THE GOOD HALF Interviews Part Two: David Arquette!

Meet David Arquette

David Arquette is an American actor and former professional wrestler. He is best known for his famous role as Dewey Riley in the slasher film franchise Scream (1996 – 2022), and Hollywood films such as Wild Bill (1995), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997), Never Been Kissed (1999), and Eight Legged Freaks (2002). He has also appeared in ABC’s In Case of Emergency (2007) and voiced Skully on Disney Channel’s animated series Jake and the Never Land Pirates (2011 – 2016).

He executive produced the game show Celebrity Name Game (2014), for which he received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination. He is set to appear in the upcoming TV series Chuck Hank and the San Diego Twins (2023) with Brett German, Troian Bellisario, and Olivia Taylor Dudley, and the feature film On Sacred Ground (2023) alongside William Mapother, Amy Smart, and Mariel Hemingway

Synopsis

After years spent avoiding his problems, Renn Wheeland (Nick Jonas) is forced to face his greatest fear: the recent death of his mother, Lily (Elisabeth Shue). While traveling home to Cleveland for her funeral, he forges a new relationship with fellow passenger, Zoey (Alexandra Shipp), and later, heals an old one with his overbearing sister, Leigh (Brittany Snow). Together, with the help of his eager-to-connect father, Darren (Matt Walsh), an old high school friend, and a hoarder priest, Renn tries to confront his past, his problems, his step-father (David Arquette), his grief, and his new reality.

Interview

Glen Dower:

Mr. Arquette, how are you, good sir?

David Arquette:

Hi Glen, I’m good, how are you?

Glen Dower:

I’m excellent, thanks. We’re going to talk about The Good Half where you play Rick, the stepdad of our main character played by Nick Jonas. And what a great, all-round guy Rick thinks he is! What a douche! Every decision seems to be the wrong one. How did you find your way into playing Rick?

David Arquette:

Oh man, Rick was a really interesting character. When I first read this script, he’s just sort of talked about a lot before he appears on screen. And when he does, he’s a narcissist. So every decision he makes is really about him, even though it’s his stepchildren who have lost their mother. So he doesn’t consider their feelings that much. Rick’s not a big ‘feelings guy’. So he just kind of puts himself first, makes it very convenient for him.

It’s funny to approach a character like that because I once had a therapist, and I was obsessed with narcissists, and I’ve known some in my life. And I asked him, ‘I’m so interested in narcissists, do you have any narcissistic clients?’ And he said, no. And I said you don’t? Wow. He goes, ‘Yeah, you want to know why? And I said, why? He said, ‘They don’t need me.’ That’s everything I needed to know about narcissists. Yeah. They don’t even self-reflect!

Glen Dower:

Wow. So your character brings a lot of the comedy, in the form of unintentional, cringe comedy with Rick. We just squirm when we see him. And every time he comes on screen, we think, ‘What’s he going to do now?’ There must have been some joy in that: ‘I can just be the worst version of myself with this guy.’

David Arquette:

It is. It’s different than me. I had to like, you know, reign in some certain things. He’s not going to laugh at certain things that I would laugh at. And he’d take a lot of stuff more personally. He looks down on people. And he can’t be bothered. Certain things are very opposite to me, but I found it fun to play. Because you just have to be selfish. It’s kind of interesting. You think of it like, I don’t know, like a kid or something; just annoyed by everybody.

Glen Dower:

It is a great ensemble as well. Of course, you have to have some negativity to offset the grief and the pain, and how Nick is just: ‘Yeah, so it’s really bad. Yeah, grieving. Terrible. Yeah.’

David Arquette:

Yeah, exactly! There’s a funny, I mean, it’s not a ‘funny’ scene. It’s a sad scene. But, you know, Nick Jonas’s character Renn gets very upset with me because I’m cracking a joke at the memorial service. And we get into this big screaming match. But what the audience doesn’t know, and what made my character so angry was completely not in there.

There’s a scene right before that, where the family, their part of the family, take a limousine to the memorial service after the funeral. And Robert, the director, as I was originally supposed to be in that limousine, Robert called me up and he said, ‘Hey, I decided that we’re not going to be in the limousine. So you can come in to work a couple of hours late. Don’t worry about it. Like no problem.’

