So where did the idea to do the show come from?

I'm a not-so-closeted reality TV fan, a traitor to my own. I think I've watched probably every Survivor and Amazing Race—I'm a weird reality fanatic, I guess. During the strike I was watching my usual shows because I couldn't work, and at some point I was like, "What the crap! I should just go on The Amazing Race." I actually just made a video, I didn't try to pull any strings, I just made a video with somebody besides my dad and sent it in.

Who?

I was gonna go with this screenwriter that I met on Freaks & Geeks, this guy Jon Kasdan. Our little sorta reducible idea was "neurotic screenwriters who never leave the house." And it turned out that he really was too neurotic to leave the house. We got to the semifinals of the prior season, Season 13, and he had sort of a meltdown at the Hilton at LAX and was like, "I can't do this!"

So how did your dad get involved?

We had gotten pretty far along and you know, it's a relationship show and they want to show the most interesting relationships, so they encouraged me to go with someone in my family [father Mel White, the founder of the gay rights group Soulforce].

You know, it's an interesting trajectory: so many reality stars want to make it in Hollywood, and you're sort of doing the reverse. Were you concerned about becoming known for reality instead of writing, directing, acting?

[laughs] Honestly, I just can't give a flip about that. For me, the show's about to start airing, and it really is less about that than being able to go do it. Like, the idea of just traveling and partying and having this crazy experience was reason to do it, and let the chips fall where they may. I think I started off by thinking, "How can I be in the race but not of the race?" but after about ten minutes, I was just like, "I've gotta be of the race to do this right."

So how was the idea of doing it different than actually doing it?

It was actually way more fun doing it. You're in a circus! You're running through airports with a camera crew and there's like, dwarves and giant Amazonian women's basketball players and everyone's in matching outfits and it's so fun. You know, when you're in LA, you're always like, "Maybe there's something more fun going on somewhere else," but for that period of time where you're on the race, there's definitely nowhere else you'd rather be than there.

So when you're on that starting line with Phil, and the race is about to begin, what should we know was going through your head?

The whole time, I was just like, I wanna get to LAX! [The race starts in Los Angeles.] I didn't think we had many advantages past the point of getting to the airport. I didn't want to be in the back of the train—I was like, "All the times I've dropped friends off at LAX needs to come into play now!" But you'll see, it doesn't exactly end up the way that I expected.

Have you seen the first episode yet?

I haven't seen any of them. I've seen the promos.

How do you think you'll be portrayed? Like, what elements of your story do you think are the ones they're highlighting?

Honestly, I did read a review of the first episode, and the reviewer said I'm perpetually grinning. [laughs] If that's all they have me as, the "laughing fool," then that's fine with me. That's how I was on the race. For the first 24 hours, I literally could not stop smiling. I felt like Jason Bourne and his old gay dad, driving this Mercedes to the airport trying to outrun these musclebound mofos. It was literally the time of my life.

Did any of the other contestants recognize you?

A couple, not many. I mean, I'm the king of "you look vaguely familiar." I think some people scratched their heads. It didn't necessarily endear me to anyone, like they were trying to suck up to me because I'm from Hollywood or whatever.

Had you done anything to prepare for it beforehand? Like, a lot of map reading?

We did have enough time for my dad to go insane with the idea of matching outfits. His long-dormant dream of walking around in matching outfits finally came to the fore! They encourage you to wear a color scheme just to identify the teams, and ours was royal blue. So my dad was like, "Oh, we've got to get matching outfits!" and I was like, "Dad, we don't have to wear, like, the exact same clothes. Wearing things with a similar color is enough." And he got so frustrated! And so he went into my closet and saw the stuff that I had pulled out for the race, and went out and bought the exact same clothes! And so I was like, "I guess I'm gonna be that guy, wearing the same thing as his gay dad on national TV."

What was the industry reaction when it was announced that you were on the show?

I think there's two separate people. Half of the people are like, "That is the coolest thing you could ever do," and they're jealous, and half of the people are like, "Why the hell would you ever want to do that?" Especially some of the more Hollywood A-lister types, they're like, "Did you have to fly economy?" [laughs]

You say in the CBS bio that you wanted to pattern yourself after former contestants Charla and Mirna. Mike, I don't know if you know this, but Mirna is crazy!

Well, yeah! But what I like about them is that they had no discernible advantages at all, no physical advantage, no intellectual advantage, and yet they just had the will to succeed. I wanted to channel them. A little crazy doesn't hurt in the circumstances they throw you into.

Have you met them?

No, I want to!

I'm sure you will now that you're all on the reality alumni circuit.

I'll go do a college speaking tour with them. [laughs]

Goldthwait is attending Sundance with the comedy World's Greatest Dad, his second festival entry in four years and a striking, pitch-black collaboration with old pal Robin Williams. The Oscar-winner plays Lance Clayton, a high-school poetry teacher with unrequited literary aspirations and one of the worst sons (portrayed by Daryl Sabara) in contemporary cinema. Similar to Goldthwait's previous film, the underrated, bestiality-tinged romcom Sleeping Dogs Lie, a macabre twist entitles Lance to pursue his life's ambition even as it endangers his job, relationship and pretty much every other facet of his life. Williams cunningly navigates both extremes, charting the outer limits of unconditional love with a cynic's eye and a comic's map, finally discovering himself in the festival's most batshit ending this side of Brooklyn's Finest.

And while we're loath to give much more away, there was no reason we couldn't ask the candid Goldthwait a few other questions about Dad, Williams, Sundance and his aversion to prime-time sellouts:

D: Knowing what we presume about a traditional "Sundance Movie," audiences might be blindsided by a dark comedy like this. How has World's Greatest Dad fit in so far?

BG: I don't know. I'm glad they've taken these last couple movies, but I don’t know where it fits in because I don't think of it that much while I'm making it. It wasn't until I was watching this one for the first time with a crowd that I thought, "Wow. This is really... dark." I know I sound full of shit, but I try not to think about it.

D: This is your second film here in four festivals. What appeals to you about screening here for this audience?

BG: This one's a little different. I think the people who were first showing up to our screenings were just blindly showing up because Robin was attached. Everybody who showed up the last time were people who didn't get into the other movies. That's not my self-loathing; that's just the reality. It's not a big ticket.

D: The logline sells itself, though.

BG: Yeah: "The dude from Police Academy makes a movie about a woman who fellates a dog." But I had this great thing where all these people who like movies showed up and they got past it. They seemed to kind of enjoy it. There was a woman who was trying to walk out, and her friend talked her into [staying]. And then I look over, and my daughter goes, "Look at her now." She was crying about an hour into it. And my daughter goes, "Yeah, you cry, bitch. You cry."

D: But ultimately both films share the themes of people hiding very dark secrets and explore the consequences of keeping those secrets. What about that appeals to you?

BG: I must be terrified about being exposed. Another thing that's similar in my movies is that people are always walking up to the other person and startling them. I'll try not to put that in my next movie. Strangers probably frighten me. But if I keep making movies, I want to make movies that explore these absolutes that don't hold water. Everybody and everything has to bend.

