In November 2007, Smiley Face came and went, earning $200,000 worldwide even though it deserved to make $200 million. Goofy stoner comedies almost always starred men, and then along came Anna Faris’ absurdly committed turn as Jane, a spacey Los Angeles actress who went to school for economics but now spends most of her time ripping bongs. Longtime Gregg Araki admirers knew right away that Smiley Face was special, but in the intervening years, more people have embraced the movie’s heady strain. Among the crowded pantheon of memorable Faris performances, it might be the best of them.
Running a brisk 84 minutes, Smiley Face borrows an age-old narrative obstacle: eating your roommate’s cannabis cupcakes when you were specifically told not to. Jane may be a slacker, but she doesn’t mean to be inconsiderate. So she sets out to bake another batch, thus launching a cascading saga that involves a drug dealer (Adam Brody in questionable dreadlocks), a no-nonsense casting director (Jane Lynch), a sweet nerd (John Krasinski) who agrees to loan Jane money as soon as his dentist appointment is done, a meat factory where she delivers an unsolicited lecture about labor rights, and a first-edition copy of The Communist Manifesto whose pages go soaring across the Venice Beach Boardwalk. A lot of stoner hits, like Up in Smoke, Friday, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, and Pineapple Express, are friendship movies through and through, but Smiley Face is distinct because it’s about a solo odyssey.
Faris’ gangly limbs and exaggerated expressions perfectly match Jane’s outrageous detours. There’s nothing quite like watching Jane think, her eyes widening or her face scrunching up as she plots her next move. Faris will soon appear in the Prime Video comedy My Spy: The Eternal City, which was as good an excuse as any for us to reminisce about the project that’s her personal favorite, too.
Smiley Face was not what we would call a big commercial hit, but it has taken on a life of its own. How often do people talk to you about it?Â
Not too frequently, but every once in a while a stranger will approach and say that they love that movie. It feels like we have a secret between us. We can get into all my emotions about that movie, but it has such a special place in my heart for many reasons. It’s really wonderful that the fans of Smiley Face feel quite loyal to it.
Where were you in your life and career when Smiley Face came around?
It was 2006 that we filmed the movie. It’s hard to reflect on how I felt emotionally about my career because I never took any project for granted. I remember Gregg Araki wanting to meet with me. I didn’t have to audition for it, which was unusual for me. I think originally they had another actress in mind for it. When I met with Gregg, I couldn’t believe that this role was for a woman. I was floored that this hysterical script that was bizarre and fascinating wasn’t going to a young dude.
Because most stoner comedies are about men.Â
And it was also a role without a love interest. The only love interest was weed and her mattress. So there was this liberation in wearing, essentially, pajamas.
I guess it’s changing as I get older, but there was always that requirement at that time: The girls in the audience need to want to be best friends with you, and the guys want to fuck you, or whatever. That was always the mantra. I never really fit into that framework. I don’t know who really does. Your only fallibility can be clumsiness. I remember really wanting to impress Gregg as though it was an audition. I found out later that he kind of fought for me. And he showed me all these intricate storyboards. He said, “Do you like to improv?†And I said, “Oh, yeah.†And he said, “Because I hate improv.†And I said, “Oh, yeah, no, wait — no improv.†I really didn’t need it anyway. The script was so great.
Then suddenly I’m getting fitted by our brilliant costume designer with truly the most amazing wardrobe. Those shoes made me feel like such a slouch, and it felt great. We had a 21-day shoot. I think it was like a $1 million budget. I was nervous to tell my parents about this project. If I were to pursue acting, I think my mom always wanted me to play, like, Joan of Arc or Amelia Earhart. But then I’m in Scary Movie and filming a movie about an incredibly stoned person. I was hesitant because I knew what she would say: “You’re a role model, Anna.†I’m not a role model!
A role model to who?
Exactly. But when the movie got into Sundance, my parents came for the midnight screening. I was just thinking earlier today how both of them were falling out of their seats with laughter. My dad was braying like a donkey. It felt so good.
Do you know which actress was involved before you came around?
