Power Ballad  SXSW Premiere, Paul Rudd Interview

"That's exciting. I mean, it's such a great festival and I'm thrilled that we're finally here, you know? You film something and time goes on and your life goes on and then all of a sudden it's like, 'Oh my God, now it's edited, it's done!' and you get to kind of see it in a setting like this where everyone's so jazzed about seeing movies is really fun.

That was the interesting thing when I read this script for the first time, you know, the song is such an important piece of this. It's the piece. And so I remember thinking, 'Boy, I wonder what that song's going to sound like. It kind of has to be good. It isn't the kind of thing that you can fake.' And so when I finally heard it after a while—I know they'd been working on it for a while—I was like, 'Oh yeah, I completely believe that this song would be that big.' It's a great song. John's a great musician and Gary Clark, who wrote a good—you know, he's one of John's kind of musical collaborators in many of his films—but the guy's an incredible musician. And he was also in a band, me, Danny Wilson, back in the day. 'Mary's Prayer', that's Gary and that's another great song. People might not realize that's the guy.

Man, working with Nick Jonas was really great and I'm—you know, I'd never met him, certainly knew who he was, and he's such a good actor. And a really good guy, like I really enjoy his company. He's so generous. He's obviously very musically gifted. After we filmed this movie, I went and saw him, you know, on Broadway doing Sweeney Todd and he's really talented. But I mean, I really kind of saw him in this movie and I was kind of knocked out just how good he is.

Man, you know, the thing I love about John's movies are every one of them I always feel good after I see them. And you know, what I hope people take away or—I just hope people are moved by it and that it puts them in a good mood. It's not my normal gig, so it was a little nerve-wracking, but really fun. And it's fun to do—you know, you do something for such a long time, I've been acting now for a while, longer than I kind of can believe, that to get to do something that's like, 'Oh, this is a new thing,' is fun."