In an interview with Comic Book Resource for his upcoming film, Danny Collins, in which he co-stars with Al Pacino, Bobby Cannavale briefly talked about Ant-Man and what it was like to step into the Marvel Universe.
With Ant-Man not set to premiere until after Avengers: Age of Ultron, it’s safe to say that Cannavale can’t go into the specifics just yet when it comes to the story. Still, he does provdide some details. He talks about the humor in the film, and even goes on to compare it to Guardians of the Galaxy.
You can’t talk about particulars of Ant-Man’s plot, but can you talk about the experience of making a Marvel movie?
Yeah, totally: it was a trip! I’ve never been in anything like that before. There’s a ton of people on this crew. You could fit the entire Station Agent crew in… it was just huge! And there’s blue screen everywhere. I remember one time we were shooting at nights for three weeks. I hadn’t seen anything behind me that wasn’t a blue screen for three nights in a row. I remember one night at four in the morning being frustrated and just saying, “If it’s going to be blue screen all the time, why can’t you just make it be night? Why do we actually have to be here at night?” That part of it was baffling to me.
But, the actual work — the scenes with me and Paul Rudd, and Judy Greer and Michael Pena — felt like an indie film. It felt like fun. [Director] Peyton Reed [and the studio], they weren’t mercurial about the script. They weren’t mercurial about the humor, at all. They let us be in charge of that. We improvised a lot. Judy Greer’s very funny. Paul’s very funny — he’s a great improviser. The rewrite of the script that Paul did with McKay — and I’ve worked with McKay before — lent itself to that.
You could see that there’s a funny scene and we could actually riff off of that, and that felt impressive to me in this big huge blockbuster film. It made me feel kind of good, that it felt like Marvel was going for something different. It didn’t feel like Thor. It felt more like Guardians of the Galaxy, which I really enjoyed and I thought brought a certain levity to a superhero movie that I had never seen before.
When asked how happy he has been in his own personal journey between achieving his artistic aims and also being successful, Cannavale stated that it wasn’t much of a problem for him.
A lot of the work that I’ve done is people calling me on the phone — most of my work, really.
Even Ant-Man was [Paul] Rudd calling me up and saying, “Dude, you have to play this part. It’s going to be fun. Marvel’s going to call you tomorrow.” That’s literally how it happened. [Laughs] He literally said, “Marvel is going to call you. [Adam] McKay and I have been working on the script. It’s going to be awesome. I’m not going to fuck you.” I’ve never had a plan. I’ve just done it the way I’ve done it. It’s a bit unorthodox. I just really, really enjoy my life. I enjoy my life in New York City. I enjoy that I don’t have to work in a bar. I’m not a millionaire but I can send my kid to school. I can pay my mom’s rent and pay my rent and I got a pension. What more could you want really?
You can read the rest of the interviw by heading to the source below.
Updated Esquire posted a new interview with Bobby Cannavale today that revealed a small bit of information that hasn’t been reported on a lot as of yet.
In the interview, Cannavale goes on to compare Ant-Man to Guardians of the Galaxy again, and that the sense of humor is a lot different than a movie like Thor.
This prompted the intereview to ask him if that meant that the money was funny.
Cannavale’s responded by saying:
Yeah, it is funny. Judy Greer is in it and she plays my wife. She’s always fun. Michael Peña is very funny in it. T.I. is in it. I worked with Tip!
We knew that Judy was playing Paul’s ex, but I don’t recall it being mentioned this piece of information making its way out prior to this intereview.
Ant-Man will be released in the US on July 17th, 2015.
Source: Comic Book Resources and Esquire.
