Interview: Kevin James Talks “Paul Blart,” Mall Cops and Adam Sandler

Kevin James is an accomplished stand-up comedian and a sitcom veteran from nine years on The King of Queens. He got his break in movies by playing a sidekick to Will Smith in the romantic comedy Hitch, and he followed it up by co-starring with Adam Sandler in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Now he’s taking the lead for the first time in Paul Blart: Mall Cop, where he takes on the role of the most dedicated shopping center security guard anywhere, whose personal life is in shambles. James sat down recently to talk about the inspiration for this film, his bond with producer Sandler and his own history with malls.

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Did you watch a lot of action movies to get into this? Because it’s got an action movie vibe.
Kevin James: Well, I think that when you look at me I give an action movie vibe. It’s innate. Yeah, I loved movies like Die Hard and Rambo and all these crazy movies growing up. So I thought “you know what, why can’t I play that? Why can’t a bigger, out of shape, sadly inept guy play this character?” I thought that would be funny, so I wanted to make this the most physical project that I have ever done. For me, I succeeded. I defiantly did so I was happy about that. I wanted it to be a very physical comedy.

That being said, how tough was it?
Kevin James: Oh, you know what? I wish I had gotten into shape in a way. It was hard. I was getting banged up and bruised every day. But when we saw dailies coming in every day and we just watched them, we were laughing so it was good. We got a lot of good guys to do physical stuff with. These X-Games guys doing the jumping and the BMX biking. We got the top guys in the sport to come in and help so it was a lot of fun to play off those guys.

So where did the idea come from of X-Games guys being terrorists?
Kevin James: We just wanted to do a different twist on it instead of the typical bad guys. We wanted to bring in a cool and fast way to get through the mall. It’s something that I hadn’t seen and we wanted to really rip up the mall in a way that these guys could do. It was amazing to see what they did. Also, we had the free running stuff where they run and jump and it’s just pretty insane.

Do you see an opening for other action/comedy types like this in your future?
Kevin James: You know, I love being physical. All of my heroes like Jackie Gleason, John Belushi, Chris Farley… it’s not good that they’re all dead is it? But all these guys were big guys who could move gracefully, and those are guys who I like to emulate. I love to do physical comedy and even real action, I would love to do. It’s just surprising. Any time that you surprise somebody by doing something that they don’t expect you to do, that’s where I want to be.

What about your segway work? That was pretty impressive. Was that something you had done before hand?
Kevin James: You know I did it once on a promo for The King of Queens. I thought it was the funniest vehicle I had ever seen. It just cracked me up. And they taught me how to do it and I picked it up pretty fast. It’s a little nerve-wracking in the beginning because you’re leaning your body weight and you don’t trust it. But it’s a pretty cool piece of equipment. Then I found out that the mall cops actually use these things and I said “this is beautiful. Thank you God for the comedic gift right there.” I laugh when I see one of those guys just floating around on one and trying to be serious.

How much fun was it playing this character?
Kevin James: This is the first movie I’ve done where it’s just me out there by myself. I don’t have Will Smith or Adam Sandler. I’m tired of carrying those guys. But if I was going to do a movie like this I wanted to play a character that I was very connected to and somebody who I could hopefully have an audience connect with and really root for. That was important, and when we found this mall cop guy, we studied mall cops, talked to them, and we just knew that this was a character that could be very funny and engaging and fun to watch. And he’s got heart. He’s a good man so you root for him. He’s just an everyday guy so most people can relate to him.

I don’t want this to be making fun of mall cops. I have so much respect, I really do, I’ve always had, because it’s very difficult to enforce the law when you don’t have a weapon or any real authority when you think about it. They can’t really do much more than a citizen can. That was always intriguing to me. But they have to do their job and walk the beat. Their job entails so much, if someone spills an Orange Julius, you’ve got to cone that off, return a kid to his mother, lost and found, you have to give directions to cin-a-bun, you gotta know where it is. And hopefully stop crime and anything that happens in that mall. Doing that without weapons or the respect of the people that work with you or who are shopping in the mall made me laugh, and it made me feel for these guys. So I think it needed to be told.

