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Next of Kinnear
Former talk show host Greg Kinnear is an actor, dammit.
By Fred Topel
Movie: The Matador
Director: Richard Shepard
Starring: Greg Kinnear, Pierce
Brosnan, Hope Davis
Studio: Miramax Films
When Greg Kinnear was the host of Talk Soup, would you have ever guessed
he’d become an acclaimed actor? Now we have to pay $9.75 to get a Greg Kinnear
fix. When he’s in movies like Loser and Mystery Men, it’s
just not worth it. But when it’s The Matador, you might want to
drop a 10-spot. Kinnear and Pierce Brosnan may not be the first names you think
of when it comes to buddy comedies, but they make it work. Kinnear plays a struggling
businessman who meets hit man Julian Noble (Brosnan) at a hotel bar in Mexico
City. Wackiness ensues.
The Wave: How did you make the transition
from talk show star to movie star?
Greg Kinnear: I was given a very lucky break with Sabrina.
Sidney Pollack gave me a shot with that film. And then leaving the talk
show. That’s part of the process that future people who want to follow this
path need to do. Quit being a talk show host.
TW: Well, Craig Kilborn left his show, and he hasn’t
quite broken out.
GK: Give Craig a little time. We’ll see. For me, I always
had a real interest in acting. I started as a drama major, and I kind of felt
that would be the path if I were to have any sort of career. But for whatever
reason, I ended up hosting a couple of different shows. Now, things have changed.
I got a break, and have just tried to follow that as best I can.
TW: Oscar nominations help, right?
GK: Yeah, I thought so. Damn it! Apparently, you have to win.
Don’t tell the rest of them.
TW: The script for this film is pretty “out
there.” Were you worried about that?
GK: I never saw the original script, but apparently it was way,
way out there. If Pierce’s character is a seven now, he was a nine-and-a-half
[then]. The director calls him a “try-sexual,” [because] he’ll
“try” anything. And that’s still in there.
TW: Were you jealous that Pierce got all the
good lines?
GK: Yeah, he did get a good part of the steak on this one, but
I don’t know. I was just kind of intrigued by the buddy comedy. It’s
a very kind of cliché thing, but I thought that the script had managed
to avoid all those clichés. It felt fresh and original, and somebody
had to be Danny, man.
TW: Was it your choice to grow the mustache?
GK: Well, the funny thing was, we had a rehearsal here in town,
just to read through the script once. I had been away for about a month and
I came down to Pierce’s office with [director] Richard Shepard. There
was nothing in the script that Julian has a mustache, and there was nothing
that Danny has a mustache. I walk around the corner, and almost bump into Pierce.
He’s looking at me. I got a mustache. He’s got a mustache. He goes,
“Character assassination!” I don’t know why, we both had this
similar response that somehow a mustache belongs on our characters. But he won.
He gets to have it through the whole thing, but we did find a way to bring Danny’s
back, which is one of my favorite jokes in the movie. It’s such a small
moment. I just love it.
TW: Have you ever met anyone on vacation that
you found so interesting that you had wild adventures with them?
GK: No. I’m not a big bar-lounge kind of a “strike
up the old conversation” guy. In Mexico City, of all places – which
is a beautiful city, but it’s a gigantic, sprawling place. To take these
two guys and quietly seat them at a bar that’s closing down is such an
intriguing place for them to start on this friendship, I thought.
TW: Who drank more margaritas, you or Brosnan?
GK: I would say it’s probably a toss-up. By the end of
the movie, we didn’t even deal with the margarita mix or any of that stuff
anymore; we were just down to the tequila. A couple of Irish guys in a movie
together, that’s combustible.
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