Steve Carell Gets Real and Gets 'Smart'

DATE June 13, 2008 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli from Broadcasting & Cable magazine and
tvworthwatching.com sitting in for Terry Gross.

Next week Steve Carell steps into the shoes and shoe phones of Maxwell Smart,
secret agent 86, in a new movie version of "Get Smart," the classic spy spoof
TV series from the '60s. Here he is confronting two agents from the evil
organization known as KAOS.

(Soundbite of "Get Smart")

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. TERENCE STAMP: (As Siegfried) Who are you?

Mr. STEVE CARELL: (As Maxwell Smart) My name is Nudnick Schpilkis. Who are
you?

Mr. STAMP: (As Siegfried) I am Siegfried.

Mr. CARELL: (As Maxwell Smart) I understand that you're the man to see if
someone is interested in acquiring items of a nuclear nature.

Mr. STAMP: (As Siegfried) How do I know you're not CONTROL?

Mr. CARELL: (As Maxwell Smart) If I were CONTROL, you'd already be dead.

Mr. STAMP: (As Siegfried) If you were CONTROL, you'd already be dead.

Mr. CARELL: (As Maxwell Smart) Well, neither of us is dead, so I'm obviously
not from CONTROL.

Mr. KEN DAVITIAN: (As Shtarker) That actually makes sense.

(End of soundbite)

BIANCULLI: It also makes sense that Steve Carell, our guest today, would fit
comfortably into a role that began on TV, because he began there, too. Steve
Carell first drew attention as one of the correspondents on "The Daily Show"
before Jon Stewart got there. Carell also has had good luck inheriting TV
shows established by other comics. His first big success came when he starred
as the clueless boss in an Americanized version of the British sitcom "The
Office," a role he's still playing. At the same time, Carell became a movie
star by playing the title character in "The 40 Year Old Virgin." Since then,
he's been in such films as "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Evan Almighty," and
leant his voice to such animated movies as "Over the Hedge" and "Horton Hears
a Who." Next week he plays CONTROL secret agent 86.

The original "Get Smart," created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, ran on TV from
1965 to 1970 and starred Don Adams as Maxwell Smart. Barbara Feldon played
his beautiful partner, agent 99, and Edward Platt played their boss, The
Chief. Here's a taste of the TV version, after a CONTROL agent, Hymie the
robot, has just gone haywire and tried to kill The Chief.

(Soundbite of "Get Smart")

(Soundbite of music)

Ms. BARBARA FELDON: (As Agent 99) What happened, Chief?

Mr. EDWARD PLATT: (As The Chief) He crashed through that door and said he
was going to kill me!

Mr. DON ADAMS: (As Agent 86) But this is impossible, Chief! Hymie has been
a loyal member of CONTROL ever since we stole him from KAOS.

Mr. PLATT: (As The Chief) Max, Hymie is a robot, a machine. And machines
can be dangerous.

Ms. FELDON: (As Agent 99) What're we going to do?

Mr. PLATT: (As The Chief) We'll have to destroy him.

Mr. ADAMS: (As Agent 86) Destroy him? You can't destroy Hymie. Hymie's my
friend!

Mr. PLATT: (As The Chief) Max, this friend just broke through my office door
and smashed my desk to pieces and almost strangled me with his bare hands!
How do you explain that?

Mr. ADAMS: (As Agent 86) I said he was my friend, not yours.

(Soundbite of laugh track, music)

(End of soundbite)

BIANCULLI: Don Adams based the voice of Maxwell Smart on that of actor
William Powell, but Steve Carell, in the new movie, doesn't imitate William
Powell or Don Adams. He's basically Steve Carell, comedy action hero, yet
another incarnation in a surprisingly varied show biz career. Terry Gross
spoke to Steve Carell last year.

TERRY GROSS, host:

Steve Carell, welcome to FRESH AIR. Let's talk about some of the parts that
you've played in the past few years. In "The Office," you are so great as
Michael Scott, who is the manager in this small Scranton-based paper--like
office products, paper products office. How would you describe Michael?

Mr. CARELL: Michael Scott is someone with an enormous emotional blind spot.
He is someone who truly does not understand how others perceive him. And if
he did gain any knowledge, his head would explode. He would not--it would not
be able to--he wouldn't be able to assimilate. He wouldn't be able to take in
all of that information because it's just--certain people exist on a different
level and they are only able to exist because they're in a sense of denial
about who they are or how other people view them, and I think that's who he
is. But he's not a bad guy. I think he's a caring person. He wants what's
best, but he doesn't always do the best things in order to achieve what he
hopes to achieve.

