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NESTLED
IN the hills to the west of the Hollywood sign, Runyon
Canyon is a see-and-be-seen hiking circuit, heavy on the
unleashed dogs. As a workout, it’s a dust-bowl journey
of around 45 minutes, during which one sometimes
passes—amid the halter-topped women running fiercely and
the Sherpa types strolling with several dogs—an actor of
some repute.
On a
recent weekday morning,
Jason Bateman
was easily the most recognizable actor on the mountain.
The former child TV star (Silver Spoons) and
late-teens cute boy (The Hogan Family) had with
him Goose, a feisty French bulldog, and Dwayne, a
mellower Brussels Griffon.
Long the
younger and lesser-known of the Bateman siblings (his
sister, Justine, was Mallory on the ’80s sitcom
Family Ties), Jason, at 39, is enjoying a run of
success that has firmly separated him from that other
Runyon Canyon subspecies, the bare-chested unemployed
actor dude hitting the loop hard, keeping his body trim
for another pilot season.
Born in
Rye, New York, with stops in Boston and Salt Lake City,
Bateman started acting at 10, having moved to Los
Angeles with his father Kent, a writer and director who
also ran a postproduction house. By his account, his
youth was divided between school and the set, with the
set often winning out.
Bateman,
as a result, has a high, intuitive showbiz IQ.
On-camera, he tends to be a filter for empathy, Tom
Hanks-like in his ability to convey the audience is in
relatable hands.
Off-camera, it means he can spot Hollywood’s grooming
habits.
“There’s
nothing hetero about a shaved chest,” he observed, as a
well-toned physique went bounding past. “Some actors, I
guess, have to look at their physique or the possibility
of their shirt having to come off at times....I haven’t
had to do that or have a love scene.”
These
days, Bateman is enjoying a domestic existence. He’s
married (his wife, Amanda, is the daughter of singer
Paul Anka), and the father of a one-and-a-half-year-old
girl, Francesca. And professionally, he’s never been
more in demand. Suddenly, he is showing up in all the
right places and hitting all the right notes, that
former boyish entitlement having matured into
understated comedic bite.
Last
year Bateman was pitch-perfect as the conflicted
adoptive father trading punk-rock and slasher-movie
references with Ellen Page in the Oscar-winning indie
film Juno. And now, in the Will Smith
action-comedy Hancock, he’s exhibiting similarly
grounded comedic chops, playing another slouchy male.
This
time, though, Bateman’s character is a public relations
man trying to rehabilitate the image of an alcoholic
superhero (Smith) who has gotten surly and slovenly in
his work.
Whereas
Hancock boozily saves/destroys LA, Bateman’s character
Ray is almost preternaturally nice, a suburban dad
pitching big-money corporations on a humanistic global
ad campaign. When Hancock saves his life—and destroys
city blocks in the process—Ray invites him over for
dinner. It’s “spaghetti madness” night, Ray tells him
with subtle irony.
In a
way, Hancock riffs on Bateman’s Michael Bluth character
on Arrested Development—that voice of reason amid
the insanity, insisting on civility where none otherwise
exists. Arrested, narrated by Ron Howard and produced by
Howard and Brian Grazer’s company Imagine Entertainment,
was a bracing antidote to the typical family
sitcom—dizzyingly referential and shot with hand-held
cameras to capture the madness of a dysfunctional family
whose figurehead father, played by Jeffrey Tambor, was
in prison.
Bateman
himself will tell you he was “a tired piece of meat” as
recently as 2003, when he was cast as the mostly normal,
if somewhat tightly wound and self-righteous son on
Arrested. But presto change-o—his career was
reinvented with an edge.
More so
than Juno, “Arrested did everything for me,” he
said of the series that ran on Fox for three critically
acclaimed but ratings-starved seasons, from 2003 to
2006, during which it won an Emmy for best comedy. “I
guess there’s a bunch of people that go to the movies
that don’t watch television,” he added. “You know, I
don’t think you can underestimate a film that’s on the
[Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences] screener
list. Any film that’s nominated for a best picture is
going to be seen by gobs of filmmakers that will never
see something like Hancock, even though Hancock
may out-earn it by three. Milos Forman is not going to
see Hancock, although he might screen Juno.”
Whereas
sister Justine, a mother of two, has returned to TV (a
recurring role on ABC’s Desperate Housewives) and
become an outspoken participant in the Screen Actors
Guild’s contract talks with studios, Jason has been
lining up movie parts. Upcoming are roles in the Ricky
Gervais comedy This Side of the Truth, a Mike
Judge comedy called Extract and State of Play,
a remake of a BBC political thriller in which Bateman
plays a “bisexual fetish club performer with an
OxyContin problem.”
There is
also a project he can’t talk about—and one that he can:
Arrested Development, the movie, which Bateman
said is about to get the green light, provided series
creator Mitch Hurwitz feels the budget is in keeping
with his script ambitions.
It was
Hurwitz who rescued Bateman from the “tired piece of
meat” portion of his career, though he was dubious when
he saw Bateman’s name on the call sheet. The actor had
become, by then, a kind of amiable, fail-safe casting
choice, even if the ’90s sitcoms that cast him—George
& Leo, Chicago Sons, Ned & Stacey—had failed.
But
Bateman surprised Hurwitz at the audition, underplaying
the comedy in the script, which was otherwise full of
crackpots and eccentrics. The role forced him out of his
comfort zone (what Hurwitz thinks of as the smug, hacky
sitcom guy wearing two shirts) to play not only a father
but, as Hurwitz envisioned the character, “an uptight
Orange County Republican” with short, conservative hair.
“He was
probably 33 or 34, and he wasn’t ready to think of
himself as a father on a show,” Hurwitz said of the
actor at the time. “That was a big obstacle for him...I
kept saying, ‘Jason, you’re a man now....Stand up
straight. Don’t work the hair.’ He was still in that hip
thing, having gotten a lot of work that way.”
“It was
really fortuitous that I was given a part on a show that
was exactly what my sense of humor was at that time,”
said Bateman. “It’s not often that those two things meet
for an actor. Usually you take the job you’re given and
pay your bills. And then on top of that, it was embraced
by the people who hand out jobs in this town.”
Those
people were spread across the vast cityscape below
Runyon Canyon. For Bateman, it seemed, it was all
downhill from here. |
