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Is Jason Bateman as sharp and sarcastic in real life as he is onscreen?
JASON BATEMAN'S
Best List
Actor: "John Malkovich. There are powerful actors, and then there's this actor. Everyone is impressed, rightly, with Daniel Day-Lewis's recent work, but Mr. Malkovich has been every bit his equal for a long time."
Classic film: "
2001: A Space Odyssey. It's pure candy for my smartest side. It also is responsible, along with Immortal Beloved, for my love of classical music."
TV show: "Countdown With Keith Olbermann. Usually, the people yelling the loudest are those who want to distract you from the facts. Keith's volume is there to highlight the facts. We should all send his parents a fruit basket."
Restaurant: "Dodger Stadium. My colon is miserable, but my mouth is elated. There may have been a better way to say that."
Bicycle: "Orbea. I recently caught the road-bike bug. I wear the funny outfits and everything. I'm not sure if this is the 'best' bike, but it feels like a sports car."
Play: "
Burn This. I saw this back when I was young enough to quit this moronic way to make a living. Malkovich was in it, and watching him hooked me for life—to acting and his talent."
Book: "
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. My parents inexplicably made reading a source of punishment, so it wasn't until I moved out, experimented with drugs, and read this that my enjoyment of reading developed."
Movie: "
The King of Comedy. I think this is Robert De Niro's best work, which is saying a lot. Martin Scorsese didn't do too shabby either."
Vacation: "Anywhere with snow. I moved away from snowy places before I was old enough to have to shovel it, so to me, it has always meant snowmen and skiing."
Romantic evening: "Lying on the couch watching a movie with my daughter sleeping on me and my wife."
Dad activity: "Walking anywhere with her on my shoulders."
Joel Stein prays that the former child star won't let him down as they roll through L.A. buying scented candles, hitting the car wash, and exploring the intricacies of the Jason B. hand roll.
Never meet the people you admire.
You've projected so much onto them that they can't help but let you down. Sure, John Cusack was nice, in a smooth, spacey, stoner kind of way, but he was no John Cusack. And Willie Randolph was cool, but he wasn't the soft-spoken brainiac baseball player I'd been having imaginary conversations with since I was 6. In the two semi-opportunities I had, I avoided David Letterman.
I randomly met Jason Bateman six days before I was assigned this article, at the Governors Ball after the Oscars. We were standing next to each other, and I broke my own rule and told him I thought his was the only character I really believed in Juno, the movie in which he plays a guy who hits on a pregnant teenager whose baby he and his wife are supposed to adopt.
"That's because you're a pig," he told me. It was exactly the quick-witted condescension I'd fallen for since
Silver Spoons.
But a long interview for a cover story? That was destined for disappointment. So Bateman, knowing he couldn't deliver, decided to dissuade me from my man crush on purpose. We were going to spend seven hours running his boring-ass errands until every one of my illusions was dispelled. I was not looking forward to this.
He picks me up at 10 a.m. at my house in Los Angeles to go walk his dogs—a French bulldog and a Brussels griffon—on a hike at Runyon Canyon. After meeting a contractor working on my house, he immediately asks, "How long have you and Daniel been together?" Before we reach the first traffic light, he makes an AIDS joke. As we get out of the car, he runs into the wife of his friend, actor Robert Patrick. "He looks good," Bateman says about Patrick. "Is he back on the pipe?"
This is why, as a kid, I liked Bateman more than any other child star. Because Bateman always played a dick. Not a teen-villain dick, but the kind who you wanted to be: the smart, cocky, friendly dick. Kirk Cameron and Ricky Schroder could do snarky, and Scott Baio could do arrogant, but underneath was a desperation to be liked, to wink at the joke, to make sure viewers knew they really were good people. But Bateman never paused for laughter. His appeal has always come from the fact that he's a little more honest, a little more flawed, a little more courageous, and a lot quicker than you are. It comes out in the dick con-artist teen in the 1980s sitcom
It's Your Move, the dick sportscaster in
Dodgeball, the dick coke dealer in
Starsky & Hutch, the dick perv attorney in
Smokin' Aces. Sure, in the first season of
Arrested Development, he was the good son coming back to save the family business, but by season two he was a dick, calling his mom a slut and refusing to acknowledge his son's girlfriend.
