Words: John Z. Photos: Matt Salacuse
Soon after “My Name is Earl” wrapped its premiere TV season, Jason Lee shaved the fuzzy moustache made synonymous with his title character, Earl Hickey. His decision to shave the facial hair after an eight-month growth sure won’t shear his leading man status or the show’s popularity once they resume filming after a four-month summer hiatus. Fear not, the ’stache will be back.
“My Name is Earl,” Lee’s wildly popular sitcom, which debuted on NBC last season, drew in an average of 11.6 million viewers each Thursday evening, earning recognition as the season’s top new show among the 18 to 49-year-old demographic. This season, Lee has re-upped as the shaggy, beer-swilling title character, Earl, and also continues his duties as one of the producers on the massive comedy hit. “The show is likeable and funny and it’s got a good balance,” says Lee, in a relaxed Earl-esque tone during an interview at Manhattan’s legendary Hotel Chelsea. “It’s an accessible show and people like the characters, because they’re the kind you could root for at the end of the day.”
The show follows the antics of a hapless crook, who has an epiphany after hitting the $100,000 jackpot on a scratch-off lottery ticket. Determined to change his karma, Earl, a lovable underdog, sets out to right all the wrongs he’s inflicted on people, starting with a teenage geek he used to pick on in high school. “He brought the role of Earl to life,” says Ethan Suplee, who plays Lee’s brother Randy on the show and also appeared along side him in Kevin Smith’s latest film, Clerks II, which was released in mid-July. “He managed to pull off playing this redneck, but with enough heart that he allows everyone in. Everyone is therefore able to relate no matter what situation he’s in.”
Growing up in Southern California during the 1970s, Lee says he knew guys like Earl who hung out at the video arcade and listened to heavy metal and classic rock music. But rather than embracing the burn-out lifestyle of his most recent character during his teenage years, Lee was more drawn towards an alternative lifestyle. He was an avid BMX racer and surfer, but it was his skateboarding prowess that eventually catapulted him from a neophyte rider to the pro ranks at age 18. His pro status and ability to master street skating with a deadly repertoire of tricks, including his signature, styled-out 360 flip, enabled him to tour the world and eventually become one of skateboarding’s most accomplished riders during the late-’80s and early-’90s.
Not only was Lee one of the first pros to have his own signature sneaker from Airwalk, in 1992 he also started Stereo, a California-based skateboard company that he co-owned with fellow pro, Chris Pastras. In the company’s early days, Stereo explored the use of alternative board graphics and the way skate videos were being made, which is evident in the company’s premiere 1994 video offering, A Visual Sound.
When companies were using hip hop and hardcore music for their video soundtracks, Lee and Pastras were using jazz as its smooth backbeat. Lee, who wrote, produced and directed the video, was one of the first to incorporate the use of 8 and 16mm film, still frames and black and white footage into skate videos—a concept that’s now considered an industry norm. “We watched a bunch of old jazz documentaries with people like Chet Baker, [Charles] Mingus and [Thelonious] Monk and the shaky POV [point of view] and photography were really inspired by that,” Pastras says. “All and all, applying these different ideas and mediums to skateboarding elevated skaters to artists, which we really enjoyed.” In retrospect, Pastras points out that, “All of a sudden, we created a mystique with our skaters that had been missing from ads and videos in the early-’90s.”
Although Lee was living in LA and hung out with other skateboarding pros, he also befriended a number of artists and actors including Giovanni Ribisi. But unlike his Hollywood counterparts, Lee had no intentions of becoming an actor. He continued skating, but slowly became interested in the movie-making process. He devoured films of all genres and was especially fond of the 1991 Coen brothers drama, Barton Fink. Lee was so impressed by the film and the diverse acting abilities of Steve Buscemi, who played a bellboy in the Coen brothers offering, he began to think about the possibility of acting.
Up until that point, the only exposure Lee had in front or behind the camera came in the form of skateboarding videos, including landing a small skating and acting-bit cameo in the “100%” music video by Sonic Youth. In 1995, Lee embarked on a full-time acting career and was first cast as Brodie, a video game-loving slacker in the Kevin Smith film, Mallrats, thus ending his pro skateboarding career and involvement with Stereo at age 24. “I thought this acting stuff was pretty cool,” Lee recalls. “I felt proud of myself for having that experience, because all I knew prior to that was skateboarding and it was kind of cool to try something other than skateboarding.”
