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Interview: Dax Shepard, ‘Brother’s Justice’ auteur
So he decided to grab friends and collaborators Nate Tuck and David Palmer and create “Brother’s Justice,” a thoroughly entertaining mockumentary that screened at the Austin Film Festival last weekend.
The premise of the meta experiment is that Shepard has become disillusioned with doing comedies, so he has decided to break into the world of action movies, specifically martial arts, with the making of his next film. After talking Tuck into co-producing, Shepard sets out to find a director, actors and financial backing.
In his efforts to get the film made, Shepard is repeatedly rebuffed by befuddled friends (strong straight-man performances from John Favreau and Ashton Kucher and ridiculous turns from David Koechner and Bradley Cooper), pummeled by a marital arts instructor and dismissed as arrogant and delusional as he abuses Tuck’s friendship.
“It’s very counterintuitive that you’d enjoy watching your protagonist get beaten up thoroughly,” Shepard said last weekend in Austin. “Not intentionally, but we achieved this weird thing where you are rooting against the protagonist yet you care about him. It’s very weird. I kept saying while we were shooting, ‘Man, I am riding the line of being very unlikable because I’m such an ego maniac in the movie.’ But I thought as long as I lose every confrontation … I think the underdog aspect will actually override your disdain for my character.”
Indeed, Shepard makes great use of his improv training to play a pitch-perfect high status boob who doesn’t understand why his friends doubt his ability to re-position himself as an action superstar. Most probably don’t remember the incidents in 2006, but the crafty and committed Shepard even made appearances on the Teen Choice Awards and “Last Call With Carson Daly” in character, the footage from which appears in the movie.
Along for much of the ride is Shepard’s good friend, the hilariously manic Tom Arnold, who is willing to help the tall blonde get his movie made in exchange for getting to play Shepard’s older brother, age discrepancy be damned.
While the movie (possibly by accident) pokes a bit of fun at Hollywood, Shepard insists that his wacky little gem is not born out of spite. He simply wanted to see his absurd sensibility writ large.
“I’m not bitter at all,” Shepard said about his relationship with the industry. “Things have not gone the way I’ve wanted them to go. But, tough (expletive deleted); they just didn’t go the way Dax Shepard wants them to go. I sympathize with everyone in the film business. It is so hard. There’s so much magic involved (in getting a film made) … it’s 60 percent of why a movie works or doesn’t work and people are trying to crack that code and it’s uncrackable. I feel bad for everyone involved, there’s tons of money being spent; it’s high risk. I sympathize with studios. I get it. I know why you hire Adam Sandler for x-amount of money, because you’re gonna get x-amount no matter what happens. It doesn’t make me angry. That’s just how it is. I’m the one that’s been a recipient of all this … I’m the one who was on eight episodes of a cable show and they let me be a lead in a movie. If I had been acting in movies for 10 years, I would have hated me.”
Shepard expressed at Saturday night’s screening how much he absolutely loves Austin, calling it the greatest city in the country. Here are a couple more side notes on his relationship with Austin and Texas:
On Austinite Mike Judge: “He’s one of the people I became closest with that I stayed in touch with, and I just think he’s a genius and he has a voice and he stays true to it.”
On Texans Owen Wilson: “He’s my favorite comedic actor.”
On Austin via his Twitter feed: “Austin, you did it again. I feel like I’m flying home from spring break, heart broken that we don’t live in the same town.”
Photo by Matthew Odam AMERICAN-STATESMAN
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