Laughing his way to the top

Mark, Ricky Gervaise, discovers a newfound gift in The Invention of Lying. Photo / Supplied

Interviewing Ricky Gervais feels more like my own private stand-up show than just an opportunity to quiz The Office star about his latest Hollywood outing. I've barely walked into his Soho hotel room and he's cracking jokes about the fruit on the table between us.

"I love a banana," he says with a smirk, before bursting out into peals of laughter. "It's got its own little carrying case. It's the most filling of fruits."

Indeed, the 48-year-old, who is clad in his trademark black T-shirt and jeans, drops more one-liners during my half-hour chat with him than he does during the whole 90-minute length of his upcoming movie The Invention of Lying (released November 26).

But the film, which the Reading-born comedian co-wrote and co-directed with Matthew Robinson, places more emphasis on melodrama than it does on gags and skits.

Like his big-screen acting debut, the David Koepp-scripted Ghost Town, it finds him once again venturing into the other-worldly realm of genre fiction. However, Gervais insists he is no fan of science fiction and fantasy.

"I see these high-concept films as analogy and metaphor and as a vehicle to explore real emotions," he says. "Ghost Town was about making a man see that he was in the wrong life. That was the important thing - not whether there were ghosts or not.

"Just like how It's a Wonderful Life is about making a man see how lucky he is, not the fact that there's an angel in it. I don't believe in angels but it enhances the film."

Set in an alternate reality where nobody has told an untruth until Gervais' character Mark Bellison inadvertently lets a little fib slip, The Invention of Lying brings to mind Frank Capra's 1946 all-time classic.

"It's A Wonderful Life is one of my favourite films," says Gervais. "[Director] Billy Wilder is another of my heroes and my character is a little bit like Jack Lemmon in The Apartment.

"We wanted to create a kind of other-world. We didn't want people to go 'that's so 2008' so we've gone back to the 40s, 50s and 60s, while some of the technology is kind of 80s or even 50s futuristic, which creates a slightly surreal feel.

"That was a conscious decision. One of our remits for making it was that we wanted to make the best episode of The Twilight Zone ever and then have the comedy and the romance on top of it."

Initially, the previously luckless Bellison uses his newfound gift for personal gain. He rises to the top of his documentary-scripting company and courts the glamorous Anna McDoogles (Jennifer Garner), who had previously dismissed him because of his inferior genes. However, after reassuring his terminally ill mother about the existence of an afterlife, he inadvertently becomes a very reluctant messiah.