Jack Black Slept Here

The limo is headed to a rehearsal for Conan O'Brien's 10th-anniversary special, and Jack Black is in the backseat with sunglasses on. He's so tired he sometimes sounds like a tape set on slow motion -- a consequence of a blizzard of promotional appearances leading up to the opening of School of Rock. He's grateful things are going well, but dammit, all these obligations are screwing up his ultra-nocturnal lifestyle.

''I'm not an insomniac,'' he says. ''I can sleep. It's just that I sleep from 6 a.m. to 2 in the afternoon. If I really have to get up early, all right -- the crack of noon.'' When schedules demand that he shake up that routine, Black says, he turns to a mother's little helper. ''A little thing called a Frenchie,'' he explains. ''It's a pill from Frahnce that is a sleeping pill. Nothing funny about it, nothing illegal -- in France. Here, it's probably illegal.'' There's a pause, and Black explains. ''I don't take it just any night,'' he goes on. ''Only when there's a crucial gig the next day that I have to get my beauty rest for. Mustn't have the eyeball luggage. For instance, tonight I'll pop a Frenchie. Reason? Conan tomorrow. Must rock. Hard.''

Clearly at home in bad-boy mode, Black wonders what will happen if School of Rock makes him -- gasp -- a family-picture kind of guy in the public mind. ''It's something I had to face making this film,'' he says. ''No matter how awesome it is, School of Rock will always be, at its core, kind of sweet. I've always been led toward the non-sweet.''

As the car nears the ''temple of Conan,'' where Black will deliver a hilarious hard-rock tribute song in his best rooster-on-acid style, he wraps up his internal wrestling match. He seems resigned to adjusting his persona now that the mass-audience gods are smiling on him. ''I looked at other family films I thought were great,'' he says, brightening. ''Like The Bad News Bears and Willy Wonka. So I said, Wait a minute, I love those movies.'' The eyebrows go up, in devilishly asymmetrical ways. ''There is no reason I cannot also party in that realm.''