Original-Cin Q&A: You Can't Run Forever's J.K. Simmons on Going Psycho With His Wife, Daughter and Son

Nobody plays a villain better than J.K. Simmons (Whiplash, Oz) and the thriller You Can’t Run Forever gives the Oscar-winning actor the opportunity to showcase his psychopathic best.

The film centers around Miranda (Isabelle Anaya), a young woman who suffers from acute anxiety due to a past tragedy. She faces a new terror when a serial killer named Wade (Simmons)  chooses her as his new target. In a harrowing hunt through the woods, Miranda finds strength she never knew she had as she tries to elude her murderous tracker.

The film is a family affair for Simmons.  It was co-written and directed by his wife, filmmaker Michelle Schumacher, co-stars their daughter Olivia Simmons, and was scored by their son Joe Simmons.

Bonnie Laufer spoke to J.K. Simmons about playing another evil character and working with his family for this terrorizing film.

You Can’t Run Forever, will be released in Theaters, on digital and On Demand on Friday, May 17.

CLICK HERE to watch Bonnie’s interview with Michelle Schumacher.

CLICK HERE to watch Bonnie’s interview with Olivia Simmons.

ORIGINAL-CIN:  As if you haven’t terrified me enough with so many of your performances, this guy Wade really takes the cake. He makes Fletcher in Whiplash look like an angel! When you take on these roles, I want to know how you justify them in your own mind, that what they are doing is okay.

J.K. SIMMONS: (Laughs) Well, it's not, it's clearly not okay. For me, this goes back to my theater days. When I was acting for hundreds of people it's almost never a question of justifying in the case of a character. 

This a true psychopath, and what it is an absolute necessity for me is to find, to be able to begin to understand the motivation or the psychology or the emotion of the character. And that always is a question of, is there something there on the page, something to latch on to?

Then in discussions with the director, and in this case, Michelle is both the co-writer and director, I make sure I’m literally on the same page with who this guy is, and where he's coming from, and the why of it all. It takes a lot of discussion and sometimes some soul-searching to find these guys.

O-C: This is the fourth time you've worked with your wife, so clearly your marriage and your work life is simpatico. But when she presents a script like this to you,  do you think that she’s a little unhinged?

SIMMONS: We worked together on her previous film, I'm Not Here, in which I was a significant character in the film and never spoke a word.  So there's always an interesting challenge that she likes to present me with. And in this case, it was playing a completely unhinged psychopath.

I have always appreciated from the very beginning, again going back to my theater days, the opportunities that I've had to play different kinds of characters.  To do comedy, drama,  from a period piece to an action film, they’re all different and present their own challenges. 

So, anytime there's an opportunity to do something - and I've done however many characters I've done now at this point -  you're going to always be able to, or usually be able to find crossover and similarities.

But when I find something that's different enough from whatever it is I've been doing recently, that's always a real joy. When it comes off the proverbial pen of your spouse and life partner, that's even better.

O-C:  With this one, it is truly a family affair. We've got your wife as the director, co-writer, your brother-in-law as a producer, your daughter, Olivia in it. Your son scored it. Is this the first time that all of you have collaborated together in such a way?

SIMMONS: Well, it certainly is to this extent. With, I'm Not Here a few years ago, our daughter was in high school and was an extra. So nobody's supposed to notice her in that and that's good. 

Our son even at the time was maybe a senior in high school and Michelle was working with a composer on it. But Joe actually contributed some little pieces to that during the final editing process. She literally went into his room one night, when he was at the computer, doing homework. She said, “Joe, I need about 17 seconds of a beautiful romantic little piano thing for the love making sequence with Sebastian Stan.”

And he said, “Just let me just finish my algebra, and I'll get right on it.” And then an hour later he gave her exactly what she needed. 

I'm glad we at least trained him well in that regard and he did graduate from college.  He was studying music at NYU.

Now, Michelle feels at ease placing all of this in his hands, heading up  the entire music department of the movie, being the composer and the sound designer, contributor and everything else, and feeling completely confident that he can do it. It’s wonderful to see their collaboration on it. 

Being a musician myself, and her being musical, but not necessarily having the vocabulary of a musician - which almost no directors do - there was a great collaboration to kind of be on the fringes of.

I studied music in college and I thought I might want to be the next Leonard Bernstein. But that clearly didn’t pan out.

So to experience the parental pride of this kid who is truly gifted musically and being one of the final contributions to making this movie of Michelle’s, is beyond words.

O-C: More pride I am sure watching your daughter Olivia who also went to college and studied acting. To watch her act opposite you when you are playing this psycho guy who has absolutely no remorse going on a killing spree must have been interesting.  How challenging was that for you to antagonize her and turn off dad mode?

SIMMONS: Yeah, that was a concern going into this. Our characters' interaction is not lengthy, it's not a giant part of the movie where Olivia and I are sharing screen time.

But it was really surprisingly organic and straightforward on the days that we were working together. I almost never felt like the dad,  I felt like I'm this guy and she's that young woman character and this is how we're interacting. She was locked in and of course, she had the comfort level of having her mother as the director and it all just flowed really beautifully.

O-C: You’re really changing it up for your next on-screen role, playing legendary comedian Milton Berle in Jason Reitman’s SNL 1975. Is that happening?

SIMMONS: Oh yeah, it’s happening. (Laughs)  Speaking of recurring collaborations, obviously, you know, Jason and I have done many things together.

And it's one of those things where he calls me and doesn’t really ask. He's like, “This is what you're doing. I need you here for a day or I need you for 15 minutes in a sound recording studio.”

Whatever he wants, I’m there.  So when he told me about this new project and said he wanted me to play Milton Berle, my initial reaction was, “Are you kidding me? You want me to portray one of the funniest icons of comedy?”

But what put me at ease was that almost everybody I spoke to about that who was younger than me, they were like, “Who? Who’s that? What's this guy's name now?”

So I was like, “Oh, good!” It made me feel a little less intimidated. The actors who have to play Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin,  they're the ones that have the real pressure.