D: And yet these are comedies. What makes those absolutes funny to you?

BG: I think the comedy I'm interested in is the comedy that's awkward. I don't really care about the joke-driven comedies or the gag-driven comedies.

D: It walks a very fine line between humanity and total misanthropy.

BG: Even the characters I kind of have contempt for, I still see them as people. Even the person you might see as the villain in World's Greatest Dad. Kind of by the end of it, I felt bad for him. I feel like he got chumped. He's kind of full of himself, but I'm not sure he needs to be taken down a couple of notches.

D: Robin Williams is an inspired choice for the role of Lance, and it works out as one of the most dynamic roles of his career. How and when did he sign on for this?

BG: Robin's an old, old friend of mine, but I've never really pimped him or exploited him. He always acts like we're peers, which is really weird; it reminds me of Marlon Brando hanging out with Wally Cox. But I didn't write the part with him in mind. I was telling a mutual buddy about it over dinner, and he was like, "What about Robin?" Robin really liked Sleeping Dogs Lie, and he read this, and he said, "I'd like to be in your movie." [Laughs] It's so weird. I even had to rewrite it because the guy I had was younger.

D: What do you think drew him to it?

BG: This character winds up being kind of a hybrid of me and Robin. We even said that at one point when we were making it; we kind of laughed at how we really are.

D: Are your films autobiographical?

BG: Everything I make is usually autobiographical. The stories aren't, but all the people are if you poke around. Sometimes I don't even really know it. In this movie it's funny: There would be someone I don't really care for, and I'd hear them say something asinine. So I just threw it in the script while I was writing it.

D: We were reading your bio accompanying the press notes, which read in part: "As an actor he has appeared in innumerable embarrassing movies and was huge in the '80s. He greatly prefers directing." What is it about your comedy and these "innumerable" embarrassments that you think informed your films?

BG: I do think that all the stuff I went through kind of prepared me for this phase. And really, what's going on my life now — kind of like Lance — I just stopped five or six years ago and said, "You know what? I'm flattered that they're calling from UPN or the WB, but..." The real shame about being a comedian who's well-known is that you don't immediately become a has-been. They just keep dragging you out. Trust me. As soon as Howie Mandel hit pay dirt hosting a game show, I got a million fucking calls to host a game show.

D: Really?

BG: Of course! I mean, Hollywood? "Hmm, who else was an annoying '80s comedian? Oh, Bobcat Goldthwait! Let's get him!"

D: Don’t be so hard on yourself.

BG: But it's the truth. I had this character when I first started; I wasn't even doing stand-up. It was really abstract. And then I got to be a comedian, and I started performing, and I had an act. Now I realize that I stopped being a comedian and became an entertainer, you know? You'd book me in a comedy club in the middle of the country, and my working-class ethics would kick in. I'd do a good show for the people. But I was miserable, man. And I'll still go out and do stand-up. Now I don't mind it, because it affords me the chance to make indie movies. I'm not looking to get discovered. I'm just hoping to keep making these movies that are small and personal.

We'd say spoilers follow, but it's hard to say whether the reveal that occurs at Moon's half-hour point is in fact a twist or just a requisite plot point ushering in the film's second act. Either way, one can't describe Rockwell's performance without acknowledging his dual portrayal of Sam 1 and Sam 2, each an unaware clone of the original Sam Bell, an astronaut "harvesting" energy on the moon. When Sam 1, mere days from returning to Earth, experiences an accident and the second Sam is brought to life by his base's friendlier, Zolofted version of 2001: A Space Odyssey's HAL 9000 (voiced by Kevin Spacey), a breach in protocol brings the clones face-to-face as they settle a mutual, potentially deadly resolution.

To loyal Rockwell fans, Moon may not immediately reflect his best work; it's jittery, quirky, too conversational. But as his story uncoils — as he fights himself, challenges himself to ping-pong, and grapples with his nature folding repeatedly onto itself — the seams disappear and the accomplishment seems to defy such easy reckoning as "best" or "worst." It's simply another marvel we'll file alongside his others, even as we wonder how the hell he did it. Rockwell and Moon director Duncan Jones sat down with Defamer this afternoon to attempt an explanation.

DEFAMER: You know, we checked this out last Friday and still don't know exactly how to write about it. The twist comes in the first act, and that's just the start. How did you hammer out the concept?

ROCKWELL: Well, it explores loneliness. That's a vague enough thing. We can say that.

JONES: We can say that. It was written for Sam. We basically had a meeting and seemed to get on pretty well. Both of us are only [children], but we had sort of this fraternal thing.

SR: We geeked out on films. Sci-fi films in particular, but a lot of other films.

DJ: The stuff when we were growing up — Outland, Silent Running, Alien, just these films that had this grittiness and clunkiness. No "clunky" in story, but everything felt hard and real and blue-collar. Actually, Sam, I remember that was one of the things you talked about; wanting to play a blue-collar guy. So we went away from that meeting and it was already in my head that I wanted to write something for Sam, and it needed to be something that appealed to him but appealed to me as well.

D: But you’re a very technical actor, too. How did you get your head around having to act opposite yourself?

SR: This is the most challenging technical film I've eve done, except maybe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But that was just prosthetics. This was so crazy. We had this motion-control camera—

DJ: It’s not the easiest thing to concentrate.

SR: It was the loudest camera.

DJ: It’s based on a system of rails, and the movements can be replicated exactly. So you can create layers on of visuals and put them directly on top of each other and everything will be in sync. We can have multiple Sams!

SR: And we were sort of terrified in the beginning whether it would work or not, creatively or technically. And when it did work — when we saw our first shot of the two guys together? We were so ecstatic.

DJ: It was a milestone. The whole film depended on this effect working. And at an indie budget, you can’t do loads of technical tests beforehand. And make sure everything is going to work exactly the way you want it for each shot.

SR: They had three times the amount of time we had on Dead Ringers or Adaptation to do the same effect. The only thing they didn't have was an iPod, which I watched previous takes on.

DJ: We studied the Criterion version of Dead Ringers, where they explained how they did it. It was really helpful.

D: You mentioned your other influences a moment ago. Some critics have said Moon is too overtly derivative of films like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Solaris or Alien. How did you perceive your relationship to those movies when you were making this?

DJ: I can honestly say that 2001 was not a direct inspiration for this film, because our inspiration was the films that were inspired by 2001. We're second-generation 2001.

SR: It's funny. I went back and watched 2001 and the making of, and then I realized that Blade Runner and Outland and Alien had all been influenced by 2001. So everything is derivative. But it's great because you're paying homage to your forefathers.

D: When we think of sci-fi at Sundance, it usually means high-concept — Primer, Pi or Sleep Dealer last year — as opposed to production design or effects like what you have in Moon. How did you accomplish this on a low budget?