GROSS: And as an example of that, let's play a scene from "The Office." This
is one of my favorite episodes. This is the episode in which Michael outs
Oscar, one of the employees, and he just doesn't get it. I mean, he just
doesn't get what he's done. So early in, at like the very start of the
episode, the human resources guy, Toby, is reprimanding Michael for outing
Oscar. So we're going to hear that part, and then we'll hear it when Michael
is directly addressing the camera explaining himself.

(Soundbite of "The Office")

Mr. CARELL: (As Michael Scott) No, that is the fun of this place. I call
everybody faggy. Why would anyone find that offensive?

Mr. PAUL LIEBERSTEIN: (As Toby Flenderson) OK. I think Oscar would just
like if he's lame or something like that.

Mr. CARELL: (As Michael Scott) That's what faggy means.

Mr. PAUL LIEBERSTEIN: (As Toby Flenderson) No, not really.

Mr. CARELL: (as Michael Scott) Oh!

Mr. PAUL LIEBERSTEIN: (As Toby Flenderson) Apparently you called Oscar
faggy...

Mr. CARELL: (As Michael Scott) Yeah.

Mr. PAUL LIEBERSTEIN: (As Toby Flenderson) ...for liking the movie
"Shakespeare in Love" more than an action movie.

Mr. CARELL: (As Michael Scott) It wasn't just an action movie. It was "Die
Hard."

Mr. PAUL LIEBERSTEIN: (As Toby Flenderson) All right, Michael. But Oscar's
really gay.

Mr. CARELL: (As Michael Scott) Exactly.

Mr. PAUL LIEBERSTEIN: (As Toby Flenderson) I mean, for real.

Mr. CARELL: (As Michael Scott) Yeah, I know.

Mr. PAUL LIEBERSTEIN: (As Toby Flenderson) No, he's attracted to other men.

Mr. CARELL: (As Michael Scott) OK, little too far, crossed the line.

Mr. PAUL LIEBERSTEIN: (As Toby Flenderson) OK, I'm telling you Oscar is an
actual homosexual. Yeah, he told me this morning. And obviously he hopes he
can count on your discretion.

Mr. CARELL: (As Michael Scott) I would have never called him that if I knew.
You don't--you don't call retarded people "retards." It's bad taste. You call
your friends retards when they're acting retarded, and I consider Oscar a
friend.

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: Steve Carell, when you got that script, did you think like, `Oh, this
is so perfect'? Like...

Mr. CARELL: It, you know what, that's one of my favorite lines, what we call
talking heads when we're actually addressing the camera, because that, I
think, sums up his character. He really--he has no--he's not trying to hurt
anyone, he just doesn't understand. And then the rest of that episode
proceeds with him trying to be politically correct and trying to gain a
relationship with this gay character on different footing and to acknowledge
and show how accepting he is. And I felt like it was an interesting--it was a
well-written script, too, because it pointed to that subject without mocking
it, and having a character who truly has--he's not chauvinist. He's not
racist. He's not homophobic. He just doesn't get it. And it's a completely
separate issue. He doesn't get how to deal with people. It's not that he has
any sort of axe to grind with any one group.

GROSS: You know, a lot of people who have worked in offices feel like they've
worked with somebody like Michael Scott, but you've never worked in offices,
it's just, you know, you're an actor. So who do you draw on for the
character? Are there teachers that you had or other people who you knew were
who were as clueless? Uh-huh.

Mr. CARELL: Primarily, yeah. I think, for me, it stemmed mostly from
various teachers that I had growing up, because many teachers that I've
had--especially fifth, sixth, seventh grade--would be people who were trying
to be as cool as the students or wanted the students to think that they were
cool, but indeed they were not. And the harder they tried, the less cool they
would appear to be. And that's basically what Michael is up against. He
thinks people think he's cool. He thinks people like him and think he's funny
and charming. But he's really none of those things.

And incidentally, when you say everyone knows a Michael Scott, I guess a rule
of thumb--Ricky Gervais told me this in regards to the character that he
played, David Brent, in the BBC version of "The Office"--is that if you don't
know a Michael Scott, then you are Michael Scott.

GROSS: That's really great.

Mr. CARELL: So better that you actually have a frame of reference for a
Michael Scott.

(Announcements)

BIANCULLI: Let's get back to Terry's 2007 interview with Steve Carell, who
stars next week in the new "Get Smart" movie, a remake of the classic 1960s TV
spy spoof. But first, let's hear a bit of the movie role that made Carell a
star. Here's the scene where his friends discover that he is what the title
of the movie says he is, the 40-year-old virgin.

