Brendan Fraser: Back in Action

Brendan: I'm not changed. I feel more comfortable in my skin. I know how to love a little bit better. I'm a lot happier. I think about what it means to do the right thing more. I mean, it's a slow, gradual, organic thing that happens. You can think about it all that you want, but until you actually have your kid, it's like, 'Wow, that's really mine. I mean, ours.' It's a huge responsibility and one I relish. I've been asked already if I'm making choices in film for my kid, and I think that I was probably making choices in the sort of films that I wanted to make before I had the kid because I was banking it. I wanted him to get a bang out of movies that I wanted to see when I was a kid. I mean, I don't want brownie points from my own child, 'I'm "George Of The Jungle's" son' but it's something that he can refer back to.

TeenHollywood: So are the 'Looney Tunes' cartoons a part of your past?

Brendan: In 1975, I was in my pajamas with cereal every Saturday morning, my face this close to the screen watching Warner Brothers cartoons. Does that count? [Laughs]

TeenHollywood: Did you have a favorite cartoon character?

Brendan: Well, come on, Bugs. He's the carrot chomping cool man, never a hair out of place! He's never easily impressed. He's always funny. He's got the world's best sidekick [poking Daffy], and no matter where you go in the world, to this day, he's known. Their careers by far outlive their contemporaries which is very interesting.

TeenHollywood: Did you actually do the voice of Taz the Tasmanian Devil in this film?

Brendan: [Does the voice and it's hilarious!] Yes, I did. I used to get thrown out of the classroom for doing that.

TeenHollywood: How did they choose you to do it?

Brendan: I just did that one day and Eric Goldberg [the animation supervisor] went, 'Who did that, who did that?' They pulled me out and were like, 'That's great, do it more. This time, can you do it and say pardon?' I think that he had one line, 'Pardon.' I think that's all he ever spoke.

TeenHollywood: You seem to have a lot of fun spoofing yourself in this movie.

Brendan: If you can't make fun of yourself, no one else can laugh at what you do. I mean, come on, I play Brendan Fraser's stuntman, who's moonlighting as a security guard on the Warner Brother's lot because he's had this altercation with Brendan about his manhood being challenged, or something like that. He's a little cranky about this because he can't even land a gig dropping off something because he lands wrong. It's frustrating for him. On top of that, on a deeper level, he's also the son of a very successful Hollywood movie star.

TeenHollywood: Have you ever been mean to your stuntman like that?

Brendan: (Laughs) No, rule number one, make friends with the stuntman right away. He gets a case of beer, pizzas, flowers, whatever, right at the beginning. This is the guy who's going to be taking heavy hits for you.

TeenHollywood: How do you interact so well with animated characters that aren't there when you are working?

Brendan: Well, it's easier. Say that you're in a stage play, and you're working with an actor and you've got a long run and you're meant to have a fight. You don't want to hurt the other person because he's got to go back to work the next day and you do too, but [with this film] there's no one there, and so you can swing as free as you want. When I was battling mummies in The Mummy, the first film, you could hack away at them and there were guys in suits and so, you had to pull your punch a little bit because you didn't really want to take a limb off [Laughs]. But in this case, it's just a matter of believing that there is some sort of invisible element that you have to work with and as long as I do, then the audience will.

TeenHollywood: Has the technology changed a lot since 'Roger Rabbit'?

Brendan: Well, it's not my area of specialty, but I'm fascinated by it. Joe Dante [the director of "Looney"] is like, 'I've got a lot of respect for [director Robert] Zemeckis,' because on 'Roger Rabbit', think about the technology that they had in those days to accomplish what they did. That movie's a landmark, you know, it's a favorite of mine. Dean Cundey [Director of Photography], shot that also, and he shot 'Looney Tunes', so we felt like we'd had a good karma going for us there. Actually the two puppeteers who worked on 'Looney Tunes' worked alongside legions of them on 'Roger Rabbit', because there were was so much more stuff they had to do. It was all on wires and moving things around and now for Looney Tunes: Back in Action it's just about us moving an object in space and someone will layer by layer put in whatever.

TeenHollywood: In this movie, which scene blew you away that you thought 'wow the animation is great'!

Brendan: I have to say my favorite is the chase through the [famous] paintings. It's inspired and it almost ended up on the floor. It is so funny and so clever. These are the greatest hits of modern art and here we have the greatest hits of American cartoon icons charging through them, assuming them stylistically. It's great fun to watch, it's dizzying great fun.

TeenHollywood: Would you say you are more naturally funny or serious?

Brendan: I think that I have to not think about it. I am what the script tells me. I mean, that's what you have to build off of, right? Everything that you should do or should know, it should be on the page, and in the case of a movie like 'Looney Tunes', I'm not going to bluff you, we made up some of it on the fly and it works. That's the nature of the movie and Joe Dante is the first one to admit that, but that's kind of the process involved. It seems kind of crazy. I mean, here we are with this mega-budget picture and we're like, 'So, we need a laugh line here, anyone have ideas?'

TeenHollywood: But you seem to slip easily between goofy roles like this and serious ones like The Quiet American.

Brendan: I take myself very seriously on this movie so it is therefore funny. I'm very lucky. I've been offered diverse choices. Larger films, family oriented films, are becoming more personally gratifying to me now that I am a dad, and I'm looking at this whole world with great anticipation. Also, the economics of it allow other more interesting, and even more thoughtful works like Gods and Monsters or Twilight of the Golds, it's independent films like that that have come my way to get made. I'm going to do a couple of weeks with an ensemble film of a very good script that's gone out called Crash in December. It's a mediation on racial tension in Los Angeles, seen socially from all points of view.

TeenHollywood: How was working with leading lady Jenna Elfman?

Brendan: Jenna Elfman, of the beautiful elfin looks and the long, long legs, funny, funny sharp wit and who may have borrowed from or rubbed against someone who rubbed against Lucille Ball or Carol Burnett or I don't know what. She's a genuine article of a bulletproof professional and she can tell a joke like no one I've met, an absolute pleasure to work with.

TeenHollywood: We hear there will be another 'Mummy' film?

TeenHollywood: Just about every actor of your age has been associated with Superman, and your name comes up quite a lot. Have you been approached about that? Are you interested in that?

Brendan: I'm interested, I have been approached about it, it is a possibility. It really comes down to I think decisions made from a studio level way-up-on-high, but it's something that I would have to consider carefully, given that the actor, whoever it is that plays that role, is historically forever more known as that character. That's a superhero who isn't masked, and he's also of a duplicitous nature, it's Clark Kent and Superman. I've read a script for it and it's very good, we'll see, stay tuned.

One last nod to "Daffy" and he's gone.

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.