DJ: It was like military strategy. We went more retro; we went with modeled miniatures like the original Alien — a lot of things that you wouldn't do in-camera these days. We chose effects that we knew would would be most cost-effective and could reuse over the course of the film. We really wanted more time for Sam. We had to do these really technical shots that were one take.

SR: It was unbelievable. And all the more triumphant when we saw they worked. Like the ping-pong scene?

DJ: We did three or four takes of the first Sam, and got something the second Sam could rehearse to for one take. But the problem is because there's a table-tennis table there, and it moves—

SR: Remember I moved it once? And you almost had a heart attack? I think I moved the net or something.

DJ: And I disappeared with the special-effects advisor and had a conference to determine how we could split the two Sams and make sure the table was in the right position. Making effects work on the day was something we had to do a lot of.

SR: I came to them with a scene from Midnight Cowboy where Joe Buck and Ratzo Rizzo embrace each other. And I said, "Can we do this?" And the thing you have to understand is that to have the two clones touch each other is such hard work technically, it's almost impossible. But they came up with a scenario; they said, you can't do that, but you can do this. And it's amazing.

D: But what about the mindfuck of it all? Beyond the technique, you're thinking and reacting on the spot to, like, the other you.

SR: It was crazy. I was losing my mind sometimes. I think we both were. It was surreal. For instance, we'd rehearse one of the clones, and then the assistant director said, "Get into make-up." The first clone had extensive make-up that took about an hour. I'd say, "Wait a minute — I have to rehearse the other clone, otherwise I'll have no idea where I'll be." It was very strange. You've got an earwig, you're looking at a tennis ball and acting with the previous take of your own voice.

DJ: It's a one-man show, but everything is out of order. So Sam's trying to maintain the arc of the character while breaking it up and then doing another character's arc as well.

SR: It was fucking nuts. It was terrifying.

DJ: But the one thing everyone can agree on is that it looks real. I think the results speak for themselves.

DEFAMER: So the nominees that emerged yesterday weren't official yet?
JOHN: What happened is we have press members on our mailing list, and this guy Larry Carroll from MTV's Movie Blog apparently misunderstood and thought that was a final list. And it kind of went viral for us.

So what was it, if not a list of nominees?
When we send out our nominating ballots, we also send out a list of suggested nominees—only because if you don't steer it somehow, you just get no consensus with as many people as we have voting. Those are likely nominees when the final ballots are tabulated and the actual nominations are announced on the 21st, but those are not the official nominees.

Are there any dark horses that could still emerge?
I'm assuming you're talking about The Spirit, which is getting a lot of write-in votes. One of the things that's happened ever since the Oscars jumped their show a month ahead is that we have to get our material out the week of Christmas, and anything that comes out on Christmas or later is not likely to make it out onto our ballot. [...] With Tom Cruise (in the Christmas-released Valkyrie), someone asked, "Well, how can Tom Cruise be on there if The Spirit wasn't?" And with Tom Cruise, the advance buzz was really awful. Although apparently the movie isn't that bad, so it'll be interesting to see if he does or does not get a nomination.

Well, one big star vehicle that seems to have supplanted Valkyrie as far as public ire is Seven Pounds, which a poll of critics recently voted the year's worst.
You know, I've seen that. It's weird, and it's an odd concept for a movie, but it's not quite to the standards of what we would consider for a Razzie. At least until the jellyfish part, which definitely belongs on the "nuke the fridge" list. Up to that point, it's a reasonably reputable movie, though I should admit that it also is getting write-in votes for screenplay. I don't think Will Smith is getting many votes for that, he's getting them for Hancock.

So what criteria do you consider for Worst Picture?
We look at box office—and big box office doesn't protect you from being Razzie-nominated—we look at the Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes, we pay attention to what's being said on the forum of our website. We look at the track record of the people involved. Like Uwe Boll—the guy over at Rope of Silicon was saying "duh." Well yeah, "duh"—it's the same thing as Meryl Streep getting an Oscar nomination! Uwe Boll is just as shitty a director as Meryl Streep is a terrific actress. They're kind of mirrors of one another, and nobody attacks the Academy for nominating Meryl Streep. Uwe's Boll's Postal...if you've seen it, you have my sympathies. I actually have, and it's right up there with Freddy Got Fingered as just an inexcusable, tasteless, unfunny, "why did anyone give this person money" movie. And Freddy Got Fingered is the only Worst Picture winner that I've actually hated.

Has there ever been any overlap with Oscar bait? One of our editors suggested Revolutionary Road this year...
Three times, I believe, the exact same thing has been nominated for a Razzie and an Oscar. And in all three cases, it didn't win either. The best known one is probably Amy Irving as Barbra Streisand's wife in Yentl, who was nominated as both Best and Worst Supporting Actress. I'm trying to remember if the song from Con Air, "How Do I Live," that also may have been nominated for both.

Well there are so many terrible Oscar-nominated songs! That's probably the category that deserves the most overlap.
We actually had a Worst Song category for years, and we had a lot of fun with it. Generally speaking, though, if a song gets a Razzie nomination it's probably one that won't get played a lot on the radio. Although I guess "I Want Your Sex" from Beverly Hills Cop II did win a Razzie!

So what do you think are the top frontrunners this year?
I don't think I agree with our members or the public about The Love Guru. I thought that it was stupid, but I didn't find it offensive. Still, it looks like it has the inside track to get nominated all over the place. I know that when this list went viral yesterday, a lot of the public was disturbed that we had bothered to nominate Rambo. Personally, I think Rambo was a violent, pointless, ill-conceived, badly-written, horribly-acted, badly-edited piece of crap.

Tell us how you really feel!
Eddie Murphy has the highest-profile box office bomb of the year in Meet Dave. I will be curious to see how many nominations—not if it will get nominated, but how many—it will get. He swept three characters at last year's awards, so I'm sure he'll end up with some. The one I'm hoping gets a lot of nominations is Postal. The real enigma about Uwe Boll is not why he exists but why he continues to make movies! Who needs the tax loss so bad that they can spend $50 or $60 million on these movies? I can't wrap my head around it.

Are we going to see any love for M. Night Shyamalan this year?
It looks like it has the possibility, but if there's anything he's learned from the multiple Razzies that Lady in the Water won years ago, it's that casting yourself as a Jesus-like character in your own movie doesn't go over well. At least he isn't in The Happening. That was one that was a lot of fun to see with people when it first opened, because the audience doesn't know you're going to find out that it's bush—but not the President!—that's responsible for Armageddon. That twist he does in all his movies was particularly dunderheaded in this one. And I'm normally an admirer of Betty Buckley, but of all the elements in this movie that I hope get nominated, Betty Buckley as a crazy old lady who crashes her head through a window and screams at Mark Wahlberg is high on my list. That definitely deserves some attention from us!

PREVIOUSLY: Razzie Nominations Serve A Shocking Snub To 'The Spirit'

The two are running a red carpet gantlet in the coming months that begins at this Sunday's Golden Globes, then hits the SAG Awards, the Grammys, and finally the Oscars, at which point crew members will power them down and wheel them into a humidity-controlled storage crate for safekeeping until next year's festivities.