(Soundbite of "The 40 Year Old Virgin")

Unidentified Actor #1: (In character) Yo, answer this question. Are you a
virgin? Are you a virgin?

Mr. STEVE CARELL: (As Andy Stitzer) Yeah, like, not since I was 10.

Mr. SETH ROGEN: (As Cal) It all makes sense! You're a virgin!

Mr. CARELL: (As Andy Stitzer) I am--shut up.

Unidentified Actor #2: (In character) How does that happen?

Actor #1: (In character) He's a...(word censored by network)...virgin.

Mr. ROGEN: (As Cal) I knew it. That makes so much sense, man. He's a
virgin.

Unidentified Actor #3: (In character) But, wait, wait, wait, wait. You.

Mr. CARELL: (As Andy Stitzer) You guys are hilarious.

Unidentified Actor #4: (In character) All right. All right. Come on, don't
be mean.

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: Let me move on to "40 Year Old Virgin," which you co-wrote. How did
the idea get started for the film? Were you in on the very start of it?

Mr. CARELL: Well, I pitched the idea to Judd.

GROSS: Oh.

Mr. CARELL: We worked together. He was one of the producers on "Anchorman,"
in which I played one of Will Ferrell's less intelligent compadres.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. CARELL: And Judd asked me at the end of shooting if I had any ideas for
movie sort of things. And I had a meeting with him and I just pitched this
idea. It's something I'd been kicking around for awhile. I didn't have a
script in place. But the seed of the idea, the notion was--and this is what I
pitched to him--was a guy at a poker game with a bunch of other guys that he
might not know very well, and everyone is--all the guys are regaling each
other with these tales of conquests and women, and the conversation turns to
him, and it's his time to step up and tell a story. And he has no frame of
reference. He has no--he can't speak this language that these other guys are
speaking. And so he tries unsuccessfully to tell a tale of his own sexual
conquest of a woman, and he just fails miserably. And that is when he is
essentially outed that he doesn't know what he's talking about and that he's a
virgin.

And Judd really liked the idea. And from there--he actually said--as soon as
I pitched it to him he looked at me and he said, `I could call Universal right
now and we could sell that idea this afternoon.' And literally three days
later he was working with somebody from Universal, he casually mentioned the
idea and they bought it right then and there. They just said, `You go and
write it and we will pay for that.'

GROSS: You know, at the very beginning of the film there's a very funny scene
where Seth Rogen is bragging about having spent part of the weekend watching a
woman and a horse.

Mr. CARELL: Yeah.

GROSS: And, of course, you have nothing, nothing that could compare to that
sexual feat.

Mr. CARELL: Yeah.

GROSS: So you tell the story of how you spent the weekend making egg salad.

Mr. CARELL: Right.

GROSS: I guess, like, you know, since the premise of the movie, when you came
up with the idea, was about listening to these sexual exploits and having like
nothing to say that could measure up to that...

Mr. CARELL: Yeah.

GROSS: Had you been exposed to a lot of those kind of sexual bragging type of
stories when you were in high school?

Mr. CARELL: Oh, sure. You know, when any group of young
testosterone-riddled males get together, those stories are kind of inevitable,
I think. And I always thought it would be funny if one person just could not
keep up, and not only not keep up but truly put his foot in it. In the movie,
the character talks about feeling a woman's breasts and he explains that they
felt like a bag of sand. And clearly this is not someone who has any
experience. And to me what was funny was not so much the story but how the
other characters were reacting to the story.

It's like that--there's a scene in which I get chest waxed, and I chose to
actually get waxed for the movie because I thought it would be funny. And I
thought not so much the fact that I'm being waxed is what's funny, at least to
me, but the reaction that--and a very natural reaction, at that--that the
other guys in the scene will have while I'm being waxed. Because that, to me,
you can't act. If someone--if a buddy of yours is having their chest hair
waxed in front of you, you will react a certain way and you'll capture
something. And to me that was the funniest part of the scene, these guys just
cringing and laughing their heads off.

GROSS: Well, let's hear the beginning of the chest waxing scene and then
we'll talk about how you reacted when your chest hair was really waxed. Here
it comes.

(Soundbite of "The 40 Year Old Virgin")

Ms. MIKA MIA: (As Waxing Lady) So, ready?

Mr. CARELL: (As Andy Stitzer) Yeah.

Ms. MIKA MIA: (As Waxing Lady) (Foreign language spoken)

(Soundbite of tape being yanked)

Mr. CARELL: (As Andy Stitzer) Ohhhh, you...(word censored by network).

