Exclusive Interview: Ricky Gervais

September 10, 2012 World Screen
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PREMIUM: Ricky Gervais, who has given comedy fans some of the most original shows in the genre, talks to World Screen about his upcoming projects.

 

WS: What type of comedy works best?
GERVAIS: Comedy should appeal to the intellect more than to the emotions. I see a lot of stand-ups going up there and they’re more rallying than trying to make the audience laugh. Stand-ups come out and say things like, “What are we going to do about all these immigrants?” And they get a round of applause. That has nothing to do with comedy—nothing at all to do with it. As soon as something steps out of the bounds of the intellect, it fails to be funny. It loses its impact because it’s not true. The reason I don’t like racist jokes—it’s not because I’m offended by them—I’m offended by the fact that it doesn’t work comedically because it’s based on a falsehood. I can’t have a comedic premise that isn’t true. If someone comes out and says something like, “Why do Mexicans blah, blah, blah,” my first thought is, No! Whatever you say now, the punch line won’t work! It fails comedically because it falls down intellectually. It’s an intellectual pursuit. We feel good about getting [the joke]. We can get it on so many levels. We can get the pun, we can get the guy acting abnormally. It comes down to what we’re really like as people. The more accurate a joke is, the funnier it is. When something knocks it out of the park, you double over.
 
WS: Can you joke about anything?
GERVAIS: I say there’s nothing you can’t joke about, it depends what the joke is. Comedy comes from a good or bad place. People accuse me of being this shock comedian or trying to offend. I never go out to offend, it’s easy and it’s churlish, but mainly way too easy. Some people are offended by my mere presence, some people are offended by mixed marriage, some people are offended by me being an atheist—what do you want me to do? Pretend I’m not? Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean you’re right. And offense is taken, not given. In comedy, there’s no right or wrong answer for what offense is, it’s personal. Simple as that. It’s about feelings, and feelings are personal. One person’s –ism isn’t another’s. You really just need to explore the subject honestly and sensibly and put a new spin on it. People will be able to laugh because it’s a release. At the end of the day, comedy is just a release. Comedy is no different from having a beer or having a massage. We do it because it feels good. We make jokes because we make someone laugh, and we feel good because we’ve made someone feel good. And we get points for that socially. If something pops into your head you have to get it out there, whether it’s a painting or song. But the point of any art form—even something as lowly as TV comedy, and it is a lowly art form, I know that—is to make a connection. That’s all it is. To make a connection with strangers or someone you know, it doesn’t matter. For me, it’s the size of that connection that matters. Not how many people it connects with, because there’s so [much] homogenized stuff that reaches a lot of people very quickly, but it’s nothing. It’s a light rip-off. You want to kick the door down. You want to think that your work could be as life-changing as some of the work that you’ve seen that have changed your life.
 
WS: What upcoming projects do you have?
GERVAIS: At the moment it’s the end of an era and the beginning of another. I’m making the final installment of An Idiot Abroad. It’s a two-part special where I’m sending Karl on the Marco Polo route from Venice to China with Warwick Davis [the star of Life’s Too Short]. Why not?
 
I’m doing a special of Life’s Too Short, it might not be the end but we’re doing a special next because it’s an idea that it would be better as an hour special than as a series. We’re in the middle of the third season of The Ricky Gervais Show, which might be the last now. Yeah, that’s 39 episodes and we don’t want to be going through the dregs of stuff. I don’t know if we’ll ever get around to sitting down and doing more, but I love that, it’s one of the favorite projects I’ve ever done. It’s comedy and it’s all so real and true and Karl is so lovable. The empathy is amazing with him. He’s totally honest. He hasn’t got a pretentious bone in his body. He’s the perfect subject, character, comedy one-liner machine in the universe. I’m also just starting a new sitcom called Derek. It’s my favorite I’ve ever done and it’s my favorite character I’ve been playing.
 
WS: Where did the inspiration for that come from?
GERVAIS: Lots of places. But I worked in an office for eight years and I’ve watched a lot of docu-soaps made with normal people. Most of my family works in care homes. My sister works with people with learning disabilities and disabled children. My sister-in-law works in a home for people with Alzheimer’s. About four of my nieces work in old people’s homes and care homes. So I’ve always been around that. I’m a little bit disappointed with how we treat our old people in Britain. It seems to be inevitable that when they can’t chew the fat anymore we sort of discard them, which is terrible because there seems to be this ridiculous arrogance in youth. If you’re lucky, you’re going to be old one day. I’ve also always been interested with outsiders. On my travels I’ve seen these people that are on the fringes of society, they collect autographs, they live in their own little world and I wonder, Where do they live? Do they live with their mom? They can’t be married. Are they together? Where are these strange people that are very sweet? I wanted to explore that. I wanted to know the outsiders and get them together and make them a home. I’ve made them a sitcom family so it’s them against the world. [There is a reality show] called Secret Millionaire and what I discovered is: you’ve got these celebrities that do these charity events, but they only do it if it’s on TV. Then you’ve got the real people who stand outside the shopping mall every day of their life collecting for cancer because their mum died of cancer. These people who’ve got nothing, and they’re collecting for people who’ve got less. Then I realized what the shortcut is in life. It’s kindness. You don’t have to be clever. You don’t have to work out the meaning of life. Because if you’re just kind—if you do just the thing that you think is kind—it’ll work. So it’s all about that. Anyone knows what’s right, really. They don’t need any direction with it. It’s the only shortcut you can take to be a good person. Just do the kind thing. It’s about that.
 
