WEIRDLAND: Mike Cera -Awkward Character-

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Mike Cera -Awkward Character-

Michael Cera in "Clark and Michael: Life After the Show"
I think Michael Cera has a promising career, he's been casted in new roles that will make him advance in different acting palettes. I've read disquisitions about his typecasted awkward act, but I believe Mike will trascend this "character", he can turn it off as interpreter, I saw a lot of potential watching him in "Clark & Michael" series. Although he's mastered his awkward virtue, Mr. Cera can start from Cero, besides he is really attractive with that occasional resemblance to Beck Hansen and a young De Niro.

Sometimes an actor is specially comfortable living as a particular character, and sometimes that creation can become bigger than his persona for the viewer's eyes, in other extreme cases, the persona could be dangerously absorbed by the character. Using this simil of Norma Jean/Marilyn Monroe, we see the story of an actress who reinvented herself:

"Meanwhile, Fox (despite firing Marilyn from her last movie) was about to offer her $1 million a picture to continue being precisely

that character". "It might even be possible that Marilyn's efforts to dispel America's fears about sex", Andrew O'Hagan recently wrote in the London Review of Books, "were somehow related to her attempts to dispel her own fear of madness. [...] If, acceding to F. Scott Fitzgerald, the sign of first-class intelligence is "the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the head without losing the capacity to function", Marilyn's ability to juggle her twin identities was a feat of supreme psychic prestidigitation.

To a certain degree, Marilyn Monroe is a schizophrenic's idea of America".
Source: www.gadflyonline.comMarilyn said that her character Cherie in "Bus Stop" (1956) wouldn't have kept her nice teeth and she was supposedly naked under her sheets during the film because she thought that her character would really have been naked in real life.

"I don't think that I've ever made a fully realized piece of art. I've always felt like the best stuff within anything I've made has been the stuff that I didn't intend to be there, that I look at and say, how did that happen? that's the stuff that makes it worthwhile to me. Because if you could imagine it, why do it? Why take that journey?" -Jeff Tweedy from Wilco.
Will Arnett as G.O.B. and his puppet "Franklin" in "Righteous Brothers", "Arrested Development".Michael Cera as Paulie Bleeker in "Juno" (2007).
"you start to worry that his whole persona is some sort of Dadaist media prank.

[...] Cera once did an entire stand-up routine during which he read an earnest poem about his ex-girlfriend, while on the verge of tears. There were no jokes, save for the meta-joke of squirming in the presence of someone so vulnerable. “But that’s the only way I can feel comfortable addressing an audience”, he says. “Having that security blanket of being in character. I’ve never done straight stand-up, where you just are yourself. That’s too terrifying to me.”Cera also plays in a band THE LONG GOODBYE with his friend Clark Duke, another former child-actor he met in L.A.
Rivers Cuomo, Weezer's Wizard.

"ALONE: THE HOME RECORDINGS OF RIVERS CUOMO"

Cera’s a huge fan of Weezer, the grunge-pop band, whose resident genius, Rivers Cuomo, endured a mental meltdown and wound up living in an apartment with the windows covered and the walls painted black. I ask Cera whether he ever wonders, in his own life, if personal demons are prerequisites for great art. He considers this, then says, “I’m not really trying to make great art.” Source: Nymag.com/movies

Michael Cera and Kat Dennings
in
"Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist" (2008).

"Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is a comedy about two people thrust together for one hilarious, sleepless night of adventure in a world of mix tapes, late-night living, and, live, loud music. Nick (Michael Cera) frequents New York's indie rock scene nursing a broken heart and a vague ability to play the bass. Norah (Kat Dennings) is questioning pretty much all of her assumptions about the world. Though they have nothing in common except for their taste in music, their chance encounter leads to an all-night quest to find a legendary band's secret show and ends up becoming the first date in a romance that could change both their lives".

