ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The new animated movie "Boys Go To Jupiter" is overflowing with the voices of famous offbeat actors. There's Cole Escola...
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COLE ESCOLA: (As Old Slippy) Oh, I never get delivery. I will take the food for compost if you take some of these eggs off my hands.
SHAPIRO: ...Sarah Sherman...
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SARAH SHERMAN: (As Miss Sharon) Yep, just what I thought. Petty vandalism, third trapezoid of damnation. You could get 5- or 600 years of hellfire per letter.
SHAPIRO: ...Janeane Garofalo and Julio Torres.
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JANEANE GAROFALO: (As Dr. Dolphin) Oh, when I was her age, I had already released a chart-topping hit. Do you remember?
JULIO TORRES: (As T-bone) Who could forget? The cran-grapefruit cocktail.
SHAPIRO: They all play supporting roles. The star of the movie is a Hollywood newcomer playing a 16-year-old kid named Billy 5000.
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JACK CORBETT: (As Billy 5000) I'm going to do a little work. There's an easy pickup down the road, $7 tip. Only, like, 20 minutes.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Oh, you're doing the pizza boy thing again.
CORBETT: Yeah. It's not always pizza. It's a flexible delivery partnership. I get to be my own boss. I get mad tips. This is tight.
SHAPIRO: That's Jack Corbett. He is not only a newly minted movie star; he is also our colleague. On TikTok and Instagram, he's known as NPR's Planet Money guy. He makes short videos explaining the economy.
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CORBETT: (As character) Don't Wall Street guys talk about bonds? Are those, like, stocks?
(As character) Yeah, they're like an investing staple. You can buy them from companies, but it's a little riskier than if you buy them from the government.
SHAPIRO: Jack, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. And congratulations on your film debut.
CORBETT: Oh, thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.
SHAPIRO: How did this happen?
CORBETT: Julian, the director - Julian Glander - reached out to me I think probably pretty early into when the TikTok started. I think, like, he was probably a couple months into the TikTok, in 2020. And he asked me if I ever wanted to voice some character in a short film, like a short animated something that would - might - maybe, like, would go to some bizarre, tiny little corner of the internet. Something, you know - and then it must have been three years later, he just sent me an entire script, and he's like, I kind of - I wrote this for you. I think this is you. I wrote this as - this is you.
SHAPIRO: And it's not a short. It's a 90-minute feature film that...
CORBETT: Yeah, yeah (laughter).
SHAPIRO: ...Has you in, I think, every single scene.
CORBETT: I think so, yeah. And then also - yeah, musical numbers, too.
SHAPIRO: Also musical numbers. When did you find out it was going to be a musical?
CORBETT: (Laughter) I - see, in the script it was just - there were sections where it was, like, something will go right here. And usually the something was a musical number. I kind of thought that they wouldn't all just be me. I thought it would be some of the other supporting cast - which are there. There are some great other performances, but, yeah, I think five.
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CORBETT: (As Billy 5000, singing) I just turned 16. I know everything.
SHAPIRO: As I watched it, I thought, it seems like this part was written for Jack Corbett. There are a lot of moments where you talk about economic concepts. You play this worker in the gig economy. At one point, you're even, like, explaining currency conversion rates.
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CORBETT: (As Billy 5000) Don't tell anyone about this, OK? I'm on a really good hustle. I busted Grubster (ph). When you want to get paid out, first you have to exchange your G Points (ph) for cash. But look at this. It doesn't have to be U.S. dollars. If you scroll down, you can pick up the check Karuna (ph). And then - this is where someone messed up - when it transfers over, it gives you the Danish krone. And the exchange rate between those two is 7.2 to 1. So if I do $100 of deliveries, I can get 720 bucks.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Bro, how did you figure this out?
CORBETT: (As Billy 5000) I just told you.
SHAPIRO: So did you have input into the script, or was this all just kind of handed to you on a platter?
CORBETT: I'm trying to remember. I believe we worked on some of the lines. I was like, ooh, this would be a great - we could - like, what you're talking about is arbitrage here. We can, like, talk about that.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
CORBETT: And even, I think, the character design - I think when he reached out to me, I looked a lot more like the character. I had, like, a big, like, mop of hair.
SHAPIRO: The animation style is not what you would call hyperrealistic.
CORBETT: (Laughter) No.
SHAPIRO: It sort of reminds me a little bit of claymation or kind of very early computer graphics. How aware were you of what this would actually look like?
CORBETT: He included a few frames, but I don't think much of it had been completed. There were a few, like, backgrounds. You could see, like, kind of what the landscape looked like. So you could see it was a little absurd. It was like - it was kind of like The Sims, kind of also like - yeah, like early graphics, early computer graphics. And I had seen his other stuff he has made. Like, he made a great music video for Clairo. So I was sort of familiar with his style. It's very distinct.
SHAPIRO: When you play roles - I'm putting air quotes - on Planet Money videos, whether you're, like, a banker or a grocery store shopper or whatever, you're always just kind of being Jack Corbett. Were you just being Jack Corbett as you were Billy 5000, or did you think about the craft of acting?
CORBETT: I - well, I think I went into it - I was considering the craft of acting. But then Julian's like, it's you. It's you. Yeah, it's even - like, it's even more me than I think the Planet Money TikToks are.
SHAPIRO: How so?
CORBETT: I do, like, a kind of affect. I think it's a little bit more - I don't know. I think those are actually more surreal than the movie is. The movie just feels very - gosh, it feels like my internal monologue.
SHAPIRO: The movie is funny and quirky, but it's also very kind of melancholy and dark. Your character is this aimless, ambitious teenager who is struggling in the gig economy - sleep deprived, trying to make a few extra bucks, sprinting on the treadmill of capitalism. You obviously had a consistent job with NPR for many years now. Did you relate to this? Did this feel like something that you've explained in your TikToks? What was your connection to the actual character and the story?
CORBETT: Yeah. Well, I mean, just like Billy 5000, maybe just a month before I was an intern at NPR, I was a delivery driver for one of these, you know, food delivery services, and I had done that throughout college. So I had - like, some of these experiences were not very far from what I had experienced as, like, a food delivery person in college. And...
SHAPIRO: Did the writer and director know that?
CORBETT: No, no. He didn't know that (laughter).
SHAPIRO: That's wild.
CORBETT: He was like, what? What? This is perfect. No, I had done that. And I had - I'd been a pizza delivery guy in high school, too.
SHAPIRO: Whoa.
CORBETT: So it was just...
SHAPIRO: Did you ever shove spaghetti through a mail slot, as Billy 5000 does in one memorable scene?
CORBETT: (Laughter) No. No, but people did ask for some very bizarre requests. They were like - I would get to the house, and they were like, there's no maple syrup here. And I'm like, what? You didn't include this.
SHAPIRO: But nobody asked you to, like, chew up the hot dog for them, as one of the customers does in the movie?
CORBETT: No (laughter). No. No, thankfully. Yeah, thankfully, it was a little bit better than that, you know?
SHAPIRO: So now that you've made your Hollywood debut, has anyone approached you about being the next James Bond or joining a Marvel Cinematic Universe?
CORBETT: Oh, my gosh. If they need someone to explain some economic concepts, I'm there.
SHAPIRO: That's our colleague Jack Corbett, who stars as Billy 5000 in the new movie "Boys Go To Jupiter." Jack, it's so great to talk to you. Congratulations.
CORBETT: Thank you so much, Ari.
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CORBETT: (As Billy 5000, singing) For (inaudible) times, it just feels like this place wants me to die. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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