Unidentified Actor #6: (In character) Ahhhh.

Mr. CARELL: (As Andy Stitzer) Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's just your
job.

Ms. MIKA MIA: (As Waxing Lady) Do you want me to stop now?

Mr. CARELL: (As Andy Stitzer) Oh, no, no, no. It's OK. Let's do another.

Unidentified Actor #7: (In character) That one little patch looks sexy,
though.

Mr. CARELL: (As Andy Stitzer) Does it look good?

Mr. ROGEN: (As Cal) Yeah, it looks really good.

Mr. CARELL: (As Andy Stitzer) Ooh-whew.

Actor #7: (In character) It looks mantastic.

(End of excerpts)

GROSS: I love how you're trying to be so nice. `Oh, it's just your job.' So
were you prepared for...

Mr. CARELL: Oh, that was the worst day ever.

GROSS: Yeah, how much did it really hurt and were you prepared for it?

Mr. CARELL: Oh, it hurt so much. And, frankly, all of the women on the crew
who had experienced waxing in their lives, were--each one of them came up to
me individually and they said things like, `Well, aren't you sure you don't
want to trim your hair back a little bit?' Or, `Would you like to take some
Advil? Just anything to kind of ease the pain.' And, of course, I thought,
`No, no. I want it to really hurt. It won't play unless it really hurts
badly.' And the woman who was waxing my chest wasn't, in fact, an actual chest
waxer or professional waxer. She was an actress who listed that as one of her
special abilities. Which, as we all know, are usually lies. So she was just
this side of proficient at it. And if you look closely, on one take you can
see the blood...

GROSS: Oh, I know.

Mr. CARELL: ...sort of bubbling to the surface. It was--it really hurt. It
hurt. And the hardest part was just continuing with it, because after that
first rip, I knew that we had a lot more scene to go. And it didn't dawn on
me--you know, I went in that morning and I thought, `Oh, this'll be fun.' And
they'd set up six cameras, because obviously we could only do one take of it.
And then as she spread that hot wax on that first strip I thought, `This truly
might have been a mistake. This might not end well for anybody.' But I'm glad
I did it. I'm glad I did it. It turned out well.

GROSS: What ground rules did you give yourself for like how much to curse or
how much to scream?

Mr. CARELL: Well, my idea behind it was to scream all sorts of different
types of obscenities, from Kelly Clarkson to, you know...

GROSS: Yes.

Mr. CARELL: ...to the more generic swearing. But that underneath, as you
pointed out, I apologize to her and say, `Well, I know you're just doing your
job.' So I figured he's a nice guy, but even nice people pushed to those
limits can lash out, and in the face of that kind of pain can drop that sort
of veneer of niceness.

Which is interesting, too, because I thought, you know, just characterwise,
that's what Judd and I wanted to do. Not to draw a picture of just a purely
nice, innocent, wonderful, sweet guy. He had problems. He was just a guy.
He wasn't like--there's a lot of gray area to a character like that. And
rather than kind of paint him as a sort of a stereotype, we wanted him to be a
bit more realistic, I guess.

GROSS: So just getting back to that chest waxing scene one more time, did you
end it prematurely because it hurt so much? Or was the character supposed to
walk out with his chest half done when he does?

Mr. CARELL: The character was supposed to walk out. As soon as she got to
the smiley face, or as Paul Rudd deemed it, a "man-o-lantern," then at that
point was when I was suppose to get up and leave. And, believe me, I had
plenty. I was done.

GROSS: So what happened to your real chest hair that was left afterwards?
Because, you know...

Mr. CARELL: I'm sure...

GROSS: ...you leave in a state where you have some of your hair, you know,
you're half.

Mr. CARELL: That was just left.

GROSS: Your nuded half and half hairy.

Mr. CARELL: Much to my wife's chagrin, it was left as is.

GROSS: Uh-huh.

Mr. CARELL: And she--I wore a T-shirt for months after that. I could not
expose my chest to anyone. It was really horrifying looking. And then, when
it grows back in, that is a mess. That is just ingrown hair festival. It is
not anything I would ever recommend that someone do.

GROSS: Now, at the end of "40 Year Old Virgin," after you've made love for
the first time, Catherine Keener, her character turns to you and says, `How
was it for you?' And you break out into song, singing "The Age of Aquarius."
"When the moon is in the seventh house," etc. Was that your idea?