We had a few questions for Lisa, which she gamely answered:

DEFAMER: Considering all the awards-show red-carpet viewing options in 2009, why should people watch you and Joey Fatone?
LISA: They should watch us because Joey and I both have the best tits on the red carpet!

What do you regret eating recently?
I regret eating the 5 pieces of pepperoni pizza and the 5 pieces of sushi at the buffet restaurant at the Cove in the Bahamas.

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and have dark thoughts? If so, what are they?
[No response.]

Everyone's sacrificing lately. It's the hot new trend. What are you sacrificing?
I am sacrificing any form of shopping consumption. I am not buying any clothes, shoes, bags, jeans - you name it. NO SHOPPING.

We were at the Playboy Mansion for a Halloween party once, and Alan Thicke was trying to get a three-way going with his wife. Would you and Harry ever consider that?
NO 3 ways for me and Harry. Never had a 3 way don't want one.

Are Richard Simmons legs as buttery as they look on HD?
Yes and more, they are scrumptious!

Thanks, Lisa! Our pre-show eyeballs will be firmly glued to yours and Joey's spectacular racks this Sunday at 6 (5 central).

• Awards Season '09 [TV Guide Network]

When we spoke to Griffin, she had just left Los Angeles (where she'd eaten Christmas Eve dinner at Cher's house) and had flown to New York to co-host CNN's New Year's Eve coverage with Anderson Cooper. Did she see the Coop's notorious 60 Minutes interview with Michael Phelps, we asked? "Of course I did! Who didn't? Even my mom was titillated."

So Kathy, a lot has happened since Defamer last spoke to you, both for your career, and for the world.

Oh yeah! I don't know if you came to any of my Kodak shows last week, but I had the most unusual, weird, wonderful combo of people come backstage. I wasn't doing any meet-and-greets because usually it's just a bunch of agents who don't really know me, so I had a "no meet-and-greet" policy. But every night I would hear that little walkie-talkie: "Dave Grohl wants to say hi." So that was extremely exciting, I got to meet him. And then the next night was really good because we had the unusual combo of T.R. Knight and Dave Chappelle.

Did they come backstage at the same time?

Yeah, both at the same time! So that was a great moment and I wish there'd been some 360 flipcam action going on. T.R. was really sweet and I was dying to ask him about Grey's Anatomy, but Chappelle kinda cockblocked me. Chappelle had no idea who T.R. is so I'm sitting there trying to explain what Grey's Anatomy is and T.R. is very much enamored and very much a fan of Dave's. And you know, to me, a Chappelle sighting is kind of like Elvis.

You alluded to T.R. Knight's backstage drama, and I wanted to ask you about your own. What was up with the Bravo renegotiation for the next season of D-List? There were rumors that you were jumping ship, then Bravo told us they'd signed you...

They definitely said I was signed when I wasn't. It was just a bloodbath of a negotation. It was a very D-list negotiation. I'm not in this situation you hear about where people get Porsches from their networks. Can I say what Bravo got me for Christmas?

Sure.

It's an eco-friendly blanket. Yeah, it was a bloody negotiation. All I can say is, you should see the other guy.

There's also talk that the format of My Life on the D-List is going to change a little bit? How so?

Yeah, I'm excited about that. We've already actually started. You know, Bravo originally talked to me at one point about doing a talk show, and I'm not sure about that. I feel like the best way to do that is to try to learn and see what you can do well instead of jumping behind a desk, at least for me. So I said, "Well, what if we take The D-List and instead of having me do things that aren't really part of my life anymore, we keep the elements of The D-List that you love—cut to my mom with a box of wine—but this year we have it be more celebrity-oriented. So half of it is like a talk show with A-listers and the other half of it is the D-list stuff you've come to expect for me to be horrified by.

Kathy, what was up with Andy Cohen and Daniel Craig having that shirtless frolic in St. Bart's? How did that happen?

Andy Cohen who?

Andy Cohen from Bravo.

ANDY COHEN FROM BRAVO had a shirtless frolic with Daniel Craig?

You need to get yourself on the internet after this interview to look up those pictures.

That sounds like a gay photo shoot to me.

It kind of is. There's a lot of bare chests and Daniel Craig emerging from the surf in short shorts.

That makes me vomit, because all that tells me is that that's what Andy Cohen is doing instead of promoting Season 5 of My Life on the D-List. The double Emmy-winning My Life on the D-List.

We have to talk about Rosie Live. That was such a...

...such a clusterfuck backstage, is what you were going to say? [laughs] I had more fun backstage at that than at anything in my life. It was really just the most bizarre, odd combination of people sharing dressing rooms, because it was an off-Broadway theater. At one point I looked in my room and there was Jane Krakowski in like a zip-up teddy and heels and fishnets, and there's Liza in a cashmere, sparkly Halston rehearsing over and over, then Gloria Estefan is in a wool dress fanning herself because there's no air conditioning, and then Alec Baldwin walks in and he's so hot that he uses the cool setting on a blow dryer to blow his face. And then in comes Clay [Aiken]! And it doesn't get any better than that.

And he was frosty to you. I assume that was the first time you'd seen him since he came out of the closet.

Frosty, yeah. You're damn right he was. Yeah, it was the first time I'd seen him since he "came out of the closet," but then that's all relative, isn't it? [laughs]

Why do you think he picked that time to finally come out?

I guess because of the kid. My guess is that he was going to be walking around with the baby and someone would ask, "Who's the mom?" And he doesn't want to have to say, "Harold," or whoever.

While we're on the subject, gay people are very mad at Obama right now because of Rick Warren. Did he screw up on that one?

Yeah, he did. Big time. Most straights aren't thrilled, either! Rick Warren...he's bad news, this guy. I just try to ignore those guys. It's funny, I make a joke about religion and then I get in trouble, but those guys ultimately are the joke. Who listens to anything Rick Warren says after that?

A lot of people, it seems.

What, his flock of morons? Let 'em have him.

What do you make of Jennifer Aniston's current press tour to promote her nude GQ photo shoot...I mean, Marley & Me?

I am so jealous of that GQ photo shoot! I want to put on a man's tie and look 25. I loved it. I don't understand the animosity toward Jennifer Aniston, I don't know what she's done to people, and it's kind of startling to me because I didn't know she had it in her to evoke such passion in people. This is the girl who was on Friends and she does movies now and then, but people are like out to get her now and I'm a little confused by that.

Speaking of animosty, let's discuss Elisabeth Hasselbeck and The View. We've had a crazy journey with her during this political year, and we've heard that there's been a lot of backstage drama. You've co-hosted there before—can you shed any light on the subject?

You know, I have an extremely annoying voice, so I should talk, but when I hear that chipmunky high-pitched screeching of hers, I just tune out. Maybe it's just from me being there so many times, but I know that backstage, you do the hair and makeup and you have an hour off to go to your room and do whatever you want, study or read the paper or whatever. And [with Elisabeth] all that happens is that Bill Geddie, the executive producer, goes to her room and gives her the Fox talking points. Everyone who's co-hosted the show knows that. So when I hear those things coming out of her mouth, I don't even know if those are her thoughts, as deep as they must be.

