‘Nice Guy’ Ryan Gosling Talks About His New Film

Thanks to Warner Brothers and Producer Joel Silver, movie-goers can travel back in time this summer. Directed by Shane Black, “The Nice Guys,” takes place in 1970’s Los Angeles, when down on his luck private eye Holland March (Ryan Gosling) and hired enforcer Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) must work together to solve the case of a missing girl and the seemingly unrelated death of a porn star. During their investigation, they uncover a shocking conspiracy that reaches up to the highest circles of power. Now this sounds like fodder for a great film pairing. The film also stars Kim Basinger, Matt Bomer, Margaret Qualley, Angourie Rice, and Yaya Dacosta.

Ryan Gosling sat down recently with us to discuss his new film, working with Russell Crowe, playing comedic roles, fatherhood and his new project the untitled Blade Runner Project.

 

Examiner: What were you smoking, real cigarettes?

 

Ryan Gosling: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually never want to smoke a cigarette again. It’s the best way to quit. Just do a film where you have to smoke.

 

E: You are a chain smoker in the film, how many cigarettes did you have to smoke?

 

RG: I don’t know, it felt like, you know, Mike Tyson had been whaling on my lungs at the end of every day.

 

E: Did you have a real cast on?

 

RG: Uh, -ish. It was real-ish,

 

E: Removable?

 

RG: Yes

 

E: That’s good. Those things are nasty.

 

RG: Have you had one?

 

E: Yeah [laughs]
E: Could you talk about finding this character? At times it seemed like he was the most incompetent guy in the room, and then sometimes it felt like he was the most competent. And sometimes he was making you believe one way or the other. Can you talk about how you thought he was at being a detective?

 

RG: Yeah, he’s pretty terrible. I think his daughter is probably the real detective. No, I think he’s got good instincts. I love the character. I thought he is very Shane Black (writer and director). And I grew up on Shane Black’s movies. So for me it just really spoke to me as soon as I read it. It’s such a dream as an actor where you get to play somebody that has so many dimensions to them and is so fallible. But, you know, so redeemable in really small ways.

 

E: This movie is a comedy, but it also is serious sometimes. How was it for you guys to work with the dramatic tone of the movie?

 

RG: It was fun, you know. We all know Shane’s work, and so there’s an inherent understanding of, kinda, what we’re here to do when we walk into it. I think for me, when I read it, I read it as an opportunity to do a lot of physical comedy that wasn’t necessarily written, but it felt like it was teed up to involve that. And so I wasn’t sure how that was going to fly when we got there but Russell (Crowe, co-star) was really, I mean Shane was of course as well, but Russell was really supportive. I remember the first day I went to set, I think it was one of our first scenes, where it was the bathroom stall scene. And I wanted to do this thing with the bathroom door and I went to set early and I was practicing and trying to figure out how to make it work. And I just smelt smoke and I looked behind the door and Russell was smoking, watching me. And he was very seriously saying, you know, I think if you hit it with a different leg it will bounce back better and we were immediately having a very serious conversation about the dumbest thing ever. And I knew it was gonna be fun, you know. He was such a champion of me doing, taking it, to as extreme of a place that I can take it.
E: So Shane was kind of telling you guys at certain moments, “Don’t do it so big.” I mean, how was that like?

 

RG: Yeah, you know well we tried to give a lot of variation for Shane. He had his options. We didn’t really know, you know, we just trusted Shane. We knew that he knew what he was doing, and what he wanted. So we tried to give him as many options as possible.
E: How about the language? You know, she was thirteen at the time. She said you were a little cautious about the language. She’s okay with it. But you were a little worried about it?

 

RG: I was more nervous about it than she was.

 

E: So how did you handle it?

 

RG: Yeah, I mean I feel like the film you know certainly walks the line and probably crosses it at a few places, and you have to be careful how you handle that stuff. You almost have to worship the scenes like fight scenes where you carefully choreograph them so all the jokes land but nobody gets hurt.

