Richard Ayoade: 'Making films is exhilarating

and terrifying'

Richard Ayoade shot to fame as Moss in The IT Crowd but it was Submarine, his debut behind the
camera, that won him critical acclaim. As his new film, The Double, is released, he talks about pride,
performing and giving up his pop dreams
The premise of Fyodor Dostoevsky's 1846 novella The Double is simple but ingenious: a man lives an
entirely unremarkable existence until one day his exact doppelganger shows up. This incongruous
situation fast becomes insufferable for two reasons: first, the new guy is slick where he is stammering,
popular where he's forgettable, Day-Glo to his beige; and, second, because no one else notices any
likeness at all between the pair of them.
The Double, it's said, is meant as an allegory: the straight man is Dostoevsky in real life, shy and often
awkward; the arriviste is the author 2.0, the person he sometimes wished he was, who is quick-witted
and irresistible to women. Dostoevsky believed this was a near-universal fantasy. It was the last book
he wrote before being dispatched to a Siberian labour camp.
Richard Ayoade, the comic actor and serious director, wanted to make a film ofThe Double because it
is offbeat and very funny, traits that he shares with the source material. But you can't help wondering
if the alter-ego set-up appealed to him, too. In person, the 36-year-old Ayoade is known for being
deferential and self-deprecating. He uttered an all-time great line in interviews (which he tends to
assiduously avoid) when he told the New York Times: "I'm not a fan of me and I can't become one."
The films he makes first 2010's Submarine, his stylish adaptation of Joe Dunthorne's coming-of-age
novel, and now The Double showcase this side of his personality: smart, finely wrought, inspired by
eclectic influences such as David Lynch, Aki Kaurismki and Franois Truffaut.
Ayoade the performer, meanwhile, is a more extrovert, populist creature. Standing 6ft 2in, maybe
even six-five with the hair, he is someone your eyes always gravitate towards on screen. This is despite
the fact that his characters notably Moss from The IT Crowd or Jamarcus in the 2012 Hollywood
caper The Watch might be self-conscious about the attention. So, does Ayoade share Dostoevsky's
belief in a divided self? Do the film-maker and the actor represent twin aspects of his character?
Ayoade considers this suggestion, gazing out of the window of a meeting room at the Imperial War
Museum, London, its well-kept lawn and magnificent 15in naval guns glowing in late-afternoon,
winter's sun. It's not a conventional location for a celebrity interview, which seems appropriate.
Ayoade described his dress sense toGQ as "70s geography teacher" his style hero is Peter Falk's
Columbo and that nails it: today he wears a brown corduroy suit, floral shirt and thick-rimmed
glasses. He proceeds to skirt adroitly around my question.
It really is a masterclass in dissembling. Ayoade starts by saying that any great novelist inhabits all of
their characters, and this leads into a favourite quotation from the author Hubert Selby Jr that the ego
of the writer should be invisible, while in bad writing it is invariably too obvious. He moves on without
pause toJungian theory and the concept that all stories are essentially varying aspects of one's psyche

trying to reconcile into a whole, before concluding: "So I think the short answer would be that I can
see Dostoevsky's imagination inhabiting all sorts of things rather than it being dualistic."
I rephrase the question, attempting to elicit a more personal response. This leads into an anecdote
that Wallace Shawn, the polymath who appears winningly as a cameo in The Double, told Ayoade
about the academic Noam Chomsky. The amazing thing about Chomsky, it turns out, is that
whomever he's speaking to the president of the United States, a class of students his mode of
address and deportment is identical. Ayoade then notes how it's fascinating that you can invariably
tell whom your partner or a really close friend is talking to on the telephone, just from their vocal
inflections. I realise this will be the closest I get to a private revelation.
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/mar/23/richard-ayoade-making-films-exhilarating-terrifyingsubmarine?CMP=fb_ot

