The indie actor talks Grand Theft Auto voice roles and lost Andrew W.K. movies

Photo by Adam Ginsberg

Writer/director/actor/grown-ass man Alex Karpovsky has been on the indie movie scene for a few years now, but just in case you skipped the last couple Sundances, here are some highlights. He's played a stand-up comic in Sleepwalk with Me, a hipster YouTube star in Tiny Furniture, and, most impressively, "several Russian gangsters" in Grand Theft Auto IV. (He's also on that show that makes the Internet spit blood every week, Girls.) Now, he's got two movies -- Red Flag and Rubberneck -- hitting select theaters. Thrillist decided to ask him about his crazy resume, plus how to cure a killer hangover

Road trip movies he watched to prep for Red FlagThere’s a great movie called The Trip that I loved. I just thought the tone of it was great, it was really funny. And those two guys -- Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon -- were playing, as far as I could tell, caricature versions of themselves, the way Larry David does on Curb and Louis C.K. does on his show. That’s what I was trying to do with Red Flag in the way that I was kinda amplifying my own ridiculous traits, fears, insecurities, and delusions for comedic effect

Getting direction on his Grand Theft Auto IV charactersI remember at one point one of the producers coming up to me. He was wearing khakis, he was sort of corporate-looking, and he goes, “Okay, Alex, in this scene, you’ve had sexual intercourse with a prostitute and you’re going to kill her to get your money back. Take a look at the clipboard, these are your lines.