“My greatest achievement: Getting you to be amusing in a movie“, he says with a grin. Given the gravity of the situation, and that their movements and facial expressions are synchronized in a whimsical, “Oh hell no!” type of way, it’s obvious these guys aren’t heroes, they just want to do the right thing and live to brag about it.
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“To me it had to be Russell”, says Gosling of his co-star.
This is exactly one minute into the interview.
Q: You’re from Canada but seem to be drawn to films set in Los Angeles, including “Gangster Squad”, “Drive” and “La La Land”.
In the meantime, we have “The Nice Guys”, which is one of those movies that probably sounded awfully good in a pitch meeting: Russell Crowe as a grumpy hired-enforcer guy!
March is on the trail of a missing girl named Amelia (Margaret Qualley), but Healy’s clients prefer that she not be found.
Take two charismatic actors. “Of course we like buddy movies“. “But is there an actual friendship in this one?”
While not as strong, or cohesive, as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Nice Guys is still a humorous film with a multi-layered plot underneath. The Nice Guys is going up against The Angry Birds Movie and Neighbors 2.
“… with a giant smoking, talking bee and porn stars?” offers Gosling. “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” by Rupert Holmes came out in 1978 and “September” by Earth, Wind and Fire was released in 1979. He worked in a little nod to the killer bees at that time.
The porn-industry subplot gives Black a chance to wallow in breasts and butts – it’s not leering, it’s nostalgia! – and a queasy low point comes when the adolescent Holly, a wised-up Nancy Drew, sneaks into an adult film premiere party in the hills. (By the franchise’s fourth film, our heroes would get a hip new partner, or maybe a dog.) But in a summer of robots and warlocks and ninja turtles, I’m not sure how this kind of old-school mismatched-partners buddy-cop film-even one with a 1970s setting and a wry tone to remind you it’s now 2016-is going to play. Their interplay is delicious, like the screamer of a scene where Healy confronts March while he’s trying to cover himself up in a bathroom stall. He was sitting on the toilet thinking he was alone when he smelled smoke and saw Crowe watching him with a cigarette in hand.
So Gosling – bless him forever – does a Lou Costello fear-stricken asthma take. It’s not a coincidence.
Crowe the told a story about Gosling’s ability to be amusing and go off-script to try to make Crowe laugh and lose his way: “We blocked off a section of Sunset Boulevard and it was a very simple shot…”
Q: When Russell Crowe’s character breaks your arm, you let out a high-pitched scream. Rice is a genuine find and this is her breakout performance. Crowe is a deft straight man, with looks that could kill.
Crowe described the anything-goes attitude of the shoot. His writing is often amusing, wry and, at times, sophomoric. “We just sort of jumped off a cliff every time, and if a left turn occurred to Shane partly through scene that’s where we’d go”.
Q: How did you prepare? I think Shane is just so smart and the script is very layered. I think we all know Shane’s work. “I have a Hawaiian shirt on, and he’s all wet because he was in the pool with mermaids”. Loosey-goosey looks good on Gosling.
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The film could have used a romance; instead, March has a wise-beyond-her-years daughter, Holly (Angourie Rice). Gosling’s March, meanwhile, drinks way too much, falls out of multiple windows and generally has the far flashier role, filled with physical comedy. She showed she could be just as filthy and foul-mouthed as the boys in the first film, but is pretty much an afterthought here.