Finally, Seth wanted me to thank you for introducing David Archuleta to Defamer.

That was a fun conversation. I didn't know what he was taking from it or not. I mean, he's not always "present," shall I say? But to this day, that video of the screaming girls...that is my Prozac. If I'm having a bad day, I can play that and feel just fine about the world. It's so fucking funny.

All right Kathy, thank you so much.

Are you going to watch my New Year's show with Anderson?

We'll definitely DVR it.

OK, great. And remember, Ryan Seacrest can suck it.

The full interview is after the jump!

DEFAMER: We’d just like to start with the question on most of our readers’ minds: Why didn’t you burn the tapes?

ROB CORDDRY: Uhhh…I’m one of your readers, and that’s not a question on my mind.

Sorry. We just saw Frost/Nixon over the weekend, and it kind of rubbed off on us. So there were no tapes?

You’re a little Frost/Nixon obsessed right now?

Yeah.

This is exactly what Frost wanted. Don’t give in to it.

Guess we’ll throw out the Cambodia questions, too. Alright. Well. So…Your show! Children’s Hospital. It’s really funny.

Hey—thank you! I really appreciate that!

In the first ten seconds a character says, “We have to slice off your son’s cock.”

Uhhh—yes. That’s an appetizer, if you will.

Then you introduce a crippled Megan Mullally, and another character says he’d like to “bang her in her clumsy vagina.”

Um. Yeah. That’s Ed Helms. He wouldn’t say “fuck.”

Then there’s an AIDS joke, and a running gag about 9/11.

Um…yes. What was the—oh, yes. I believe there was an AIDS joke. We also refer to retarded children even before that. And I’d just like to say to your readers, “You’re welcome.”

We guess our question here is, “What happened to your balls on the way to the internet, Corddry?”

[Laughs] Well, they’re alive and well. I’ve been building up a lot of anger at sick kids that I felt like I had to get out.

Where did that start?

C’mon, don’t you think the sick kids had it coming?

They do tend to get more attention than they really deserve.

THANK you. They take themselves so fucking seriously.

With the bald heads, and the Making the Wishes…

Oh my God. “I hurt…Give me more medicine.” Please. This show was born of my love for St. Elsewhere and hatred for Grey’s Anatomy. Not hatred, so much as a deep—I have a respect for that show. I shouldn’t say I hate it. I really don’t. I watch it with my wife. She’s a huge fan. And I will half watch it while I’m working on the computer, and I’ll look up, and Katherine Heigl is banging a ghost. Or there’s a kid encased in cement for the love of a girl. There’s not enough sharks for these people to jump. It’s insane what they get away with. And I love how the backstage on that show is even crazier than the show itself.

The latest is that T.R. Knight wasn’t showing up to work because he hated the scripts, and he’s leaving the show.

[Laughs] I love it. I LOVE it! Like—I don’t really enjoy the show, but I really enjoy the show within the show.

Far more entertaining option, as far as we’re concerned.

Homophobes, and may I say horrible cunts?

You just did!

But I’m not going to say who.

You don’t need to—we all know you’re talking about Patrick Dempsey. Come to think of it—you say “cunts” in Children’s Hospital, too. And you explore the backstage drama on that set.

Yes, and how it may exist in another dimension entirely.

Do we want to give away what that dimension is?

We should say that if you really need to know right now, skip to Episode 6. [Massive Spoiler: The entire CH universe exists in a Puerto Rican midget's farts.]

Were you at the SAG town hall meeting last night?

No—what happened?

It’s not looking good.

Oh man. Well, I just sold a show to HBO, and I’m looking forward to my affiliation with AFTRA. It’s a typical case of the asylum being run by the inmates. Neither union is exactly the pipefitters, you know what I mean? AFTRA made a deal in panic, and SAG—I don’t even know what they’re doing. They’re not negotiating their way into a horrible situation for everybody—studios and actors and the public included. I hope AFTRA can handle this. I don’t know who’s running their office, but I think they still have TRS-80s.

What was your experience like working with Oliver Stone on W, in which you played White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer?

He was pretty wild. You know, everybody’s heard the stories, and he lives up to them in a certain respect. But also, he’s a consummate professional and an—can I use the word “icon?”

Go right ahead.

Alright, I just did it. I dropped the I-bomb.

If you can use “cunt,” you can use “icon.”

You know what’s funny is the last day of shooting, when you wrap, the first AD says, “That’s a wrap on Richard Dreyfuss,” and everybody claps. And I just happened to wrap on the same day that almost everybody did—Scott Glenn, Dreyfuss, Toby Jones. There was just raucous applause for everybody, and Oliver Stone was walking around hugging us. And he got to me and gave me a big hug, and a kiss on the cheek, and he whispered something in my ear. But the applause for everyone was so loud, I couldn’t hear it. So it’s like my Lost in Translation moment, and I will never know. And in that moment you can’t go, like, “I’m sorry Oliver Stone, director of Platoon. Come again?”

In your ultimate fantasy, what do you think he said?

My fantasies are usually pretty dark. I imagine he said something like, “You’re not fooling anybody.”

Going back to your HBO show for a second: It’s loosely based on the Robert Redford movie The Candidate, we hear?

Paul Redford is writing the pilot—he was a writer/producer at The West Wing. It’s a half-hour comedy, if HBO has us. They bought the pilot. It’s only loosely based on The Candidate. It’s presumptuous of me to call it that. It’s just about the most unlikely candidate to run for public office of all time. It’s about what the most unlikely person has to do when he actually hears the call to greatness. Will he heed it, or will he still bang prostitutes?

How much did the election inform it?

It completely changed it. At first it was a really cynical story about how we’re told growing up how anybody can become president. And the last eight years that’s been proven to pretty much be more terrifying than it is inspiring. So that was sort of our tagline before we even had a show: “Anybody can become President. Anyone.” But now we are burdened—burdened!—by hope and optimism. So the character has changed into one who feels the weight of other people’s hope, and is just a little too hungover to deal with it on most occasions.

Is he dumb, like in The Candidate?

No, not at all. If anything he’s a little too smart for his own good. You know that line in Broadcast News where Holly Hunter is always asked, “It must be great to always be the smartest person in the room.” And she says, totally deadpan, “No. It’s awful.”

Does it have a title yet?

The show is called, The Untitled Rob Corddry Project. We’re borrowing from Greek tragedy.

Evocative. Where were you on election night?

I went to my brother’s house (Studio 60’s Nate Corddry) for a party, and then my wife and I had a couple slices of pizza and went home and watched it from home, and went to bed. And woke up in the morning—and I don’t know what your experience was—but it must have been a horrible time to work at Defamer, because everyone was just so HAPPY. My waitress was just in the best mood. And people were hugging—and not just hugging because it had been a long time since they’d seen each other. They were hugging because they were happy! Which was so strange.

