Ed Norton's SMOOCHY

By: Paul Zimmerman
Date: Thursday, March 28, 2002

Edward Norton has survived getting punched in the face by Brad Pitt (FIGHT CLUB), losing the girl to Ben Stiller (KEEPING THE FAITH) and even having one of his directors (AMERICAN HISTORY X's Tony Kaye) call him a "preening dilettante." With DEATH TO SMOOCHY, he's got his biggest challenge to date: putting on a brightly colored foam outfit and playing a dancing, singing rhinoceros named Smoochy.

In the dark new comedy DEATH TO SMOOCHY director Danny DeVito and TV veteran writer Adam Resnick poke fun at everything that is facile and commercially odorous about kids' TV. As Sheldon Mopes, a.k.a. Smoochy, Norton gets to play a softer character than usual, one who must combat money grubbing studio execs, gangsters and the bitter man whose job he took (Randolph "Rainbow Ralph" Smiley, played with "bound for hell fury" by Robin Williams).

Robin Williams and Edward Norton star in DEATH TO SMOOCHY.

Although some may bristle at the film's dark tone and crude language, Norton sums up the film as "a dark chuckle on an adult level." While promoting the film in Los Angeles, Calif., the soft-spoken Ivy League trained actor jokes, "After FIGHT CLUB this seemed like a light comedy to me. I like this stuff. I'm not interested in making movies for everybody. I like making movies for myself, my friends and people of my sensibility. And when I find people of like mind, like Danny and Robin, I mean, when you read a script like this the first thing you think is, 'I hope to God they don't back off and try to make it so you can take your kids.' And I was so happy Danny didn't."

Norton takes a breath and then adds parenthetically, "I'm not saying it's bad to make those movies. It's just a thrill to make an adult comedy. To not shoot an alternate take where Robin doesn't say motherf**ker.

When Norton first read the script, he was shooting THE SCORE in Montreal with Robert DeNiro and Marlon Brando while across town DeVito was making David Mamet's HEIST with Gene Hackman and Delroy Lindo. Norton and DeVito met for dinner and Danny passed him the script. Norton recalls, "I read it at like two in the morning and I was lying on my back and I had tears running down my temples when I was done. It was such a funny script. The verbiage was so specific and hilarious."

Norton quickly signed on, but when shooting approached he became a bit apprehensive. Would the script stand up to Williams and his notorious improvisational talents?

"What really impressed me about Robin is he's so restrained and disciplined about when he chose to sort of turn his tap on," Norton says. "He was comma perfect on the script and when he'd find these openings to let loose he would. And I never thought he did anything other than enhance the script. He doesn't just crap out a bunch of stuff and then let them sort it out it in the editing; he's maniacal about working and working it and hones in on it."

Director Frank Oz, Edward Norton and Robert De Niro on the set of THE SCORE

A big believer in the power of the written word, Norton continues,
"Adam's script was just hilarious and there's an amazing percentage of it still in the film. What makes the blistering takes and the improvs is the amazing original."

Audiences who are used to seeing Williams the way he's been portrayed on screen for the last 10 years are in for a rude awakening, and it's a style Norton relishes.

"I loved seeing Robin in that vein," Norton says with studied enthusiasm. "I grew up on ROBIN WILLIAMS LIVE AT THE MET and loved hearing him cut loose."

Having directed dark comedies in the past like THROW MAMA FROM THE TRAIN and THE WAR OF THE ROSES, DeVito was the perfect man to helm the edgy material.

"Danny's a master at going as black as you'd ever want to go and as profane as you'd ever want to be, but not making it offensive," says Norton.

Norton then laughs at the memory of how the diminutive DeVito acts on set. "Danny's kind of the George Cukor/Howard Hawks tradition. He was just basically like [snaps his fingers and mimics DeVito's familiar growl], 'Faster, faster.'"

DEATH TO SMOOCHY targets the state of children's television today in general and specifically aims at a certain purple dinosaur named Barney. This suits Norton fine.

Edward Norton in DEATH TO SMOOCHY

"I grew up on the Golden Age of children's television," he laments. "The residuals of the whole Chuck Jones Warner Bros. stuff still existed plus there was the whole Community Children's Public Television workshop and that stuff was so creative. When we were doing [THE SCORE] at one point that had nothing to do with what we're doing I said to [director and former SESAME STREET veteran] Frank Oz, 'You were such a huge impact on my growing up.' [The SESAME STREET gang] were such brilliant performers."

Norton shrugs and then adds, "That stuff is still out there, but they've really receded into the landscape for these lame excuses just to sell dolls and toys like BARNEY and all that horses**t. I feel bad for kids nowadays."

The actor is currently smack dab in the middle of shooting RED DRAGON with Anthony Hopkins (making his third on screen appearance as Hannibal Lector) - though DRAGON was filmed once before as MANHUNTER in 1986. Fans wondering what will be so different can keep wondering as Norton only offers, "It's going fine."

When the MANHUNTER subject comes up he quickly dismisses the comparisons, saying RED DRAGON is "really based more closely on the book. If you read the book [you'll see] MANHUNTER departs in a lot of ways from the book. This is a little bit more faithful to the book."

Having played a neo-Nazi and a lovelorn priest, defended Larry Flynt and even sang in a Woody Allen film, Norton says DEATH TO SMOOCHY is more than just another comedy. Smiling, he says, "I call this one 'f**k you if you can't take a joke.'"

Ed Norton's SMOOCHY

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