Faithful to His Freaky Side

Jack Black, wild-man lead singer of off-the-wall cult band Tenacious D, is performing with the group at a Hollywood nightspot in an orange T-shirt featuring a picture of a gorilla head. Black’s unruly hair flops in his eyes, his sweaty round face reddens with every oddball raunchy lyric, and faithful fans are cheering him on. It’s force-of-nature craziness reminiscent of John Belushi.

Familiar primarily to regular Hollywood clubgoers, Black and mild-mannered partner Kyle Gass are each playing acoustic guitar and singing original--often X-rated--songs about Sasquatch, Dianetics, sex backstage, Jesus and Satan, any number of bodily functions and Fat Albert. They call themselves “the greatest band in the world,” and while that’s meant as a comic exaggeration they do have one high-profile fan so taken with Black that he’s given Tenacious D’s loose cannon another role to play that could make him a star.

The fan is actor and writer John Cusack, and in the new film “High Fidelity”--which Cusack co-wrote and stars in--Black is stealing scenes as a belligerent record store clerk named Barry. The Touchstone film, which opened Friday to mostly rave reviews, provides Black the kind of breakout role that has audiences howling and wondering just who that crazy heavyset guy is--a reaction not unlike the filmmakers’.

“I’ve never met anyone like Jack Black,” says “High Fidelity’s” director, Stephen Frears. “It’s as if he’s come from the moon. I had no idea what was coming next.”

Black, who’s been acting for years in smaller parts in films such as “Enemy of the State” (1998), “The Cable Guy” (1996) and “Waterworld” (1995), said the role of Barry is “definitely the best part I’ve had. It’s the biggest, juiciest, funniest, best opportunity to get wild. I was intimidated by the part at first. They had to talk to me because I was afraid of failing, of sucking. I’m really glad they did because if this movie was coming out with someone else in it I’d be freaking out.”

“High Fidelity” is based on Nick Hornby’s popular 1995 novel about a struggling record store owner, Rob (Cusack), with a pathetic love life and two employees--Barry and Dick (Todd Louiso)--whom he calls the “musical moron twins.” There aren’t many customers (they only sell vinyl), so the three pass the time compiling meaningless lists, like the Top 5 musical crimes perpetrated by Stevie Wonder in the ‘80s, or the Top 5 songs about death.

“These guys, they’re like idiot-savant Filofaxes of musical trivia information,” says Black, soothing his throat with soup following the previous night’s show with Tenacious D. “They’re kind of lonely dudes that are friends, but they’re also kind of mean to each other the way friends can be.

“Barry wants to be making music, and since he doesn’t have that going on he takes it out on the world and he turns insulting people into an art form.”

Cusack, who co-produced the movie, thinks it’s the perfect part for Black.

“It might be the first time his talent and a great role have come together with the right director,” Cusack says. “It’s rare to see someone get as broad and as explosively bizarre as you could possibly want and also break it down and do subtle, discreet naturalism with the best of them. That kind of range is dramatic and great.”

After watching Tenacious D--a mix of the Smothers Brothers, Cheech and Chong, Beavis and Butt-head and Spinal Tap--it’s easy to see how Cusack thought that casting Black was a no-brainer.

“If you haven’t had a chance to see Tenacious D play, it’s one of the six or seven wonders of the world,” Cusack says. “Jack is great because somehow in his comedic aesthetic it’s like he’s the king of somewhere. It might not be on Earth, but it’s definitely somewhere.

“It jumped off the page in the book and it was the easiest role to write because he’s this acid-tongued freak misanthrope. He’s just so insane. We all said, ‘We gotta get Jack.’ ”

Got His Big Break in ’92 Playing a Psychotic Fan

The 30-year-old Black got his big acting break when Tim Robbins (also in “High Fidelity”) cast him as a psycho fan in 1992’s “Bob Roberts.” (Black, Gass and Cusack all studied with Robbins’ L.A. stage group, the Actors’ Gang.) Robbins also put both Black and Gass in “Cradle Will Rock” (1999) as two wannabe performers bumbling through ventriloquism lessons from an exasperated Bill Murray. Bruce Willis killed Black in “The Jackal” (1997), and in the upcoming “Jesus’ Son,” due later this year, Black is a drug addict working in a hospital.