That was here in LA?

That was here in LA .

That is unusual.

I live in Silver Lake.

So do we!

Which was like, hipsters smiling. Hipsters smiling is like, you know, odd.

Yeah, you'd just assume they were having a brain aneurysm or something. Were you happy?

Very happy. It’s been a long eight years. Very, very happy.

You came on to The Daily Show shortly after 9/11 , right?

Yeah, actually. February 2002.

And you were living in New York at the time.

That's right.

So you basically came along at probably the darkest time in recent U.S. history. And you were tasked with making people laugh throughout a surreally awful reality.

Yeah...

That sort of occurred to us as we watched you in Children’s Hospital. You play a clown doctor who’s unsuccessful at healing people with laughter, but that’s all he knows.

That’s interesting. Wow. That’s not a connection I made, but, uh—very astute. People will be writing papers about that at junior colleges all over the country.

Now’s a pretty bleak time too.

Yeah. Yeah.

So what are your thought on the true healing power of laughter, if we can be sincere for a moment?

What?

To get sincere.

I’m sorry—missed that last word?

Sincere! We’re being sincere!

Oh—right. Sincere. Well, after 9/11 everyone said irony and satire and sarcasm were dead, but it turned out to be a bellwether time. It ushered in a new age of irony and satire and sarcasm. For us on The Daily Show, the war was very good to us. And George Bush has been very good for my career. Now I believe we’re in a time where it could go either way. There’s been a lot of ink spilled about how it’s going to be hard to make fun of Obama, but I think The Daily Show exists more to make fun of the media and their portrayal of people like Obama. I think SNL did a great job during the debates, in that great sketch about how the media was going so easy on Obama and hard on Clinton. There’s never a lack of hypocrisy in the media, and so I think The Daily Show will be OK in that respect.

Then again, the ‘90s were a great time for America, and yet kind of a bleak time for comedy, or at least satire. SNL had some good players on it, but mostly it was like Opera Guy, and Chris Farley with his shirt off. Which is really funny, but it isn’t satire. Ace Ventura was huge in the ‘90s. They didn’t do a lot of political stuff. So I think we could be in for another eight years of that. I think Liberals do satire very well, and Conservatives do sarcasm very well. It remains to be seen what age we are entering.

Where does Children’s Hospital fit into that spectrum?

Absolutely nowhere. It’s safely at the shortstop of comedy—the second base of comedy. It’s just feeling boobs.

• Children's Hospital [TheWB.com]

DEFAMER: How did you hear that TRL was going off the air?
DAVE: I think I saw it on, like, Huffington Post or something. There wasn't a 3am phone call or anything like that.

DEFAMER: How did you feel when you heard the news?
DAVE: I hadn't watched [TRL] in a long time, but it was kind of a bummer, you know? It was a funny show where a lot of people who I still work with got their start. It'll be missed.

DEFAMER: Had you heard any rumors about its demise? Did you see this coming?
DAVE: I'm a little bit out of their demographic right now, so I hadn't heard anything. I check in every now and then, but I don't recognize a soul who's on it anymore. Damien [Fahey] does an awesome job, but I have no idea who the artists are at all. Like, I don't get Tokio Hotel. I don't understand why they're trying so hard to get them into them in the running. But yeah, I kind of thought that it might be coming. In 1999, 2000, there were a few huge stars. Now, there are a ton of semi-big stars. There's nobody that every thirteen-year-old girl can agree that they love, that they'd skip school and hop on the train and stand in Times Square to look at through a window.

DEFAMER: But what about a show like 106 & Park, which I think is still BET's highest-rated show? How can a music video show like that succeed while TRL is cancelled?
DAVE: Yeah, I don't understand how it doesn't make sense to at least keep it on. I mean, it's MTV's last music show, it's like their little clubhouse. It seems like the kind of thing they would want to keep going on forever, but then, what do I know? I mean, I just saw my first episode of The Hills last night, so what the fuck do I know?

DEFAMER: How had you managed to avoid it all this time?
DAVE: You know, it was just total, willful avoidance. I never saw Laguna Beach, either. It's almost more entertaining to watch people try to explain The Hills to you than to watch The Hills, because they don't know why they watch it. They talk about the people like they know them. It really is more fun to watch a grown man or woman defend their position as a Hills watcher.

DEFAMER: Is that indicative of how MTV has changed? We did a feature a few weeks ago called "7 MTV-Defining Stars Who Wouldn't Be Allowed on MTV Anymore"...
DAVE: ...Yeah, I read that!

DEFAMER: So do you agree with our premise that there's no niche there anymore for the sorts of people who put the network on the map?
DAVE: Yeah, I definitely agree. This is, like, a whole big conspiracy thing, but the way the Nielsen system works doesn't reward things like MTV used to put on. You know what I mean? Like, any music video show, you'd tune in for five minutes and if something came on that you didn't like, you'd change the channel. So ratings would be really low for some of the interesting programming that MTV used to put on. Now they do these things that aren't really challenging, but you're almost beat into submission in the first five minutes, like, "I guess I should see how this ends." You don't remember it when it's over, but you've watched it and that's all that matters. And it's a business! Unfortunately, they have to sell advertising.

DEFAMER: Was MTV always that ruthless about programming, though?
DAVE: You know, even the lowest-rated shows when I was there, people would talk about. Years later, they would remember it. So anecdotally, you know that people are actually watching, but the ratings never really bore that out.

DEFAMER: Is there anything on MTV you still watch?
DAVE: Listen, I will watch The Real World/Road Rules Challenge until the day I die. Big, hot dudes with their shirts off yelling at each other and getting drunk? For some reason, that never gets old. Like, I will watch CT take his shirt off and yell at somebody all fucking day. If there was a channel that was just that, I would watch it. But yeah, I don't love The Hills. Every single Dance Crew looks exactly the same to me. A lot of people I love still work there and the ratings are really good and people are still talking about it, but I'm 37 years old.

DEFAMER: But MTV used to be at least a little countercultural, didn't it? Even when they were programming shows like Singled Out, there'd be something like Tabitha Soren...
DAVE: And even things like Singled Out had Chris Hardwick, who's hilarious, and Jenny McCarthy, who's hilarious. They were sort of in on the joke a little bit, and right now, there's a lot of stuff that maybe takes itself too seriously. Like, Lauren Conrad probably has demands of what she will and won't do, and that's ridiculous... I wish that MTV2 would sort of take on that mantle of, "Here's our programming and here's people who love music," but it just seems like it's reruns of The Hills.

DEFAMER: When we posted about the TRL cancellation, some of our commenters started posting some old YouTube videos of their favorite moments...
DAVE: Oh, no way!

