The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Arts Tuesday, December 13, 2016 — 5 “For me, it’s glass. I always get cut. TV show I just did – cut. “Tomorrowland” – cut. It’s always getting cut by glass! You’re flying through the air, doing flips and falling down hard and none of that makes any difference and then you lean on the thing and you’re like, ‘what the hell?’ And then you just get cut by glass! That’s the worst injury.” It’s 9:22 a.m. in a conference room at the Book Cadillac Hotel in Detroit, and the room is erupting with laughter as Keegan-Michael Key explains how he most often gets injured on set. The Emmy award- winning comedian and actor, perhaps best known for his sketch work on “Key and Peele,” is in town for Thanksgiving and to promote his upcoming film, “Why Him?” The holiday comedy about a Midwestern family meeting their daughter’s eccentric, Silicon Valley millionaire boyfriend features an all-star cast – James Franco, Brian Cranston, Zoey Deutch, Megan Mullally and of course, Keegan- Michael Key. It includes stunts, accents, literal potty humor and a lot of heart. Key describes the feature as something “akin to a film like, ‘Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?’” He sat with confidence and ease, sipping coffee as he explained what led him to “Why Him?” After gushing about the opportunity to work with both the cast and director John Hamburg, Key shared his personal motivations for choosing the film. “I wanted to do stunts,” he said. “If someone says you get to play a modern day ‘Kato’ from ‘The Pink Panther’ — I’m not saying no to that. I get to play a character, which is what I enjoy. Having the strange hair, an accent … all of that outside-in stuff.” That he’s doing what he enjoys is obvious in the film. The sketch comedian is famous for his hilarious impressions and characters, and he does not disappoint in “Why Him?” Key plays Gustav, the personal concierge of Franco’s character Laird. Gustav is “high German and educated. Very refined.” His accent, quite distinguishable, is reflective of Key’s talents. Finding the specific dialect for the character was a process of trial and error, per Key. “Yeah. I think the first table read, I was just like, (Key uses an extreme German accent) ‘Hi guys!’ and after the table read John (the director) says, ‘well — that’s a little extreme. Maybe he’ll just be German.’” This kind of role — one which allows for collaboration between director and actor — is where Key thrives. He elaborated on the production process, explaining that Hamburg “would let us improvise quite a lot. It keeps the momentum of the movie going forward.” The extent to which the cast could improvise is shocking – one take lasted for 46 minutes. With the cameras continuously rolling, the actors would “keep throwing spaghetti at the wall,” he said. Clearly it worked – the comedic chemistry between actors in the film is palpable. Occasionally, that chemistry was too strong. Further detailing the 46-minute shoot, Key reveals that it was “the toilet scene, because we couldn’t get through it.” In the film, Key’s character Gustav and Bryan Cranston’s character Ned share an awkward encounter in the bathroom. “There are 46 minutes of footage and I’m telling you there’s 2 usable minutes. We’d be three-quarters of the way through the scene and we’d hear a boom operator and then we would be gone,” Key said. Ultimately, he said, the only possible way for Hamburg to make the scene work was “to use special effects, cut two takes, put them together and use CGI in the middle.” Key smiled broadly while reminiscing about the toilet scene. It seems there’s no better exhilaration than 46 minutes in a bathroom with Bryan Cranston. “It was a lot of fun. How often does an African-American man get to make a movie where he plays a German who know martial arts? You have to say yes to that kind of role.” On the note of uncommon roles for African Americans, Key also discussed the potential impact of another upcoming film: “Hidden Figures,” about African American women mathematicians in NASA. The fact that a movie could be made about these women, he mused, is the “power of cinema.” “Cinema can evoke emotion but cinema teaches,” he said. “Especially in this day and age, we might need more films which show people of an ilk that I didn’t know existed. Humans that are helping the world, as opposed to marginalizing.” At a pivotal point of his career, Key is uniquely qualified to examine the potential impact that cinema can have. He has dedicated his life to the arts, and it has paid off insurmountably. Reflecting on where he is now, he shared what he wishes he had known starting out: that process is perfection. “Within yourself, you have to figure out what makes you happy. There’s not a destination called perfection. That way lies madness.” He elaborated further, citing recent achievements. “I didn’t grow wings and become a demigod when Jordan (Peele) and I won an Emmy. The only thing it means is, now you’ve got to do better work! A part of me goes, ‘an Emmy! That’s a destination!’ No. It’s simply a chapter in the book. “It’s all process. You have to be able to find fulfillment in this moment. If you can start doing that in your twenties, you’re just going to have an easier life. Otherwise, what are you supposed to do? Were you happy on the way to the top? That’s the part you must cling to. It’s the experience,” Key said. He spoke with peacefulness, aware of the journey an artist must make yet unafraid of the uncertain future. It was inspiring to sit across from Key. In a span of 15 minutes, he went from demonstrating a ridiculous German accent to sharing wisdom with an eager college student. His final piece of advice on navigating life was a perfect button to the morning’s interview. “It’s: ‘Wow. Great. Next.’” “Why Him?” opens nationwide on December 23. EMILY BICE Daily Arts Writer LITERATURE NOTEBOOK I am the biggest bookworm and literary advocate you will ever meet. Most of my time is spent thinking about books, perhaps because I am endlessly fascinated with how life- changing a book can be. I am a sucker for the classics, and for anything published before 1950 that was written as an attempt to inspire social change. But because so much of my mind revolves around books, I am incredibly intrigued by censorship and the people behind it. Is it ignorance? Or is it a sheltered lifestyle that leads one to want so desperately to censor things that human beings need to be reading? What do we do about it? A once in a lifetime event. A story Fox News and CNN will just about kill each other over. A dinner party to end all dinner parties. Invite only, inside an ornate library, catered by the Cheesecake Factory. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: “The Great American Controversy: Dinner and a Book Ban Debate.” Thought you were in for date night? Dinner and a show? Boy, were you wrong. Welcome, pro- censorship citizens, to the most life-changing dinner of your life. Just imagine: a long mahogany table would be dressed in a classy white lace and pearl table cloth, surrounded by wooden chairs with gold cushions, the finest china in front of each place. The guest list would be exclusive since a dinner party of this importance is not just for anyone. The list would include a specific selection of people around the country who have attempted to censor books. And of course, the special guests of the evening — all of the authors who have been met with major protests and bans on their incredible works of art. Ah yes, these might as well be the two favorite pastimes of the overbearing parent, the conservative principal and the occasionally ignorant schoolteacher: attending dinner parties and banning books. Ideally, I’d like the seating chart to have Mark Twain sitting at the head of the table, where he can pass the mashed potatoes to a woman from Minnesota who claims that her high-school- aged son and daughter “will not be reading ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ under my roof, due to its irrational and crude language. The thought of having my children read this novel is deeply uncomfortable to me.” Mark Twain would turn to her with a polite smile and reply, “With all due respect ma’am, the point of my novel was not to make you comfortable in any way. In fact, it was meant to make you uncomfortable. It was meant to uncover the harsh realities of the way America truly and honestly functioned in Mississippi at this time. If you are uncomfortable, you certainly do not have to read my book. But by shielding your children from real things that happened in this country, you are not helping them. You are not educating them. You are making them ignorant to the realities of the world. You are hurting them.” This same woman, we’ll call her Sharon, who refuses to let her children read phenomenal literature because of “crude language” will let her son listen to whatever terrible music he wants when he gets home from school. The woman, realizing she is wrong, makes