Starring alongside best friend Michael Cera in the Internet series Clark and Michael is only the beginning of Clark Duke’s story. With the underappreciated Sex Drive and hit television show Greek under his belt, not to mention the highly anticipated film Kick Ass on the horizon, Duke is proving himself as one of the most promising up and coming actors in Hollywood. I recently had a chance to chat with Duke about his new movie Hot Tub Time Machine and the difference between television and film.What attracted you to the Hot Tub Time Machine script?
It was funny. I got involved with it because the guys who wrote Sex Drive had written the draft of Hot Tub and wanted me to play this part and I just said yeah because I really love those guys. They ended up not directing it, but I still stayed on because there was Corddry, Craig and then Cusack. I think Cusack being in it makes it really weird and meta because he’s such an 80’s icon himself. And in the movie, these guys go back to the 80’s and the whole thing seems like it’s coming out of him a little bit which is cool.
Since you mentioned your co-stars, after seeing the movie it seems like John Cusack is being billed to sell the movie.
John is sort of the straight man to some extent. He’s still the lead in the film, but Corddry has the wild character like the one I had in Sex Drive, the really fun one to play. So Johnny’s stuff is a little more understated, but he’s great. It was just really cool working with him because High Fidelity and Grosse Pointe Blank are two of my favorite movies. And the guy who directed Hot Tub wrote those. Working with all of those guys was pretty amazing. Chevy Chase was my highlight because he’s my hero. All of our scenes were together pretty much and he was next to me at the hotel, so every night he would come knock on my door, call me and mumble things, so we’d go eat dinner and get drunk every night. It was the best week of my life. It was pretty surreal.
Would you like to continue doing comedy or break away and do more serious roles?
I don’t know. I like comedies. I guess if there was a really dramatic part that I thought I could do something interesting with or somebody asked me to do, but I don’t know, I like working on comedies for the most part because I mainly watch comedies.
Do you ever watch yourself? Is it weird seeing yourself onscreen?
The first time I saw Sex Drive in the theater, I had to leave. It was just unsettling. I couldn’t talk to anybody afterwards. I’m kind of used to it now, but at first it’s pretty jarring.
You’ve also done a lot of work on television, on the show Greek. I know this is a question you’ve heard a thousand times, but do you prefer the slower pace of film or the faster pace of television?
Film for sure. TV is brutal man. You’re going through eight pages a day and it’s rough. I mean it’s not rough, but compared to shooting a movie where you’re shooting one page a day, TV’s pace is just so much different.
So on average, how many takes does it take to get something done in movies and TV?
On TV you’re doing one or two takes because there’s just no time. On movies you can take all the time you want more or less because you’re shooting a page or two a day compared to six to eight pages, so it’s pretty bananas.
Besides Kick Ass, do you have any other films lined up right now?
I have this movie with Eddie Murphy called A Thousand Words that I think comes out at the end of this year.
Can you give us any details on that?
Eddie gets a curse put on him, so he only has a thousand words left to say before he dies and I play his assistant.
That’s a cool premise. It sounds better than Imagine That.
Let’s hope so. [Laughs] I didn’t see that one, but it didn’t do very well. He needs a hit.
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