 

E: So after becoming a dad in real life, I think this is the first dad role…

 

RG: Character?

 

E: Yeah, character.

 

RG: No I’ve played dads before.

 

E: After you came dad in real life.

 

RG: Right.

 

E: So what’s your mindset change as a new father?

 

RG: It changes it for the better, your life becomes better than you ever thought it could be. And…

 

E: More protective?

 

RG: Protective of who?

 

E: Protective like, controlling. Like, “Ah, that is dangerous, don’t touch that.”

 

RG: Now you mean in my own life, do I get more? Sure, yeah, everything is a potential danger. Ten heart attacks a day.

 

E: Did you immerse yourself in the 70’s vibe and music, because it seemed when we were talking to the girl, Angourie (Rice, played Gosling’s daughter, Holly). She seemed kind of surprised at the soundtrack, when it was placed in, she said she liked it. Did you guys listen to music on the set, 70’s music? Did they try to keep a vibe going during the filming?

 

RG: Uhm, no. I liked the way they handled the time period in the sense that the seventies was never the joke. It was never the gag, was never the outfits, or the you know, those are kinda easy and I felt like Shane really tried to avoid those. He really wanted it to feel like a heightened version of the 70’s but that it was set in the 70’s and not self aware that it was set in the 70’s.

 

E: So Russell actually grew up during the 70’s, and you were born in the 80’s. Did he give you some advice, like “Oh, I remember the 70’s and you don’t.” What kinda of research did you do to get ready for a role that happens in the 70’s?

 

RG: Uh, honestly I should say I did a lot of research on the set. It’s not really that kind of film. It’s, to me, it was more about just it’s own world. It’s Shane Black’s head. It’s more about getting into his head and figuring out you know what he wanted. We really didn’t. We got there, they did such a great job with production design and costumes, and all that that really, so much of that work was done for us.

 

E: So Russell didn’t mention anything about the 70’s?

 

RG: I honestly don’t think Russell remembers a lot. He tried to remember some things that happened, but…

 

E: You did a lot of action sequences in this film. Did your dancing experience help? How were the action sequences with tight pants?

 

RG: It hurt. It was very, uh, you know, I think the last sequence, that kind of almost Harold Lloyd kind of like ending, with the character as he chases this film can falling off of buildings and through glass, through plate glass windows and through ceilings, and chasing mermaids, and you know it was, it took like, I think 3 or 4 days to shoot. But it was really fun for me because I grew up on slapstick films not that this is slapstick but there is an element of that in it. So for me it was an opportunity to finally make something like the films I have grown up on.

 

E: So you didn’t know if there were action sequences? Like there were a lot of stunts?

 

RG: Yeah, there were certain things that my stunt guy Brett, who was actually really helpful because he had played the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, the theatrical version of Wizard of Oz for a long time. So we just worked a lot on making the action sequences kind of like almost like funny in the scarecrow type way.

 

E: Now I have to ask, when Russell breaks your arm, and you let out a scream. It sounded very similar to the Mexican scream. So I don’t know if you are aware of that.

 

RG: What’s the Mexican scream?

 

E: Exactly how you do it in the movie, it’s exactly that’s how they do it.

 

RG: It’s just how I, you know. I see a spider and I scream. That’s how I scream. [inaudible] You know make lemonade out of those lemons.

 

E: You saw the script for this. Did it please you the fact that on the surface you can say it’s about a young cop. But there’s a real strong family element to it. There’s a historical element to it. Did it make you happy that there were all these elements?

 

RG: Yeah, it did. And you can tell that it had taken a long time to write. They’ve been working on this for a long time. It had been in a lot of different incarnations with different people involved. There was a TV show at one point, and then it was a film. You know, it was not in the 70’s for a while. And I think all those versions just bolstered it, and strengthened it, and only the strongest ideas survived. It is interesting I saw only 15 minutes of it with an audience the other day. But afterwards, you know, people were saying that they were surprised they were laughing so much but they also found themselves really emotionally invested as well. So it was nice to hear.