DEFAMER: ...so what would your favorite moment have been, if you could post it?
DAVE: You know, the really funny shit happened behind the scenes. My favorite thing I saw in probably the whole time I worked for MTV was there was this whole hour devoted to Prince, which of course he showed up fifty minutes late for. He flew in with this huge phalanx of guards, hot chicks with their tits out, and one of the biggest of the big dudes who was around him had this big jar with a posted note on it that said "Swear Jar." If you swore around Prince, since he was a Jehovah's Witness, you had to put in a dollar. That didn't make it to the air, but I just thought, "Man, that's funny stuff!"

• WATCH VIDEO

• WATCH VIDEO

Sure, Brooke Hogan's political ignorance may be easy to pillory (though her dark horse candidate would certainly win endorsements from the bulk of last night's Moonman-accepting crowd). After all, this is the same reality star who came under fire for her belief that female menstruation should be an instant DQ for the presidency (so get cracking on that change of life, ladies!). Still, after the events of the past ten days, we can't help but see in Brooke the sort of happy optimism that remains unchanged by frightening new political polls. Sometimes, after reading about the new person Palin had fired or the books she wanted banned from the public library, all we want to do is don a low-cut dress, toss our hair from side to side, and shimmy, shimmy down the red carpet until political doom is just a bad dream on a channel far, far away from VH1. [MTV]

DEFAMER: Mel Brooks and John Waters turned their old movies into Broadway musicals. How come you went the opera route?

CRONENBERG: As a kid I saw the original West Side Story and The Pajama Game in New York, and I have a fondness for musicals, but I've never really been attracted to them as something I would do myself. It makes sense for John Waters to do it. He's into that kind of stuff. But I'm much more snobby and elitist! Although truthfully, opera was popular in its time. It's only now, in retrospect, that it's become an elite art form.

DEFAMER: What did your agents and lawyers say when you told them you wanted to direct an opera?

CRONENBERG: They don't tell me what to do. Your agent is there to help you realize the projects you want. Sure, they're interested in money—they want to get their ten percent—but they work for me.

DEFAMER: Your work has been getting more and more critical acclaim lately. Do you care about winning an Oscar?

CRONENBERG: You have to remember, the movie I did in 1986 won an Oscar.

DEFAMER: Yeah, but for best makeup.

CRONENBERG: You know, everybody disdains the Oscars and wants one at the same time. And I think that's the right attitude. Many wonderful, creative people have won Oscars, so if you win one, you're in their company. And there are also some great filmmakers who have not. So when you don't win an Oscar, you're in that club. But that can never be your motivation. The Oscars are such a lottery. You don't know what films you'll be up against. You don't know what people's attitudes will be. It's foolish to spend two years of your life working on a movie on the off chance that you might win an Oscar.

DEFAMER: Who is it more important to please, yourself or an audience?

CRONENBERG: There's no difference. You are your own audience to begin with. I once met Oliver Stone and he said, "Do you mind being so marginal, with such a small audience?" And I said, "Well, how big of an audience do you need?" There comes a point where if you try to please too big an audience, you lose what was interesting about what you're doing. You have to achieve a balance.

DEFAMER: Why does it seem like all your movies are in some way obsessed with the human body?

CRONENBERG: People don't pay enough attention to the body. My understanding of life is very existential. I think that we are our bodies. There's nothing else, and when we die, that's it. No afterlife. I'm very anti-religious because religion tends to disembody you. There's an emphasis on your spirit, or where you'll be when your body's gone, and that's misleading. I think the world would be a better place if it we admit that's not the case.

DEFAMER: Did you see that BodyWorlds exhibit at the science center here? You of all people would love it!

CRONENBERG: That's what people tell me.

DEFAMER: I've heard you say that you are lazy, but you seem like such an obsessive guy. How is that possible?

CRONENBERG: I get other people to do work for me and then I take credit for it. I say it jokingly, but it's true. I have a desire to be creative, but that's not the same as obsession. I'm happy reading a book or riding my bike through the hills. I get up late, I stay up late. I'm not very well organized unless I'm plugged into a structure like the opera or a movie. When I'm doing that, I have to be organized. But left to my own devices, I like to laze around. I think that's a huge part of creativity. You have to let your mind relax and then another part of your brain suddenly connects with the solution you're trying to find. I nap all the time when I make movies. Often I give my cameraman a very difficult lighting set up so I can get a longer nap.

DEFAMER: What a great scheme. Alright, one last question. Who is weirder, you or David Lynch?

CRONENBERG: Oh, Lynch is way weirder than I am. That's obvious.

(From L To R: Composer Howard Shore, performer Daniel Okulitch, David Cronenberg and conductor Placido Domingo)

[Photo Credits: FilmMagic, Getty Images]

• The Fly: The Opera

DEFAMER: Tropic Thunder was based on an idea by Ben Stiller who then started working on the script with Justin Theroux. Why did they bring you along? ETAN COHEN: In about 2002, Ben Stiller, who's about the busiest guy on the planet, was looking for someone who could do some of the unsexy heavy lifting of fleshing out the script. I think he read an early draft of Idiocracy [which Etan co-wrote with Mike Judge] and thought maybe I was someone he could trust to take it the rest of the way.

DEFAMER: What was it like meeting Ben for the first time?
ETAN: You know, every time I met with Ben he was incredibly intimidating because he was in costume for whatever movie he was working on. I think the first time I was wearing the usual writer's costume and he and was dressed in a full tux like James Bond because he was shooting Along Came Polly.

DEFAMER: What was the writing process like? Did Ben just give you the story and the ideas and say, "go to town?"
ETAN: Ben and Justin gave me a lot of material that I incorporated into a screenplay. Basically, I laid it out into script form and gave it to Ben in stages. When it got to a certain finalized point, I started working more closely with Justin. And then everyone started sending it back and forth. Ben too. But it was rare for all three of us to be in the same place at the same time.

DEFAMER: Any fights about keeping stuff in the script?
ETAN: No fights. You just do what Ben says. I think he knows what he's doing.

DEFAMER: There are lots of huge actors in this movie. As a director, how did Ben Stiller control all those raging egos?
ETAN: Basically, people had tremendous respect for Ben. He was able to command the set. Also he works out like crazy. He got ripped for this part because he was playing an action star and he was super buff. He even had dumbbells on the set. So knowing someone can kick your ass is probably more intimidating than just thinking they're really smart.

DEFAMER: Let's talk about the whole Robert Downey Jr.-in-blackface thing. How sensitive were you to the fact that some people could have been offended?
ETAN: As a writer sometimes you're able to be detached from the reality of what you're writing. I think it was maybe just a funny joke in my mind and I wasn't aware of how crazy it was. It didn't really hit me until I visited the set and I saw Robert taking a break while his stand-in, who was a real African American actor, stayed on camera. Then I realized it was truly insane.

DEFAMER: But do you worry about offending people in your work? I mean, they already took down that Simple Jack site and now the National Down Syndrome Congress is calling for a boycott of the movie.
ETAN: I do worry about it, but I hope that people realize our heart is really in the right place. The statement we're trying to make is not to make fun of those people, but to make fun of the way Hollywood views those people. I would feel terrible if people thought we were making a racist joke or a joke at the expense of handicapped people when what we're really trying to do is say, "Hollywood please stop fetishizing handicapped people."

