Comedian Paul Rust went from Iowa to working with his childhood heroes Judd Apatow and Paul Rubens, and now he's landed the Netflix series "Love," which comes out today. The Coen Brothers bring water ballet back to the big screen with the L.A. aquatic dance troupe Aqualillies. Also, we deconstruct the Oscar race for Best Picture with John Horn and Kyle Buchanan from The Awards Show Show.
You may not know his name but Paul Rust might be Netflix's next star
Not many people can say they've worked with Judd Apatow and Paul Reubens. Comedian and writer Paul Rust can.
He recently co-wrote "Pee-wee's Big Holiday," which debuts next month on Netflix, and co-created the new Netflix show "Love" with his wife, Lesley Arfin, and Judd Apatow.
The show, which stars Rust and Gillian Jacobs, centers around two people who form an unlikely bond while struggling to make it in the entertainment industry.
Rust got his start doing comedy at Upright Citizens Brigade a few years ago. Since then, he's written for "Comedy Bang! Bang!" and "Arrested Development."
When Rust joined us at The Frame, he talked about his collaborative process, his love for Pee-wee Herman and how his stint as a bad sex robot helped him connect with Judd Apatow.
Interview Highlights:
You wrote and directed a video in which you star as a pretty inept sex robot. But that was a kind of turning point in your career, right?
Yeah, it's so funny that you say that, because I got a call one day from Judd Apatow. And he was like, "Hey, Allison Jones showed me this YouTube clip of you as a bad sex robot." [laughs] "I thought it was really funny." I had known him for a while, but that was the thing that reconnected us. So yeah, I guess that video with poor cinematography and awful sound ended up having some sort of effect. [laughs]
What was the call from Judd? What was he interested in doing with you at that point?
Charlyne Yi and I had co-written a script for Judd, and I was currently working on the Pee-wee movie, but that was Judd's first exposure to me as an actor. [laughs] You can tell by that performance.
But that raises a really interesting question. In two of your most recent collaborations, "Love" with Judd Apatow and "Pee-wee's Big Holiday" with Paul Reubens, you're working with writers and comedians who have a very distinct, specific style. You have your own style, of course, so how do you find a middle ground that's satisfactory to everybody?
I mean, Judd Apatow and Paul Reubens are two people who I'd be more than happy to learn from, because I think they're geniuses at what they do. In a weird way, I think I probably connected with them because they'd already influenced me.
Growing up, I dressed up as Pee-wee Herman. I was a big Pee-wee Herman fan. [laughs] It would make more sense if it was for Halloween, but sometimes I was just dressing up as Pee-wee. I was going to go to a midnight screening of "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" in college, and it's the sort of thing where people dress up. So I got dressed up, and then I got lost, I was speeding, and a cop pulled me over while I was wearing a Pee-wee suit. That's a hard ticket to get out of.
And then, in college, watching "Freaks and Geeks" and seeing Judd's sensibility flipped a switch for me creatively. By the time I reached those guys, their sensibilities were already in my creative DNA, so there was never a negotiation about whose voice we were doing.
As a child, you dressed up as Pee-wee and you were clearly influenced by what Paul Reubens was doing. When you started collaborating with Paul Reubens, what was the experience of working with him like? How did you start talking about what you could bring to him?
The first three times we met, I don't think I remembered anything. [laughs] I was just in this daze like, Oh my gosh I'm sitting here with Paul Reubens. And I kept almost calling him Pee-wee. [laughs] I'd just drive back to my house with my head swimming. That was the initial three to five times we met.
Paul's a genius, so it really did feel like getting to work with a master, someone who really knows comedy. As far as what I could bring to it, maybe it was just me being an admirer of that character, and being a reminder of that for Paul.
"Pee-wee's Big Adventure" might be the finest comedy ever made, and Paul and I talked a lot about how, unlike any other comedic character, Pee-wee exists in a sort of utopia — no one ever points a finger at him to go, "Look at the weirdo!" So we really wanted to hold on to that aspect in the Pee-wee movie, because we felt like someone else might put someone snarky into that universe, or have Pee-wee use Instagram. [laughs]
In the show "Love" you play a character who's an on-set tutor for a TV child star. But secretly, you don't want to be an on-set tutor. You want to be a writer. I suspect that that might be informed by your background as a writer in the business.
