VIEW FILM STILLS: Walk Hard

Jenna Fischer and John C. Reilly in Walk Hard Gemma La Mana/Courtesy of Columbia Pictures

When most people think of Jenna Fischer, the word that probably comes to mind is "mousy." On TV's The Office, her Pam Beesly sits quietly behind a reception desk, watching with bemused detachment the strange and ridiculous goings-on around her. So it's refreshing to see her suggestively licking an ice cream, belting out double entendre-laden lyrics, and beating the crap out of John C. Reilly in the name of love.

How did your approach to Darlene Madison Cox differ from your approach to, say, Pam Beesly?
Knowing that the humor was so over the top and knowing that the film did have very broad elements, we wanted to take our characters very seriously. When I read the script, it reminded me a little bit of the movie Airplane, where the characters are taking themselves very, very, very, overly seriously and the world around them is so ridiculous. And so that was sort of the way we approached the material.

Did it read funny?
The script read very funny, but when you added the look of the movie, which is so distinctive — you know, the costumes and the set design and how they shot it in this epic way with these huge, sweeping shots that we're used to watching in these "very important" movies. I think it is a very visual film, and there's so much visually that's funny that it just sort of built on itself.

So you have you guys taking your characters seriously, and the movie being shot very seriously, all for comic effect.
Right. And I think that's satire done right. That's why This Is Spinal Tap was so successful, because they could have all of these ridiculous things happen to these people, as long as the people they were happening to were taking it seriously, then it didn't become goofy. It just was funny.

One of the major targets was obviously Walk the Line — were there any other specific things you drew upon for your character?
I read the book Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley, and it was this great firsthand account of what it was like to be married to the King of Rock 'n' Roll during the birth of rock 'n' roll, and there's kind of no bigger rock 'n' roll personality than Elvis Presley. And she wrote a very candid book about their falling in love and their marriage, and then Priscilla Presley went on to run the Elvis empire after his death. So I felt like this was a lot like what the character of Darlene would be like. She starts out a performer, but when she meets Dewey Cox she kind of becomes like the woman behind the man, she keeps him out of trouble, she's the brains in this whole operation. And so I kind of wanted that kind of influence for the character. And I did watch Walk the Line and Ray and What's Love Got To Do With It, but I wanted to start with this template of Priscilla Presley just so that it didn't seem like I was just regurgitating Reese Witherspoon's performance in Walk the Line. I didn't want to just do an imitation of her. So I made sure to do my homework in other areas and try to flesh out the character a little bit.