Jack Black’s pleasingly plump 5ft 6in frame is not of the type usually associated with Hollywood’s leading men. Think of Brad, Keanu or George, and it’s unlikely that your mind will conjure up Jack next. But right now, Jack Black is the man of the moment. His wild-eyed, speedball persona has been yanked off stage, where he performs with his band Tenacious D, and thrust in front of the cameras, in the process transforming a mid-budget comedy,
The School of Rock, into a box-office goldmine. Made for just $20 million (a snip in these days of $100 million epics), it took four times that in the States alone. And now Hollywood wants more of it - or, specifically, more of Jack. But while studio heads and casting directors salivate over the prospect of the "new John Belushi", or perhaps a comedy star to rival the present king, Jim Carrey, the unlikely object of their desire is apparently turning down multimillion-dollar paydays by the dozen. When asked what his newfound stardom has brought him, Black is refreshingly frank: "There’s more opportunity to do crappy films," he says. "You think that great directors are going to offer you great scripts, but that’s just a dream. I mean, more people recognise me on the streets and stuff, but Tim Burton hasn’t been on the phone yet."
The thing is, Jack has been threatening to hit the big time for years, and now that he’s done it, he knows that he’s got to get it right or risk losing his edge. As Barry, the record-store fascist who refused to sell rubbishy music to customers, he stole High Fidelity from the established star, John Cusack. He was supposed to break through in Shallow Hal, playing a sexist lump who only dates beautiful (thin) women, until he’s given the gift of seeing "inner beauty" and is smitten by Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit. Unfortunately, the film wasn’t very funny. He was, however, very funny in Orange County, playing a drug-addled slacker and major embarrassment to his academic brother. Sadly not many people saw the film. Black claims he wasn’t looking for major stardom anyway. "I’m not Matt Damon," he says. "My goal was to be a character actor. I never thought I would get leads the way that I’ve been able to in the past two years."
And now that he has that most precious commodity - a big hit - everybody is trying to work out what, exactly, Jack is. "They say I’m a Belushi type of guy, I guess. Which is fine by me. Only with a different ending." John Belushi, another rotund actor who specialised in wired oddballs, died from a heroin and cocaine overdose at the age of 33. Black has already had his brush with drugs and rehab, and, at 34, he can tell you of the pitfalls of mind-altering substances with some authority. In fact, he could have told you when he was a teenager, growing up in Santa Monica.
"Somehow I got into cocaine when I was 15 and they put me into this school for troubled teens. It had 20 students and an on-campus psychologist who was also a weightlifter. You know, cause any trouble and he’d wrestle you down and give you some therapy. I had therapy for the next year and a half and it really helped a lot."
Years later, by now trying to make it as an actor, he drifted back into drugs. "Yeah, I had some fun early on. And it just sort of became a pain in the ass." Perhaps it’s this first-hand experience that makes him so good at playing characters who look like they’ve been at the bong before lunchtime. "I have a kind of stoney vibe naturally," he agrees, "so these kind of characters are easy to slip into."
We meet first at the Toronto Film Festival, where The School of Rock has just had its premiere. It’s the day after, and Black bounds into an anonymous hotel conference room, clearly on a natural high from the glowing notices. He makes a lot of sweeping arm gestures when he speaks and tends to capitalise words, especially when he’s referring to music - as in "The Rock" - or his own tongue-in-cheek band, Tenacious D, which he and his musical partner, Kyle Gass, started more than a decade ago.
Black was always interested in the arts. At school, long before the drug problems, he liked drawing and music and school plays. After the school for troubled children, he went to a specialist arts and sciences school. "It was great, and that’s where I got back into acting and stuff. It was the path of least resistance. My parents were supportive. It was the last course open to me. They were both engineers, and I certainly didn’t inherit their mathematical skills."
He attended UCLA, where he became a member of Tim Robbins’ Actors’ Gang, an LA-based troupe that included John and Joan Cusack, and Kyle Gass. Then, in 1992, Black made his film debut in Bob Roberts, Robbins’ spoof documentary about a populist right-wing politician.
Throughout the Nineties he appeared in a series of small roles in big films - Kevin Costner’s Waterworld, Robbins’ Dead Man Walking, The Cable Guy with Jim Carrey, to name a few. Black’s screen time was usually minuscule, but he was mostly happy about his career: "I’m pretty low-maintenance, really. I was having fun."
Mostly, though, he was having fun with Tenacious D, named after basketball commentator Marv Albert’s phrase for a solid defence. Having begun jamming in 1989, Black and Gass continued to play together until, finally, in 1994, they persuaded Al’s Bar in downtown LA to let them play. "A legend was born. The D were on stage and on fire," says Black. The band wrote semi-spoof songs about frustrated teenage lust, exaggerated sexual prowess, and how they were the greatest band in the world - a joke they still hammer to this day, although now they have a record company, a hit CD, and sell-out tours to their name. Black clearly loves it all. "I have a girlfriend of seven years, so I don’t indulge in the fruits of the road," he says with a wink. "But everything else about The D is so The Rock. It’s the biggest thrill going out on stage with an audience that is ravenous for The Rock. You don’t get that from movies at all."
By the late Nineties, Black was beginning to get noticed as an actor. He played a pill-popping hospital porter in Jesus’ Son in 1999, and a year later came High Fidelity, memorable for Black’s lethal delivery of one-liners, as well as his surprisingly soulful rendition of Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get it On. Shallow Hal was meant to be the reward - his first lead role. But it proved a false start. Black had to wait a little longer for his turn in the spotlight.
That it’s happened with the Richard Linklater-directed The School of Rock is not really a surprise. Linklater is a gifted film-maker who has delivered some memorable independent movies, notably Dazed and Confused and Before Sunrise. And Black also had the benefit of his close friend Mike White writing the script for him. White had seen Black on stage with Tenacious D and took that as a starting point for this film. "I just felt there was a lot more of Jack that we hadn’t seen on screen," says White. "He’s as funny at home as he is in the movies. And his comic timing is second to none."
On paper, The School of Rock sounds dreadfully naff: Dewey Finn, a frustrated wannabe heavy rock star, is kicked out of his second-rate band because he’s too over-the-top (the film opens with a glorious concert sequence where Black sends up an overblown metal axeman, complete with stage dives and screeching solos). He then gets a job as a supply teacher in a posh private school, where he proceeds to teach the overly academic kids all about The Rock.
In the wrong hands this could be truly dreadful, but Linklater, with Black clearly adoring mugging every minute he’s on screen, has crafted a very funny film that will make the kids happy and their parents laugh out loud. "It’s always a tricky subject because there’s never been a good rock movie, except for Spinal Tap," says Black.
"I was a little worried about working with kids. I wanted to make sure we didn’t approach it tip-toeing around stuff that would normally be funny, or make it gentle, rock-a-bye-baby bullshit."
As for what Black will do next, well, he already has one movie in the bag, Envy, directed by Barry Levinson. Black and Ben Stiller play life-long friends who fall out when one of them - Black - makes a fortune by selling an invention. It was made before The School of Rock was released, but sounds promising, with a strong supporting cast including Rachel Weisz and Christopher Walken.
"I’d just like to be in films that I would like to see," says Black. "I think of myself as an entertainer and I have different weapons in my entertainment arsenal. Like I have my acting bazooka and my music machete. And you don’t know what I’m going to come at you with."
The School of Rock opens on February 6