Mr. CARELL: It was my idea to do a big song and dance number at the end. As
I was driving to one of our writing sessions, I heard some song--it wasn't
"Aquarius." "Aquarius," the song itself, was Judd's idea--but I heard some
song and I thought, `Wouldn't it be fun to'--I mean, where else could this
movie go at that point? I mean, I thought, what greater expression of joy and
release, in a way, that everyone would break into a highly-charged song and
dance. It was extremely silly, but I thought it was fitting. I thought it
was as happy an ending to a movie as there could be. And...

GROSS: I love the ending.

Mr. CARELL: You know what? I thought it was sweet. And some people were
taken off guard by it or didn't understand it. I just--I really thought of it
as just the most pure expression of joy that this guy could show at that
point.

GROSS: And had you ever wanted to be in musicals?

Mr. CARELL: Apart from being a sexy leading man, that's all I've ever wanted
to do is be in musicals. I did musical comedies growing up. I did summer
stock and I was Jud in "Oklahoma" and I played Doody in "Grease." And I, you
know, I did a bunch of that sort of stuff.

(Announcements)

BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli in for Terry Gross. If
you're just joining us, we're listening to an interview Terry conducted last
year with Steve Carell, whose new movie "Get Smart" opens next week.

Before Steve Carell got the starring role on NBC's "The Office" and became a
movie star in such films as "The 40 Year Old Virgin," he was working on cable
TV as one of the correspondents on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show." He
started in 1999, before Jon Stewart got there.

GROSS: So how did you get on "The Daily Show"?

Mr. CARELL: Stephen Colbert got me the job. I owe it all to him. We'd
worked together at Second City. And then when they were looking for new
correspondents, Stephen threw my name in the hat, and they called and they
essentially gave me an audition. But I definitely, I owe him that job.

GROSS: So what was your audition for "The Daily Show"?

Mr. CARELL: Well, what they do instead of a set audition, they send you out
on a field piece. And my audition field piece was interviewing a man in
Colorado who believed that Walt Disney had a subterranean lair built at
Disneyland in which he would kidnap children and make them into mind control
slaves. So that was my first "Daily Show" piece.

GROSS: Was this a real guy who really believed that?

Mr. CARELL: It was truly--and I almost didn't take the job because of this.
Because, essentially, "The Daily Show" back then was a bit meaner than it is
today. It would go after extremely eccentric people who, through no fault of
their own, believed--were just quirky. And some were...

GROSS: Mentally ill?

Mr. CARELL: Yeah. I mean, yes, to put a fine point on it, they were. And
to go out and to mock these people and to do a story about how crazy they
are--this guy was mentally ill, and I felt terrible because, really, we
weren't making any sort of point. We were just mocking the fact that he
believed what he believed. And over, you know, over the next several months
and, you know, when Jon came on, the tone changed dramatically.

And I was--I almost didn't take the job. The only way--and I talked to
Stephen about this, too, and asked him how--because he's a very kind, gentle
guy. And I said, `How can you do it? You know, how can you rationalize this,
because it's just so mean?' And it's like shooting fish in a barrel. It's
just--these people can't fight back. And what I decided to do was to sort of
assume the character of a boob, of an idiot. And the more ridiculous I was in
the interviews, the dumber the questions that I asked, the more they would
react to that. The more--it sort of took the focus off the subject, and I
became the idiot. So the audience was laughing at what an idiot and jerk I
was, as opposed to the people I was interviewing, and I felt kind of let them
off the hook. But otherwise, it was a very hard thing for me to rationalize.

GROSS: Did the Disney piece make it on the air?

Mr. CARELL: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that went on. They wasted nothing.

Here's the other side of it, though. There were people that we interviewed
who deserved it, who really deserved to be taken to task. You know, Stephen
went, I think, I don't know. He went somewhere down South and had this run-in
with skinheads and neo-Nazi groups. And that's a different thing. I mean,
that's--going after, you know, people of intolerance or people who deserve it,
essentially, that I had no problem with at all. But it was those innocent,
quirky, frankly unstable people, that was never fun, and it was always a trick
to try to turn the joke on myself and away from them.

GROSS: My guest is Steve Carell.

Where did you grow up?

Mr. CARELL: I grew up in Acton, Massachusetts.

GROSS: And tell me something about your neighborhood.

Mr. CARELL: We lived in a garrison, a brown garrison colonial. And my
parents, my dad was an engineer. My mom was a psychiatric nurse. It was a
pretty normal little town. I played with my friends in the neighborhood. We
had something called demolition derby. We lived sort of at the bottom of a
hill, and kids would build essentially soapbox kind of cars. And we would
have races, but mostly it was to try to destroy each other's cars on the way
down. So that's why we called it demolition derby.

