His eyes droopy and features looking deprived of melanin, the instantly recognizable Mike White sits lethargically on a couch in a Four Seasons hotel room overlooking Logan Square. He's tired from traveling all day, and I can tell he's not terribly interested in chatting about his new film, Year of the Dog, so we make small talk about my life for a bit.
"So you go to UPenn?" White asks. I tell him I'm about to graduate and start a production company. "Wow, look at you," he grins widely. "A couple more months, you'll be out in the real world. You're doomed."
Thanks to that goofy charm, White himself might today be making a decent real-world living as a character actor - showing up in comedies as a ne'er-do-well high school professor or grocery store manager - were it not for his talent for writing smart, funny indies like The Good Girl and School of Rock.
"I was like a little scribbler when I was younger, but I went to Wesleyan, I was an English major and I took some playwriting classes. I had a buddy [Zak Penn, who scribed X-Men: The Last Stand] who'd gone out to L.A. and sold that movie Last Action Hero. He had a deal at Fox and he'd broken up with his writing partner and he needed somebody to help write a script with him ... It was a pretty easy transition but I realized after two years of writing with him, I definitely wasn't writing the stuff I wanted to be doing. I had to start over."
Since then he has become a respected screenwriter in his own right, and now tries his hand at directing with Year of the Dog. He admits that Dog isn't the easiest comedy to sit through, nor are its characters particularly sympathetic. But it has heart, and it's a labor of love for White.
"I just hate the feeling where five minutes in[to most movies] you know not necessarily where it's gonna go, but you know how you're going to feel when it's over . my favorite movie experiences are when I'm watching it and going, this is not what I expected from this movie. When you're actually surprised, not just by a plot twist, but when the whole spirit of the movie just wrong-foots you."
Dog revolves around Molly Shannon's Peggy, a puppy lover who, after a disastrous series of dates, retreats into her home and becomes a "dog lady."
"I think we all know somebody like that. I have two dogs, and there's definitely times where your animals are like a source of unconditional love. You don't have to bargain with them, there's no bickering; it's a little bit simpler."
Shannon, underutilized in most of her other movie roles, shows up in a rare but welcome tour-de-force lead.
"I always thought she was super funny whether she was pitched really up and broad, like falling over bleacher chairs, or if she's really low-key and subtle; in some of that she's even funnier. Peggy has to cry so much in the movie, but with Molly it stays at a comical level. It takes her a while to spin out, but because it's Molly, she brings a little bit of suspense to it - you know there's going to be something off about her."
While working his way into film, White wrote for several TV shows, including cult favorite Freaks and Geeks. Since that show succumbed to cancellation, White said, he's hesitant to return to the small screen.
"I've had really good experiences on the creative side with TV but they've all ended up being heartbreaking experiences getting it out there. You feel like the monkey who presses the button and gets an electric shock - after a while, you just aren't going to press that button anymore."
Coming next for White is a project with Hot Fuzz writer-director Edgar Wright starring Jack Black. Wright's penchant for gore, and White's aversion to it, could muddy the waters, though.
"It'll be interesting. The idea is more in his wheel house, it's a paranoid conspiracy-theory comedy, and it has some action elements to it ... hopefully it will be a nice marriage of minds"
