Marathon man

>> David Schwimmer on his directorial debut, the jogging-themed romcom Run Fatboy Run

CREATIVE COLLABORATOR: Simon Pegg

by MARK SLUTSKY

The first hint that David Schwimmer had more to offer than Dr. Ross Gellar’s eternal love for Rachel on Friends was his role in the 2001 Steven Spielberg-produced WWII miniseries Band of Brothers. Playing Captain Herbert Sobel in the series’ first episode, Schwimmer portrayed, with no small amount of fearlessness, an amazingly unlikeable character, far from his beloved sitcom’s cuddly paleontologist.

Since the show’s end in 2004, Schwimmer had been quieter than his former castmates, most whom have traded on Friends fame to take lead roles in various projects. For better or worse; for every hit like Jennifer Aniston’s comedy The Break-Up, there have been misfires like Matt LeBlanc’s ill-fated Joey spinoff. But while Schwimmer’s kept a low profile, he’s stayed busy, acting onstage in London and on Broadway, and, maybe most significantly, directing his first feature film, Run Fatboy Run.

A traditional romantic comedy, the most surprising thing about Schwimmer’s film may be that he’s somehow made… a Britcom. Set in London, Run Fatboy Run stars Simon Pegg (of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and who’s also a writer on the film) as a down-on-his-luck loser who, some years before, abandoned fiancée Thandie Newton at the altar.

When Newton starts seeing a jerky American financier (Hank Azaria), Pegg decides to take a shot at beating the athletic Azaria at his own game by enrolling in a marathon in which his romantic rival is planning to compete. Though directed by an American, the setting, the cast, and Pegg’s participation on the creative end definitely give it a strong U.K. sensibility.

At the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival to promote the movie, where the Mirror sat down with him, Schwimmer exuded an easy affability; self-deprecating and sweet, he’s a real mensch. “I was starting to read a bunch of scripts before the show ended three years ago,” he says, “I read this script by Michael Ian Black, and it was originally set in New York around the New York marathon. I’ve always been a fan of his, he’s a great writer and actor and I put it down and I thought ‘I have to direct this film.’ I was laughing out loud throughout the read and I was surprisingly moved by the whole thing.”

London connection

When the script was optioned by a British production company, Schwimmer sought out Pegg, who signed on to do an anglicizing rewrite, and who he first met on Band of Brothers. It was a collaboration, Schwimmer says, “every step of the way. Until we actually started principal photography, and then he became just an actor. And I think that was wise, because he was in every day, he’s in every moment of the film, so I think it was good for him to get as much rest as possible and just come to set when he needed to. But the whole process before, all the casting, all the script notes, it was a true collaboration. And the editing—we’d run stuff by him and show him different cuts and the choices of music.”

“I had no idea my first film would be a London comedy!” Schwimmer says, laughing. “That was my goal too, to really make it feel like a British film. But I had my own little secret agenda—I wanted it to be more representative of my experience of London as a guest, as an American, because I found the city to be incredibly diverse, culturally and ethnically. I kept thinking that, in recent memory, I can’t remember seeing that reflected in the British comedies coming over to the States. So we made a real effort to cast, both the principal artists and a lot of the supporting and background artists, as ethnically diversely as possible.”

Like most actors, Schwimmer harboured directorial ambitions, though he seems more serious about it than most. “I’m with a company in Chicago, and for the last 20 years, I’ve directed theatre. Every time I had a break in Friends, we’d have three to four months off, I’d run to Chicago and direct a play. I’d always wanted to direct a feature, but as you know, it takes more than a year of your life, so I couldn’t do it while we were shooting the show. So I started directing the show; I directed about a dozen episodes of Friends just to get the skills, to learn what the hell I was doing. It was always my hope to direct a feature when the show was over, and I’ve just had such a blessed career and I’ve had a lot of great, great opportunities, and I’m just really proud of the film and I hope I get to do it again. It was a blast.”

Run Fatboy Run opens
this Friday, March 28

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