It was pretty normal. I wouldn't say bucolic, Rockwell childhood. But it was
a fairly normal upbringing with the youth hockey and the youth baseball and
all of those things. I have three older brothers and I was able to antagonize
them as much as I could.

GROSS: The hockey and the baseball and the demolition derby, and where did
the theater come in? Where did acting come in?

Mr. CARELL: That was just a--you know what?--that was just for fun. That
was always a hobby for me. It's nothing I ever thought would end up being a
career. And really, through college, it was just something I did on the side
and just something that I always enjoyed doing, but I never thought it was a
viable career choice.

GROSS: You thought your career was going to be law, right? You were about to
apply to law school?

Mr. CARELL: Yeah, that was the plan. And I think, ultimately, I was
planning on doing that because I thought--I mean, my parents sent me to
private school the next town over, and I think I--and they were not wealthy
people by any means, and I think I felt obligated to pay them back somehow by
making something of myself, because they had really worked very hard to send
me to this great school. And so I sort of started thinking about law and that
that might be a good fit for me. And it came to filling out the applications,
and the essay question asked why I wanted to be an attorney, and I just could
not respond to that. I had no idea, other than that it sounded good, that
it's something that I figured would make them happy.

And I talked to them about it, and they were the ones who said I should try
acting. They were the ones who said, `This is something you've always liked
to do. You should try it. You should at least give it a shot because it's
something you've always just had fun at, and that's what your life should be.
It should just be doing something that you enjoy.'

GROSS: So when you decided that you would do that, that you would pursue
acting, what did you see for yourself?

Mr. CARELL: My goal as an actor was to just make a living. That was all.
And by 1988--1988's the last year that I waited tables to supplement my
income, and that's when I was able to just start acting exclusively and
supporting myself. And that, to me, that was the line that I was able to
cross. And that was my line of success. That was it for me. Anything beyond
that was icing on the cake.

GROSS: Were you a good waiter when you were waiting on tables?

Mr. CARELL: I was a terrible waiter. I just, I tried very, very hard, but I
didn't--I don't know. No, I don't think I was that good at it. I would--and
I'd have nightmares about waiting tables. I would have nightmares that the
entrees would be done and I still haven't served the soup. And literally for
years after I stopped waiting tables, I still had these nightmares. It's what
waiters call "being in the weeds," when you have too many tables and not
enough time to service everybody. And there was a great anxiety because all I
wanted to do was make people happy and please them. And when their food's
cold or they haven't gotten their salad or--there's so many things that can go
wrong, and I obsessed about it. I tried very hard, but I wasn't smooth
by--no, that didn't work for me.

GROSS: So, you know, you didn't get like really famous until you were in your
40s. Do I have that right? I think it was in your 40s.

Mr. CARELL: That's true, yeah.

GROSS: So what were some of the--what's some of the upside and downside of
having success come at what is a pretty late time for an actor?

Mr. CARELL: Boy, upside or downside? Well, certainly I've waited a long
time--well, God, I don't even want to start with that because that--you know
what? If I say that I've waited for a long time, it's implying that I always
thought this would happen, and I never thought this would happen in a million
years. I am so shocked that any of this took place that I pinch myself all
the time. And it seems ridiculous, frankly, that any of this actually
happened when it did.

I think the fact that I'm older is helpful because I have it in perspective
for the most part. I realize that, as quickly as it came, it can all go away,
too. And I'm not assuming that it will continue, so I think I'm enjoying it
more perhaps at this age than I would if I were younger, because I think being
younger I would assume that I was just at the beginning and this is just going
to continue to roll and everything will just proceed accordingly. But I don't
believe it. I'm sort of a guy who's always waiting for the other shoe to
drop. And so I think that's a defense mechanism to a certain extent.

GROSS: What do you do on the opening night of one of your films?

Mr. CARELL: We will go to the premiere, and I will watch and probably sweat
my way through it, because I hope that people will enjoy it. And then after
all of the revelry, my wife and I will go get a cheeseburger and fries and a
shake and go home.

GROSS: Is the cheeseburger part of a ritual?

Mr. CARELL: The cheeseburger is. We always--any time we go to any of
these--esentially any time she has to put on a gown and I have to put on a
tux, we will end up the night eating a cheeseburger at this place called
In-N-Out in California.

GROSS: In the evening gown and tux?

Mr. CARELL: Yes.

GROSS: And you're the only people dressed there like that, probably?

Mr. CARELL: Well, we drive through and we bring it home.

GROSS: Oh, OK.

