New ‘Hamlet’ brings time travel, Jesus to high school

By Gary M. Kramer
PGN Contributor
© 2008 Gary M. Kramer and Philadelphia Gay News

The new film “Hamlet 2,” opening Aug. 22, is a broad but genial comedy about an insecure Tucson high-school drama director, Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan), struggling for respect and success. Fighting to teach a class of misfits as budget cuts are shutting down his theater program, Dana slowly sees his job, his marriage and his life fall apart as he tries to stage “Hamlet 2,” a multimedia presentation in which all of Shakespeare’s cast come back from the dead via a time machine and perform such songs as “Rock Me Sexy Jesus.”

In separate interviews, Andrew Fleming, the film’s openly gay co-writer and director, and actor Steve Coogan, who is straight, spoke to PGN about “Hamlet 2.”

From Los Angeles, Fleming talks about why he made a “sequel” to one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays. “Well, I think the real question is why has it taken so long? Clearly, over the millennia, people have been crying out for more — and a happy ending, too,” he said. “It’s an absurdist notion, really. There’s something in the idea of this sad story — why can’t some perverse mind step in and give it a happy ending?”

“Hamlet 2” is certainly absurdist, and Fleming and co-writer Pam Brady (of “South Park” fame) skewer sexuality, religion, actors/acting, ethnicity and high-school musicals. Their script is comprised of things that Fleming says make him and Brady laugh, and this includes both a song about rape and a sexualized image of Jesus. Yet Fleming defends the shocking material. He insists the song in question “is not making fun of rape it’s about the anxiety of talking about rape,” and he claims the film, is not “anti-Jesus,” citing that Mel Gibson and Caravaggio have both produced sexualized images of Christ.

The writer/director could be on the cusp of a big hit with “Hamlet 2” — which features marquee names like Catherine Keener, Amy Poehler and David Arquette — as the film was bought at Sundance for $10 million. Not bad for a filmmaker who started his career making the horror film “Bad Dreams,” then came out publicly when his bisexual love triangle “Threesome” was released in 1994. He followed these projects up with two popular movies, “The Craft,” about a coven of high-school witches, and “Dick,” about two teenage girls who bring down Nixon.

Yet Fleming says “Hamlet 2” represents him best. He explained, “The Western canon is about the outsiders — one person standing up for what is right. My D.P. [director of photography] says I have an ongoing obsession with absurdity. I take a crazy notion and making it palpable, step by step.”

In the film, Dana says, “Sometimes you have to go a little crazy to make great fucking art!” And this sentiment seems to reflect Fleming’s queer (as in odd and as in gay) sensibilities. He laughs at the line and admits the line is skewering Dana’s self-absorption, but he gleefully accepts the truth of the statement.

So does Coogan, who recently met with PGN to discuss “Hamlet 2.”

“Some of those things I said in the movie I said in jest, and they sound pretentious. But, in actual fact, taken out of context and trying not to be funny,” he pauses a moment to scoff, “I agree with them. Being creative to me is everything.” The actor answers rapidly, and with enthusiasm, despite it being 8 o’clock in the morning. He seems to almost stutter as he tries to get his thoughts and words out quickly. It is an endearing, telling trait and very different from how he appears on screen as Dana.

In “Hamlet 2,” Coogan throws himself into Dana with vigor and pratfalling, being abusive and being abused. If he plays a pompous ass, Coogan said that he is happy to be the butt of a joke as long as it makes people laugh.

“Most humans are worried about looking like a fool, being humiliated or doing the wrong thing — having people laugh at them in a bad way. For me, it is liberating, because you don’t have to be concerned about it. I feel more secure being a fool. I’ll do anything if I think it will serve the comedy,” he said.

In the film, Dana has a nervous breakdown in front of his students and openly discusses his testicles with them. “Steve knows you have to go into an uncomfortable zone. That’s what he liked about the script,” Fleming said about his leading man, who goes nutty and behaves in ways that make people squirm.

“Hamlet 2” uses Coogan’s comedic stylings and timing well. He generates chuckles wearing a ridiculous caftan, gets to do physical comedy playing both Einstein and Jesus, and he Rollerblades badly to amusing effect. The actor enjoys doing physical humor and claims that he did all his own stunts “apart from the one where I [Rollerblade] into a truck.”

He also plays drunk, mimics Jeremy Irons and has one very funny moment of coprolalia (the Tourette’s Syndrome condition of profanity-laced outbursts).

“Monkey-fucker!,” he screamed at the mention of the obscenity-shouting in the film. “What was great was trying to say as many obscene things as possible, but not having it quite work because it sounds so ridiculous.” He explained that his foulmouthed speech is courtesy of co-writer Pam Brady.

Not surprisingly, Dana Marschz is not unlike some of the other manic characters Coogan is famous for playing, from the brilliant music impresario Tony Wilson in “24 Hour Party People” and Tristram Shandy in “A Cock and Bull Story.” His role as hotheaded director Damien Cockburn in the just-released “Tropic Thunder” is also in this mold and also hilarious.

“I try to do characters that think they are in control,” Coogan admitted. “As a comic, you tend to be very controlling about trying to make this or that moment funny, so I’ve learned not to worry too much and to let go — let things happen to you. One thing in ‘Hamlet 2’ that is a little different than what I’ve done before is that the character is very vulnerable and also well intentioned. He has a good heart. Generally the characters I play are a little more dislikable. Doing a character with empathy is new to me.”

The actor discussed how to best play Dana at length with Fleming, and one critical decision the filmmaker made was to have the drama director be queeny, but not gay.

“We liked the idea that there was a theatricality about him, but it wasn’t necessary to have him be gay,” Fleming said. Dana is a gay-acting straight man who pitches hissy fits and then dances wildly to the gay men’s chorus, which performs in his production. But he never crosses over to same-sex love.

“We didn’t want to make him a repressed [homosexual] who couldn’t come out,” Coogan said. “Reading the script, he sounded gay to me, but Andy wanted to pull back from that. And I didn’t want to turn it into a big camp kind of extravaganza. There have been too many flounce-y caricature things like ‘The Birdcage.’ Sometimes when straight guys play gay guys, they play so over the top, it’s not believable.”

Coogan’s portrait of a high-strung theater director is often very funny. In real life, however, the British actor suggests he has nothing in common with Dana, being more emotionally closed than his egomaniacal screen creation. Yet the actor can’t resist admitting, “I feel a lot of what he feels, but in a contained way.”

“Hamlet 2” also features a subplot about Dana being oblivious to his student Rand (Skylar Astin) being in love with him. “We played fast and loose with that,” said Fleming about the young character who is less concerned with his sexuality than he is with the size of his part.

“I think it helps that the gay student has a crush on him, and that love which can’t be reciprocated,” said Coogan. “Dana is emotionally open and raw.”

Having addressed the film’s sex, religion and humor, one last question remains: Will there be a sequel to “Hamlet 2,” say, “Hamlet 2.2?”

Coogan considers the question, “I might [reprise Dana] if it was funny enough. What’s funny about that character is that he thinks his life is like a movie. He lives vicariously through movies.”

However, Fleming has a decidedly different response. He says, with what appears to be complete seriousness, “I hope not.” Perhaps if “Hamlet 2” is a success, he will change his mind.