Title: Cameo - Dave Grohl Interviews Jennifer Aniston
Author: Dave Grohl
Source: MTV.com
Date: May 2003
Foo Fighter Dave Grohl and "Bruce Almighty" star Jennifer Aniston sit down to talk and discover lots of common ground, from their shared love of rock and their nearness in age to their strange experiences with Jim Carrey.
Dave Grohl: I've met some super-duper hard hitters in my time. I got to meet Paul McCartney once. I got to meet Robert Plant and Jimmy Page once, but today when I told my friends I was interviewing you, they freaked out more than [for] Paul McCartney.
Grohl: Yeah. They know it's you.
Aniston: That's weird.
Grohl: I think this is because, all over the world, every band I know, their favorite tour-bus movie is "Office Space."
Aniston: That's like becoming a cult-classic favorite. That's kind of cool. That movie's done many things good for me. And I worked maybe a week on it. Isn't that weird?
Grohl: Super quick.
Aniston: It was super quick. I didn't really do anything in the movie. I flipped somebody off. That was pretty much it.
Grohl: No, no, no, no, no. Big part of that movie. You're like — the way we rock musicians see you is like a cool party chick. Not like the gross dirty, nasty, parking lot party chick. You're like the cool party chick.
Aniston: Wow. That's great. I have a brother who was putting earphones in —
Grohl: Older brother?
Aniston: Older brother, yeah.
Grohl: Turned you on some good rock, huh?
Aniston: Pumping it into my head at a very early age, so I had no choice. Is there any actor person in you?
Grohl: No. You know, I did act when I was a kid.
Aniston: You must have, because you can't do what you did on that airplane and not have a thing ... Now come on.
Grohl: Videos are a different trip because it's like silent movies.
Aniston: But when you see other rock musicians in videos — that was something that you brought to that, that I was impressed with.
Grohl: Enough about me.
Aniston: OK, sorry.
Grohl: "Bruce Almighty." Tell us about —
Aniston: Don't ask me about my character.
Grohl: The director?
Aniston: OK. He's awesome!
Grohl: Yeah? Is he the same guy that did "Pet Detective"?
Aniston: Yes. And "Liar, Liar."
Grohl: Legend.
Aniston: And he and Jim do real well together.
Grohl: Dream team. So, how can you make a movie with Jim Carrey and not —
Aniston: Laugh all the time? I didn't; I laughed all the time.
Grohl: Is it hard?
Aniston: It is. No, actually, it's more of his off-camera stuff. When you're doing the scenes, you're watching him go from zero to 60 and you're seeing this whole process. He's funny. You can't help but think he's funny all the time. But he's not "on" all the time, which is great, because that gets exhausting.
Grohl: You're very funny.
Aniston: I have moments.
Grohl: You jump back and forth from the serious drama to the funny stuff. Is it hard? Is it difficult to do so much?
Aniston: I bit off more than I could chew this year, I'd say. My eyes were a little bit bigger than my stomach. ... You get an opportunity and you kinda want to strike while the iron's hot, and I said yes. Then I did another one right after that, and there was sort of a period where they were all happening at the same time. And I — I didn't pull a Mariah Carey or anything but, you know?
Grohl: Don't do that.
Aniston: No, but I was exhausted. I kinda exhausted myself. But, please — I'll sleep when I'm 80. It was so fun.
Grohl: I like that. It's like the hardest-working woman in show business vibe. That's good. I feel that way too sometimes as a rock musician.
Grohl: Is acting totally weird? That's the one thing that I don't understand. How do you go from being someone that you're not and then go back to being you and then back to —
Aniston: Because actors are tortured children. We're all just lost and vulnerable creatures who don't know who we are. I kind of feel like I've gotten away with something in that way because being funny is sort of what I did as a kid ... and then all of a sudden I found a way to make a living at it.
I thought I was going to be a serious actor. ... Realizing that we can sort of just draw — it's just drawing from our own life — and how can we jump in. It's sort of fun to just play. The hardest thing is to sit right here and just be normal.
Grohl: Are you in the middle of the press junket?
Aniston: Yeah, but I'm at the end, so —
Grohl: What do you do when you're done? What do you do at night? We do press tours sometimes, which is like eight hours just talking about the new record. "Oh, your new record's awesome; you're the best band in the world."
Aniston: Your new record is awesome, by the way.
Grohl: Thanks. But you never play. That's the thing. When we do press tours we go out and talk about ourselves all day long and then we have to go to sleep without playing a gig. That sucks.
Aniston: That does suck.
Grohl: So what do you do when you go home?
Aniston: I just go home. I'll have a glass of wine, probably. Play with the dog.
Grohl: How did you get involved with "Bruce Almighty"?
Aniston: Tom Shadyac called me and asked me to do it and I said yes.
Grohl: You must have been excited.
Aniston: I was over the moon. I said I would love to, without a script, and I remember —
Grohl: And then you saw the script.