Mr. CARELL: But we're certainly the only people in the drive-through, but
that's it. And honestly, that is the part of the night I look forward to the
most. Because I don't--I always feel extremely out of place at these things,
and I think that might be a sort of a cliche, but we truly do. I do not feel
like I fit into that--walking the red carpet, all of that is just beyond me.
I just don't feel a part of that world. I definitely feel like I'm an
observer on nights like that. So we both are much more comfortable when we
change into our sweatpants and are eating cheeseburgers at 2 in the morning.

BIANCULLI: Steve Carell speaking to Terry Gross last year. His new film "Get
Smart" comes out next week.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Ken Tucker on "Evil Urges" by My Morning Jacket
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

Since its inception over a decade ago in Louisville, Kentucky, the rock bank
My Morning Jacket has developed a growing following that attracts a diverse
audience. Its guitar-driven singer/songwriter sound has roots in one of the
band's heros, Neil Young. Its Southern rock style connects it to such groups
as Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers Band. And My Morning Jacket's
lengthy instrumental jams are appeal to fans of The Grateful Dead and Phish.
Rock critic Ken Tucker says the band's new fifth studio album, "Evil Urges,"
goes a long way to establishing My Morning Jacket as more than just the sum of
its influences.

(Soundbite of "Evil Urges")

Mr. JIM JAMES: (Singing) Honey, it's rotten, and they got me so scared
Thinking there's some evil waiting under vain
Hoo! I made a nasty decision
To love whoever I want, just-a whenever I can
Things they're saying--
Evil urges, baby...

(End of soundbite)

Mr. KEN TUCKER: One of the high points of Todd Haynes' wonderful Bob Dylan
movie "I'm Not There" occurs during the middle of the film when the Richard
Gere Dylan ambles into a rustic town where a man is singing "Going to
Acapulco." That singer is Jim James, the lead vocalist for My Morning Jacket.
James is in whiteface makeup for the film, just as Dylan had applied whiteface
for many dates on his 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue. And it's the sound of
rolling thunder that rumbles through many of James' vocals on his band's new
album, cracking the sonic landscape with its roiling power.

(Soundbite of "I'm Amazed")

Mr. JAMES: (Singing) I'm amazed at the quiet ocean
I'm amazed at your warm devotion
I'm amazed at what the people saying
I'm amazed by your divided nation
Like the middle of the earth, I get disrupted

I'm amazed...

(End of soundbite)

Mr. TUCKER: Jim James has said that there's a theme of moral confusion
running through this album, "Evil Urges." I, however, hear a musical, verbal
and emotional clarity that's one of this collection's finest qualities. James
is using his voice to sing out about glowing love, about being amazed by the
world around him and about emotions that compel him to entitle not one but two
songs, touch me, I'm going to scream. As in, if you don't touch me soon, I'm
going to scream. And he sings about being thankful for someone who can see
and appreciate his quote-unquote "naked heart."

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. JAMES: (Singing) Really didn't think I was going to make it
Really didn't think I was going to make it this way
Put on my rubber face
Had my emotions way far away from you
Oh, you really saw my naked heart,
You really brought out the naked part
I don't know what you are doing
I know I just want to thank you for thinking of me

I want to take you...

(End of soundbite)

Mr. TUCKER: It's this sense of radiant openheartedness that I find so
invigorating, even thrilling in the best songs on "Evil Urges."

A lot has been made of My Morning Jacket's admiration of Neil Young and Crazy
Horse, the way that band has made thrashing music out of alienation and
melancholy. But My Morning Jacket is making buoyant music. It possesses the
grandeur of U2 without the stuffy self-consciousness and the pleasing sonic
density of REM without the muzzy ambivalence. And then there are the guitars.

(Soundbite of "Aluminum Park")

Mr. JAMES: (Singing) You care if you want to
You care if you don't
Come on, it's a big, big world now
You got to get what you want
Got no lack of frustration
Got no lack of disease
Come on, it's a big, big world now
You got to like what you seein' out there

(End of soundbite)

Mr. TUCKER: That's "Aluminum Park," one of a number of songs on which James
lets loose thick, rapid chords and keening feedback, as well as making his
voice sound like an extra instrument of howling reverberation. If you're on
his wavelength, it's pretty sublime. And if you haven't been until now, "Evil
Urges" is an album of conversion.

BIANCULLI: Ken Tucker is editor at large at Entertainment Weekly. He
reviewed "Evil Urges" by My Morning Jacket.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: David Edelstein on "Encounters at the End of the World,"
"My Winnipeg" and "Chris and Don"
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

Three new documentaries opened this weeks. One is by Werner Herzog, one is by
cult director Guy Madden, and one is the story of an enduring love affair
between writer Christopher Isherwood and a man 30 years his junior. Film
critic David Edelstein reviews all three.

