VOD Spotlight: One good comedy leads to another with “Get Him to the Greek”

Russell Brand (right) reprises his "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" role of rocker Aldous Snow in "Get Him to the Greek"

By Elaine Bergstrom

Russell Brand’s portrayal of rock god Aldous Snow in Forgetting Sarah Marshall made such a strong impression on the film’s director, Nicholas Stoller, that he brought Brand back for an encore performance in Get Him to the Greek. Here Brand experienced life as an out-of-control star. “I’ve been plunged into water for seven hours. I’ve had to hang off a building on a wire, had to mimic having broken bones and been covered in vomit. I’ve been in sexually compromising positions, and I’ve had to take all manner of ‘narcotics.’ I’ve performed live rock ’n’ roll. I’ve recorded an album,”  Brand says. “All the times I pretended to be a rock star, with a hairbrush and tennis racket … I got to live out those fantasies in front of thousands of people.”

When fleshing out the story for Get Him to the Greek, Stoller initially wrote a new protagonist (not Aldous Snow) … with Brand in mind to play him. The filmmaker soon realized, however, this major character in his script simply had to be a rock star with the attitude and swagger of Aldous. He thought what better way to extend one of his favorite roles from his directorial debut than to write a spin-off.

“In the intervening years since we saw Aldous in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, he has fallen off the wagon and is a drunk disaster,” says Stoller.  “And to everyone who has an issue with that,” the director laughs, “I would say that Star Trek reinvented its entire universe in the last film. They have 50 years of people memorizing every detail of the Star Trek universe. So, I don’t feel too bad about it.”

“Get Him to the Greek” is now showing on Video On Demand. Check your cable system for availability.

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© 2010 Universal Studios. Credit: Glen Wilson