Massie Twins: So what was it like watching the movie last night with an audience? Did you get to do that before? Emma Stone: It was awesome. This was the second time I’ve seen it with an audience. The first time was Cine Vegas, which was the film festival in Las Vegas, but this was so cool because it’s my hometown. It was so cool to be at the Esplanade. MT: Do you have any actual resemblance to your character? Your character in the movie describes herself as sort of punk and based on what I read about you, you like The Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel. ES: No, and that’s what I liked about it. She felt different than me and she’s not a smiler and she looks at the dark side of things more often than the light. So that’s what drew me to it, especially in a comedy - finding a character that is so sardonic and completely stiff faced and being faced with the challenge of not smiling and not cracking jokes. I liked that. MT: Did you have to do any research, especially to be a musician? ES: Not really. She’s not too dark, she’s very teenaged; it’s a teenage angst. I did learn to play bass - that was a big part of it because that’s where she puts all her passion into so that was important. MT: Did you pick it up pretty quickly? ES: Yeah, relatively quickly. I went to bass lessons everyday in Toronto and I learned all the songs from the movie - and I just went about practicing and practicing and practicing until I had them down.
MT: Do you play any other instruments? ES: I dabble, but not well. Not well at all. MT: But you sing, so you’re musically inclined. ES: Yeah, in a sense but I’m by no means a musician by trade. Yeah, I will not be making an album anytime soon. MT: How much free reign did you guys have with the script? When Jason Sudeikis would come on screen he was firing off stuff - there’s no way all of that was scripted for him. ES: Oh yeah, the majority of Jason’s stuff was improvised. He definitely went the distance with the improv. It was awesome. There were hysterical things that were not in the movie that had us dying of laughter. But I’ve been really lucky to have a bit more free reign in House Bunny and Superbad and this one was quick so there were two lines I wrote in this movie. That was the extent of my free reign. MT: Did you guys rehearse a lot of the band scenes? ES: Yes we did, all as a band to kind of get that feel down. We needed to have that camaraderie as a band so for about two weeks before we started shooting we rehearsed as a band pretty much everyday. MT: Did Rainn have to learn to play drums too? It looked natural on screen. ES: Yeah, he had a drum coach named Stew and he was hysterical and was picking up chicks all over the place. He taught Rainn how to do fills, because you can’t fake drum fills. So Rainn practiced his ass off and Walter, Rainn’s little son, who looks exactly like him, now wants to be a drummer all the time. He’s like drumming out in the garage and kind of passed that on to his child.
MT: Coincidentally there is a metal punk band out here called ADD (which was the fake band name in the movie). ES: Are you serious? Wow, who knew. I’ll have to Myspace them. MT: What was it like making a film like Superbad and The Rocker without being 21; did anyone go off and do any partying without the underage actors? ES: For Superbad I was 17. Chris who played Mc Lovin was 17, Michael was 18, Jonah was over 21 but they’re not really partiers per say so that wasn’t too bad. And The Rocker, Teddy was young, I was young – I’m not really big on the scene so it wasn’t too bad. MT: You’ll avoid the tabloids that way. ES: Yep, no complaints there. MT: What’s it been like moving from Scottsdale to L.A.? Obviously you got a big break with Superbad and The House Bunny and now The Rocker. How has life as a working actress been? ES: Different than it was the first three years I was in L.A. and not a working actress. There was a lot of rejection for many years. I convinced my parents to let me move out there when I was 15 so you can probably imagine what it was like to not really be working and I should’ve been in high school and I was just auditioning and auditioning and nothing was happening. So I am incredibly grateful at this point that this much has happened. And I don’t have a job lined up next; you know that’s just the life of an actor, I mean who knows if I’ll ever work again. Hopefully I will, but that’s just kind of what comes with the territory. So you never know after each movie.
ES: I made a PowerPoint presentation. MT: What was the most memorable part of making the movie, on or off the screen? ES: One night when we were shooting the arena scene, we shot from 4pm to noon the next day. So it went from light to dark to light to really bright, it was so bizarre. And three of us hallucinated; we saw a little boy. I don’t know what it was - we were in the arena and we knew we were going to talk about this later on. It could’ve been a ghost. It was just so bizarre. It was a pretty funny moment since we were all hallucinating the same thing. MT: In that scene, did you actually get to perform in front of 20,000 people? ES: It was about 700 extras and then with CG they multiplied them. So it wasn’t quite 20,000 but it was still pretty nerve wrecking to be in front of 700 people playing bass.
ES: Well, I don’t really know much about either quite yet and I’m not sure how much I’ll ever really know about rock stars. But it was pretty awesome to be a rock star there for a bit. MT: In the movie, Fish likes to rock out with a pocket of puke; is there anything you like to do to get pumped up before you perform? ES: Probably just drink a Red Bull. Or some water. MT: As an out of work 15-year-old actress, what was the worst advice anyone ever gave you in L.A.? ES: I can’t really remember any bad advice but there were some bad auditions. But no bad advice, I was pretty lucky. MT: What are your favorite movies? ES: Cameron Crowe movies and Harold and Maude.
MT: There were some great pickup lines in the movie. What are the best or worst pickup lines you’ve received? We heard you also wrote a couple of lines for the movie – what were they? ES: I don’t really get pickup lines. “Can I give you a hug right now?” – that’s maybe the best (which was asked of her at the screening the night before). The two lines I wrote were “You look like Ms. Saigon,” and “Ambercrombie’s making people now.” MT: Are you a fan of The Office? ES: Yeah, absolutely. That was one of the main reasons I wanted to be involved with The Rocker. I think Rainn’s so hysterical. And Fish is so different from Dwight – it’s exciting to see him branch out into crazy territory. MT: The audience got to see just about all of the “naked drummer” in the film? Did you get to see more than that? ES: (laughs) No, that was a closed set. I was
reacting to nothing. I was reacting to the idea of Rainn being
naked onscreen. Rainn is a sexy beast. He can’t help it.
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Emma Stone is actually originally from Scottsdale!