Aniston: And then I went, "Uh oh. What did I do?" And then — uh, no. [laughs] But the chick needed some fine-tuning. She needed to have a little work done and filling out and that happened. So that's how I got involved. Jim is funny on screen and off screen. Morgan was God, which was great, he was godly, you know? He has a godly presence to him.
Grohl: Morgan Freeman.
Aniston: I'm not talking Fairchild. Morgan Freeman, very sweet man. Makes you feel — you tremble in his presence.
Grohl: Really?
Aniston: Which I assume would happen if God stood in front of you. I did, personally. That was just me.
Grohl: Are you a religious person?
Aniston: No. Not really at all. But people are going to get their panties up in a bunch over this.
Grohl: Why?
Aniston: It's always fun to watch that happen. Who knows? Because we're using God, pretending to have God's powers for a day. It's sort of being a little careless, don't you think?
Grohl: I'm not a religious guy either.
Aniston: What's your background? What were your parents? Were they —
Grohl: Writers?
Aniston: Writers.
Grohl: No. I was born in Ohio. January 14, 1969.
Aniston: Capricorn. You were a month before me. I was February 11, 1969.
Grohl: Really? Aquarius.
Aniston: 34. You talk about how you're like an older person with the young kids; I've been feeling that lately.
Grohl: Well, see, usually it seems that actors mature, whereas rock musicians just get old.
Aniston: Is that what happens?
Grohl: Kinda, yeah. Mick Jagger is a legend. The yellow pants and the 18-year-old Brazilian pregnancies. It's kinda like the guy's —
Aniston: He's still doing it.
Grohl: 70?
Aniston: Is he now?
Grohl: No, but he's old. That's the thing. So it's a little different.
Aniston: Do you feel like you're going to end at a certain time to avoid being that?
Grohl: Oh yeah.
Aniston: You want to just cut it off.
Grohl: I'm done.
Aniston: Would you start acting? Would you start writing?
Grohl: Ah no. Still making music but —
Aniston: Make music just go in that other area. But what if you just grow? Certain musicians just do it. Look at U2.
Grohl: U2 is definitely an exception. Neil Young. Great right?
Aniston: Yeah.
Grohl: It's that kind of thing where you like to have a life.
Grohl: I get calls all the time about soundtracks. I don't think I got a call for this movie or your next movie. Hmm. Weird.
Aniston: [laughing] That was good.
Grohl: Get it? Like I'm pissed like you didn't call about the soundtrack.
Aniston: Would you want to be on a soundtrack? Not that that's a bad thing.
Grohl: It's not a bad thing. We do soundtracks sometimes. We've done that before.
Aniston: Yeah, I mean I don't know if that's something people aspire to. Not that you aspire to that, anybody would do that.
Grohl: But most musicians are like, "Soundtrack? I'll score your movie for you." But that doesn't really —
Aniston: You're going to feel like "Oh sh--, now I have to do the whole movie? I can't just do a song?"
Grohl: Yeah. I scored a movie one time, a movie called "Touch." It was a film with Christopher Walken and Bridget Fonda.
Aniston: Wow!
Grohl: It was pretty cool.
Aniston: That's awesome.
Grohl: And it actually is a lot of fun because you're not confined to any sort of conventional song structure. You're just like jamming as you're watching the movie.
Aniston: So you watch the movie and you kinda just like write songs?
Grohl: You sit on a couch, watch TV and make music.
Aniston: What's better than that?
Grohl: Nothing.
Aniston: Maybe you do want to score a movie.
Grohl: Yeah. Thanks for calling.
Aniston: I don't score them or hire them. I'm just the pawn. I'm just the little seal. I'm just like the performing —
Grohl: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Oh my God, I've made her mad.
Aniston: I can see that you're really upset about it.
Grohl: Brad's a rocker, huh?
Aniston: Oh yeah.
Grohl: You guys are f---ing rockers, right? That's cool.
Aniston: We enjoy — that's how we fell in love, really, to music. All we did was sit at home and listen to music.
Grohl: That's so kick ass.
Did you see [Jim Carrey] jump up on stage when we did "Saturday Night Live"? What a spaz.
Aniston: No!
Grohl: We were doing "SNL" this was like the night before the Grammys and I had never met him before and I saw him backstage right before we went to do our second song. And he's like, "Hey man, I'd really like to come jam with you sometime." And I'm like, "OK, maybe I'll go get the tambourine or I don't know."
And so we're up there, and I'm playing and there's the camera right to the left of the camera. And Jim Carrey, he's f---in' rocking out, having a blast or whatever. And I turn to look at my guitar and then I turn and he's on stage with us.
Aniston: No.
Grohl: Playing his leg like a guitar.
Aniston: How did you feel about that? Were you OK with it?
Grohl: Well, yeah. What are you doing to do? "Security!"
Aniston: Yeah, you could have. That would have been a twist.
Grohl: It was totally nuts.
Aniston: He'll knock you right over. On the first day, I had rug burns all over. It's terrible. He's aggressive.
Credits to: mtv.com
Copyright © 2003 Eala