<< "This Is It" a Winner | Blog Home | Warner Discounts DC Comics Merchandise >>

 

Charlyne Yi Makes Us a ‘Paper Heart’

29 Oct, 2009 By: Billy Gil

---

The sudden popularity of Charlyne Yi is one of those things that makes 2009 a great time for entertainment. The actress and comedian has become famous not only from her memorable bit roles in films like Knocked Up, in which she played one of Seth Rogen’s goofy stoner friends, but for her awesomely awkward YouTube videos, like “Face,” which is just her using one of those built-in webcam effects to distort her face and create characters based on how she looks.

Paper Heart, which comes out on DVD and Blu-ray Dec. 1, is a different story. The film, which Yi co-wrote and stars in, still has her trademark goofiness, but it’s also more cerebral, as Yi, along with director and co-writer Nicholas Jasenovec, tackles the great question of love and what it means to different people, from a Nashville divorcé with a deer’s head mounted on his wall, to a gay couple in New York, to bikers in a biker bar, to a divorce court judge and family lawyer who are married to each other. The film is interspersed with interludes of Yi telling stories using crude paper puppets as well as a fictional love story between Yi, playing a version of herself, and actor Michael Cera. Also Jasenovec is in the film, but he’s played by actor Jake Johnson. It’s a lot less confusing when you actually see it.

HM: Have you seen Paper Heart since it came out?

Yi: No, I haven’t. I watched it throughout the whole editing process, so I watched it maybe 200 times, maybe 150 times. So I’m kind of sick of it. It’s hard to pay attention to it cause you’re numb to it.

HM: Is any of it painful for you to watch?

Yi: Every time where I’m onscreen is painful for me. The things I enjoy most is when the documentary subjects are talking.

HM: Where did the idea for the movie come from?

Yi: It originally was going to start out as a documentary. It was mainly because when I was around 19, I was performing around comedy venues, and I found myself hanging out with 40-year-old comedians who are single and I said, “Wow, I don’t really hang out with anyone my own age.” And I turned on the TV and “elimiDATE” was on, where one guy has like three girls in the Jacuzzi, and it’s really gross, and I was like, “Is this what’s hip, what people my age do?” And I was questioning, how am I gonna meet people? I’m not really socializing because I’m always working. So I went into a mini nervous thing where I was like, I want to meet someone …

People would surprisingly open up to me about their love stories. It was like the thing where I was the bartender but it was only me. This guy who went home and saw an old picture of before he met his wife, and he had this photo where they were posing in a photograph but they hadn’t met until like five years later. And he hadn’t seen this photo until after the marriage and it was like this shock, like, she was always there. I realized how exciting it was to have stories about love. … So I came to my friend Nick with the idea and he was like, “you know ideally if we have enough time we should shoot you falling in love so you can learn what falling in love is firsthand.” I wasn’t comfortable exposing my life like that and I think it’s impossible to capture that. … So that kind of inspired the idea of keeping it in the realm of real and fabricating a thru line.

HM: As far as the special features go, does the making-of featurette go into all that, and is Michael Cera involved?

Yi: I think Michael was shooting at that time. So I think he was supposed to be a part of that where it was like combined shooting for the Year One DVD, but that fell through. But we do have behind-the-scenes footage and interviews intertwined with me and Nick and Jake Johnson. And then there’s footage that didn’t make it in.

HM: I was sort of surprised that the interviews with the other actors and comedians were so short compared with the interviews with the regular folk. Are the extra comedian interviews taken from those same interviews or are they with other people that didn’t make it in the film?

Yi: The comedians that got trimmed down, they were our friends, and we realized one, it didn’t feel right putting their stories next to the strangers stories, it felt almost false, so we just used them as a way to kind of set up who my character — who I am. I get confused. And also like, no offense, but their stories were just kinda … it felt weird.

HM: What is going on at the part of the film during a montage where it looks like you’re in a play?

Yi: That was a play and we really did film that. It’s so confusing, I know. There was this bit where we did a dating game with audience members, and there’s a bachelor, and we go on a date and we’re eating dinner and we’re dancing to the Beach Boys, and at one point his crazy ex-girlfriend comes out (it’s a man with a wig) and I’m like, you didn’t tell me you had a girlfriend. And that’s what that whole part was, me fighting with the crazy ex-girlfriend.

We wanted to put that on the DVD, but we couldn’t get rights to the music to “The Dating Game” and when I’m swinging on the rope it was the “Indiana Jones” music, so unfortunately we couldn’t get the rights to that.

HM: My boyfriend is obsessed with you and wants to know what your favorite Web page is and who your favorite YouTube person is.

Yi: I don’t know! It’s not even like someone famous, it’s this little kid who covers songs. I was amazed because he covered this song and I thought he wrote it. And I was like, that’s such a good song, you’re so good little boy! And I found out he didn’t write it. I don’t know who he is. And my favorite Web page, I guess it’s YouTube ’cause that’s the only thing that entertains me.

HM: Of all your YouTube videos, I really loved “Face,” but I thought “The Music Scientist” was a really cool idea (Yi writes songs and sends them to musician friends, who cover the songs). Is that something you would do more with down the line?

Yi: I want to keep doing that. I write songs like all the time, but a lot of them are bad. I already have a few people on the list that said they would do it, but I don’t want to waste their turn by giving them bad songs. I did give some bad songs to people and they made them into gems I was like wow, you’re a genius.

HM: What are you working on now? Will there be a Paper Heart 2?

Yi: No, there will not be a Paper Heart 2, unfortunately, or fortunately. I’m writing something [for a major cable network] with Nick and Jay, who plays Nick. We’re not allowed to talk about the project, so we’re just waiting on that. Me and my friend Paul Rust (who is in Paper Heart and is the lead in I Love You, Beth Cooper), him and me are writing something for Judd Apatow. Those are just projects that have been around since before Paper Heart. I feel like everything takes forever to see if it can be made or not.

HM: I also loved your bit on the “Rotten Tomatoes” show about your top five movies and how The Beautician and the Beast was No. 1. Do you have any recent favorites or kind of recent cheesy movies you’re into?

Yi: I totally love 17 Again (laughs). It’s like an ’80s movie, you know? It’s totally cheesy and romantic. That was pretty well done for those types of movies. It felt like the movie Big, it was good.

 

Bookmark it: digg del.icio.us technorati yahoo facebook twitter