‘Paint’ Star Owen Wilson Talks Emulating Bob Ross in IFC Comedy, Finding Calmness in Crayons

variety.com:

Scott Huver After starring in “Paint” as a Bob Ross-esque (but far more angry and tortured) paint instructor, Owen Wilson admits he’s warmed to finding his own sense of zen calm — not with watercolors and brushes, but with Crayolas. “When my boys were little, at restaurants I’d give them crayons and try to calm them down, but I think that maybe adults should be doing that, too,” Wilson told Variety at the premiere of the IFC film at the Ace Hotel on Thursday. ”I don’t know why we ever stop doing that, because there is something really nice about trying to create something.” “I guess there’s that Picasso quote: ‘I want to spend the rest of my life learning to paint like a child,’” he mused. “Not worrying about anything and just expressing yourself — that feels good.” Wilson’s character, Carl Nargle, is decidedly not feeling good after his longstanding niche — painting bucolic scenes on Vermont public television — and in turn his whole existence, is challenged by an upstart rival.

With the retro-placid, afroed image of Ross, who died in 1995, having become pop culturally ubiquitous in recent years, adorning t-shirts and other merch, the actor said he relished luring in Ross adherents and flipping the script on the tranquil icon. “Hopefully what people will appreciate and enjoy is the same thing that I did when I first read the script, and that was just how funny it is, and the idea of somebody who has not felt the need to change with the times, because everything’s going so perfect in his life,” Wilson explained. “We can all sort of get comfortable and complacent if things are going your way, and then all of a sudden, when things aren’t, that can be an upsetting thing.