When the filmmakers changed the novel’s setting from London to Chicago, fans of the book were skeptical. “It’s almost a nonissue to me,” says Black, who arrived at a photo shoot in a camouflage Army jumpsuit. “It’s a universal thing, guys being secretly weird and sensitive when they’re putting on tough exteriors. It could be anywhere.”

“Sensitive.” It’s not a word you read often in descriptions of Black. But give a guy a break.

“I’m sensitive, and also obsessive and neurotic,” Black says. “I stress over career decisions and what people think of me. I worry about this notion of selling out, of having credibility. The only thing that matters is you doing what you think is good and funny.”

And he realizes comparisons to the late comedians Belushi and Chris Farley go beyond their talent and larger-than-life personas.

“We can make fat comparisons because everyone is obsessed with weight, including me,” Black says. “I’d like to be a hot skinny dude. I love food so much, though. And there’s something there, it’s not just food. I know it’s some kind of addiction where I’m filling some void. I don’t know what it is.

“The wild thing too, that’s the comparison [with Belushi and Farley] that we have the explosive burst of energy thing. If I could get a piece of what those guys had, it’s just a very flattering thing. Some people think it’s a cutdown because they weren’t considered real actors, they were comedians. I don’t buy that at all. I thought they were great artists.”

Black is an actor first, but just barely--he loves Tenacious D. Sometimes he’s managed to combine the two: “The D” appeared on HBO in 1997 in 10-minute segments following episodes of “Mr. Show With Bob and David.” And a 1999 “Tenacious D” comedy series on the cable network, though short-lived, included more wackiness--Jack and Kyle competing for the affections of Flama, a punk record-store clerk who worships Satan, and the two stumbling onto a cult that claimed to have the world’s largest potato.

As for the music of Tenacious D, Black and Gass hope for a record deal, but some say they’re not even a real band. Black describes their music as folk-metal with a “weird nursery rhyme quality,” and some critics have embraced the act’s originality. Others haven’t, like one whose review contained the phrases “lacked a point,” “rambled horribly” and “nothing but chaos.”

Black’s opinion: Critics, schmitics. The shows sell out, and the band’s popularity is growing beyond the underground club scene. Tenacious D played to a crowd of about 2,500 last month at the South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas.

“It seemed unanimous. Everyone was into the D. Brains were being roasted, hearts were exploding,” recalls a typically restrained Black. “The next day we got the worst review we’ve ever received. The writer didn’t even mention that anyone was enjoying the show. Doesn’t he have to report the event as it happened?”

More HBO shows are possible, and Black and Gass are writing a Tenacious D movie script. Black, who grew up in and around Hermosa Beach and attended UCLA theater classes for two years, also wants his own TV series, the latest project being “Nostradamus 2000.”

“I play a wild-card crazy guy who sees flashes of the future. Jason Schwartzman [“Rushmore”] plays the youngest Secret Service agent in history. We hook up in the pilot and rescue the president from robots.”

Last year, Ben Stiller directed Black in a TV pilot called “Heat, Vision and Jack” that didn’t get picked up. It was a mix of “The Six Million Dollar Man,” “Knight Rider” and “Kung Fu,” only funny, Black says. “I was Jack Austin and my motorcycle could talk. We were running away . . . because I was the smartest man in the world and they wanted my brain for study.”

So is there anything he won’t try?

“I don’t do stand-up, I don’t have the [nerve] for it,” he says, in a rare reflective moment. “With Tenacious D I have the guitar between me and the audience, and there’s the music and Kyle to blame it on if it goes badly. But getting up there and talking for even five minutes, you’re naked.”