>>PREVIEW
BLACKBALLED: THE BOBBY DUKES STORY
Directed by Brant Sersen
Maple, 2006
He may be more familiar to you than most of your blood relations. Though not exactly pretty, his face is distinguished by his c’mon-just-try-to-hit-me smirk, enigmatic hairline and air of Beantown braggadocio. And courtesy of a certain late-night satirical talk show, Rob Corddry is readily recognized by every stoned college kid on the continent.
"And every drunk NPR listener," Corddry says over the phone from his office at The Daily Show in New York. "Fans have me either sign their boobs or their totebags. It’s just those two demographics. Nobody else knows who the fuck I am."
Even so, that still counts as some kinda fanbase. What’s more, his tenure as the most pugnacious of Jon Stewart’s correspondents is being augmented by more film and TV appearances, including the lead role in Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story, a scrappy but very engaging indie mockumentary that may do for paintball what Flashdance did for welding. Corddry plays Bobby, a legend of the sport who was caught wiping off an opponent’s shot. The disgraced hero spent the next decade travelling the world in an attempt to redeem himself. When he finally returns to play the game he loves, Bobby struggles to assemble your proverbial ragtag team in time for the big championship.
Shot over weekends in between Corddry’s Daily Show duties during a very rainy few months in 2003, the movie is apparently more fun to watch than it was to make.
"We shot every weekend in the pouring rain and it was pretty gruelling," says Corddry. "I feel like I’m a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, sitting in a bar somewhere really drunk and going, ‘Those were the good old days, but I don’t wanna repeat ’em.’"
If they weren’t quite comparable to combat in Vietnam, the many sessions of paintball play made Corddry feel like he lived through Grenada at the very least.
"On the one hand, the actual paintball players loved the fact we were making this movie and being faithful to the game," he says. "But, when they got the chance to break our balls, they did."
Most of Corddry’s fellow paintball neophytes were friends he met through his association with the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB), a New York troupe (founding members include Saturday Night Live’s Amy Poehler) that has gradually expanded into an improv comedy empire with theatres on both coasts. After moving from Boston to New York in 1994, Corddry was appearing in "a really crappy sketch group" when he first learned of the UCB. Mistakenly thinking they were Andy Richter’s sketch group, he went to see them one night and "they just blew me away – I’d never seen comedy like that. They were the first people I’d ever seen to play comedy realistically, to treat it like a mathematical equation."
Corddry’s UCB connections led to appearances on the troupe’s short-lived Comedy Central show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and ultimately The Daily Show. When Blackballed writer-director Brant Sersen and co-writer Brian Steinberg approached Corddry and fellow UCB vet Paul Scheer (who plays the geeky ref who originally caught Bobby wiping) with an idea about a paintball movie, it was an easy decision to draw from the same pool of talent.
"I’ve been working with these guys for years – I know how funny they are," says Corddry. "It’s really great to have more people agree with me. The Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre on both coasts is the pinnacle of comedy right now."
Some fans would say the same about The Daily Show, though Corddry believes that show’s success has less to do with the Brigade’s scientific methods than satire’s fundamental appeal.
"I think the most satisfying humour for human beings is that which is based somewhere in truth and that which we can recognize," explains Corddry, who earned an English degree from University of Massachusetts in Amherst. "That’s not to say slapstick isn’t funny but it’s funny for completely different reasons."
He’s amazed as anyone at The Daily Show’s ability to go from strength to strength and jokes about the moment when the show jumps the shark. "It’s gotta happen. No one’s immune. We’re all gonna get black eyes and bloody noses."
If Corddry’s luck holds, he’ll be at a safe distance when that occurs. He’s followed Blackballed with more movies, including a recent bit part in Failure to Launch and meatier roles in The Pleasure of Your Company, a forthcoming comedy by Stella’s Michael Ian Black, and Unaccompanied Minors, a kids’ movie by Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig slated for next Christmas. He’s also the star of The Winner, a live-action pilot by The Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane.
"It’s sort of a skewed version of The Wonder Years in which the narrator, a man in his mid 40s, looks back on his coming-of-age which just so happened to be when he was 32," says Corddry. "It’s really, really funny and it has the word ‘vagina’ in it, which makes it all worthwhile. We won’t find out ’til mid-May whether it goes to network or not. I know it’s so hard to get a TV show made, no matter how much smoke they blow up my ass."
What with all that work and his first child due in July, Corddry’s days may soon be just as busy as the summer he made Blackballed. "After that summer was done, I went on a cocaine-and-whore bender so I felt better," he says. "But y’know, one bender just isn’t enough after a while. I’m planning a trip to the moon once this spate is over." |
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