Jeff Daniels is the award-winning actor best known for screen and stage dramas like The Newsroom and To Kill A Mockingbird, as well as comedies like Dumb and Dumber. He’s also written 21 plays that have had their world premieres at his Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea.
His latest opens Friday night.
WKAR’s Scott Pohl takes us Inside The Arts with Jeff Daniels to learn more about writing and directing Office Party; Grinch In Fight With Rudolph; Police Called.
Interview Transcript
Scott Pohl: Jeff Daniels is the award-winning actor best known for screen and stage dramas like The Newsroom and To Kill A Mockingbird, as well as comedies like Dumb and Dumber. He’s also written 21 plays that have had their world premieres at his Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea.
On Friday night, his latest play opens at the Purple Rose. This week, we go Inside The Arts with Jeff Daniels to learn more about writing and directing Office Party; Grinch In Fight With Rudolph; Police Called.
When I'm previewing a play, Jeff, frequently, I try to avoid spoilers, but the title of this play is in itself a spoiler. It's kind of funny to think of it that way.
Jeff Daniels: It tells us everything we need to know going in. I found it, I was looking at MLive.com, this was like a year and a half ago, and I saw this headline, and it was something [that] had happened up, I think it was Leland, Michigan, but I could be wrong, somewhere near Traverse City, and that was the headline: “Office Christmas Party, Grinch In Fight With Rudolph, Police Called.” You know how sometimes headline writers can have some fun? I think they did, and as soon as I read that headline I said “that's a comedy.”
I don't know what happens. I read the article, and it was very short. It was like a police blotter. There was really no information in it. And I said, okay, well then, I'll just make it all up, and every time they said “What are you working on over the last year and a half?" And I would tell them the title, they would laugh. For a comedy, that's gold.
If you can just say the title and people laugh, you're halfway home. And when the lights come up, even though we know that's what happened, why it happened and who it happened to and what happens because of it. That's where the fun is.
Pohl: I read the MLive story that you are referring to, and the last sentence of the article is also a bit of a joke. The last line of the story says something along the lines of “alcohol was believed to have been a factor, not the size of their hearts.” So, you're having fun with it, just like the journalist did back then.
Daniels: Yeah, there's nothing. There's no assault. There's no blood. Basically, two coworkers, one dressed as the Grinch and one dressed as Rudolph, got in an argument over when to clap on Silent Night, and one was clapping on the one and the three, and the other insisted clapping on the two and the four, and someone took a step, and the next thing we knew, Connie in Accounting was face first in the punchbowl.
Pohl: It does contain adult language and subject matter, though.
Daniels: Does it?
Pohl: That's what your website says.
Daniels: Well, we have to be so careful nowadays. There might be one F-bomb dropped right at the end, strategically placed. That should get a big laugh. But no, I look at this more like a Preston Sturges 1950s comedy, Jackie Gleason, you know. The Honeymooners wasn't full of that stuff. No, I think it's pretty PG, it really is, and I've written stuff that wasn't, and I would say so, but no, this is, it's just funny. It's just funny.
Pohl: People, of course, think of your serious acting roles, but when they think of your comedies, they think of bathroom humor frequently, toilet humor. Is there something about crude jokes that you enjoy especially, and is that an element of this show?
Daniels: There is humor that is, I would say it's almost vaudevillian at times. There are spit takes. But, you know, anything that makes you laugh, I mean, it's not Dumb and Dumber on stage. There's also some smart humor there. We call it around the Purple Rose "smart funny," and there will be jokes and things that people laugh at that not everybody is going to get, and I enjoy those as much as anything.
There's a joke we wrote a couple of weeks ago. Wally Wilkins, Jr., who is the president of the Middletown Fudge Factory where the play takes place in Middletown, Michigan. His secretary is named Madge, who is not just old, she's ancient, and she gets into a bit of an argument with him and says, “You know, Wally, you don't believe in the internet. You don't believe in GPS, and that's why you're still stuck in the Eisenhower era.” And one of the other coworkers, you know, when they hear Eisenhower, one doesn't know who Eisenhower was, and then the second one looks at Madge and said, “Did you know him?” I expect about ten people to laugh a week at that, but both Paul Stroili, who plays Jerry Cornicelli, the Grinch, we're looking forward to seeing when we get responses on that “Did you know him?” joke.
Pohl: You're expecting a big run of this show, I understand 86 performances through December 22nd. That's a lot. Is that an unusually big number for Purple Rose?
Daniels: No, we've always done a big fall show, and a comedy written by me will fill it. I mean, we've been doing that forever. Escanaba in da Moonlight premiered in the fall, 1995, I think, and we brought it back at least twice, and that's the big run. We got to get from October 1st to Christmas, and a comedy by me is what does it, and so that's kind of the requirement for me is to write something that can fill the fall. And again, when I saw that headline, I said, “This is it."
Pohl: One quick question about your next acting role. I understand you're playing Ronald Reagan. What can you tell us about that project?
Daniels: Well, it's a risk, and that's kind of what keeps me interested as an actor, because this is my 48th year as an actor, and that's a long time, a lot of roles, but I look for things where I might fail. I look for things that are challenging, that I haven't done before, that I might swing and miss. And so, I've worked hard on it. We're going to shoot it in October. I've been working on it since April. I've been working real hard, on the voice and some of the mannerisms. It takes place in Reykjavik, and that's the name of the movie, Reykjavik. It's the weekend where Reagan and Gorbachev met to see if they could come to some kind of agreement on lowering the number of nuclear weapons in the world, and it's a famous meeting in 1986, just a weekend, so the whole film is that weekend.
We're shooting in Reykjavik in the house where they met, in the same room where they negotiated. I’ve got Jared Harris playing Gorbachev, who is phenomenal, and J.K. Simmons, who's playing George Shultz. J.K. and I have wanted, we've been circling each other for years, and we're both Tiger fans, and so I can't wait to see him and Jared. I mean, it's a real good threesome, we're looking forward to it, and I know those guys are working hard and getting ready for it.
Pohl: The play is Office Christmas Party, Grinch In Fight with Rudolph, Police Called. It opens October 4th. That's at the Purple Rose Theater in Chelsea. It was written by Purple Rose founder and artistic director Jeff Daniels. Jeff, thanks. Good to see you.
Daniels: Thank you, Scott.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