But what he didn’t know, and what the audience didn’t know that I was fine with it, because I had just had some more time off. But Rick, my character was so pissed! He was so angry at the fact that he had rented this limousine, he picked it out, and he paid for it! ‘And I can’t ride in it?’ Like, how dare you?! He was looking forward to the limousine ride. So that was his motivation for being so upset. They didn’t use it but I was like, ‘I hope you enjoyed the limousine ride.’

Because that’s really what it was about. Hes’ so pissed about that. But it was funny, because it just kind of gave me the, you know, point of view, where I could dig into him, make him feel bad because they didn’t let me ride in the limousine. But that’s where his brain went.

Glen Dower:

That is fantastic! So all of this is happening off-screen, he’s raging. That was going to be the highlight of his day. Oh, man.

David Arquette:

Yeah, yeah! He’d made sure there was alcohol in it.

Glen Dower:

That’s amazing. Of course, we’re talking about Lily, the late mother, played by Elisabeth Shue. Just wow. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with Elisabeth about the movie and she is just fantastic. What was your reaction when you found out you’d be playing her husband?

David Arquette:

Oh, I loved it. I was a huge fan of hers. And I’m a huge fan of hers. Getting to work with her was great. We only had one actual scene together. So we had to talk about our backstory: what do you think connected these people? We determined it was like, there must be some kind of passion element to their relationship. And you know, it’s funny, her previous husband was Matt Walsh. So they are such sort of opposites. It’s kind of funny to see who she had been with and who she then ended up with. But it was it was great to work with her. She was just fantastic, such a career as well.

Glen Dower:

It’s amazing. We talked about your director Robert Schwartzman and how he’s made the switch recently from actor to director. Do you think this influenced his directing style at all?

David Arquette:

Absolutely. I think he understands actors and their approach and just artists in general. I mean, he’s such a creative person with the music he does and directing and acting and just his understanding of comedy and literature. It was a fantastic script that Brett wrote. It was based on a true experience that he had. Cleveland gets a really bad rap in this film! And I apologize to anyone from Cleveland because it was based on this experience the writer had had.

And I think a lot of it has to do with having to see Rick, to be honest, my character. So I encourage everyone to go to Cleveland. It’s a beautiful city. I love it very much. But Robert was incredible. He was open to sort of improvising and would let us sort of find the scene and discover little different beats. And he would let us sit in the awkwardness, which was fun. We would just like to sit there for a while before he said action.

Glen Dower:

That’s great. And like yourself, he comes from this acting dynasty, if you like. If our readers don’t know, Robert Schwartzman, brother of Jason, a Wes Anderson regular, and of course, his mother onscreen was a Balboa and a Corleone: Talia Shire, which is incredible. Who was a Coppola as well? Did you guys trade any family stories?

David Arquette:

Yeah, at one point, this is how awkward it gets. But at one point, we were somewhat related because my sister Patricia was married to Nic Cage at one point! So we had known each other and seen each other. So there was that sort of connection. And it was slight, but it did mean something. You know, we had seen each other at family functions in the past. So there was like this awkward family element that is within this film as well.

Glen Dower:

Like, Robert, you stepped out of acting and have done a lot of executive producer roles. Do you get to pick and choose your projects and what sort of attracts you to projects?

David Arquette:

Well, it’s this sort of weird game in Hollywood, where you develop things for a long time, some things go and some things you keep trying to push, and some things never make it. And some things you pour tons of time into, and they never get greenlit. So a portion of it is just what you get to finally make.

Sometimes it can seem like they’re kind of out of left field or this or that, but you’re developing something for television, you buy the rights to a book and get a script written, and then it finally becomes a movie, or you find an independent script, or you do a game show, or something like that. There’s all of these, you know, based on a game. So you, yeah, it’s just one thing you learn, or at least I learned as an actor is that there’s a lot of downtime.

And for a person like me, it can kind of drive you a little crazy. So I tend to like, find projects that, you know, I can do in my free time that make it so I don’t feel like I’m just sitting around all the time. So I’m working on different things and spending time with different things or writing a comic or something like that.

Glen Dower:

So people may think you’re not on screen as much anymore; but you’re a busy, busy man. And of course, we are Cinema Scholars, we have to talk about that little franchise called Scream, if you don’t mind. We’re coming up to the first movie being 30 years old. Can you believe that? And I just want to ask your opinion. What do you think is Scream’s legacy on horror?

