The Heart, She Holler series premiere and new interviews with Patton Oswalt

Patton Oswalt's new show, The Heart, She Holler, premieres tonight at 12:30 am on Adult Swim. As good an opportunity as any to catch up on at least some of the things he's been doing lately.

These days, he has one movie out in theatres (A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas), another one getting released next month (Young Adult), and Stars Entertainment reports that he will make an appearance in the Christmas episode of Raising Hope.

On the media front, he was on the Kevin & Bean podcast with Rob Delaney and Joshua Jackson the other day. You can listen to it here.

Popbytes has a recording of the panel for The Heart, She Holler at the New York Comic Con.

Hampton Roads has an article about the show, which includes a short interview with Patton. Snippet:

The six-part miniseries centers on a tycoon who leaves his fortune to a long-lost son, played by Oswalt, which upsets the guy's two daughters, portrayed by Kristen Schaal and Heather Lawless.

Oswalt likens his character to Kaspar Hauser, the 19th century German boy who claimed to have been raised in a dungeon.

"He's this sort of blank slate that other people can impress themselves upon, which leads to some really wild whiplash spectrums of behavior," Oswalt said.

And Vulture (NY Mag) has a longer interview. He talks about the show, about his character in Young Adult, and about United States of Tara.

Here are a few snippets (the first part is about The Heart, She Holler):

I’ve never seen you in that much costuming before.
Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever been in that much costuming before. It was fun! It was an acting challenge to be that besuited that bewigged and that betoothed. I have a newfound respect for people like Jim Carrey and Mike Myers. Although in a way when I was a little kid I used to idolize Boris Karloff and Lon Cheney, so maybe I’ve come full circle. Those motherfuckers had to emote under pounds of makeup and fur, so hey.

Did you have any say in this character, or did you just deliver the lines the way Vernon Chatman and John Lee had written him?
The scripts were so well written. And I’m a little leery these days; I think right now there is an undeserved sort of fashion and fad for improv, where people improv before they even read the script. And again, a lot of great stuff comes from improv all the time. But sometimes the script is awesome, and you will look really good if you read the fucking script. So I read the scripts first and I saw that they were good. I think I ripped a couple things here and there, but it was never anything major because Vernon and John’s writing is so dense and lyrical to the point of mythology. And I wanted to sort of capture that rather than add my own bullshit input. (...)

So this character in Young Adult is obsessed with Star Wars. Could you resist ad libbing any of that?
Well, we talked about the character beforehand. Before we started shooting, I sort of suggested a couple little character things with the action figures and stuff like that. But I wasn’t riffing that much while I was on set. I’m not saying I’m against riffing. I’m all for riffing and improv after the script has been read. But it seems to me that a lot of that happens before anybody even cracks the cover. “Well I’m just going to add my own flourish to this.” Why don’t you see if there might actually be a brilliant character in there? Why don’t you read it first?

Los Angeles Times talked to him about Young Adult:

Oswalt's interests are expansive. A military brat from Virginia, Oswalt is hopeful that what is sure to be a profile-raising role as the moonshine-making, action-figure-creating disabled man in Reitman's dark comedy, which opens Dec. 9 in Los Angeles, will lead to some interesting opportunities, one way or the other.

"A movie like this will hopefully give me the exposure to work with other directors I like, or [give me] the breathing room that if [eccentric horror director] Ewe Boll wants me to go to Germany to do something, I can go. Because I also want to observe Ewe Boll and write about that experience," he says, as he sops up his wild boar bacon carbonara at one of his favorite neighborhood haunts, Little Dom's in Los Feliz. "I still want to be a stand-up and you can't be a stand-up if you're not living life."

And speaking of Young Adult, here is some more Oscar talk, from Cinema Blend:

After a relentless and ultimately harmful press tour for Up in the Air, director Jason Reitman is keeping this film on a very low profile, scheduling pop-up screenings in Toronto, Minneapolis, Chicago and other cities before finally showing up in Los Angeles earlier this week as a "secret screening." So even though only a handful of writer types, and even fewer Academy voters, have seen the movie, word is that Charlize Theron's brittle, fearless performance is just as good as we hoped, and Patton Oswalt might not just be a Supporting Actor contender, but a possible winner, playing her friend. It's hard to tell if the film's black heart might keep it out of the Best Picture contention-- Juno was edgy, but also extremely sweet-- but it's very much in the race for now.

The Flick Cast has a video interview with Patton:



Here are a couple of clips from the press tour for The Heart, She Holler at the New York Comic Con:





And the trailer for Young Adult, out in theatres next month: