Fart or art?

You really know where you are with the Apatow crowd. Rogen, Hill, Rudd, Baruchel, Segal, Franco, Carrell – the last couple of years have seen us getting very used to those fellas rolling out the guy shtick, acting petrified of women, and smoking an awful lot of dope. Yet it seems some in the company harbour artistic ambitions beyond playing dumb in comedic cash-hoovers. Step forward James and Jay.

Sure, many of the above named bromantics appear content to remain languidly paddling in the warm and calm waters of the mainstream. Steve Carrell has a brace of pretty straightforward rib-ticklers on the horizon - from Hollywood's two most multiplex crowd-friendly comedy directors - in the shape of Date Night (for Night of the Museum and Pink Panther remake helmer Shawn Levy) and Dinner for Schmucks (coming courtesy of Austin Powers and Meet the Parents man Jay Roach). The second of those flicks will see Carrell re-teaming with his 40-Year Old-Virgin co-star Paul Rudd, and the latter's Knocked Up co-star Seth Rogen is himself busy with his most high-profile project yet; late December being the time we will finally get the chance to run the rule over his long-gestating superhero yarn The Green Hornet.

Jonah Hill, yet another of the Knocked Up veterans, has meanwhile seen his profile rising like a flyaway hot air balloon over the course of the last twelve months. This summer he will be hitting theatres alongside Russell Brand in Get Him to the Greek, and he has also just been added to the cast of the Aaron Sorkin-penned baseball drama Moneyball. And like his old buddies Segal and Rogen, Hill has been supplementing his on-screen outings with a spot of writing, with him doodling up a script for a movie version of late '80s undercover-cops-at-high-school TV show 21 Jump Street, in which he is due to star for the Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs directorial pair of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.

All of which seems as simple as a stick man. Comedies, costumed crime-fighters, and telly remakes. Exactly the roster of forthcoming pictures you would expect a rough affiliation of comic actors to have resting on their respective slates at this precise moment in movie history. However certain segments of the Apatow crew appear to have a bit more devilment and derring-do about them when it comes to making career choices – spawning some mooted projects that are definitely more unusual, if not actually better. We have previously covered the performance art fancies of James Franco (sample line: “If you bake some bread in a museum space it becomes art, but if you do it at home you're a baker.”), who aside from his film acting is also currently studying for a masters in English at Columbia University, as well as taking classes in film at NYU.

The latter provided route to a thesping assignment for Franco too, as he took the lead role in In Praise of Shadows, which shot last summer under the direction of his NYU professor Jay Anania. According to MTV, the film is 'the story of a man named William Vincent, who returns to New York after four years in exile from the city. The journey that brings him home is strange and curious, and his goal is a simple and romantic one: he wants to save the woman he loves from a crime syndicate.” Now that might sound like regulation noir territory, but any flick forged in the waffle house of a film studies classroom seems sure to take at least a few detours down pretentious turnpike. Reflecting on the merits of his star/pupil/star pupil, Anania has remarked, “I was immediately struck by his inventiveness and talent.” Was this impression forged before or after the Prof had clapped eyes on the opening grosses for Spider-Man 3? Whichever it was, we will see Franco operating in more routine comedy territory first, as he stars alongside Danny McBride in Your Highness, which reunites that duo with their Pineapple Express director David Gordon (whose movies George Washington and Undertow can be seen for free here on Indie Movies Online).

Jay Baruchel is another Apatow-er who harbours grander ambitions than spending the next 20 years appearing in geek-centric, schoolboy sniggerfests (a subgenre of which the actor's latest live-action feature, She's Out Of my League, would appear to represent the absolute nadir). The Playlist carried a story last week that Baruchel was hoping to break into directing with a self-penned horror outing entitled Pig, with him being quoted as saying:

“I'm trying to get that going as best I can, 'cause all I want to do is direct horror movies in Montreal for the rest of my life [this is not an obscure bit of geographical whimsy. Baruchel was born, raised and still resides in Montreal]. Without giving too much away, it's a 21st century re-imagining of the slasher film with a lot of socio-racial commentary, that's all I say.”

The same site brings more news of this project today, picking up on an interview that Baruchel has given to A.V. Club while on the promotional trail for She's Out Of my League, in which he discusses his film-making masterplan. Now, if the singing career of Bruce Willis and the acting of Quentin Tarantino have taught us anything, it is that the public should beware of celebrities who suffer from Jack of all trades syndrome. But although the interview finds Baruchel coming over a teensy bit akin to Clive Woodward when he tried to claim he had always preferred football to rugby, the actor does seem earnest in his assertions that a career behind the camera has always been on his agenda:

“When I was 12, I promise you, in my mind my endgame was 'I’ll make some money, put some money away as an actor right now, go to film school, and that’ll be that.' Because all I’ve ever wanted to do is direct horror movies in Montreal for the rest of my life... that is the endgame. That is the ultimate motivation. Everything I do is an effort to get to that point.”

Regards his own acting fame, he says:

“Listen: acting has afforded my mother, my sister, and me a great, great, great life, and I get to do a job that a lot of people would kill for. It’s one of the best jobs in the world. So I am absolutely grateful for all that stuff, but it was never my raison d’être. Always, on all my days going to school and just being an average high school kid and miserable as you are, I was just always making movies in my head. Every day I’d walk to the bus, and I’d literally just be framing, framing everything. So the acting, I don’t mean to do it a disservice by saying this, but it was always a means to an end. It was a way to afford me the opportunity to get to kill people on camera.”

That being a wholesome goal for any polite young man to work towards. Of the films he wants to make, Baruchel remarks:

“I have a whole bunch of ideas. I got a dozen movies, my dream movies, that I want to make if I get the chance. The first one, the one that we’re kind of working on right now, that hopefully I’ll finally get to direct in the next year or two, is kind of a re-imagining of a slasher film about a crazy white cop who chases four black kids throughout the ghetto on July 4. It’ll be subversive and controversial and polarizing, but that’s what’s best in horror, the movies that do that to people.”

While no titles are mentioned, that would seem to tally closely with what we have previously heard about Pig. Baruchel goes on to insist that the movie, if it happens, will be shoot in his home country (“no matter what, I'll be making it in Canada”), and he also pays effusive tribute to the nation's most famous film-making son, David Cronenberg:

“He is my absolute hero. He’s absolutely one of the biggest influences in my life.”

Who would've thunk it? A member of Team Apatow bowing down at the altar of the King of Venereal Horror. Another getting arty like Art Garfunkel and Art Carney having an 'eart to 'eart (sorry). And while you muse on these unforeseen developments dear Indie Movies Online user, you might also care to check out Jay Baruchel in I'm Reed Fish, which you can watch here for free.