Jason Segel dream: The Muppets

Voici un article paru sur le site Heraldsun.com.au le 28 Mai 2009 et qui pourrait servir de fiche technique à tous les journalistes voulant parler de Jason Segel.

Jason Segal has dream come true writing Muppet Movie

 

JASON Segal may be the man of the moment with movie hits Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the upcoming I Love You Man, but there was a time he was just weird... .

Jason Segel mined his break-up to write and star in last year's comedy film Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Now his trouserless humiliation has made him hot, and helped score him his dream job.

"I'm writing the new Muppet movie for Disney -- my dream come true," he says.

"I'm trying to bring it back to the early '80s Muppet movies, when it was about laughter, love, friendship and all that.

"It's about the Muppets having to get together to put on a show to help each other out for reasons I can't let on."

Segel, 29, says the Muppets hold a special place in his heart.

"They were my first comic influence, for sure. And Kermit inspired me to do the full-frontal (in Forgetting Sarah Marshall) because you don't see Kermit wearing pants," he says with a laugh.

Segel went to London for inspiration while writing the movie, and his stint there helped him fully comprehend the premise of his latest comedy, I Love You, Man.

Segel plays fun-loving Sydney, who is befriended by Peter (Paul Rudd), a straitlaced real estate agent who, on getting engaged, realises he has no male friend close enough to be his best man.

"In LA it's very difficult to make friends," Segel says earnestly. "It relates to your personal space -- you're driving in your car everywhere, it's a very destination-driven life. So when a stranger comes up to you a wall comes up, like 'Oh no! A stranger! What does this person want from me?'

"Whereas in London, the first night I was there -- and I acknowledge in advance this homo-erotic statement -- I made really great friends with the fire brigade in a pub.

"We were all drinking, we played a game of chess, and the next day they took me to a cricket match, and they are still good friends to this day. That's what I love about London."

Another Brit, his Forgetting Sarah Marshall co-star Russell Brand, was Segel's inspiration for Sydney.

"I was so jealous of Russell -- how much he popped in Forgetting Sarah Marshall -- that when I read the script for I Love You, Man I thought 'This is my opportunity to do the American version of Russell Brand'. So I put on a swagger and just tried to be really cavalier.

"Russell has this 'This is who I am, take it or leave it' attitude about him that I've never had.

"I'm always very concerned about people's feelings and perceptions of me. Don't get me wrong -- Russell is concerned with people's feelings -- but people's perceptions don't really matter to him."

Segel and Brand will team again in the comedy Get Him to the Greek, in which Brand revisits the rock-star character he played in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Segel has co-written the screenplay and the songs.

Segel also stars in TV hit How I Met Your Mother and has been writing another movie comedy, The Five-Year Engagement, for director Judd Apatow.

Apatow, the director/producer behind The 40 Year Old Virgin, Superbad and Knocked Up, gave Segel his start in TV series Freaks & Geeks in 1999.

"Judd's been like the patron saint of my career," Segel says. "I met him when I was 17 for Freaks & Geeks and for 10 years, when people were not knocking on my door to do projects, Judd tried to force me into everything he was doing, with varying degrees of success. He never gave up on me.

"At one point he said, 'I've zeroed in on what you do well -- you are able to get really, really close to the creepy line while still being likable, and that's what you should focus on'," Segel says.

"He also once said, 'Jason, look, you're a strange dude. The only way you're going to make it in this business is if you learn how to write'."

Segel a strange dude?

"Well, there was a time when I was out of work. I was really depressed and would stay up all night, and it was very possible that a girl would catch me playing around with puppets in my house at 4am," he says with a hearty laugh.

"It might seem fine lately, since I've been able to parlay this stuff into jobs -- I put puppets into Sarah Marshall and I'm writing the new Muppet movie -- but when you're unemployed and depressed and drunk, it seems real weird."