How are you doing?
I'm well, I'm well, and you get really good, thanks.
I really enjoyed Freaky.
I saw actually last of last October, but it's a film that's really stuck with me.
I'm going to begin by asking about your character.
He's not the nicest bloke, is he?
I mean, you don't have to name names here, but did you use any people from your
your real life to to help kind of craft this character?
Well, yes, I did. Yeah,
I had a high school teacher, and this is an awful long time ago.
He was a chemistry teacher and he was just mean.
He was just a mean spirited person.
And I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, and for some reason,
Florida was all the rage and people would go off to Florida
for vacation and come home with these plastic pink flamingos,
you know, and put them in their garden.
It really silly.
But anyway, everyone had them
and he had a couple of them in the chemistry room.
And he would come over and ask a question.
And if you didn't answer fast enough or
he just didn't like you, he would peck you on top of the head
with the pink flamingo, which actually hurt quite a lot, you know.
And I just happened to have a very I was you know, as you can imagine,
I was small and skinny and I was
I was an easy mark for a bully.
Well, I just happened to have a friend.
We were in theater together who was quite muscular.
And he sat next to me and Lenny, his name was Lenny Cosempa.
He's no longer with us, but he just said to this teacher,
why don't you try hitting me on top of the head?
And then and then the chemistry teacher never did that again.
But he was he was infamous for that.
He was he was a bad guy.
He was he was infamous for getting involved with underage girls.
He had a photography
sort of hobby, and he had a darkroom in the chemistry room.
And he would entice young girls to learn about the wonders
of photography in the darkroom.
He was that kind of guy.
Wow. Oh, well, he sounds like an even bigger douchebag than your characters.
Yeah. I wasn't allowed to explore all that horror horrors.
Not really a genre we've seen you do too much of.
Was that kind of part of the appeal here?
Because you are someone who's tried your hand in most types of films.
And once it's almost like a box.
Was there a sense of box ticked when you made this? Absolutely.
I made a couple of short films in the horror genre, but never a feature.
And, you know, before I hang up my spurs, I kind of want to try
to do everything I can, and I would like to do more, you know,
whether I'm the guy that gets killed or whether I'm the bad guy
that goes around killing people.
I think it's a lot of fun and I think it's great escapist entertainment.
And I think that Chris Landon [director] really thread the needle on this one.
I really think that he
he pulled it off.
Quite a feat of balancing the horror and the comedy.
I thought it was very impressive.
I mean, I thought I thought so when I read it, you know,
and then when I heard that Vince Vaughn was going to be
inhabited by the spirit of a sixteen year old girl,
that pretty much sold me, I was like, I have to be a part of this show.
Yeah. I mean, you mentioned how well Christopher kind of balances the comedy
and the horror, but much of that, I guess, does come down to Vince.
Doesn't mean he's got this brilliant capacity to test
to just move so seamlessly between genres.
Yeah, he's an awfully gifted guy and
he's immediately likable.
What's amazing is he plays this horrid serial killer.
But, you know, it's kind of like that pulp Pulp Fiction
thing with Travolta and Sam Jackson.
They're murderers. They're wretched murderers, you know.
But you kind of love them.
You just can't help but love them.
And I think that Vince has that same quality that,
you know, he can.
In a way, you root for him until the end when you don't. Yeah.
But instore is something of the safe bet you're talking about mean.
Jason Bluhm is about a safer bet as producers get in Hollywood
at the moment. Is that something you take into account as an actor?
Are you just focused on on the strength of the character in the screenplay
or or do you look at kind of bigger the bigger picture
and think about who's producing and think about things in those terms?
Well, well, truthfully, in my in my career,
until just very recently, it's just been if I've been offered a job, I'd take it.
And there hasn't been too much thought put into
whether or not this is a top shelf producer or
or the best quality script I could possibly find.
I've been doing a lot of bill paying in my life and
just recently, and just things have just fallen into my lap.
Like I got this show on on HBO succession.
It just fell into my lap.
Know? And so now I'm working with some of the best people in the business.
And every now and then, about every 10 years that happens to me
that somebody from the top shelf reaches down and says,
Alan, why don't you hang out with us for a little bit?
You know, and but
happily, that this role in Freaky was just offered to me.
Chris decided that he wanted to be in it and he bounced it off.
Jason and Jason said, great idea.
So that was just another bit of good fortune for me.
But yeah, I like the way Jason makes movies.
He's a smart guy.
You know, it's his sort of formula for these lower budget,
smaller budget pictures is that we all take a chance.
And if it's successful,
everybody gets you know, everybody gets paid, you know.
So it's it's he's a smart fellow and he makes some good movies.
Excellent movies, really. You mentioned Bill paying.