Yeah, I guess so. There was some apprehension there, just because even a smart person might go, I'm not going to make this guy a writer. I'll make him an ad exec. Like so many Albert Brooks movies, I think he's playing an ad man because it's just such a nice substitute for a writer. [laughs]
But I didn't do that, and yeah, I'd been working as a writer for the last decade or so. I guess as far as how the industry gets represented, it had always been a bummer to see people as cigar-chomping meanies. That's not my experience — it's usually that people are trying to do good things, but the business makes it sometimes difficult to do the right thing.
The ladies behind Scarlett Johansson's water ballet in 'Hail, Caesar!'
Film studio MGM found success in the 1940s and ‘50s with a string of frothy, colorful aquatic musicals: films like "Neptune’s Daughter" (1949) and "Million Dollar Mermaid" (1952) surrounded swimmer Esther Williams with fountains, water slides and dozens of bathing beauties in elaborate, Technicolor production numbers.
Water ballet disappeared from the big screen more than 50 years ago, but when filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen decided to pay homage to the artform in their new film set in early-'50s Hollywood, their production team knew just who to call: Los Angeles-based aquatic dance company Aqualillies.
Thirty-two members of the company appear in a memorable musical sequence in "Hail, Caesar!," which features Scarlett Johansson as an Esther Williams-like aquatic film star. Johansson makes her entrance dressed in a shiny green mermaid tail, surrounded by a ring of swimmers wearing vintage-style red and yellow bathing suits and swim caps, moving in sync like a kaleidoscope.
Aqualillies founding director Mesha Kussman says the Coens started with a clear vision for the look and feel of the musical sequence.
“They wanted symmetry and simplicity. They wanted it to feel like Busby Berkeley. They wanted it to feel larger than life,” says Kussman. “They gave us the direction to make it almost like a moving painting.”
Mary Jeanette Ramsey, the executive director of Aqualillies, trained Johansson for the film and was the actress’s mermaid-tailed swim double.
“It requires a lot of physical endurance [and] a cool head. You need not to freak out when your legs are tied together,” says Ramsey. “The hardest thing for someone who doesn’t have a background in synchronized swimming is learning to hold your air in your chest. It’s sort of intuitive for most people to fill their cheeks with air, but when you do that, your face isn’t freed up to act or do facial expressions.”
Kussman says that when she formed Aqualillies eight years ago, she wasn’t thinking about those classic MGM musicals. She was just looking for a way to step up the dance presentations she was already staging at parties and events around L.A.
“The pool was there at every party and I was just like, why is nobody doing anything with this stage? It’s lit, it’s central, it’s kind of a no-brainer,” says Kussman. “At first I thought, I’ll just put dancers on rafts! And then I was like, why is it so hard to get dancers to perform in the water? There’s got to be an easier way.”
That easier way, she found, was to work with veterans of the world of competitive synchronized swimming, to merge that strict discipline with commercial dance and a high-fashion retro style that Kussman says was inspired by music she heard at her home in Echo Park.
“My neighbor would play '40s and '50s classics just over and over again,” says Kussman. “This music just would waft over the fence and into my mind.”
Kussman and Ramsey say that shooting "Hail, Caesar!" on the Sony lot felt like revisiting the midcentury heyday of the aquatic musicals. The swimsuits created by longtime Coen brothers costume designer Mary Zophres “fit like swimsuits would fit in the 1940s,” says Ramsey. “They were very tight in the waist, almost sort of like a corset. It really brought you back to the period.”
“The tank where this was shot was the same tank that Esther Williams swam in,” adds Kussman. “And because the set dressing was of that period, you know, if someone took me there, told me to open my eyes, I‘d say, 'I’m dreaming.' But it wasn’t a dream. It was real.”
Ramsey says one highlight of her years of working with Aqualillies was the opportunity to meet Esther Williams herself — and to get her autograph and a written note of encouragement.
“Mine said, ‘Always keep swimming,’” says Ramsey. “I always remember that, in the few moments where the life of a water ballerina gets tough.”
Kussman says that when Williams died in 2013 at the age of 91, the Aqualillies were invited to swim at her memorial service.
“It was a nice way for us to sort of give back to her and her community and say thank you for everything you’ve done to inspire us.”
Aqualillies, which now has “teams” in cities across the U.S. and in Canada, Europe and Australia, will offer synchronized swimming classes at the Annenberg Beach House in Santa Monica starting in April. The location of a planned public performance on Esther Williams's birthday, Aug 8, will be announced on their website: Aqualillies.com.