I feel like I should say no. It’d be unfair for me to say it because I don’t know how far it progressed, if that makes sense.
Smiley Face is the perfect center point between the two types of movies you were making at the time. There were the big, raucous studio comedies, like Scary Movie, Just Friends, The Hot Chick, and My Super Ex-Girlfriend, and there were hip auteur indies like Lost in Translation and Brokeback Mountain. It really marries those two modes.Â
Yeah, I’d never been more excited to get up at five in the morning to perform in my life. I loved working with Gregg. We had enough money for, like, two takes, so the excitement of knowing what I want to do in that very moment felt incredible. Back in the day, I used to get asked a bit during promotion, “Why would you choose this movie?†And there’s always this feeling of, Oh, it’s a job and I’m hired and I’m so grateful. I wish I had a bounty of offers raining down on me. But at that time, I wasn’t necessarily landing roles that I felt fit. Maybe it was my oddity.
I was thinking about this with the movie The House Bunny. You’re working intensely with the crew — so much that the crew kind of thinks of you as your character. And that low-budget crew on Smiley Face kind of thought I was just so fucking stoned all the time. In The House Bunny, I gradually became more comfortable wearing those tiny outfits because I started to get used to the crew gaze. It was a growth experience for me.
And if a crew struggles to separate an actor from their character, audiences definitely struggle with it. You do such a convincing job of making Jane’s physical comedy feel freewheeling and spontaneous. People watching it thought you must have been stoned, too. How choreographed was the physicality?Â
None of it. It felt like we were bandits running around L.A. At times, it felt like we didn’t even have permits or rehearsal time or anything. But Gregg and Dylan Haggerty, our brilliant writer, just let me play. Obviously, for the fall on the bus, we had some padding. I was rewatching some clips before this interview, and I was thinking, God, my run is a little too wacky. I should have toned some things down a bit. I think in my previous work everything felt so much more choreographed and contained. I would have done Smiley Face for free. Instead, I think I did it for $3,000.
Really?
My pay was pretty minimal. But I would do it again. I really would. Some of the projects — something like My Super Ex-Girlfriend — kind of feel like a bounce card. You know, you react to the man or convey something to the audience. Usually, in my case, it was the gravity of a situation, like through Cindy Campbell’s eyes in Scary Movie.
One thing I noticed in rewatching the film is how many close-ups there are — shots where Jane is processing information or sorting through some kind of internal monologue that you presumably couldn’t actually hear on the set. What kind of notes did Gregg give about your facial expressions or how those close-ups would function?Â
I am astoundingly slack-jawed. It felt really good to not think about vanity. I always try to come in with a pretty strong point of view of what I want to do, but I like to be malleable. I don’t mind a line reading. In fact, I welcome it. But with Gregg, he really made me feel like a partner. For all the internal pieces, I just enjoyed thinking about what Jane was going through. I would show up, he would call action, I would do my thing, and I’d hear him laughing. I haven’t seen the entire movie in a little while, but I do wonder if there were some choices that now feel a little broad. Maybe Gregg should have reeled me in a little bit. But it very, very much like a collaboration for the first time in my film career.
I think the broadness fits the tone because of the way the plot careens through all these different settings and situations. By the time she is running around with The Communist Manifesto, it’s so absurd and you need to believe she responds to these larger-than-life situations accordingly.Â
Do you find Jane sympathetic? How do you feel about her as an audience?
I do. Although she is presented as something of a reckless screw-up, she also has this heroic quality because she lives by her own rules. A lot of the people she interacts with are squares caught up in a rule-abiding, capitalist system. I have to assume that was on Gregg’s mind, and yours, when he found himself attracted to the script.Â
I think so, and I would always ask the writer Dylan, who is kind of Charlie Kaufman-esque, about the art they wanted to create. I’m just thinking now that I don’t think Jane is lonely, and I wonder if that’s also an unusual quality. I think she tries to function politely in society, to a degree, but I don’t think she is seeking out a friend group. I think that is a unique form of liberation. To speak to your point about a character in society, I don’t think she’s without anxiety about her future, but she can block it out for a while in a way that we don’t see too much of.
