After last year's interview series, I
wanted to create a real link between you guys and the people I interview. I want
to get an almost photographic portrait through my interviews. To begin this new
catching up series, I chose one of
my
favourite interviewees, for many reasons. It is pretty obvious,
Matthew Gray Gubler is one of those people
who can do everything. Whatever he touches turns to magic.
First, I asked
Matthew to step into the photobooth. He did say this picture would hurt my eyes.
❤
What have you been up to since
our last interview?
I just finished a voice-over for the sequel to
Alvin
& the Chipmunks (it comes out Dec 25th in the US).
500
Days of summer came out in America,
How
to be A Serial Killer had a small release in America (comes out on DVD Oct
13). Season 5 of
Criminal
Minds started shooting,
www.gublerland.com has finally been
excavated. I started a record label, a T-shirt company, and have been getting
into puppet manufacturing. I played a small part in
The
Great Buck Howard. I Just finished the album artwork for a friends record,
and also got to collaborate with Jacques Cousteau's son on this super cool
environmental zine for the Warped Tour. (they let me design and paint the
cover)
I have been working on a children’s
book that I am 90% done with. Hopefully it will have some puppets to go along
with it.
But mainly, I have just been trying to walk for the past 4.5
months after completly shattering my knee, that’s been the big
priority.
❤
What is the idea behind Gublerland?A
friendly playground on the internet where everyone is welcome except bullies and
fascists. When I was little my favourite thing to do was play with puppets and
toys. I would give them dumb voices and make up fake scenarios. It’s kind of
hilarious that twenty years later I’m doing the exact same thing only now
instead of playing with plastic action heroes on my floor, I am now playing with
pixel monsters I have drawn on my computer, and instead of doing all of this
with my imaginary friend, I do it all with my real friend named Steve who helps
bring them all to life. At least Steve tells me he's real. That would be great
if
Steve Damstra ended up being my
imaginary friend. Ha! Oh man. I hope that’s the case. Jaffe and Haruka too,
what if it turned out you were just interviewing a total
psychopath.
Anyway...
The site is going to keep growing. I am
working on an underground Gublerland subterranean cave level and other hidden
stuff.
Next we want to get into cartooning and alternate methods of story
telling with fabric and pixels.
❤
What are you working on
currently?
I am doing a few cartoon voices from our
childhood. Scooby Doo and Superman. A total dream come true. I've been filming
more fake documentaries,
I have also been making puppets and little
monsters with a friend of mine named Haruka. We collaborate very well together.
we are from the same planet. She has the innate capability to basically bring
whatever i think up to life in 3 dimensions. We've been turning my characters
into finger puppets, buttons, sock puppets, bags, etc. I am making those, and
also tee shirts. I am trying to do tons of other things, besides the acting
stuff. I love hanging out at fabric stores.
My friend
Jaffe Zinn (Haruka's husband) is directing
a movie called “
Buhl” that
starts filming in November. I play a character who’s going to be in his next
movie (about Death Metal). He wanted to give the character some background, so
he is introducing me in the prequel. I am so excited because it is the first
time I get to work so closely with a friend on a feature length
movie.
❤
Can you describe a normal day?
If it is a Monday, I wake up at 5 am, go to
work at 5.30. If it is Criminal Minds, I don't get home until 7 or 8pm, try to
look at my lines for the next day and then start it all over again on Tuesday.
Occasionally I’ll have a day off and I will either do voice over, or meet with a
director. If I am very lucky, I will get a spare hour where I get to draw or do
something I like to do for myself. My weekends… Saturday evenings I just stay at
home and try and make stuff of some sort then I eat a pint of ice cream, light a
pumpkin candle and watch a movie, but only after I feel I have done something
productive with my day. If I haven’t done something productive, I will carry on
working through the night.
