By Kenn Gold
At the age of 22, Clark Duke seems poised to take Hollywood by storm. The young actor/director/writer/producer currently co-stars in ABC Family’s Greek as Dale, the ultra-conservative roommate of the shows lead, Rusty (Jacob Zachar), who has no qualms about showing his disdain for fraternity life. Duke, who is a recent honors graduate of Loyola Marymount University with a degree in Film and Television Production, has also had roles in Oxygen’s hit comedy Campus Ladies, as well as on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Judd Apatow's mega hit summer feature, Superbad. Duke had earlier success as a child actor in Jack Ritter’s Hearts Afire, though didn’t pursue acting when that show wrapped-- until recently.
Duke is arguably best known for the hit web series, Clark and Michael, for which he is the co-writer, co-producer and co-star. The 10-part broadband series was co-created and developed, as well as directed, with comedy partner Michael Cera ( Arrested Development, Superbad), and developed out of Duke’s senior thesis project. Clark Duke recently spoke with MediaBlvd Magazine about his role on Greek, the web series, and other projects.
Duke, an Arkansas native, is able to draw upon the convictions of those around who he grew up in playing the character of Dale on Greek. “It’s the Bible Belt, and I was raised a Baptist,” he says. But it is important to Duke that the character not be played only as a joke. “I don’t want Dale to be a cartoon character. He totally believes everything he says. He has this weird confidence in himself, and has no insecurities. He is in no way embarrassed by what he says.”
Playing an honors engineering student, and memorizing the necessary technical dialogue can sometimes be a challenge for Duke. “I was in an honors program in college, but numbers aren’t my thing. It sucks! I just write it down,” he says. Taking a trick from the late Marlon Brando, who refused to memorize lines, Duke sometimes has his dialogue written down also. “Anytime you see me reading from a text book, I’ve probably got the words written down there on a note,” he says.
Duke does get a chance to display his own comedic writing talents in Greek, by occasionally changing the dialogue for his character. “No one gets on to me if I improv something,” he says; though he is cognizant of the fact that the show must maintain a set shooting schedule. “If you mess up a line on Greek, everybody has to stay longer. It throws the whole schedule off,” he says. Duke works on the show for 2 or 3 days a week when it’s in production. He had the entire month of August off though, but will return soon to film the second half of the season.
A huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Duke unfortunately missed the filming of Charisma Carpenter’s scenes from the first-half season finale. “I wasn’t even aware that was going on till after it happened,” he says. However, Duke does have several scenes that are contenders for his favorite. Among those that he most enjoyed were the scenes in which Dale develops a crush on Casey (Spencer Grammer), as well as the scenes inspired from A Beautiful Mind, in which Dale and Rusty are trying to use physics to figure out sports. One of his favorite scenes though, is the band playing at the Bible Bunch party. Dale’s band, Darwin Lied performs a number there, and Duke says he was really playing, though the music was pre-recorded for the shoot. “It was lip synced”, he says.
Clark and Michael is still garnering a great deal of attention for Duke. Produced by CBS the pilot was developed originally as Duke’s final thesis project. The show is a fictional look at two young men who develop a television pilot, and try to sell it. Duke is proud of Clark and Michael, and feels that he and Michael Cera were extremely lucky in getting the show picked up. “We were 21 and 18 and got it out there,” he says. “The style and tone of the show, as a mockumentary is something that probably wouldn’t be doable in a few years.” The timing may have also been right with the proliferation of broadband. “What we did was essentially film an independent movie, shooting over 110 minutes of video,” says Duke.
Duke does recognize the fact that the show is somewhat of a pioneer undertaking, with so few shows produced for the web, actually succeeding. “We’re Conquistadors!,” he jokes. “Every time I go out now I get recognized for Clark and Michael, and we get something like 100 MySpace friends a day,” he says. Duke is glad he didn’t go to USC, because they would have owned the rights to his student film. As it was, a friend helped them get the project in front of CBS. “Max Winkler really loved it, and showed it to a friend of his from high school who worked at CBS,” says Duke. By the time Duke and Cera met with CBS, the network had already decided they wanted the project.
Talking about the origins of the project, Duke says he and Cera wanted to try a new take on comedy. “We wanted to see what would happen if they had two George Costanza’s and no counter point,” he says. CBS let the pair continue filming the series, much as they had the pilot/thesis project, with friends helping out as camera crew. “I honestly wish we’d had more crew,” says Duke. The involvement during production from CBS was minimal. “A couple of times a few CBS guys would come and sit around messing with their Blackberries and blow scenes by laughing,” says Duke.
At the time the thesis project was being filmed, Duke had little idea that he would one day be acting on an ABC Family show. Changed to ATC Family in the online pilot/first episode, the original had several crude jokes about the Family channel. In the plot for the pilot, the pair had approached the network to buy their show. “ABC Family brushes their teeth with my dick- that line got a lot of laughs and comments around here”, says Duke.
Though Clark and Michael ended after 10 episodes, Duke says there was a plan for a 2nd season, in which the pair would have actually sold their show. In the plot that was developed, “the network became annoyed with Clark, and replaced him with Freddy Muniz. The 2nd season would be essentially Clark’s nervous breakdown as he tried to destroy Freddy”, says Duke.
While there are no FCC laws for the internet, CBS did bleep the foul language in Clark and Michael, which is something that Duke feels worked to the shows benefit. “It makes everything seem way filthier than it is,” he says.
Still a comic book fan, Duke recently attended the San Diego Comic Convention this summer, though he was a bit surprised by the event. “They don’t really have any comic’s there! It’s an excuse to dress up in costume, and for movie producers to screen their upcoming projects,” he says. In a series of hilarious videos which should be online soon, Duke, along with Trevor Moore (The Whitest Kids You Know), tried to get Spiderman and Captain America to kiss on screen. Instead, Spiderman challenged Duke to a pushup contest, saying he could do twice the number that Duke could do, a challenge that was accepted. “I did 35 or 40,” says Duke. “Spiderman did 90 and could have done more, though Captain America was suffering. He wouldn’t take his mask off, so I think it was the real Spiderman,” jokes Duke. Duke’s comic collection is quite large, he says. “I’m totally out of room- my closets are just filled to capacity.”
While he enjoys acting, Duke also enjoys writing and directing, and he has had several meetings recently about various projects which would involve him directing. One other area that the multi-talented Duke would like to explore is his music. He and Michael Cera previously had their own band, The Long Goodbye. “Michael doesn’t have an interest in recording or playing shows,” says Duke. Though a recent development is a potential new band, with Veronica Mars star Kristen Bell. Duke was introduced to Bell by director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead), and the two have similar interests, and have already settled on a name for the new band- The Kung Fu Professors.