The whole foundation of the plot is built on her causing problems and them working to fix the problems. That is a noble character trait, even if it leads to a dozen other problems, including at a meat-processing plant where she thinks she wants to be a union activist all of a sudden.Â
I know, it’s such an essential and intriguing component that Jane is thinking as a sociologist or an economist in moments — sort of a global righteousness. I come from a family of sociologists. My brother is a fourth-generation sociologist. Forgive me if you’ve read this already, but it does frame a lot of my life in terms of spirituality. Jane does have a bit of that. While she’s wide-eyed, she doesn’t seem naive to the world, wouldn’t you say?
I think the world sees her as naive, but the movie is a series of zany sequences in which she’s kind of disproving that in her own way. What did you guys do to keep your eyes looking droopy and bloodshot?Â
We occasionally would put on some red eyeliner, but mostly our DP and Gregg would have this massive aluminum foil. I think I aged like four years during that movie. It would make me tear up. It would make me naturally quite squinty. And I just naturally have pretty dry eyes.
Did you film on the actual Ferris wheel at the Venice Beach Boardwalk?
It was amazing. And that motorcycle scene, we were able to close down a brief portion of the 710. That felt surreal because we had been filming in scrappy parks in Burbank or some abandoned office building or something like that. So it felt pretty magical that we were able to do that.
And there’s the incredible monologue at the meat-processing plant, which is, of course, a fantasy playing out in Jane’s head. She’s far less eloquent in reality. The scene is cut up with shots of meat running through grinders, but did you film it in one continuous take, with the intensity growing throughout the speech?Â
Yeah, I think we were afforded three takes on that one. I remember having a remarkable time remembering my dialogue in that particular film, and that’s not always a strong suit for me. It’s hard to memorize mumbo jumbo, but Dylan’s work just spoke to me so much. I do remember feeling like I wanted to do it one more time, but we had to move on. But truly, I can’t stress enough how awesome it was, on a 21-day shoot, to have essentially a new guest star almost every day. In that particular scene, it was Danny Trejo and John Cho and Richard Riehle. Or I’d arrive 7 a.m. and see Jane Lynch in the trailer.
Did you have any theories or feelings about why Smiley Face wasn’t a bigger commercial success? It’s a crowd-pleasing stoner comedy; there’s a world in which this movie makes money.
I don’t know. I am really bad at the economics of the film industry. We had incredible producers that cared about the project. It is kind of interesting to look back now: I don’t know if weed was that stigmatized back then, but it’s certainly not now. Is there anything radical about this idea anymore? And if there was something radical, then did that hamper success? Or was it me? Or was it the weirdness of the movie? I do know that I’m really grateful that a handful of people have seen it. I was so grateful for someone like Seth Rogen to be like, “Dude, that movie was hysterical.†It didn’t come at all as a disappointment. I guess it probably would now.
Seth Rogen told you that?
Yeah, I was surprised he had seen it. Truly, that midnight screening at Sundance was such a wonderful moment for me and everybody.
It was a different movie for Gregg, too. It’s edgy in its own way, but it’s not the same kind of edge that his darker, queerer stuff in the ’90s had, and I think people were surprised to see him tackling such an overt comedy.
I remember him getting a lot of questions about that, whereas mine were more like, “Were you really stoned?†I always felt like I should have played with it and been like, “Oh, dude, I was so fucked up.â€
It would be even more impressive to think that you were still able to remember the lines and get the physical comedy down. At the start of our conversation, you said you have a lot of emotions about this movie. Are there any others that we haven’t already covered?
I always wanted to please a director and deliver the desired performance, and this movie shook that up for me. It felt like the Cinderella shoe, like I was able to have full creative ability in embodying this person. It was a high-paced marathon, and that felt like such a morale booster, actually. It made me feel optimistic.
You can sense when a movie is a real partnership between the lead star and the director. Most movies don’t achieve that.Â
It really helps that Greg had such an easy, generous laugh. It’s the most fun project I’ve done because it felt scrappy and because Gregg was laughing all the time.
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