Mr. DAVID EDELSTEIN: Few things are more satisfying in the middle of the
Marvel-Comics-at-the-movies season than good documentaries, films that remind
you life is so much more amazing than tank-throwing slabs of CGI green beef.
Start with Werner Herzog's "Encounters at the End of the World," shot on a
trip the director made to the McMurdo Station in Antarctica. At first, the
film is rambling: Herzog scans the settlement, which looks like an ugly
mining town, and meets the sundry eccentrics who reside there. Who, he asks,
are these scientists and adventurers drawn to the edge of the planet, and what
are their dreams? But then his camera plunges below the ice to behold the
strangest, blobbiest, spindliest creatures, so much more unfathomable than the
Incredible Hulk. And gradually, uninsistently, an eerier theme creeps in.

In his films, fictional and non-, Herzog loves to dramatize--even
overdramatize--man's hubris toward nature: Explorers pit themselves against
primal forces, which chew them up. But the people he meets in Antarctica turn
out not to be the hubristic ones. They're the reporters, the realists, the
ones who say the South Pole is not as solid as in our imaginations. He ends
with underwater seal calls, high-frequency, inorganic-sounding, yet keening,
like a message to extraterrestrials that this might be, in fact, the end of
the world.

Herzog grapples with the external world; Guy Madden pulls the world into
himself. His films, the latest being "My Winnipeg," are montage-collages. He
weaves found footage into faux-found footage to achieve an expressionistic and
fetishistic intensity; it's like watching psychosexual messages piped in from
the collective unconscious of moviegoers. Madden's films are better in small
doses, before the overload of his imagery wears you down. But "My Winnipeg"
keeps you entranced. It's grounded in a place--Madden's Manitoban
hometown--where the inner and outer worlds reflect off each other. The
demolition of an old hockey arena is linked to the death of Madden's father,
and the city's soul. He shoots an old woman playing his mother in stark
close-up superimposed over the landscape. She's emotionally withholding, yet
repressive, with an aversion to all things sexual.

The narrator, Madden, pictures himself on a train, trying to leave Winnipeg
but never getting beyond the outskirts. He tells the true story of horses in
the 1920s driven from their barn by fire. They leaped into one of Winnipeg's
four rivers and froze in place as the current met a sheet of ice. Then he
shows footage of people strolling on that ice among the frozen horse heads,
unaware of the symbolism, while Madden palpably sides with the animals, their
faces contorted in agony. Like them, he's not going anywhere.

A more optimistic, transcendent note is sounded by Guido Santi and Tina
Mascara's "Chris & Don." Chris is Christopher Isherwood, the gay English
aristocrat famous for "Berlin Stories," which became the basis of "Cabaret."
Don is Don Bachardy, 30 years younger, whom Isherwood met on a Santa Monica
beach. Here's a bit of his diary, read by Michael York, then the voice of
Bachardy today.

(Soundbite of "Chris & Don")

Mr. MICHAEL YORK: That spring, I realized that I had fallen deeply in love
with a boy whom I'd known for only a short while, Don Bachardy. The 30-year
difference in our ages shocked some of those who knew us. I myself didn't
feel guilty about this, but I did feel awed by the emotional intensity of our
relationship right from the beginning; the strange sense of a fated mutual
discovery.

Mr. DON BACHARDY: This is more or less the area of the beach where I met
Chris. And that would have been when I was probably 16.

He was so friendly. He had such a charming smile and sparkling eyes. Eyes
that had such energy, eyes that eat you up.

(End of soundbite)

Mr. EDELSTEIN: It might be pathetic--rich old guy prowls the beach, finds
movie star-obsessed stud-muffin who goes along for the ride--but "Chris & Don"
tells one of the most tender yet unsentimental love stories I've ever seen.
Isherwood needed to find love and commitment outside his class. He pressed
Bachardy to pursue his talent for drawing, and Don became a marvelous
portraitist. They had periods of estrangement, took lovers, pushed the limits
of domesticity. But in the end, Bachardy was by Isherwood's deathbed, drawing
him compulsively, drawing his body in the hours after death. The sequence,
like the movie, is shockingly open and heartfelt. Barchardy is feverishly
capturing the surface details in an attempt to go beyond them, as if he's
searching for the core of his lover's being. Realistic as it is, "Chris &
Don" is a profound documentary of the human spirit.

BIANCULLI: David Edelstein is film critic for New York Magazine. Guy
Madden's "My Winnepeg" is available on cable TV through IFC On Demand.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.