Sam Hoffman’s ‘Humor Me’ Sees Jemaine Clement and Elliott Gould as Winning Duo

Sandra Miska

As any writer can tell you, real life is often just as full of twist and turns as any written work, and this is definitely the case for Nate Kroll (Jemaine Clement), the protagonist of “Humor Me,” a once-successful Harvard-educated playwright who is having difficulties getting his latest play off the ground. To make matters worse, his art dealer wife, Nirit (Maria Dizzia), up and leaves him for a French billionaire, taking with her their young son, Gabe (Cade Lappin). Unable to afford his fancy NYC apartment on his own, Nate has little choice but to move into a New Jersey retirement community with his father, Bob (Elliott Gould), a retired businessman with whom he has not always seen eye to eye with.

“Humor Me” is the feature film directorial debut of Sam Hoffman, a producer and assistant director who has worked with the likes of Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater and Mike Nichols. In a recent interview with Entertainment Voice, Hoffman, who also wrote the screenplay, said that the character of Bob was in part inspired by “Old Jews Telling Jokes,” his successful web series that spun off into a book and an off-Broadway play. A running gag in “Humor Me” involves Bob telling jokes, always involving a fictional character known as Zimmerman (Joey Slotnick), whom Hoffman cleverly brings to life in black and white vignettes.

“I sort of discovered a lot of these characters who were older guys who told jokes as a way of communicating, and also sort of avoiding communication,” he explained.

As for Nate, Hoffman admitted, “Jemaine’s character of a playwright who’s having trouble writing and having a confidence block, I could say that that was kind of autobiographical. I do have a wife who’s an art dealer, like his wife. Mine currently has yet to leave me for a French billionaire art director, but there’s always time.”

The character of Bob, a widower who has trouble expressing his emotions is hard on his writer son, seems tailored-made for Gould. Much humor is milked from the two men’s inability to properly understand one another. For example, Bob seems to think Nate will find success as a writer if he would only get up at the crack of dawn to write, citing the routine of Mary Higgins Clark, the writer of popular paperback novels, as an example. Surprisingly, Hoffman was not acquainted with Gould before this project.

“When I was growing up, there was this really funny rumor that we were somehow related to Elliott Gould,” he recalled. “But that fact of the matter is we’re not actually related to Elliott Gould at all, in any sort of traceable manner.  I didn’t know him, but he was always at the top of my list to play that part, because he’s just so natural for it.”

Clement, who is best known as one half of the musical comedy duo Flight of the Conchords, shows a different side of himself in “Humor Me” as a relatively straight character who finds himself as a fish out of water in the retirement community. It’s the people around him who get to act weird, such as a group of of elderly women he agrees to direct in a play, particularly Helen (a saucy Le Clanché du Rand), a former prostitute who puts the moves on him.

“You kind of can’t keep your eyes off Jemaine in a way. He’s very handsome in an offbeat way, and he’s really intelligent,” said Hoffman of Clement. “I just love him as a performer. He wasn’t an obvious choice for the movie, because he was from New Zealand, but he was such a sport about learning an American accent, and such a joy to work with, and he was always making the movie better. He’d always have great ideas and he’d always want to try one more thing.”

Along with Gould and du Rand, veteran actors Priscilla Lopez, Annie Potts, Rosemary Prinz and Willie C. Carpenter also get the opportunity to display their quirky sides. However, it was important to Hoffman that the humor in their scenes not just simply come from the fact that they are “over the hill.”

“What’s important to me, in the work that I do, is you’re not laughing at the old people,” he explained. “They’re not played as [being funny because] they’re old. They might be funny, but they’re funny because they’re stubborn, or they’re funny because they’re flighty, or [because of other] elements not related to their age…. They’re characters in the movie just like they’re characters in our lives.”

One person with whom Nate can relate to is Allison, a musician and recovering drug addict who is also staying at the retirement community and helping out with the play while she gets back on her feet. Allison is played effectively by none other than singer/songwriter Ingrid Michaelson, whose whimsical tunes also liven up the soundtrack. Despite having never acted in a feature film before, Michaelson brings a realness to the role, not at all like a pop star.

“I was writing the screenplay one day, and one of her songs came up on my Pandora or something like that, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is an interesting mood, this song. It’s a little bit hopeful, but it’s also a little melancholy. I felt that that was like the mood of the movie,” recalled Hoffman, who was inspired to contact Michaelson and offer her the part of Allison, despite not knowing if the she had any interest in acting. “I just thought that that was an interesting kind of serendipity that her song came on. I just reached out to her and I sent her the screenplay, and she was the first who responded and loved it and said, ‘Yes, I want to do it.’”

In one of the more poignant scenes, Nate discusses with Allison his failed marriage and his philosophy about relationships, explaining that when one falls for someone, they fall for both the person they are at that moment, as well as they person they have potential of becoming.

“What’s interesting about love and the commitment that you make in a relationship, is that no one takes someone and thinks, ‘This person is as wholy formed as I wished they would be. You fall in love with elements of a person, and they fall in love with elements of you,” said Hoffman when asked about the inspiration here. “Your sort of make a silent pact, I think, that you’re going to work on each other. Hopefully, in the good relationships, in the relationships that are positive and instructive, you make each other better… [Nirit’s] star sort of eclipsed [Nate’s]. Sometimes you can be in a relationship even with someone whom you love and they love you and you can feel insecure about that, you can fear that you’re not living up to the expectation of your partner. I think it’s an interesting unsaid dynamic to the idea of romantic love, which is the bargain that we make with each other.”

Next up, Hoffman is developing a project with Frances McDormand, an adaptation of Michael Pollan’s nonfiction book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” into a feature film. He is also currently producing and directing episodes of the CBS series “Madam Secretary.”   

“I knew what to expect,” he said when asked about the challenges of directing his first feature. “The hardest part is that you’re ultimately responsible. There’s no real other person on a movie set past the director who is ultimately responsible for the quality of the material, so I have to live with the decisions that I made… When you’re producing someone else’s movie and the movie comes out and stinks, you can always say, ‘Well, I told them to it this way, but…’ But you’re the writer and director of a movie, it’s your movie to sink or swim.”

“Humor Me” opens Jan. 12 in New York, Jan. 19 in Los Angeles and other select cities.