Canadian actor Ryan Gosling, who was blessed with a second daughter earlier this year (with wife Eva Mendes), recently shared a few parenting tips on The Ellen Show. Incidentally, the 35-year-old is also playing a dad (and a detective) in his next, The Nice Guys, along with Russell Crowe. In the action comedy set in the 70s, the detective duo tries to solve the murder of a fading adult movie star. The Notebook actor, who confirmed that he will be starring in the remake of the 1982 film, Blade Runner, which will also star Harrison Ford, talks about finding his comic timing, his bond with Crowe and his entertaining director, Shane Black.
Zeroing in on other movies for inspiration: Shane gave me some movies to watch. But what does Night Moves have to do with this? All the movies he gave me have nothing to do with this. A total waste of time. This is a spoiler alert, but there is a scene with a giant talking bumblebee, a cigarette-smoking bumblebee, in this movie. We have a whole scene with him. That ain’t in Night Moves, and that requires a whole other conversation in a tone that we never had, so we’re trying to find that tone, you know.
When the director is also a very entertaining scriptwriter: I always hear that Shane is laughing by the monitor. People are always saying that and then I go back and he’s like, “It’s a serviceable take.” You’re not ever in danger of getting high-fived to death.
The deciding factor, on choosing this project: If it wasn’t for Russell, I don’t think I would have done it. When I read the script, I knew that Shane was on a plane trying to convince Russell to do it, so I read it with him in mind. I could completely picture him in the role and I’ve never, you know, seen him do anything like this and the movie just immediately became so funny.
Discovery of comic timing: I just think it’s part of life to find humour, even in the dark stuff of tragedy. In movies, it gets sort of surgically removed and I never quite understood it. It also feels that, if you’re looking for the truth of something, you have to acknowledge the humour of it as well. So it is something that I always look out for and try to incorporate into the films that I am doing.
Hitting it off with Russell Crowe: It’s been so surprising to me how he has been so wildly supportive. And I really am grateful for that. I am used to meeting a certain amount of resistance when I am trying to take something in a comedic direction. To want to go as broad as I wanted to go with this, and to have Russell be such a champion of that, well… I am very grateful. The movie releases on June 3.