Jon Gries – An Xperience Interview

Jon Gries – An Xperience Interview – by Rob Smittix.

Photo By: by Gage Skidmore

JG: Rob, how’s it going?

RRX: Good man, how are you? I’m a big fan, by the way, so I’m pretty excited to be talking to you, so thank you.

JG: Oh, you must stay up late and watch a lot of garbage. No, I’m kidding.

RRX: Well, for me, it’s like a breath of fresh air. I mainly interview musicians, and when I have the rare opportunity to talk to another type of entertainer, I enjoy it.

JG: Me personally, I love music. I’ve been around it for a long time. My brothers were all musicians, my grandfather was a pretty well-known jazz musician.

RRX: Really?

JG: Yeah, like way back in the day. His name was Muggsy Spanier. He’s actually my step-grandfather. My real grandfather left my grandmother when my dad was like 5, so she remarried. And she married a jazz musician and was on the road with him. Bing Crosby’s brother, Bob Crosby (who was also a really accomplished musician and singer) –  my grandfather was his bandleader, and he also went out on his own. He was very close with Louis Armstrong and a lot of those guys.

RRX: That’s really cool.

JG: Yeah, he was amazing. He passed away when I was nine, but he died kind of young. He was pretty active in the ‘30s and ‘40s.

RRX: Yeah, you know? People did die younger back then. I don’t know if you ever thought about this or if you noticed, but I’ve made an observation. It seems like people age differently now.

JG: Yeah, I was literally talking about that last night.

RRX: For real? No way!

JG:  Of course. I mean … I look at pictures of my grandfather from when he was younger than I am now … and I look at him in the picture and the dude was an old f***ing guy. But honestly, I knew Mal Evans because my brother Steven, who just passed away, believe it or not, last year but … he played on Keith Moon’s solo album. So I got to know Keith Moon pretty well. I was 15 and I was hanging around all these crazy f***ing people in the studio, like Harry Nilsson, Keith Moon, and Micky Dolenz.

RRX: Wow!

JG: It was a crazy time, but I was right there, and Mal was such an amazing dude. Such a sweet guy, and it was just so sad that he got killed by the LA County Sheriffs. It’s typical, though, but …

RRX: Yeah, that’s wild, man. Well, sorry to hear about your brother’s passing, but it sounds like some incredible experiences that you had.

JG: Oh yeah, absolutely. I have no complaints about the crazy turns in my life. I’m not a terribly ambitious person. This is what I was having a conversation about with one of the producers from “The White Lotus” yesterday, Jason Isaacs, who’s also in it. We went for a hike and he was like … you just kind of wander through life, you know? I’m like … I know, dude. I’m so lucky, I just don’t have all of the accouterments. I don’t have PR, I don’t have all that stuff, I don’t play the game. I just kind of do it the way I feel like doing it. Whatever happens, happens. I mean, I’m certainly excited when things go well. “Napoleon Dynamite” was such an amazing thing to come upon in my life. It changed my life, actually.

RRX: Oh, I’m sure it did. The movie had mass appeal as far as … it was my daughter’s favorite movie growing up, but it’s also a film I enjoy. It captured all of us. It was great, and of course, we all wanted a sequel.

JG: Funny enough, we have sat around, just me, Jon (Heder) and Efren (Ramirez), (Rico, Napoleon, and Pedro) and spitballed what it should be if there were a sequel. We wouldn’t do it unless it was Jared Hess. You know, right after the film was out, Fox Searchlight basically reached out to all of us and said hey, we’d like to do a sequel, but… it might not be Jared Hess and we all said no. We just said no, we don’t care. We don’t wanna screw the integrity of this film just for the sake of making a buck.

RRX: Absolutely.

JG: I feel that was such an amazing choice to band together and do that. Jared’s just done the Minecraft film. He’s doing quite well. I think the sequel in his mind had been when he did the cartoon for those six episodes. But all in all, the truth is, if we were to do it today, it would have to be in real time, and it would be 21 years later. The luster of easy teen life … that optimism would be overshadowed by adult living and the things that befall.

RRX: Good times. I love learning new things about people. Everyone knows you from movies, but what’s a day in the life of Jon?

JG: It’s pretty simple. Right now … I don’t start another film until August, although I’m going to be rehearsing in June because it’s a pretty involved role. The Napoleon tour obviously takes me out for five or six days every month. Hold on … I’m trying to get my parrot to stand on the cage. As I’m moving around the house trying to get ready to go to the doctor, he’s on my hand and he’s like dude … I’m not letting go, I’m going wherever you take me. My day involves my parrot quite a bit, he’s like my sidekick. His name is Pablo. He wants to do whatever I’m doing, he wants to hang with me, and I love hanging with him, too. And he’s not a jealous type. He’s not upset when my wife is here. She’s always out of town, though, because she’s a fashion designer. She lives here, but she’s in Europe right now. She’s always got stuff going on. We’re kind of like ships in the night, which is actually really good for a relationship. Quite honestly, we come together and do stuff, and then we go off in our separate worlds.

RRX: I think that’s the best because then you actually miss each other.

JG: We do, we miss each other, and we also get to have our autonomous time, which is important. I think it’s really healthy to have that in a relationship.

RRX: I would say so. Well, I’m enjoying our conversation.

JG: This is cool. This is really cool.

RRX: Anything that you’d like to put out there to the universe, to the world?

JG: Listen, obviously, we are in the craziest of times right now, it seems. And I don’t mean politically necessarily. I think that we’re at a mini morality crossroads. We just hear some of the craziest stories about our own human folly. I think the most important thing is … at the end of the day or the end of your life, however you wanna look at it. It’s not about the things you acquire, it’s not about the money you make as much as it’s about the love you give and the love you get. Those are the things that you take with you. Because there’s no luggage racks on a hearse, you know what I mean? I guess that’s one of the reasons I love this Napoleon Dynamite so much, because it does engender a positivity and an inclusion. Ultimately, these iconic, relatively universal characters … there’s a little bit of truth in each of these to the point that they represent a demographic or whatever you want to call it. People relate to it, and it gives people permission to be who they are. Who wants to go to a circus where all the clowns are the same? You know what I mean? I want different clowns, I like diversity. The movie talks about this in its own subtle way. It has a very warm, accepting sense of inclusion and kindness. I think ultimately, at the end of the day, we win with that. We don’t win any other way. There’s no such thing as a war being won. That’s us at our worst, with fighting, everybody loses. It’s horrible for everybody, and it’s tragic.

RRX: I agree with you on all of that.

JG: In showbiz … people treat it sometimes like rocket science, you know? Or something really extraordinary. It’s entertainment. I always refer to actors as glorified popcorn salesmen. But we’ve heard all kinds of stories with people going through all kinds of challenges, and somehow this movie affected a positive change for them. You kind of have to stop and go, wow! There is some power in this stuff, maybe it’s not just entertainment. It’s an amazing thing. Honestly, while we were making it, we knew it was special. We felt it, but we had no idea that anybody would catch on. We thought maybe we were the only ones who were privy to it.

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