within 1/24 of a second, jump 180 degrees around an axis is one of the most surreal things about cinema. You can see that, and thats really odd, and not normal.
Youve done several videos for Arctic Monkeys, as well as Vampire Weekend and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and though those bands dont have a lot in common, they all have a strong sense of performance and persona.
Yeah, definitely. Its interesting, Karen [O] starting to work with Ezra [Koenig], at the Oscars. I thought This is really strange. They kind of complement one another, their voices. Its really great to see it.
Its interesting to me the personae people have. It exists in a more widespread and accessible way. One of the most ridiculous things you can do is look up someones series of tweets. You go, What is this? What is it, exactly? Its public texting. Its the most self-conscious act its possible to make. It only exists to be witnessed, and so each thing is kind of a mini-performance. Like everything, its mutated into the thing that it becomes: Its just celebrity. Its why everyone loves hearing about people not being able to get into somewhere, like, Dont you know I am? The reality is that if someone doesnt know who you are, you arent Keanu Reeves. Youre just some dude in a beanie. Who are you? That, to me, is a funny question.
How did J Mascis end up in The Double?
Hes my favorite musician and I knew he could act. He was in Gas Food Lodging; you could just tell hes a great performer. It felt specifically important that you remember that character. He has one or two lines, and hes incredibly memorable, his voice, in a very small amount of time, registers. That was key in all the characters, the smaller parts, that they just needed to be very strong, very quickly. We were just fortunate that he agreed to do it.
Did you do The Watch between directing these two movies?
Yes. It was after Submarine, after I did that.
Thats obviously an entirely different scale of production.
Id say its a companion piece! [Laughs] I dont know how I got in it, really. I just presume everyone else was busy! I think Akiva [Schaffer], who directed it, had seen some shows I was in. Ben [Stiller] I knew, because he executive produced Submarine. Who knows? But yeah, Id never really been in anything professionally, as such. I knew everyone whose shows Id been in, or Id co-written or was directing. So it was interesting to see something on that scale, where someone can use Steadicam more than once on a film, those kind of things.
Did you take anything away from that experience going into The Double?
I dont know, it was odd because when it came out we were still shooting The Double, so I wasnt really aware. I didnt see it. And then it started to become an affectation that I hadnt seen it. I only went for a couple of days for press. I could go a quarter of the way up the red carpet, and then I had to leave before anyone else got there like the shortest prom ever, leaving at 7:00 p.m. Itd be weird to go and see it in a cinema, yourself, and I cant just sit in my house and watch it. I generally try to avoid watching things Im in. So Im aware of its existence in the world. Im aware that its not, perhaps, seen as midperiod Fellini.
I like all the actors in it, and I like Akiva for me, when Im in something, my job is just to serve the director and do what they want. Its kind of like giving a tissue sample. You have no idea what will be done with it. Thats the experience for me of being in something that Im not involved in the writing or directing of. You kind of go, You seem happy, okay!
Theres a sense that runs through a lot of things youve done of being in the world but not of it, whether youre playing an alien or, on The IT Crowd, a tech nerd with limited social skills.
Because youre so interested in the thing youre currently doing, youre not seeing it in a kind of lineage or anything. I guess Ive always liked things that say what they are, like The Catcher in the Rye which says, Im going to tell you what happened. Theres something I find reassuring about that.
To me, theres something very funny about very handsome movie stars pretending to be in real situations. Its one of the funniest, most surreal things, this incredibly handsome person going, You know, I think I might pack in my job as a chef. Its just hilarious to me. Whereas I love that Singin in the Rain has that [self-awareness] in it; it makes it so I can enjoy it as a result. Everything is artificial, is not real, and I find that is an inherent part of any experience.
I remember this thing Martin Scorsese says that everything has two processes: Its recording and shaping. Youre aware of whats being recorded, how its being recorded, is it on film, whatever it is, and how theyve chosen to shape this. I think you can enjoy those decisions, and participate in them, and still be involved as well. Otherwise, the logical end of it is that you literally are Michael Corleone, and you literally do feel that youve killed someone. You have no sense of who you are.
The 50 Funniest People Right Now
Very few people wrote about Submarine without mentioning Wes Anderson, and very few will write about The Double without invoking David Lynch and Terry Gilliam. You dont seem especially concerned with hiding your influences.
I think most everyone has been in that situation, really, since the first people who made films. In the atmosphere of commerce, theres a desire to go, Whats this like? Ive used this analogy before of My Bloody Valentine coming out and people going, What are they like? Maybe a bit like The Jesus and Mary Chain? Its got a lot of feedback. But its not like that. You need some kind of orientation. Submarine was definitely more like Wes Anderson than it was Porkys. Also, theres an extent to which you could take any story, and you go This is this persons territory. If you do a heist film where people make any pop culture reference, thats Tarantino.
In a way, I dont know how much it really matters, because I dont think anyones truly able to be someone else entirely, whether they want to or not. For me, Gilliam is Fellini-esque, in that way, but hes his own thing, with a kind of grotesque scale to it. Whereas this felt more about a romantic yearning, and a lonely thing.