“My relationship with food is very neutral. We’re just friends,” says SNL comedian Bill Hader, while doing press for 3-D animated feature Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.
Hader voices Flint Lockwood, a crackpot inventor who makes it rain cheeseburgers and pea soup for the local citizens of Chewandswallow, who suffered for years with only anchovies to eat.
Though the film, based on a children’s storybook of the same name, focuses on the town’s growing dilemma of this unstoppable raining food, Hader and co-star Anna Faris say that what they loved most about the film was it’s celebration of geek-dom.
“It’s kind of a cool moment when you realize that that can be attractive to somebody, that being yourself is kinda good,” says Hader.
“I remember the first time I met my wife, I went to her apartment and she had Star Wars curtains. I said, ‘I am going to marry you.’”
“Bill and I are both geeks,” Faris says, before Hader swiftly reminds her to speak for herself. But Faris persists, “I used to wear a Christmas tree skirt as a cape and now I feel cool enough to talk about it.”
Doing the animated film was a challenge for both comedic actors, who thought they were in for an easy ride.
“It’s the hardest job that I’ve ever had,” says Hader. “It’s such a unique challenge to try to channel everything into your voice. You say the same line three times in a row, talk about it and do it again.”
But Faris, who has starred in such comedies as The House Bunny and the Scary Movie franchise, sees a bright side to all that hard work.
“It’s finally a movie I’ve done that people under 10 can see.”
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