Photo
FanPop - Matthew Gray Gubler as Spencer
Reid
My job is really time consuming, but it is the
greatest in the world! I love to work, even when I worked for retail shops in
high school, nothing is better than a long hard day of work. If i don't fall
asleep exhausted it feels like a waste of space.
The only bummer is there
are so many things I want to do and so many friends I want to collaborate with,
I just don’t have time to do everything. It gets to a point when I just have to
say "no" and that is really frustrating. I know it sounds lame, but I have so
many great things going on, I sadly can’t do everything.
Bath time is the
only time I am not technically working, although actually, I typically learn my
lines in the bath so scratch that, i'm always working.
❤
What
did you do during the summer break?
I mainly destroyed my knee. I was going to go
to London and Monte Carlo and hopefully Japan but instead I spent a lot of time
back home hanging with the family like it was 1994. I had a bar mitzvah into
manhood with that knee injury. The doctors tell me it was one of the worst
cases ever recorded in North America. There wasn't even an existing protocol to
follow with the post op rehab, because what i did had never really been done to
that extent before. I am working on getting this specific type of injury named
after me. Enduring constant mind bending pain for a third of a year has changed
me for the better, its made me stronger, more focused, more patient, and more
empathetic. I am so glad it happened. I feel like a damn
cowboy.
❤
What was the soundtrack to your
summer?
I have been pretty much exclusively
listening to 1940s music on a station called
40sOn4, which is
pretty big in America.
Garfunkel
& Oates are so good.
The new
Folded Light album as well is pretty sweet.
Halloween Town is also
amazing… I am trying to pretend like I am not giving press to my buddies
here.
Truthfully though… Django Reinhardt and Angelo Badalamenti. The new
Dinosaur
Jr. tracks are also stellar.
❤
How was it working on 500
Days of Summer?
WONDERFUL! It was great fun to be a part of
such a special film. Also, I rarely do movies with people who are anywhere near
my own age. I’m usually the “little kid” in the movies I’m in. It was
Marc Webb’s first film, he is from the music
video world and he did a phenomenal job.
Zooey Deschanel is incredible in
this, so is Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
I am proud of the message this movie
sends, a completely accurate depiction of the rollercoaster known as
love.
❤
Tell me more about How to be a Serial
Killer.
It was the exact opposite of everything i have
been doing on Criminal MInds for the past 5 years. The director (
Luke Ricci) wrote this genius
script but was willing to let us improvise which opened up a realm of freedom I
had never known as an actor (outside of my own fake documentaries), for once I
wasn't tied down to words on a page or notes from a studio/network, i had to
constantly be thinking of what to say next. it was the best!!!! It essentially
forced me to live as the character for the month it took to film. a very bizarre
and hard to describe sensation. Bart (my character) is not the sharpest tool in
the shed and with every passing day i could feel myself life loosing braincells,
but gaining a new friend. I guess he's technically a "bad guy," a killer, but
man... i really grew to love him. I miss him, i feel like i should send him a
postcard. i hope he is well wherever he is...staying out of trouble.
Matthew Gray Gubler as Bart
❤
Tell me more about Cornstalk
Recordings
Music is an area where I have no talent
whatsoever. I am a pretty good whistler but that’s about it. What's weird is for
some reason most of my friends are musical wizards. So I started a label in
order to showcase their talents. There are two bands on it at the moment Folded
Light and Halloween Town but there will be some more soon.
I put out the
albums; occasionally do artwork, direct a video, fund the records, etc. im like
a sugar daddy only i get high fives instead of kisses.
❤
What is the craziest thing you have ever done for a love
interest?
