Interviews
This is a School of Rock audio interview, which can be found here.
Interviewer: So Joey, I know your Dad was a guitarist too, wasn't he?
Joey Gaydos: Yeah.
Interviewer: Can you talk a little bit about your musical background? Joey Gaydos: Well, my Dad's been playing you know rock and blues guitar, since God knows how long and I wanted to play. But he didn't want me to play just because, you know, Dad played guitar. So he finally taught me and I started getting lessons. I've been playing since I was eight- I'm twelve now so, an eleven year old playing rock and blues and whatever so... yeah.
And Miranda, what about you, I mean you don't have to be so musically adept in the film do you? But you can, you are a musician, aren't you?
Miranda Cosgrove: Well, after the movie I took up electric guitar, but I've been acting since I was three. It was funny, I was dancing in a restaurant and an agent walked up to my Mom. So I've been acting ever since, for about seven years.
Interviewer: Right, that's great. You can both answer this. What sort of preparation did you do for the film? Miranda first perhaps. What sort of, when you got the role, what did you do, to prepare?
Miranda Cosgrove: Well, um, I was just so excited, but I have to say to prepare I went over the lines a little and um, with my Mom and Dad and um (inaudible) get to know what was going on. And um, I got really excited about meeting Jack Black, so of course I was really overwhelmed by that, and um, just kinda went over the lines, got everything ready. Yeah.
Joey Gaydos: I didn't know what to expect, I didn't know what to do. This is my first acting job and I've only been a musician, so... being able to act that was so fun and being able to be a musician, while I'm acting was such a great experience so, I didn't really prepare because I didn't know what to prepare for, so... but I think it went well.
Interviewer: So was it fun, the actual... I mean, film making can be pretty boring can't it? I mean, you say, oh no that's no good we'll do it again, all that sorta stuff. But was it fun, did you enjoy it?
Miranda Cosgrove: It was actually really fun.
Joey Gaydos: Jack kept it fun because I mean (Miranda: Yeah) it'd get real late, and we'd get kinda tired. We have child labour laws, we didn't work all night, you know.
Miranda Cosgrove: (inaudible)...like a whole show for us. He's just always cracking us up, never stops.
Interviewer: So he's always kinda acting.
Miranda Cosgrove: Yeah (somewhat dubiously).
Joey Gaydos: I mean, he's a real mellow guy on set.
Miranda Cosgrove: Yeah, he really is, he's really laid back. He's not like, the crazy guy you probably think he is.
Interviewer: Yeah, we just talked to him a moment ago and he was a bit laid back. Yeah. So, so tell me a bit more about working with him, I mean, you Miranda, you were very excited to meet him. Had you seen his other films?
Miranda Cosgrove: I'd seen like, Shallow Hal (Interviewer: Yeah) And seen (inaudible) stuff like that and um, yeah I'd always thought he was just so funny and um, I was really excited to get to meet him because I just knew he was gonna of course be funny but he was a lot different than I had expected. He was like, a lot more laid back like we were saying. But he's just always, never stops twenty-four hours a day making us laugh. Yeah, it's really cool getting to meet him and work with him.
Interviewer: Joey?
Joey Gaydos: Yes, I'd seen most of his films- High Fidelity, Saving Silverman, (inaudible) great movies, still one of my favourite movies, with John Cusack, um, but, so when I met him I was really excited because it's like, "Oh my god, that's Jack Black!" You know? Cause I'd never met stars or anything, I was living in a small town in Michegan, so um, it was such a great experience to meet him, so, it was lots of fun.
Interviewer: As a matter out of interest, when you're shooting a film like this, what happens to your schooling?
Miranda Cosgrove: Well um, we actually have a studio teacher named Missy(?) Sims and er, she kinda does this whole (inaudible) but it's cool because you get a little bit of two sides, like actual school and we get to do like travelling and all sort of different places and we practically had a different school room like every month, so it was really cool, we get to get both sides.
Joey Gaydos: Right. If for like if every working day we'd probably do three hours of school, so you know if we go to the zoo in Australia on one day, that'd knock off a few school hours- we'd right a paper on how we like Australia, knock off a few school hours. They give us our work to work on too, you have to finish it.
Miranda Cosgrove: We have like, a few more options in school.
Interviewer: That's pretty good isn't it? Pretty clever.
Miranda Cosgrove: It's really cool.
Joey Gaydos: Yeah.
Interviewer: Now, I heard about this, there was a sorta Rock and Roll boot camp that Jim organised. Were you guys on that? Did you do anything?
Joey Gaydos: Well er, actually, me and the drummer Kevin, Clark, we'd been rock musicians so when we went there it was kinda like a breeze because we, you know, had played together and we knew some rock music but um, Rebecca the base player and Robert the keyboardist, they were very classical musicians, so they had to learn rock so um, but we played as a band and... so that was lots of fun.
Miranda Cosgrove: Yeah. Well for me I actually got a 45 minute lesson with Jim (name???) on how to sing bad.
Interviewer: On how to sing bad?
Miranda Cosgrove: Yeah. It was a lot of fun because I've been taking singing lessons for around five years. So um, it was really cool to, it's like kinda weird because the director would say, um, "Now Miranda, try to even sing worse." So, it was strange to hear him so that. It was really cool.
Interviewer: Ok, now what was the most difficult thing, er, in making the film?
Joey Gaydos: Trying not to laugh when we were (inaudible) the scenes.
Miranda Cosgrove: Yeah, definitely. I mean, Robert? He had a little bit more trouble than the rest of us on that. And um, it was funny because when the camera went in front of him he'd laugh and that'd make us all laugh? So, it was a lot of fun. Just getting the whole experience.
Interviewer: So the director, Richard Linklater, he'd get frustrated when you were laughing?
Miranda Cosgrove: No, he was really good about it. He's really nice.
Joey Gaydos: He's a great director. (Miranda: Yeah.) He did Dazed
and Confused one of my favourite movies. Getting to meet him, he's you know, into the rock stuff and that's the kind of music that he listens to so you can relate to him when he's telling you about, ‘k at the end you know, rock out, that's what we really like to do. It's harder to act, you know, real quiet and like my classical music in the beginning, but, what a great director to work with.
Miranda Cosgrove: Yeah, it was really cool actually, um, a funny thing is, he usually has like a little um, time inside each of his movies, like a little appearance and in the movie when he hold up the picture, it's actually him and Jack, he's one of the guys in the band. (Interviewer: Oh, ok.) Yeah, he's just a great director.
Interviewer: So, last question to you both. You said what was the most difficult thing, did you learn anything, say, about music or about, well anything really, I mean, what did you learn?
Joey Gaydos: Well, what I learned about production is that the big battle of the bands we went to the studio and recorded us playing because live there was so many different camera angles that if you shot it all live it'd be real phasing, warbly(?) kind of sound, so um we recorded, we played to ourselves, so er, but I learned that, you know, that we couldn't play live then because it'd sound real bad.
Miranda Cosgrove: Yeah, I learned a lot about music, yeah, like before I always liked beetles and rolling stones and basic, big rockers, now I'm getting more into like, Led Zeppelin, and The Who, The Ramones all those people, so I'm kinda more opened up to rock now and um, I'm playing electric guitar, yeah, so all that.
Interviewer: Great, well thank you both very much. (Miranda: Thank you. Joey: Thank you.)
Transcript by David (Webmaster).
Permission must be requested to repost.