a petty noise and sips her fine wine, as Mark Twain turns to converse with Richard Wright. I’d like Holden Caulfield to climb out of the pages of “Catcher in the Rye” and pull up a chair in between J.D Salinger and Harper Lee. In all his innocent and naive defiance, he would fill his plate with only dinner rolls and sit at the table adorned in his red hunting cap and smile. He would call all the people around him “phony” as he does so well. He would refuse to let his voice be silenced. He would continue to be a voice for the confused and lonely teenager, as he first did for the 1960s kids who desperately needed something to relate to. He would turn to F. Scott Fitzgerald who is arguing with the priest of a church in a town in South Carolina that has banned “The Great Gatsby” due to references to sex and alcohol. ELI RALLO For the Daily Dinner and debate on banning books MUSIC REVIEW “Brendan, put down the knife / I love you too much to let you take your life / and I won’t let you try again / won’t let daisies grow through your head / won’t let daisies grow through your skin.” Slow Burn, the first release on Flower Girl Records started by Old Gray’s own vocalist/ guitarist Cam Boucher, is an unflinching, unapologetic scream at the world, mental illness and death. Old Gray have long been revered within modern emo, and with their latest album, they have cemented themselves as some of the most talented modern musicians with their heaviest material to date. It’s reflexive of the struggles of others and of Boucher himself, expressing a chaos only fully comprehensible in the emotion of music. The opening three tracks each float around a minute in length, delivering punishingly abrasive instrumentals among screams and setting an atmosphere of desperate urgency present through much of the album. The opener, “Pulpit,” effectively intertwines screams of suicidal thoughts with calm monotones contemplating the helplessness of attempting to heal. It’s an incredibly raw look into the cognition wrought upon a sufferer of mental illness — a tango of anger and surrender to your own thoughts. By the third track, “Blunt Trauma,” the focus shifts to loved ones who have succumbed to suicide. “Long live the Devil and all hail the saints / Chewing up stars with their names / Angel, I feel your pain / I understand why you’d want to take it all away.” Instead of the usual emotions surrounding social views of suicide, Boucher expresses comprehension, even longing in their fate. It’s an abrupt viewpoint, atypical of most music, and it produces a necessary shock of eye-opening insight into the theme of mental illness. “Like Blood from a Stone” is quite possibly one of the hardest songs I have ever listened to in my life (yes, I cried three separate times), and the first half of the song consists only of simple monologue, a tale of self-harm, hospitalization and ultimately the beginnings of recovery, before the band even adds their overwhelming immediacy with shrill notes and periods of silence. The level of detail produced in these four minutes forces itself upon the listener, a single story with so much feeling it wouldn’t let anyone leave unaffected. Within the track, Boucher details an incident with a workplace bully before the self- harm, “And you panic when you realize what just happened because the boy who picked up your notebook, he’s a cruel boy / with eyes like shotguns and razor wire.” He follows this later by depicting a befriended patient in the hospital: “And there’s a man / maybe ten years older than you, with eyes like rough-cut pine and sunset.” At the beginning of the song, the protagonist writes poems of aching solitude, while ending with poems of infinite possibilities and clear skies, alluding to an escape from mental confines. It’s this symmetry of opposites that defines Slow Burn as an incredible work of art. The ending isn’t necessarily the standard definition of “closure,” but it shows intent to move in that direction. It looks to improvement and healing in the future, even if it isn’t entirely attainable at the moment — and it lets you know that it’s OK to not be completely OK. “Because, I don’t want to close my eyes anymore / I want to be whole again, how the fuck do I get there?” Front to back, the comparisons throughout the album make sense of its outward chaos and warring emotions, closing with “On Earth, as It Is in Heaven,” an epic instrumental track that is the slowest burn of them all. It builds upon itself over the course of five minutes, adding