Josh Peace Wants To Live

You Might As Well Live is a funny, twisted little movie about Robert Mutt — a man who just wants to be “somebody” but instead frequently comes across as the town joke. Mutt is admitted to a mental hospital after trying to commit suicide. Upon release he’s accused of being a pervert by his neighbour, Fred (Stephen McHattie), and is run out of the neighourhood by a lynch mob who want to chemically castrate him. This leads Mutt on a series of misadventures with his friend, Hershey (Dov Tiefenbach), and Hershey’s girlfriend, Cookie (Kristen Hager). He gets involved with trafficking drugs, meets a transvestite, ends up at a bondage party, and runs fully naked through the streets. This is the type of comedy that cult filmmaker John Waters would make if he was Canadian.

CityNews.ca spoke with Toronto-based actor and You Might As Well Live co-writer Josh Peace about playing Robert Mutt and what he hopes people will get out of the film now that it’s on DVD.

How did you and writer-director Simon Ennis first come together on the idea for You Might As Well Live?

We met at [the video store Revue Video] where we both worked back in 2002. I was also working as an actor and he was in film school at the time. We started making short films and then we made this film called The Business of Suicide which was a dark comedy with the same characters that ended up in You Might As Well Live.

What went into developing the Robert Mutt character?

When we first made the short film in 2002, the description on the page was ‘gawky, bespectacled geek’, and from there it evolved. In [the short film] he was a little more ornery and a little bit more intense because he was planning on killing himself. He was really uptight, on the verge of having an aneurysm, and didn’t have a whole lot of patience. When developing the feature, the character became more of an innocent, joy-for-life type. He’s a bumbling idiot who’s got a huge heart but is dark as well.

There’s a scene where you’re running around fully naked on the street. Was that challenging for you to do?

I’ve had to show my butt in a bunch of things but have never done full frontal nudity. What made it a little bit easier is that we built a prosthetic that had this big, bushy mane on it with a tiny, uncircumcised penis. It was more uncomfortable getting that on with the prosthetic guys than it was shooting the scene. Everyone thought, ‘Oh my god! That guy’s running naked through the street.’ But in fact I felt like I had a G-string on. It actually went around the back and they glued it to the top of my butt crack.

Anything you or Simon wanted to do in the film but could not?

There were things that were cost prohibitive. There was a whole secondary plot in the movie where these Honduran hit men were after [the character] Cookie. They were going to have traditional Honduran hats, assault rifles and bazookas, and drive around in a beat-up old van looking for her. At one point she was going to shoot one of their heads off. Very early on in the process when we were showing the script to [producer] Robert Lantos he was like, ‘You know what guys? No. You can’t afford this and it doesn’t make any sense.’ We also wanted to go a little bit further with the in-the-nude running scene and have Robert jumping over fences and barely missing having his testicles ripped off. Stuff that would make the audience [cringe]…that also became a logistical nightmare for our budget.

Who inspires you as an actor?

I’m largely inspired by people based on their older [films]. Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman…all their ’60s and ’70s stuff. Right now, Sam Rockwell is someone who inspires me. I don’t really have any contemporary actors I idolize.

What are your hopes for the film now that it’s available on DVD?

It’s so difficult for independent movies to do anything in the theatres because there’s no advertising budget compared to the big blockbusters. With DVD, I think we have a real opportunity to reach some sort of cult status. People will now see the movie and hopefully it will catch fire. I would love for it to see a large audience and, as we make more things in the future, people will go back to it. I think it has a real chance at finding success on DVD.

What else are you currently working on?

I worked on a feature film called Devil that was produced by M. Night Shyamalan. I play a mustachioed homicide detective from Philadelphia. It’s part of his series of movies called Night Tales and will be out around Halloween 2011.

Any chance of seeing Robert Mutt return in another film?

Simon and I have talked about going back to Robert Mutt every 5 or 10 years…whenever we want to make a comedy. It would be interesting to see Robert as an old man because we love the character so much. He’s fun to play too. Being on the set, doing the character, I became really likeable because Robert was so likeable.

You Might As Well Live is available on DVD February 16. Find out more about the film on the official site.

brian.mckechnie@citynews.rogers.com

Top image: Josh Peace as Robert Mutt in You Might As Well Live. Courtesy E1 Entertainment.