The Double: Toronto 2013 - first look review

5/5stars
Jesse Eisenberg stars alongside himself in Richard Ayoade's adaptation of a Dostoyevsky story about a
meek office worker who is confronted by his confident, aggressive doppelgnger. It's a brilliant copy of
a great original, says Henry Barnes
Dank and depressing, spurred by impotent rage and deflated ambition, The Double arrives as the
black sheep of this year's Toronto film festival. It's a moody, gloomy comedy. A taut study of selfidentity that comes up with no easy answers. It's totally out of step with the festival's sunny tastes. It
might just be the best thing we'll see all week.
The Double mirrors aspects of Gilliam, Gondry and the Coen brothers' Hudsucker Proxy. Ayoade
shares those directors' intricacy. He uses sound rhythmically, builds farce and tragedy out of the
simplest devices. A beautiful moment of character exposition pops up as Simon heads to the office. A
workman methodically stacks boxes onto the tube as Simon tries to leave. The action swings into time
with the soundtrack. Simon steps around the man, but each time the worker is back in the way. It's a
clever, funny and moving little scene. An immediate indication of how hopeless Simon is. Everything,
inside and out of the fiction, is against him. A blender roars to life as he tries to listen in on a
conversation. A draft whips up and drowns him out when he thinks of something clever to say.
Ayoade's killer script takes evil pleasure in having Simon swallow his words and stutter through life.
Eisenberg's last film, the bumpy magician heist movie Now You See Me, saw the nervy actor play an
arrogant card shark. He's said that that role freed him, allowed him to unleashing a side of himself
that made him feel more confident. At times the actor's nervousness can slip into arrogance. The
Double plays on this. James is gregarious and cool - everything that Simon (and Eisenberg) aspire to
be. It's a superb piece of meta-casting.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/08/the-double-toronto-2013-review
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/oct/05/richard-ayoade-it-crowd-gadget-man-double-submarineauthor

Richard Ayoade: Shyness can be interpreted

as a kind of aggression

Hes a TV star (The IT Crowd, Gadget Man) film director (The Double, Submarine) and now
hes written a book in which he interviews himself. Which is funny, because he hates
interviews ...
Richard Ayoade has asked to be interviewed in the Imperial War Museum. To find him in the
museums cafe, I have to walk through the main entrance, where Im forced to stare down the barrels
of two 50ft naval guns. When I finally reach him, sitting round the back in the museums grounds, I
ask whether this is some kind of interview power play.
Im actually doing a Charlton Heston, announcing my support of the NRA, he deadpans. No, to be
honest it just feels not terribly media-y here, and its quite close to my house.
Im only a tad suspicious because these are unusual circumstances in which to conduct an interview.
There should be plenty to talk about: Ayoades comedy career, including his Bafta-winning sitcom role
as Moss, the socially-inept star of Graham Linehans The IT Crowd, as well as his two acclaimed films
as a director,Submarine and The Double, which, alongside the recent output of Ben Wheatley and
Edgar Wright, have made him a leading light of the new school of cultish British filmmaking. But
Ayoades latest work a book, Ayoade on Ayoade is an interview itself, in which two fictional
versions of the man antagonise one another.
Why is it so difficult for him to be himself? As soon as cameras are there its just different. Its not
being yourself. Your mother could have died that morning but they will say, Just be yourself, we have
to film. Anything thats not complete submission to the gaze looks kind of aggressive on camera.
Reality stars are geniuses in that they have an ability to be completely undefensive. Joey Essex, for
example, is completely open, so you like him. The villains are the defensive ones; shyness can be
interpreted as a kind of aggression: Who are you to care so much how you come off?
But when Ayoade made the move into directing, something more than the humour and the front
shone through. Both 2010s Submarine, an atmospheric and honest secondary school romance in a
small Welsh town, and this years The Double, in which Jesse Eisenberg plays both a nervous and
ignored office worker and his confident, sexually successful doppelganger, are sensitive adaptations
the former from Joe Dunthornes novel, the latter the Dostoevsky classic. Ayoade proved able to
present young romance in a way that feels neither cliched nor overblown, and when things fall apart in
his films its genuinely heartbreaking. I think few of his comedy contemporaries could have handled
these stories so tenderly. Surely that ability to engage with the human condition comes from personal
experience?
Not really. To me, theres not necessarily a distinct separation between something being funny and
something being sad. It can be funny tripping over at a funeral at the worst moment, or getting
annoyed if you cant find a parking space. Catcher in the Rye is the funniest book and the saddest
book.