WS: There certainly seems to be a moral bankruptcy of kindness these days.
GERVAIS: Everyone is out for themselves. It’s time [to do a show like Derek] because I’ve studied the ego of the rich and famous and the desperate and I just want to turn to normal people. I want to return to what’s so nice and brilliant about just being a normal person trying to live a good life.
 
WS: What were some of your goals for The Office?
GERVAIS: I wanted The Office to be a study in body language. I noticed that people talked much more with their bodies and their eyebrows and touching their mouths and touching their hair than they do with what they’re saying. Often there’s a huge juxtaposition with what someone’s saying and what his body is saying. I wanted to explore that with David Brent. I’d say that was The Office’s main innovation. Everything else has been done before. The Office was the first fake documentary. It wasn’t the first thing to have a group of flawed characters acting like they weren’t flawed. Film has done that for ages, The Larry Sanders Show did it. It wasn’t the first thing to have no stars. It was probably the first to have them all in some degree at the same time. It was probably the first sitcom that explored body language in comedy. The big secret about The Office that no one has ever picked up on is that it was the first sitcom that was about comedy. Everything came down to what was funny, what was acceptable. The thing about comedy is that it’s turning a societal norm on its head. It’s someone acting wrongly and people reacting to it. Garret saying something stupid is one thing, but cutting to Tim looking straight down the lens, that’s another. That gets a laugh. That’s as effective as a laugh track.
 
WS: Do you think that comedy can illustrate truths about human nature more clearly or better than drama?
GERVAIS: Yes it can, because it’s not beholden to certain structures. It can certainly do it quicker. And it can certainly do it more viscerally. It can do it with feeling. A laugh is there—bang. You can laugh before you realize why you’re laughing—something hits you. You find yourself smiling. You don’t mean to laugh or smile, you just do. It comes back to truth. Picasso summed it up, he said, “Art is a lie that helps us see the truth.” That’s what’s fantastic, whether it’s literal or metaphorical, played out or just said.
 
In The Office the main themes were men are children and women are adults. I see that men never grow up. Men’s egos run away with them. Women don’t have the egos like men, they just don’t. And we can’t help it, it’s sort of part of our hardwiring. We do have a little bit of alpha-male-ism. But what’s funny is the alpha male is usually to protect the tribe from danger, it’s not to be used to win at trivial pursuit or cards. That’s when it’s funny, when the male ego competes with a child, or when it’s in charge of something, like David Brent. He shouldn’t have been competing with those people. He shouldn’t have been trying to be top dog. He was top dog, he should have acted like an adult. That’s why we couldn’t really take him out of The Office, because if you’re in the pub with David Brent, he’s off-duty, he’s bound to get drunk and have a laugh. If they jump the shark and suddenly take the sitcom to Spain, he’s allowed to be a brat when he’s drunk on holiday jumping in the pool. He’s not meant to be a brat when he’s in his suit and tie, he’s meant to be in charge. Because he was trapped within that, and that’s what all sitcoms do. In sitcoms, you have to be trapped, literally, like the prison comedy Porridge, [a British sitcom from the ’70s], or Sgt. Bilko in the army [in the ’50s comedy, The Phil Silvers Show], he’s physically trapped. Or a family comedy where they’re emotionally trapped, like Roseanne, she can’t ever leave the kids. In Sanford and Son, the son can’t leave his dad. So you have to be trapped somehow. David Brent was trapped by his own ambition. He couldn’t get away from that camera. He was like a moth to a flame. He thought it was his way out. That was about the new ambition in society now, fame.
 
WS: Fame has been a recurring theme for you.
GERVAIS: The Office came out of me watching a lot of docu-soaps where normal people became famous overnight and they had their 15 minutes of fame. What was funny for me was the second 15 minutes, what they did to hold on to fame. Nowadays, that second 15 minutes is a profession. Now there are people who will literally do anything to stay in the news. There are people under 30 bringing out their third or fourth autobiography. Really? There’s no difference between fame and infamy now. [After The Office came] Extras, a clear study of celebrity and being body-snatched by fame. Life’s Too Short is probably the most gruesome face of it because The Office reflected those quaint docu-soaps of the ’90s with normal people getting their 15 minutes. Life’s Too Short was about that second 15 minutes, where being a celebrity is now living their life like it’s an open wound to get another 15 minutes. Now there are these celebrity shows like Celebrity Rehab—why would you do that on television? Going into celebrity spa having enemas! I don’t know where it’s going to stop.