The one kind of movie Danny DeVito has always wanted to make: “Oh baby, now we’re talking!”
Danny DeVito has been going so long at the top now that it’s hard to imagine the guy who was in a mental hospital with Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest could possibly be the same one getting up to 18 seasons of insane adventures with the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia gang, but it is indeed, and he shows no signs of stopping.
Anyone who is a fan of the FX comedy, which is now the longest-running live-action sitcom in US TV history, will know that, unlike behemoths like The Simpsons, standards have in no way slipped, and the latest season featured one of the best episodes in recent times in the shape of ‘Frank in a Coma’.
Despite barely appearing in that episode, it was a reminder that even at 81 years old, DeVito is just as sharp and funny (and demented) as when he first began on the show, with every box ticked from completely heartless and selfish behaviour to his character Frank plumbing ludicrous depths of deranged behaviour just to make a basic point.
People are discovering It’s Always Sunny even now, some 21 years after it first aired and two decades after DeVito joined the cast and elevated the show from what was a sharply-written twist on Seinfeld-style comedy to the incredibly dark, astonishingly funny descent into daily nihilism it became, completely immersing himself into the immoral Frank Reynolds and taking ‘commit to the bit’ as far as it will possibly go.
That meant doing things like, deep breath, emerging naked from a sofa, kidnapping a boat full of asian tourists to point out dead bodies in a river, shaving off all his hair and covering himself with hand sanitiser, getting stuck for hours in kids playground equipment, soaking an entire ham in rum then falling in love with it Castaway style – the list goes on.
So it’s far to say that on top of a 50-year career as a writer, director and actor there isn’t a whole lot that DeVito hasn’t done in the name of entertainment, although when Vanity Fair asked him if there was anything left to scratch off his list he brought up a movie genre he hasn’t yet dipped his toes into, replying: “You know what I want to do?… I want to do a Bollywood movie. (Starts dancing) Oh baby, now we’re talking!”
Anyone who has seen the classic Friends episode in which DeVito appears at the apartment as a down-on-his-luck male stripper, complete with oversized ghetto blaster, will probably have a decent idea as to how that might go down, but as yet, DeVito doesn’t appear to have any plans to follow through with his excitement at the idea of filming in India.
One thing he is doing, though, is filming Jumanji 3, the final instalment in the rebooted series starring Jack Black and Dwayne Johnson, due out later this year. Despite very mixed reviews, the first two movies in 2017 and 2019 pulled in almost $2bn dollars at the box office combined, so an ending to the trilogy was always on the cards.
DeVito will also start filming season 18 of It’s Always Sunny this month, the last series that is currently under contract to be made, with some of the cast admitting it could well finally be the end of the story. DeVito is open to whatever might happen with filming, though, saying: “It’s something that you look forward to because it really is so much fun…And they know anything they want to do to Frank, they can.”
