CHICAGO — As with his iconic comedy sketches for “Saturday Night Live” or “Mr. Show,” just give actor and son of Naperville Bob Odenkirk a moment with an idea and he’ll come up with a premise unique and funny enough to steal attention.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the writer who helped bring Chris Farley as Matt Foley to life could figure out the secret sauce to Hollywood stardom, even in the unlikely world of action movies.
In town recently to promote his new movie “Nobody 2,” Odenkirk, who produced and stars in the film, talked about his dramatic turn to grittier roles, first in FX’s “Fargo” series and then as the scheming Saul Goodman in “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul.”
Being able to find the funny in those characters helped him find the balance between dark humor and extreme violence in the original “Nobody” (2021). “I’m not a handsome guy, or a young guy,” Odenkirk, 62, said recently in a conference room overlooking North Michigan Avenue. “I think I work well on the screen as a regular guy who has a certain amount of pressure he’s under.”
In the second installment of the franchise, Odenkirk returns as Hutch Mansell, the mild-mannered suburban husband and dad with a dark past stumbles into trouble while taking his family on vacation. On cue, he releases his pent-up rage on irredeemable bad guys in a satisfying comic wave of cathartic violence that often leaves him just as battered and injured as his victims.
Veteran actors Christopher Lloyd, Connie Nielsen and RZA return from the first film, while Colin Hanks and Sharon Stone join the new film as villains.
While the fights in the films are highly choreographed, Odenkirk’s Mansell is as far as you can get from invincible killing machines like Keanu Reeves’ John Wick, or Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne. When Mansell takes a punch to the face, is stabbed or shot, you can see Mansell writhing in agony in a way most movie heroes never would. It’s something that Odenkirk specifically saw in the early stages of his character.
“I want to play a guy who, in the middle of the fight, when you cut to his face, looks worried, scared, unsure of himself — because all of those guys are sure of themselves,” he said. “Jason Statham, Liam Neeson, they are utterly, 100% sure that they’re gonna win this fight.”
“And my guy,” his voice rising, “is in the middle of the fight, he’s hurting, he’s limping, he’s holding his side and seems to be getting a little bit weaker and in his eyes looks like ‘Oh my god! I’m in trouble.’ And I thought there’s something I can contribute to this genre.”
Audiences responded positively toward Odenkirk’s grim turn and the over-the-top violence in the first film, which earned $57 million worldwide from a $16 million budget.
The experience of jumping from being a writer of edgy and irreverent skit humor to full-on action star, albeit an older one, has been somewhat of a surreal experience for the Second City alum, whose Midwestern roots makes it hard for him to accept being the center of an action franchise. Bliss for Odenkirk is returning to town, visiting family in the area and seeing as many Cubs games as he can fit in.
“I never saw myself as this, as the lead and I never pursued it. It just came to me,” he insisted.
Odenkirk added that he was hoping to make a personal film that takes place during his teen years in the late 1970s — about the infamous Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in 1979.
Odenkirk, who starred in an episode of Comedy Central’s “Drunk History” featuring the riot, says he’s eager to make a film based on the raucous event that he co-wrote with his good friend, the late Chicago actor Jim Zulevic.
Odenkirk and Zulevic’s take on the history is more of a lighthearted fun teen romp and a showcase of shock jock Steve Dahl on a wild and unexpected summer night, rather than the ignominy that the night would come to represent to some.
“I feel good about that movie and I like it a lot,” Odenkirk said. “It’s really about kids and getting so swept up in that night and it’s about Steve Dahl and his story, which is a fun story and a rebellious character, funny to follow around. And of course it’s about an event that just got out of control. I mean, it’s really a funny story.”
Odenkirk says any attempts to get it made have faced pushback from film studios uncomfortable with stories taking place in the past. “Hollywood is afraid of period pieces because they feel like kids today would be like ‘I don’t really know what you’re talking about,’” he said. “I think Hollywood is a little too gun-shy about period pieces. It’s fun to go back to another time.”
While the 1979 uproar at the old Sox Park has since become a cultural touchstone as a signal of the end of the carefree and commercial disco era, recently many have shared darker reflections based on the event’s perceived anti-Black or anti-gay bias against disco.
But don’t count Odenkirk, who was about the age of most of Dahl’s rabid young fans at the time. Odenkirk believes the event was more of a strike against the corporate control over music.
“There’s always been this argument about Disco Demolition and that it was homophobic at its core. And while we address that in the movie, I don’t perceive it as that being a core purpose for the event,” he said, calling it more of a lashing out by rebellious youth.
“I think it’s hard for people to grasp how the record business and the radio business were different back then and the bosses of that business were in New York and LA. It was more of an anti-New York and LA thing than any of these other things that they are nailed with.”
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