When first we meet the wild-haired, sleepy-eyed Rob Schneider, the anti-Dr. Dolittle of The Animal, he’s having rather a tough time of it. Seems the film’s cast and crew enjoyed themselves a bit too much last night (making up for the lack of a wrap party) and it’s catching up with him.
“I think legally right now if I got pulled over I’d be in trouble,” he jokes. “I made it to bed by about 2 this morning–I was still standing; I’m very proud of myself. One of the guys was just face down.”
So he’s a party animal, too? Well, it’s probably the tamest anyone’s seen Schneider in weeks.
See, in the movie, Schneider plays a wimpy policeman named Marvin Mange, who receives organ transplants after a near-fatal car accident. Problem is, his crazy doctor (Michael Caton) gave him animal organs instead of human, and after awhile Marvin starts to exhibit some pretty beastly traits. This is all well and good–his newfound energy and inhuman abilities help him go from weakling to supercop. But after he meets gentle shelter volunteer Rianna (Colleen Haskell), he finds it harder and harder to suppress his animal instincts.
“Tom Brady [Schneider‘s writing partner] said, ‘I got a movie idea. It’s gonna sound crazy, but it’s called Zooboy. The guy gets different animal parts.’ I recognized the potential for it but I also knew it could be a pain in the ass, ’cause I’m the one doing all of it, y’know?” Schneider says with a laugh. “We literally sat watching animal tapes for hours when we were writing the script. That’s the good thing about being an American film star. I can call up and go, ‘Can ya gimme all your When Animals Attack tapes?'”
In fact The Animal could easily have turned into such a video thanks to Louie, the orangutan on set. “I was worried about the orangutan pulling Rob’s arms off! I mean, he was hitting him, like this, over and over,” says the film’s first-time director, Luke Greenfield, flapping his arm.
“You don’t see them in a lot of movies because they’re dangerous and unpredictable. It’s a relationship. They don’t work like, here’s a biscuit, now do your Michael Jackson impression,” Schneider adds. “They’re seven times stronger than a man, could drop 30 feet onto the concrete and just get up and walk away. You have to treat orangutans like they’re your best friends. You know, ‘Hey, how ya doing, good to see ya.’ My neck is the only thing that hasn’t recovered from Louie getting me in a headlock.”
Schneider got on famously with most of the creatures he worked with on the set, but one of them was having none of his animal behavior–the goat he tries to seduce in what may be the film’s most outrageous scene. “The goat was a complete jerk to me. If I didn’t have alfalfa in my pocket it was nowhere near me. I’m trying to hug it and it’s either walking away or crapping on me,” Schneider says.
Greenfield laughs. “I think he just had a crush on the goat and was hurt when it was over!”
“After months of working with these animals, you’re like, you know, this goat’s a lot better lookin’ than that goat,” Schneider adds. “It’s got a better body, the hair is fuller, the face is cuter…. The ugly older goat would let me do more. I was kissing it, it was looking at me like, this is great! I said, let’s make it more about the romance than the act.”
In fact, Schneider goes for even more shock value in a scene that will only appear in The Animal‘s overseas or DVD versions. “I had my shirt off, my pants down, we didn’t know what we were gonna do with the darn thing. You see a close-up of my face, it cuts to the farmer, pans down and you see the goat’s tail tickling my nipples,” he says.
All animal antics aside, what about the allegation that casting Survivor sweetie Colleen Haskell, who had never acted before, in the female lead was a PR stunt to lure audiences to the theater?
“I was doing a short film and never saw Survivor. We loved her; there was no doubt in our minds,” says Greenfield. “She’ll be lots of movies after ours.”
Schneider agrees. “We were meeting with a lot of actresses around the time of the first Survivor. [Someone told me to watch the show] and I’m like, she’s adorable. Not in a classic way, but she just has this smile that melts you. I said, let’s meet her!” he says. “She had this star thing. Y’know, I believed that she’d be living up in a tree, eating rats and stuff. It wasn’t a stretch. It just came naturally. She said, ‘I have never acted,’ and I said, ‘Don’t start now.’ So I did some tricks with her, like, if I wanted to get a certain reaction I wouldn’t say what I was going to do.”
The Animal marks the former Saturday Night Live cast member’s second leading role–if it ends up a hit like his first, 1999’s Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, he may prove a successful box office draw. “I didn’t know you could say no when I was first starting out. I was just happy to be working so I pretty much took anything. But if you have control, you have the chance to come out with something really good,” he says.
“I have to say, I do like being the guy in the poster better than the guy who lives under the sink, like in most of my roles.”
The Animal opens June 1.