Source: www.rottentomatoes.com
"Youth in Revolt" (2008) is the irreverent story about the wild adventures of a teenage boy named Nick Twisp who meets the girl of his dreams while on a family vacation and has to turn his life and the lives of all those around him upside down in order to be with her". Source: www.rottentomatoes.com

"In further moments of awesome casting, Michael Cera has been cast as the titular hero in Scott Pilgrim's Little Life (2009), Edgar Wright's adaptation of the graphic novel series of nearly the same name. "Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life" will detail some of Scott Pilgrim's most tumultuous weeks: playing inept indie rock, avoiding finding work, and meeting the girl of his dreams and learning he'll have to destroy her ex-boyfriends in mortal fisticuffs if he wants to hook up
with her. Paramount currently has plans for a fall start date on the movie, with no release date announced. Cera's next movie, "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist", is out November 3rd. His other upcoming projects include "Year One", a caveman comedy produced by Judd Apatow and directed by Harold Ramis, and "Youth in Revolt", directed by Miguel Arteta and based on the cult book by C.D. Payne.

Edgar Wright is also working on another comic adaptation: Ant-Man, whose script has yet to be finished. We'll see if he'll be able to fit that in before starting on Scott Pilgrim".
Source: www.rottentomatoes.com

Also, Michael Cera will be playing George Michael Bluth in the film version of "Arrested Development" (2009).Michael Cera and Alia Shawkat in "Righteous Brothers", "Arrested Development" Season 2, Episode 18.

"Arrested Development" Episode Pilot's dialogue:

-George Michael: Yeah, I know. I’m tempted to kiss you again just so we can teach them a lesson.

-Maeby: And why would that teach them a lesson?

-George Michael: Oh, I mean, to freak them out.

-Maeby: Yeah? But that doesn’t make any sense.

-George Michael: Well, isn’t that what makes it funny? I’m laughing. Go fish. Uno.

"That awkwardness was at the heart of the character for which people know him best: George Michael Bluth, the painfully confused adolescent with an inappropriate crush on his cousin in the fanatically admired sitcom "Arrested Development." "I was excited about people thinking I was an idiot".
Before he was in preschool, Cera says, he knew he'd be an actor. He was obsessed with becoming Bill Murray, the star of "Ghostbusters," and he watched that 1984 film over and over when he was 4. Cera still carries a "Ghostbusters" wallet, trivia he has not shared with the film's writer, Harold Ramis, who wrote and will direct Cera's next feature film, "Year One" with Jack Black. "I'm not going to show it to him", Cera said. "I'm afraid it'll change the whole dynamic." Cera started acting professionally, in local commercials, when he was 9. He was 14 when he filmed the pilot for "Arrested Development."
"We were just trying to make each other laugh", Duke said. "And sometimes it does feel like it's just a big in-joke between us." A 10-minute pilot version was shot for Duke's college thesis and eventually found its way to Matt Kaplan, the online content supervisor at CBS Interactive.
So without commercial sponsors and focus groups, "Clark and Michael" unfolds in weekly bursts of 7 to 10 minutes long, filled with the awkward silences that Cera likes so much and plenty of absurdist low-key mockery of life on the show-business fringe, including one scene in which Cera, after having a script rejected, cries in a bathtub and refers to a well-known screenwriting guide".
Source: www.iht.com

"I was fortunate enough to attend a preview screening of Jason Reitman’s new film, "Juno", earlier in the week and I really think that it will be one of the big hits of 2008. It stars the freakishly talented Ellen Page, who plays a confident yet confused 16 year old, dealing with the issues of an unplanned pregnancy while still at school - That might sound a little too serious for some, but the film is delivered in such a way that it oozes charm, and has some
of the best one-liners this side of "Donnie Darko".
Source: Getbiglittlekid.com

4 comments :

Unknown said...

Mike. I really think you are awkward, weird and all but what the heck..i like you. ur starting to grow on me..i hate to say this but at 29 i never imagined i'd have a HUGE crush on someone way younger than Iam. anyway, i heard u dig older/asian chicks. anyway i'm from the philippines and im a huge fan of yours..why not send me an e-mail..i would love to hear from you. ..goodluck and can't wait to see your next films... LOVE U ..MMMMMWAHHH!!!

p.s. i forgot... my e-mail is elen.river@gmail.com

Elena said...

Welcome to Weirdland, lifepath8!
As far as I know Mike is not around here, but yours is a good try.

Anonymous said...

hey Mike! I'm from Mexico, but I guess you don't care lol. You're such a great actor and I really really admire you and this may sound like many girls but I think you're really cute!
I gotta go so bye!

Elena said...

Welcome to Weirdland, Brenda!!
Good to see girls from different countries who admire Michael and find him cute.