hey aspire to be superheroes. But before they'll be taken seriously, the oddly mismatched team of Mystery Men (which includes one brazen woman) must first face the devilish Casanova Frankenstein. Based on the Flaming Carrot
series from Dark Horse Comics and directed by Kinka Usher, the
ensemble comedy stars the versatile William H. Macy as The Shoveler,
Saturday Night Live alumni Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo as Mr. Furious and The Bowler, and the Oscar-winning Geoffrey Rush as the diabolical
madman Casanova Frankenstein. Go behind the scenes of Mystery Men as
the actors share their thoughts on the making of the film:
William, was it fun to play a superhero?
Macy: It was a complete hoot. All of the really stupid
stuff was completely fun, like wearing the costumes, and swinging that
shovel around. I didn't do a lot of back story about where The
Shoveler started shoveling, but I know he worked in construction. I
looked at my role as sort of the heart of the gang, or the moral
compass for the gang. Interestingly, all of the actors in this thing I
thought were quite inventive on how they were going to play their
characters in ways that were not on the page. And I found myself cut
short a little bit when we started rehearsing the thing, since I
hadn't found a hook for my character. At the last minute, I thought,
Gary Cooper should be my role model in this thing. I requested and
Kinka agreed to cut half my lines. I decided to be very simple and
sort of monosyllabic in my dialogue. What I wanted to do was sort of
based on the Western hero: the guy that takes in all of the issue on
the thing, thinks about it, decides what's right, and never looks back.
Did it take lots of practice to learn how to wield that shovel?
Macy: I worked my butt off. I worked really
hard. I did the first two weeks of the shoot with this horrible gash
over my eye because Id been swinging the thing around and then
clocked myself in the face. With my own shovel! I hit myself
a lot with that shovel.
Janeane, at first you passed on this role. What made you change your mind?
Garofalo: I met with Kinka. He was nice and funny, and the
money was good, so I did it. [The original script] wasn't exactly as
it is now. There were a lot of things that were different, and a lot
dialogue that was different, and I didn't love it. I definitely saw
what was funny, but it was different than the finished product.
What did you bring to your character?
Garofalo: I made her a reluctant bowler. She didn't really
want to bowl, she wanted to go to graduate school and investigate the
life of the mind. But she felt obligated to avenge her father's death.
Ben, Janeane had to twist your arm
to join the cast. Why the reluctance?
Stiller: Janeane helped me get into the film; she committed before
I did. At one point, I had been approached about directing and
rewriting the movie, and so I'd seen [the script] and almost had done
that. And then I decided I didn't want to do it because it was just
too much of huge movie to take on. I liked the concept, but I couldn't
conceive of how to do something that big. However, when I saw the cast
that Kinka put together--Paul [Reubens], Janeane, William Macy--it
became a really interesting opportunity. The idea of a real superhero
movie but with a bunch of guys who wanted to be superheroes and
weren't that good, like the B-level guys, I thought that was a really
good idea.
How much improv went into the film?
Stiller: There's a lot of improvisation and work on the script
amongst all of us as we were preparing. There was a lot of
collaboration happening on the writing. And then, as we shot it, we did
do a lot of different versions and tried a lot of different things.
Geoffrey, is it fun to play the gleefully malevolent villain?
Rush: Yes. He's a freak. There are thousands of villains
every year in literature and movies who want to take over the world or
take over the city. But there is something about the freakish aspect
of it that really appealed.
Mystery Men is quite the change of pace for you. Why did you sign on?
Rush: As an actor, it was really a nice bit of timing. I was
very aware of that--that I'd done Les Miserables, Elizabeth, and
Shakespeare in Love all in one year, and it was just a nice stimulus
to have a script come along. I was looking for something a little
cheesier, a little more playful. I wanted to vary my menu. There was
no instant reference as to whom Casanova Frankenstein was like. When I
read [the script], that's what actually appealed to me.