Would you say it takes a certain type of personality to work security?
Kevin James: Exactly. Well, you have two types of mall cops that I noticed when I was looking around. You have guys that don’t take the job seriously at all. They’re just there to flip over a spackle can, sit there, read a book, and just kill time. Then there are the guys like Barney Fife that just take their job very seriously. They’ve been issued a badge. It’s a generic badge that says security guard, but they take that very seriously. They wear it like a badge of honor, and you’re not going to screw up in their mall. That’s what Paul Blart does.

Did you get any feedback yet from real mall cops or security guards?
Kevin James: We did. We talked to a few of them that had saw the movie and they were thrilled. They were laughing hard and having a good time with it. The guy is a hero in the end and that’s why I think they were okay with it.

The screening last night was packed with very enthusiastic kids who loved it. Were you surprised by that fan base?
Kevin James: Yeah, you know, when I first came up with the idea, we thought it would be just like a Die Hard and the only difference was that we would make it not an R but PG-13. I just wanted to make it as real as possible. As we started developing the movie, the more I realized that we weren’t being vulgar and we really didn’t need to really do this, and our audience started opening up. It could be a family movie, and my concern was that we were going to lose adults by saying it’s a kid movie. You want to get everybody to enjoy things in the movie. When I take my friends’ kids to a movie I love it when I can enjoy the movie as well as they do. That’s important to me.

Were there any malls that you had particularly fond memories of as a kid?
Kevin James: I did. I remember my mall was the Smith Haven mall on Long Island and I used to hit it with a bunch of my buddies in my black Kiss concert T-shirt. Malls are like night clubs for kids. There’s lights, food, girls, music, there’s a lot going on. A lot of stimuli for kids, so that’s the place to be. Then as a stand-up comedian I also hit malls a lot, because when you go to different cities, you work for about an hour a night and then the next day you’ve got nothing to do so you just walk the malls. I was always aware of mall cops and how they were disrespected in a way so I wanted to tell their story. I think everybody needed to hear their story.

Did the name Blart come from anywhere specific or was that something that you just made up?
Kevin James: The guy I wrote it with, Nick Bakay, just said that to me one day and I cracked up. It just says everything to me. Paul Blart: Mall Cop. You just understand right away what it is. It just seemed like a perfect fit. And I never knew that was going to be the title even, we just called it that for a while. We thought they’d call it Mall Cop. Even though that was going to feel generic, people were going to call it that anyway just to shorten it. But we laughed at Paul Blart and they kept it.

What is it like working with and collaborating with Adam Sandler? Are you guys going to produce more projects together?
Kevin James: Absolutely. Adam’s just the greatest gift I’ve had in film. I mean him and Will Smith are the two guys who just really helped me out and I’m really thankful for them both. Adam and I have very similar lives in a way. Obviously, him being a lot more successful in the business, but we love the same things, our families - I’ve got two girls, he’s got two girls. We go on vacations. The wives get together. We have the same sensibility and I’m so happy because he’s got the experience and he’s helped me with this and produced this movie. A guy who’s done it so many times and keeps turning out these blockbusters is helping me not only shape my comedy but add heart to the movie. Right down to the editing and adding music. I love the music in all of Sandler’s movies. He’s always famous for putting songs in there that kind of take you back to a certain time. And he helped me with the music in this, I’m psyched about it. I’m proud. “I Can’t Hold Back” was a song that Adam picked that I just loved, from Survivor. That and the Kiss song “Detroit Rock City” were the ones. And then Barry Manilow. I love Barry Manilow songs. They get me emotional. It’s weird. That’s one of the ones where I’m not my proudest if somebody finds it on my iPod. I’ll just kind of try to cover it up. But I love it.