‘I Love You Man’: Secrets from the Set
By Carita Rizzo, Special to Hollywood.com
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Tuesday, July 22, 2008
To explain why Rudd and Segel are hanging out at a wedding is easiest done by describing the premise of I Love You, Man. It is a movie about platonic love between two men. Rudd’s character realizes as he’s about to get married that he has no male friends, and his fiancée, played by Rashida Jones, encourages him to find a best man. Rudd goes on a series of man-dates and hilarity ensues. After auditioning various candidates, like high-voiced guy at the Galaxy football game, he finally finds his best man in Segel, which is why today the two of them are strumming their guitars (playing I Want It Now! From Willie Wonka). And they have the bruises to show it. “Yeah, a war wound!” says Segel and shows us his black and blue forearm. “Also, my guitar is splattered with my own blood. You haven't rocked until you've splattered a guitar with blood.”
In this comedy Segel moves away from being Mr Nice Guy, incorporating what he calls 50 percent Russell Brand and 50 percent his brother, to become “sort of a continental kind of guy who gestures oddly and is slightly effeminate but also a real raging womanizer.” As Jones puts it, “Sidney (Segel) is not necessarily the friend you would wish up for your husband. I wouldn't pick that person as my husband's best friend. At first. But he grows on you... like a fungus.” And he knows how to pronounce the word aioli.