I mean, you've been paying the bills
and brilliant roles and some brilliant projects, though.
I mean, because obviously this past year, we've all got quite reflective, I think.
And with that comes nostalgia and with nostalgia comes kind
of revisiting our favorite films, for it's like putting on an old jumper.
So I've been watching, you know, films like Speed of Ferris
Bueller's Day Off. And it really struck me.
I mean, you've been in some real
classic films, you must say, fondly over over your career.
I'm I'm very happy.
I've been a very lucky guy.
There were times when I didn't think so.
And, you know, that's just ego or whatever.
It's I don't know who I think I am sort of situation.
But I've had I've had a lot of fun.
You know, I mean,
I've been in some good comedies.
I've been in some
thrillers, you know, some good chase pictures.
I did one Western.
I thought maybe I wanted to try one Western,
although it will probably kill me.
But I probably I won't try one more Western before it's all over.
Yeah, I'm I'm pretty happy with the way things have worked out.
I sure have. Yeah.
So what what you mentioned that obviously you've used to maybe not think that way.
Maybe your ego got in the way. But what changed for you?
What made you change that perspective?
Well, I stopped drinking for one.
That was a big help.
I started to realize that, you know, just
that I'm just another guy on the planet with billions of other people.
And hopefully I get to do what I do for fun.
I get to do what I like.
And I've really been blessed that way.
There's so many people that.
They struggle. They don't they don't have a shot at their dreams.
And here I've been you know, I've kind of been living the dream
all these years and just pouting about not things exactly going my way.
And so I, I had some years ago
what what is known as a moment of clarity.
And I just started to count my blessings.
And it's made all the difference in my life.
And I was always thinking when it's mentioned - Ferris
Bueller before that, which was one of those films,
I'd love to sit down and watch my kids when I have them.
I just wonder if you've been able to have that experience
with your kids, a younger family members of yours, or you sat down
and showed them your kind of movies and how you enjoy kind of sharing those
experiences with your family.
It's fun to see how they react.
I have I have two sets of children.
I have fully grown children now, and then I have some younger kids.
And when my very oldest, Emma,
who is now a nurse and I'm very proud of that,
first saw me in Ferris
Bueller, she couldn't get over the fact that I was once a kid.
She said she said Dad was a kid... Dad was a kid!
It really is. She couldn't comprehend.
It wouldn't sink in.
And then I don't remember how my boy Sam reacted.
But then when my 10 year old Vesper
we did recently for her school
benefit night and they showed the picture
and I was there and she was so upset that that car got ruined.
She wasn't she wasn't that upset about me having any trouble.
She was like, yeah, yeah, whatever.
But she was very upset about the car getting trashed.
And then she was very worried that Ferris wouldn't
get home in time and would get caught, you know.
But I think she was about seven years old when she saw that so
reasonable. Became
just a bit too young to watch Freaky just yet, I imagine. Yeah. Mhm.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
That's my final question that it's just I'm going to ask you about Succession
because I mean is Connor Roy is a fantastic character, it's a fantastic series.
And you mentioned it just fell on your lap that you must just feel so thrilled
when you get a character like that, because not only is
it really and gives you so much to work with that it lasts over a number of years.
And it must be such a thrill to get all the new screenplays in from each script.
for each series thinking where where are they going to take him next?
Well, we we don't know.
And we have some of the best writers in the business.
Jesse Armstrong and his gang are just
incredibly talented people.
And we don't get our scripts until the very last minute
because they cannot leave it alone.
They just are constantly fine tuning it,
you know, which which drives some people crazy
because it takes some of us longer to learn lines, you know. But
oh, yeah, it's it's thrilling.
A couple of times in my life, I've been given a character
who's basically a license to steal.
And I feel that a bit about Connor Roy that.
I mean, you know, he's the family.
Not the black sheep, but he's definitely the family dingbat.
And, you know, so there's really nothing they they put the craziest things
on paper that come out of my mouth, you know, I mean, he's just mad.
He's just we haven't really pinned down what what is.
Particular maladies are we know that he suffers from delusional disorder,
and we know that when he was young, there was some ADHD involved and
but here's a man who's never had to work a day in his life,
and he does read he's not stupid, but he doesn't read anything current.
You know, I mean, I don't think you'll find a copy of Infinite Jest
on his bedside table, but you might find remembrance of things past.
You know what I mean?
He's he's he's an anachronism.
Yeah. Yeah. I can't wait to watch Season 3 and I can't wait to watch
Freaky again as well.
It was a really good, good fun. And I love above anything else.
Let's get too many spoilers. But I love the way that it ended for you.
And that was a big selling point for me. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, thank you so much for your time today. It's been a real pleasure.
Nice to meet you. Thank you so much.