Wow...let me think...I have done some pretty
crazy stuff… I once hand made a girlfriend a 50 page leather bound book. It
was an illustrated fairy tale about a princess and an eccentric magician. The
magician had his heart broken so badly in the past that instead of keeping it in
his chest where it could easily get hurt again, he kept it locked up in a rusty
trunk under his bed, where it had withered into a shriveled apricot. a lot
happens that cant really be summed up in one paragraph, but at the end, his
apricot heart swells to the size of a house and they end up living happily ever
after inside of it. It took me about a month to make, it was all rhyming, hand
painted... something i was pretty gosh darn proud of. I really poured a lot
into it, and I think its filled with some of my best paintings yet. Sadly in
real life the story didnt end as happy as it did in the book. Lets just say i'm
living alone in that giant apricot heart at the moment.
I once gave a
girl a bloody fake ear in a TIffany jewlery box with a letter that said, "will
you Gogh to prom with me" yeah, I guess I'm a romantic.
❤
Top Babes
Fran
Drescher (I have no idea why I love her so much but I do)
Amelia
Earheart (for too many reasons to list)
Mary Poppins (my first crush,
beautiful voice, great style)
Elvira (oh man)
Lisa Bonet (one of
the many reasons I loooove the Cosby Show)
Ashley Smith (a friend of mine
photographed this painter/model in New York recently. I have no idea who she is
but she has the most enchanting smile I have ever seen)
Ashley Smith
Bebe Neuwirth (I have a soft spot for ghostly
pale women who wear their hair in tight buns)
Casey Wilson from SNL (a
sense of humor is the most attractive thing in the world to me, I also like the
fact that she's not emaciated. Ive seen so many beautiful curvy women gain
success in hollywood and then wither into bobble headed stick figures in some
grotesque attempt to fit a revolting hollywood trend) I like real women, not the
broomsticks that Hollywood has been selling lately.
Winnie
Cooper (when she broke Kevin's heart in the "Wonder Years", mine shattered
into a million pieces, also the girl that plays her in real life, Danica
McKellar, is a brilliant mathematician who has her own math theorem named after
her)
Last but not least, I am wildly in love with pretty much all of the
Disney princesses (that includes Jessica Rabbit). Their
optimism/innocence/beautiful dresses/and old fashioned values drive me insane.
Belle will always hold a soft spot for falling in love with the beast despite
his horrific appearance.
❤
What’s your relationship with
your fans?
I'm the luckiest person in the world because
besides having the best, most loving, most awesome, and most unique family,
friends, and coworkers in the world, I also happen to have the best, most
loving, most awesome and most unique fans in the world. I can't begin to
describe how blessed i am. They are so much more than fans they are "fands"
(fans/friends).
I've never understood the notion of shunning or acting
"too cool" for fans. I know, and occasionally work with, actors who seem to
think it is beneath them to take 5 seconds to stop and sign an autograph or even
shake hands with their admireres. To do that, you really have to be filled with
a lot of self-hate and insecurity. An actors job is to entertain, how can you
resent, or look down on the very people that find you entertaining? It would be
like being a birthday clown who gets hired, goes to the party, shouts insults at
the kids, and then kicks all the dads in the crotch. If you have the ability to
make someone's day by giving them a moment of your time DO IT!
❤
Favourite Horror MoviesSomething
Wicked this way comes – Jack Clayton 1983
Watcher
in the woods – John Hough 1980
Halloween
– John Carpenter 1978
Night
of the Hunter - Charles Laughton 1955
The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari – Robert Wiene 1920
Still from The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari
❤
What is your interior style?
My apartment in new york is the size of a shoe
box
My LA apartment is a tiny bit bigger, its the
size of a hat box
I really like small confined areas, not only
because i prefer to live modestly but because I find them creatively
stimulating.
My dream would be to live in a hollowed out tree.
I guess
you would say each place has a Victorian library feel, old family photos, red
walls, taxidermy, some of my friends art, strange artifacts etc.
❤
What are you going to be for Halloween this year?
Beaker
and Bunsen from the Muppets with one of my friends if he agrees. I am not sure
yet.
Please do not reproduce this interview without
permission. All photos and text are copyrighted to MademoiselleRobot.com unless
stated. If you want to use parts of this interviews or photos, please email me.
