Allow Marc Maron to regale you with tales of his “ridiculous” Avatar audition
Maron auditioned for Avatar: The Way Of Water, and all he got was some cigars
Aux News Marc Maron
Alright, what the fuckers, what the fuck buddies, what the fuck-atars. Appearing on stage at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, WTF host Marc Maron joined Happy Sad Confused’s Josh Horowitz to talk Tar, and we don’t mean Lydia. Marc Maron, a guy who admittedly didn’t “even remember the first” Avatar and doesn’t seem to care about the colonization of Pandora, auditioned for James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way Of Water and lived to tell the tale. But before he could even ask Cameron who his guys were, Maron had to wrestle with a “ridiculous” audition that led him to wonder, “Why the fuck would I want that job?”
“There’s this assumption that we’re going to do four Avatar movies. Dude, I don’t even remember the first one!” Maron said. Reading the script didn’t help because Maron didn’t “know what this all means to the world.” Maron recalls going down to Cameron’s Long Beach studio, where “there’s people doing acrobatics, there’s people flying. It’s like Cirque du Soleil down there.”
“So you go in, and [Cameron] gives you the script, and he’s like, ‘Uh, can I have your, you know, you can’t take a picture of [the script]. This doesn’t leave the building, this script.’ I’m, like, ‘Okay, man.’” Maron continues, “[Cameron’s] like, ‘Go take a look, uh, look it over because, you know, you’re here. You might as well just read for this today.’ I’m, like, “Okay, man.” To be a fly on the wall in that Long Beach compound, “the only cool part” of which, to Maron’s mind, is “a museum of James Cameron,” a room that houses the Titanic model and “some other stuff from the other movies.” As Horowitz put it, Maron’s a “big fan.”
Things didn’t get any less weird when the cameras were rolling. “All of a sudden, you’re in this zone with these people that he just has around down there to read parts and fly and be on dollies,” he said. “I’m on camera, I think. I got a picture of whatever the fuck it is, a boat or whatever. I’m in the middle of this thing, and I’m totally untethered, and I have no sense of character. I don’t know really what’s happening around me other than there are several unidentified actor people and acrobats all around me.”
As we all know, Maron didn’t get the part. Instead, it went to Jemaine Clement from Flight Of The Conchords, which was fine by Maron. “Thank god,” the comedian said. “Here’s the fucked up thing about me and acting: I don’t like being away from home. It’s not my bag. I got anxious being there for a week. What am I going to eat?”
“My agent was like, ‘You’re probably going to go to New Zealand for four years,’ or whatever the fuck it was. Some ridiculous amount of time. I was like, it’s not happening, and I have no problem with it. I had nothing invested in it other than the experience of, like, all right; I’ll go take the meeting. Then [Cameron] sent me a box of cigars because he didn’t cast me. Okay, that’s nice. At this age, I have no problem saying no.”
“Like I would’ve had to go to New Zealand for a year, and people would’ve been like, ‘Were you even in it?’” Maron replied. “But Jemaine lives in New Zealand! He has family there. It was a no-brainer.”
As hard as it is to believe, it doesn’t sound like Jake Sully will be stopping by the garage any time soon.
(via Variety)
20 Comments
I don’t like being away from home. It’s not my bag. I got anxious being there for a week. What am I going to eat?Get out of my brain!
Clement’s role didn’t amount to much, and I thought it was hilarious that he was using an American accent next to the boat captain who was (I think) Australian. Like, who cares, it’s the future on another planet, let Clement be a kiwi. He and the Australian could make snide comments at each other.But to have Marc Maron in that role would have been fucking hilarious.
May have been marginally funnier but it was a pretty thankless role, thinly sketched and the character’s moral misgivings about what he was doing were not entirely credible.
I don’t mean it would have been a hilarious performance. Just that having Marc Maron play a dyspeptic marine xenobiologist in an Avatar movie is a hilarious concept.
If there was a line where he ordered someone to lock some gates, he’d nail it.
I think the fact that the moral misgivings not being credible are the point. The character is a biologist who knows exactly why what he’s doing is wrong, and because of his existence in the society that he’s in, he can’t really do much else, because he’s a marine biologist and the earth is entirely broken. It’s like people in the petroleum sciences now – they know intimately that what they’re doing is earth-murder, but they also need to eat and there isn’t any outlet for their research and knowledge that isn’t earth murder.
I was honestly confused as to whether it was Clement or some sort of lookalike, because the accent seemed so arbitrary (and because the character wasn’t particularly funny). Odd casting, wasted opportunity. It’s a reminder that one of the flaws of the Avatar movies is that they are humorless.What is funny is that the scripts are treated like a state secret. Because the script is definitely the most precious part of these movies.
He wasn’t particularly funny, but I still think he got the only laughs out of me in the entire movie.
I didn’t have any idea Clement was in the movie when I saw it, so when he appeared on screen I involuntarily blurted out “the fuck?” And yeah, totally wasted opportunity.
Christ, and he did a woeful job with the American accent. All that money for photoreal CG but $0.00 on helping the Antipodeans convincingly Yank.
Maron recalls going down to Cameron’s Long Beach studio, where “there’s
people doing acrobatics, there’s people flying. It’s like Cirque du
Soleil down there.”You’d think the Blue Man Group would be more the go-to descriptor!
NGL, I’d have been way more likely to see Avatar 2 in theaters if Maron was in it.
Maron or Tig Notaro.
Maybe we’ll get a Maron guest spot on Star Trek Discovery with Tig…
Rami Malek
Didn’t even notice Clement.
It took me way too long to understand what this article meant when it said “talk Tar” and meant “AvaTAR”. Was that just some clickbaity way to try to get Tar SEO points?
Interesting that Cameron seemed to have comedians in mind for this particular, rather small role that Jemaine Clement ended up getting. I don’t recall anything that “funny” about the character, seemed like it was played pretty straight? Kind of a thankless part anyway.
Soderbergh does that a lot (casts comedians in straight roles), he says it gives an otherwise unmemorable character a quick edge.“we had cast a lot of stand-up comedians in these supporting roles not because I wanted them to be funny but because I find them to have a distinctive quality because of what their day jobs are. They make a living being distinctive, and a lot of these parts I felt like had to register pretty quickly, and they really do — they really can in a very short period of time make an impression, and they also look like normal people.”
Yup, there was nothing humorous about it whatsoever, and the dramatic elements were sadly completely out of Clement’s wheelhouse. Undoubtedly the terrible writing didn’t help.