So many tech fails: Ron's Gone Wrong actor Zach Galifianakis talks about dropping his Walkman on treadmill

Technology can be a double edged sword for celebrities — just ask all the ones who have gotten cancelled for social media mishaps.

In the case of Zach Galifianakis though, he meant it a little more literally when he told AsiaOne that technology trips him up at times.

We caught up with the actor and comedian at an interview for the upcoming sci-fi comedy Ron's Gone Wrong where he talked about his technological prowess — or lack thereof.

In one particularly painful-sounding anecdote, the 52-year-old gamely admitted that he's eaten dirt after dropping his Sony Walkman on his treadmill.

"When you drop something, if you were running on the pavement, you just stop and you pick it out. If you stop on a treadmill, you flatten and then you roll off of it.

"That happened twice in two days. And that was before even anyone ever heard the term epic fail."

Ouch.

Ironically, tech noob Zach voices the titular robot in Ron's Gone Wrong. Produced by tech giant Bubble, he's manufactured to be his owner's best friend out of the box.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6idM2MvlFTk[/embed]

Unfortunately, when awkward middle-schooler Barney, voiced by Luca's Jack Dylan Grazer, gets his hands on Ron, it becomes apparent that Ron's, well, gone wrong. The robot is missing a large chunk of essential code, and chaos ensues.

Zach might not be new to the voice acting scene — he's voiced characters in The Lego Batman Movie and Puss in Boots — but this role was particularly tricky, he said in a press conference on Oct 11.

"You don't want to do a robot. Obviously, they didn't want that. They wanted more of my voice. But then how do you walk that line of not too much emotion, but likeable or lovable?

"There's a lot of imagination that's required in the beginning, because you don't see a lot of visual stuff quite at the beginning."

To add to that, most of the scenes in the movie were recorded remotely due to the pandemic.

Making a movie from home

Halfway through the film's production, which commenced in 2017, some 300 to 400 of its staff were forced to take their work home, Julie Lockhart, the co-founder of animation studio Locksmith shared, adding that everyone "just mucked and did it".

It wasn't exactly smooth sailing for the voice actors either. Some, like Jack Dylan Grazer, had to record from their homes. The 18-year-old apparently had to kick his grandfather off the television during the recording process to get enough internet bandwidth, and took to recording under a duvet for the ultimate sound insulation.

In fact, Jack revealed that he and Zach only recorded one scene together — the one where Barney abandons Ron in the street after a tiff.

Ed Helms, 47, who voices Barney's dad, explained that it all came together thanks to the filmmakers, who were "so great" about showing all the actors the work in progress and animation sequences.

If anything, it's almost all too fitting that a movie discussing the theme of friendship in the social media age was made remotely.

And sometimes, it's not that bad when things don't go according to plan.

As Zach summed up, "What's neat is just to see the juxtaposition of all the cool kids with the toys that are supposed to work the way they are and then Barney's given this more humanlike, if you will, robot with his flaws and glitches and just to watch that kind of natural progression.

"And they kind of fall in love with each other."

Ron's Gone Wrong opens in cinemas on Oct 21.

kimberlylim@asiaone.com