increasingly shrill guitars and crashing cymbals before slowly breathing the album’s last breath. Slow Burn is hard to listen to because it’s true to its name, but it’s as rewarding as the progress it paints. DOMINIC POLSINELLI Daily Arts Writer Old Gray cements their status as one of the most talented modern bands Key talks keys to success ‘Why Him?’ actor gives career and life advice before film premiere There seems to be a formula for the adult party comedy: Assemble a hodgepodge of stars, throw them into a hastily crafted context, find some reason for a party and let the cameras roll. Plot and characters are rough drafts, while the party itself is filmed with a fervent meticulousness. But, the ultimate question remains: why? No matter the output, these films keep coming, and it doesn’t appear that “Office Christmas Party,” the latest such addition to the collection of grown-up debauchery, will do anything to change that. Unfortunately, the film’s rather splendid assembly of a cast from various comedic walks of life can’t overcome the plot which, overloading on a variety of stories, leaves the film messy, confused and not all that funny. There’s the main story: the Chicago branch of Zenotek, a technology company of sorts, isn’t performing up to standards. Clay Vanstone (T.J. Miller, “Silicon Valley”) runs the branch, sharply departing from the no-nonsense leadership style of his sister, Carol (Jennifer Aniston, “We’re the Millers”), the interim CEO after their father passed. Their sibling rivalry plays out over company politics, and the Chicago branch is under threat of closure. Clay recruits fellow branch executive Josh Parker (Jason Bateman, “Zootopia”) and head of technology Tracey (Olivia Munn, “The Newsroom”) to throw a raging Christmas party to convince a potential client, Walter Davis (Courtney B. Vance, “The People v. O. J. Simpson”), to choose Zenotek as his company’s provider. Davis’s company’s business would keep the Chicago branch afloat, making good on Clay’s bullish promise to give everyone at the branch a bonus. And so the event begins, with extravagant fixtures stuffing the office with the imagery of Christmas, or something like it: an eggnog ice luge, a real life Nativity scene, plenty of lights, and Clay donned in his father’s Santa suit. But the film spends much of its time between coworkers, mingling awkwardly, drinking lightly — then very, very heavily — amid their mundane offices. Allison (Vanessa Bayer, “Saturday Night Live”) and Fred (Randall Park, “Fresh Off the Boat”) have an awkward attempt at a sexual encounter, Joel from Accounting (Sam Richardson, “Veep”) breaks out as a DJ with a penchant for air horn sounds and Mary, the all-too-common pent-up HR director (Kate McKinnon, “Ghostbusters”), tries to maintain her office’s sacrosanctity. But given enough time, and certainly enough alcohol and drugs, everyone can break loose. And so does the story; taking a wild turn from a party to action sequence, with Clay leaving his office party for a hangout with a hilariously psychopathic pimp (Jillian Bell, “22 Jump Street”), who’s only aiming for his money. Excluding the risks from drugs, seven people nearly die, two couples are created (on-screen, at least), multiple orgies seem to take place, Kate McKinnon is at her Kate McKinnon-est and Zenotek ruins, and then saves, Chicago’s Internet. All in under two hours! But while “Office Christmas Party” has a surplus of stories and characters, each lacks the fine quality needed to make the film memorable. There are a number of jokes that nearly land well, but as I write this sentence, about one hour since the credits rolled, I cannot recall a single one. There are few things sadder than a completely forgettable film but “Office Christmas Party” seems to be it, not quite a waste of time but certainly a waste of money. For those short on time, revisiting your thoughts on “Sisters” or “Horrible Bosses” or “Neighbors” can form a personalized and concise review of this newer version, updated for 2016-relevant jokes. “Office Christmas Party” will please lovers of these films, but detractors will feel distant and equally disappointed. PARAMOUNT PICTURES Oh, so no office Hanukkah party? No office Kwanzaa party? TV REVIEW DANNY HENSEL Daily Arts Writer ‘Office Christmas Party’ boasts a great cast, but is woefully average FILM REVIEW C- “Office Christmas Party” Paramount Pictures Quality 16/Rave Cinemas FILM INTERVIEW A+ Slow Burn Old Gray Flower Girl Records Read more at MichiganDaily.com