David Arquette:

Oh, man. I think Scream was amazing. The way Kevin Williamson kind of dissected the whole genre and made it very self-referential and, you know, Wes Craven coming in and just sort of taking all the knowledge that he had of this genre and also infusing it with, you know, this humor and this sort of tongue in cheek element. And that did help sort of relaunch the love of horror films. It sort of gave horror fans an understanding that this was a community and, you know, it gave rules about it all and sort of this understanding about the genre.

And then it allowed people to sort of, the community to come together and sort of like, find things that they like in these different movies and talk about them and meet and meet the performers and meet the director, you know. So I’m excited about the next Scream being Kevin Williamson’s first time directing one of the films that he was so incredible at writing and starting. And having Neve Campbell come back is exciting.

Glen Dower:

And of course, talking about the characters, can I just share with you my favorite Dewey Moment in the whole franchise? It’s in Scream 1 and Sidney has gone to stay with Tatum at your house after the first killings. And Ghostface calls then hangs ups. Then after Dewey comes along, takes the phone and goes… Hello? I just thought that was a perfect character movement because it’s just so Dewey! He’s out in his pajamas, in his pants and the girls have had a scare and he puts on his big boy voice. Do you remember that moment? Was that a Wes moment, a Kevin moment or was that your moment?

David Arquette:

Yes, I remember that! That was a Wes Craven moment. He had said, you know, we’d done it a couple of times and they said, hey, when you do it again, like answer it as if, you know, you could perhaps be the killer. I was like, oh, wow! Oh, Wes, thank you. Yeah, that’s a little inside. I don’t know if I’ve ever shared that! But yeah, it was a really beautiful moment.

And to a certain extent, you know, a lot of the time they didn’t give us the final pages. I think they did in the first script. So we never even knew. So there were some times when some of your choices that you were making were as if you could have been the killer as well. Some of the stuff that, you know, the way you approach certain lines or certain interactions with different characters, it kind of gives it this other layer that you can perform, you know, draw from.

Glen Dower:

So that happened even in the first movie because we know that happened in subsequent movies that you got pages at a time. But even the first one, that was the case.

David Arquette:

Little stuff, little stuff. I mean, they would hide maybe like certain reveals and stuff, certain pages that said certain stuff about certain characters. Like maybe that there were two, you know, I think some of the things they kept, you know, under wraps for sure.

Glen Dower:

That’s good for you, too, as a performer, because it keeps it interesting for you as well. I just want to share a quote from you: ‘I can relate more to people at a horror convention than I can to most Hollywood executives.’ You talk about community as well; the horror community must have been very kind to you because I never got the ‘Dewey Hate’. I loved Dewey since the first movie. So the conventions must be very kind to you?

David Arquette:

They are. I mean you go to a horror convention and meet all these amazing fans. And they share these stories about, you know, we got engaged right after the first film, we had a Scream-themed wedding. All of these interesting things. Like, we met and now we have three children. I watched this film with my parents, you know, my dad, who passed. That kind of stuff just is like, oh, it just really touches you. And you get to interact and meet the fans. And then sometimes you meet them over the years and all this stuff. So it’s like, becomes this element of like, growing up together, experiencing part of your life together.

And then, you know, it was the first horror movie I saw, and now my kids watch it, and they fell in love with the genre. So it’s like this ongoing, like, fandom, which we’re like, not only performers in it, but we’re also, you know, fans ourselves of these films and that. So it’s this cool community. I think there’s something about like, horror fans where they watch this kind of stuff, and it kind of gets it out of their system because they’re like the sweetest people you’d ever meet.

Glen Dower:

A perfect way to close. Mr. Arquette, it’s been a real, real pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.

David Arquette:

Thank you, I appreciate it.

Utopia and Fathom Events will release The Good Half in theaters nationwide on July 23rd and 25th with an exclusive virtual Q&A with Nick Jonas, Robert Schwartzman, and special guest moderator Kiernan Shipka.

Read more Cinema Scholars interviews here!

THE ANGRY BLACK GIRL AND HER MONSTER: An Interview With Star Denzel Whitaker

THE WRATH OF BECKY: An Interview With The Directors And Star Lulu Wilson

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