Lee was one of the first to make the successful transition from professional skateboarding to mainstream Hollywood. The Larry Clark film KIDS, which featured Leo Fitzpatrick, the late Harold Hunter and Billy Valdes was also released the same year. Though the films represent incredibly different genres, their combined presence opened up audiences to accept skaters exploring acting roles. Despite Lee’s sudden career change, some of those in the skateboarding community weren’t too happy about his then newfound Hollywood career path. “Skaters would come up to me and say, ‘So, are you doing that acting thing, now?’—as if I was doing some kind of work on Mars or something,” he recalls. “It’s a lot different now because a lot of skaters are doing other things like painting, acting or photography.”
In Smith’s next film, 1997s Chasing Amy, it was Lee’s performance as a wisecracking comic book artist, Banky, who he played opposite to Ben Affleck’s character that thrust him in front of a larger audience. Even though Lee once again played a comedic role in Smith’s third film, his character’s performance required more thought and preparation than was expected of him when he appeared in Mallrats. Lee says it was Smith, who played a major role in helping him evolve into a more serious actor during the filming of Chasing Amy. “I was thinking more about what I was doing scene to scene and moment to moment,” he says. “That helped shape me and from that, I ended up getting most of my work from that movie.”
While Lee parlayed his success from Chasing Amy into a number of other films, he was consistently cast as a sidekick to other already established Hollywood stars including Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky, Will Smith in Enemy of the State and David Schwimmer in Kissing a Fool. Although Lee enjoyed the work appearing along side of some of Hollywood’s heavyweights, he admits he had no intention of starring in a TV sitcom. Once the producers gave him the 30-page “Earl” pilot script, he said it read more like a feature film than a major network comedy.
After contemplating the overall look and feel of the show, Lee signed on to play the lead, and also acts as producer. In that position, he was able to select some of the guest actors that appeared last season including friend Giovanni Ribisi, Juliette Lewis, Adam Goldberg and Jon Favreau. Lee and the “Earl” editors also handpicked the artists that were featured on the show’s soundtrack. They included an eclectic mix of diverse artists—from classic rock icons Lynyrd Skynyrd, to Nick Drake and Sammy Davis Jr., all of which aren’t common on primetime “Must See TV.”
“For mainstream network television, we’ve broken a lot of rules and paved a new path and I’m proud of that,” says Lee. “People are always following formulas—in business, in making movies and on TV shows, but there are ways to create compromises and balances. When you do that, it makes people think, ‘Ah, you can get away with such and such,’ and it opens them up a little more.” Since Lee has achieved massive marquee status with “Earl,” more than ten years after first appearing on camera, he hasn’t let the leading man status get to his head. Not only does Lee regularly hang with his core group of friends made up of artists and pro skateboarders, he has since revamped Stereo, the brand that folded in his absence, and renamed it Stereo Sound Agency.
“He’s never lost himself like some actors do once they make it big,” says director and friend, Kevin Smith. “Jason’s never been a prick, and he’s never acted like an asshole—not back in the day, and not since ‘Earl’ took off. He’s still J. Lee, and he’s still kickin’ it [Burt] Reynolds-style.” While on summer hiatus from “Earl,” Lee has kept active in some of his other creative endeavors including shooting photographs for anthem, Details and FLAUNT magazines. He also directed a short film and is putting the finishing touches on a concert film he shot for Los Angeles-based pop-punk band Autolux during a performance at the LA Natural History Museum. In addition, Lee recently dusted off his board and has been skating more frequently in the last few months.
Whether Lee’s stardom was aided by his pro skater status remains uncertain, but one thing is for sure—Lee’s catapult to stardom has been one hell of a unique ride. Besides Lee, there aren’t any other leading TV actors who could simultaneously claim having their own signature deck and a billboard promoting their latest show perched high atop Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard. “When I saw the first ‘Earl’ billboard back in the fall, I smiled like the Cheshire Cat,” Smith says. “It’s really gratifying when good things happen to good people and this motherfucker is one of the good ones.”
