Cyrus may not look like your typical John C. Reilly movie, with its handheld camera and tiny budget, but then, what's a typical John C. Reilly movie anyway? The actor has made his reputation by being unpredictable, building up a dramatic arthouse career with Paul Thomas Anderson then transitioning to the glitzy musical Chicago and studio Oscar bait The Hours, only to start showing up in goofy Will Ferrell comedies and headlining his own musical biopic parody Walk Hard. Reilly always seems to come from the old school of actors who were expected to be able to do it all with a flourish, and he has the odd skill of seeming right at home no matter how odd a project it is.

And Cyrus, which is a brilliant and funny and dark film, is also a little odd, a love triangle about an average man (Reilly) caught struggling for his new girlfriend's (Marisa Tomei) affection against her 20-something son Cyrus (Jonah Hill), who still lives at home and is a little too attached to his mom. To his own surprise Reilly's character-- also named John-- allows himself to be dragged down to Cyrus's level, in a battle of the wills that's both very funny and very sad.

I talked to Reilly last week about his expectations about working with directors Jay and Mark Duplass, the difference between broader comedic improv and this kind of movie, and why he never seems to stick to the same genre of movies twice. Check out our conversation below; Cyrus is out in limited release this Friday.

You and Jonah are coming to Cyrus from the same improv world that's pretty different from what the Duplass brothers do. Did it feel like a transition you guys were making together?
Not really. I don't think Jonah would think it was something different in terms of the way of working. What's different is the circumstances. The difference is the characters are closer to real life. The truth is that Jonah's just a good actor. If the circumstances you're in are ridiculous, you're in a comedy. If not you're in a drama. What you do, that sense of play that you have, is really similar no matter what kind of project it is.

What were the conversations you had with Mark and Jay and Marisa at the beginning? I heard you had long conversations before filming.
There wasn't that much talking. That was one of the beautiful things about making the movie, when they would give direction, they would often talk secretly to us, so when the cameras were rolling I had no idea what they just said to Jonah, or what direction he was going to go based on the conversation. I just had to react to it.



How do you build the relationships so that you're all comfortable enough to do that?
We just got lucky. With Catherine Keener and I we were already really good friends, and we had worked before, so we already had a sense of intimacy between the two of us. I was thanking my lucky stars for it. I begged her to do the movie, and I was so happy she did. Marisa and I didn't know each other at all, and we met the day before we started filming. When you see us getting to know each other in the movie, it really is us getting to know each other. Jonah and I did know each other, but the gamesmanship between our characters really suited the way we tease each other and goof around.

What did you expect from working with Jay and Mark and what was it actually like?Were there any surprises?
I knew they liked to improvise, and how can you plan for that? You kind of get comfortable with everybody and be prepared to be unprepared. It takes a lot of forgiving yourself to do that. You feel like the responsible thing to do would be to know what you're doing. Every time I asked them "What do you want?" and they'd say "Follow your instincts." Like, "My instinct is to do what you want! What do you want me to do?" They were like, "We don't want to tell you what to do. We don't want to do that. They way we want to work is to have things happen on the set." On some days we had great success, and other days it was frustrating, like grasping at straws. But I'm really glad they insisted on us being brave and following them on this uncharted course. We were following the general trajectory of the script, but there's a lot to fill in from a script, and that was what we had to discover day by day.

You've been dipping your toe into a lot of different kinds of comedy, and this is an example of that. Why do you change things up so often?
I just try to stay slippery. I don't do a lot of press where people really get to know me personally. If I talk publicly I usually just talk about the work and try to remain mysterious if I can so I can keep surprising people, and they don't know what to expect from me other than something interesting and something different from what they've seen before. It's how you stay engaged in your work. I've been doing this a long time at this point. I've done so much work that it's got to be interesting to me in some way, and usually interesting to me means different.