DEFAMER: Alright, let's change gears here. Tom Cruise plays an evil studio exec in Tropic Thunder. What's it like meeting that dude?
ETAN: It's astounding. He just seems like the healthiest, happiest, most energetic guy you've ever met. He's radiant. He comes to the table and you think he's the biggest superstar, he's certainly earned the right to half-ass it, and he just brings it in the most wonderful and shameless way.

DEFAMER: Please put the rumors to rest. Did Tom base that performance on anyone in particular?
ETAN: I've heard all kinds of theories about that. But in the script it was really just a conglomerate of classic studio bosses going back to Jack Warner.

DEFAMER: I don't want to give anything away, but Tom Cruise dances in this movie. Now do you just write in the script "he dances," and Tom takes it from there?
ETAN: Actually the dancing was his idea! It was something he wanted to do, and to me, it's one of the best parts of the movie. People will see it and remember how great he is. It's a transcendent moment. I wanted that scene to go on for half an hour.

DEFAMER: I have to ask. Any Scientology crap when you met him?
ETAN: You know, I'm a religious person, so when I read that stuff I truly do sympathize with him because anyone's religion can be made to seem crazy by people who don't believe in it. I just have the benefit of my crazy things having happened thousands of years ago.

DEFAMER: Ok, let's talk about your career. What's your work ethic like? Do you write every day? To be douchey about it, what's your process?
ETAN: I have three kids at home so I don't sleep much past five. I try to treat writing like I would any job. You got to put in the hours. You hope if you work enough, some of the hours will coincide with when you're feeling inspired.

DEFAMER: What's next for you?
ETAN: Well, I'm writing the new Sherlock Holmes movie for Sacha Baron Cohen and Will Ferrell. And I also have Madagascar 2 coming out. That's something my kids can watch.

DEFAMER: Robert Downey Jr. is in a competing Sherlock movie. Are you concerned about that?
ETAN: I've let him know that LA is a dangerous place. All kinds of things happen. People disappear. I heard he's a martial artist and he should know that I take karate with my daughters, so don't fuck with me.

DEFAMER: But seriously...
ETAN: I think that it's odd, but I also don't think they're really competing projects. Ours is a big comedy and his is a serious action movie. I think there's an appetite for both. That said, at the junket, he was like, "Oh you've got the other Sherlock Holmes movie." And I said, "No you've got the other Sherlock Holmes movie."

DEFAMER: You're a big comedy writer in Hollywood now. You have some heat on you. What does that feel like?
ETAN: It feels pretty awesome. I've heard other people say this, and now I think I understand. People start to say yes more and that's scary feeling because they're gonna let you do what you want, so it's your fault if it's bad. But all in all, it's great.

DEFAMER: Are your agents kissing your ass more?
ETAN: You know, I unfortunately have an agent who was a good friend of mine before he was an agent so he could really be a much better ass-kisser than he is.

DEFAMER: Tropic Thunder opens on Wednesday, August 13 (that's today, kids!). Here is what you are competing with over the weekend: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the new Woody Allen movie Vicky Christina Barcelona, a horror movie called Mirrors with Keifer Sutherland, and some indie dramedy called Henry Poole Is Here starring Luke Wilson of Idiocracy fame. Why should people go see Tropic Thunder instead of those?
ETAN: I have a history of not helping Luke Wilson's career and I think I'm going to continue to do that. But why should you see our movie over Star Wars and the others? There's a truly amazing scope in our movie that's never been done in a comedy before. I think people will be astounded at how huge it is. I'd say for your ten dollar ticket, you get fifteen dollars of movie.

DEFAMER: Fair enough. One final question. The Dark Knight— greatest movie ever or a little overrated?
ETAN: I didn't even see it yet.

DEFAMER: Russell, since American audiences are still becoming familiar with you, we wanted to see how familiar you are with the tastes of the American audience.
RUSSELL: Right.
DEFAMER: So we're going to give you the Defamer American Pop Culture Literacy Test. I'm just going to throw out famous names and you tell me whether you know them and what your take is on each.
RUSSELL: OK!

DEFAMER: We'll start out easy before we get a little more obscure. Here's a gimme: Lindsay Lohan.
RUSSELL: Lindsay Lohan is an actress. I believe she was in a Herbie film? She's become notorious for her off-stage and -screen exploits and her tabloid lifestyle. I believe she has been connected to drugs, sauciness, and sexiness in equal measure, though she seems like a nice girl to me.
DEFAMER: She does love the Brits. She had a British boyfriend, and now she's got a British girlfriend.
RUSSELL: Her girlfriend is British?!
DEFAMER: Yeah, Samantha Ronson.
RUSSELL: That's fantastic! I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Lindsay Lohan for her promotion of English sex.
DEFAMER: Here's another easy one: Amy Winehouse.
RUSSELL: Amy has been on several of my television shows in the United Kingdom. She's a very talented and beautiful girl and in my house, to this day, I have a Mexican doll that for a while lived in her hair.
DEFAMER: [laughs]
RUSSELL: You know those Mexican worry dolls? Or maybe they're Colombian. You sort of tell it your worries. She took it out of her hair once, gave it to me, and I treasure that little worry doll.
DEFAMER: Who wouldn't? OK, we're going to get a little harder. Zac Efron.
RUSSELL: Zac Efron is from High School Musical. Now whilst I've not seen this, because I don't think I belong to its target demographic, I recognize that it's a significant thing. It's sort of like this generation's Grease.
DEFAMER: Lil' Wayne.
RUSSELL: Lil' Wayne is a hip-hop artist and rapper, dreadlocked, with teardrops tattooed on his face. He is also known as "Weezy," and this is not because he is asthmatic. He seems to me to be a terrific poet.
DEFAMER: Somebody's been studying his Wikipedia!
RUSSELL: Good, wasn't it?
DEFAMER: Yeah, not bad!
RUSSELL: I haven't done any Wikipedia studies. I just happen to have an interest in Lil' Wayne, because I think he ignores a lot of copyright stuff to sort of rap over it. I think he's a pioneer.
DEFAMER: Miley Cyrus.
RUSSELL: Miley Cyrus is the teenager daughter of "Achy Breaky Heart" singer Billy Ray Cyrus. She is confusingly attractive, and to people under the age of eighteen, she is probably the biggest star in the world. She is the Madonna of tweenies.
DEFAMER: Speaking of tweenies: The Jonas Brothers.
RUSSELL: The Jonas Brothers is a band. They're all actual brothers and they all came out of the same womb, where many have said they studiously rehearsed their instruments. How the Jonas Mother was able to keep an amp in her uterus is one of the greatest mysteries, because them boys were born already possessing an incredible talent.
DEFAMER: How about your familiarity with MTV shows? Do you know of The Hills?
RUSSELL: I believe it's about some girls that go around and get off with people and wear nice dresses. They have the general air of louche attractiveness and easy availability.
DEFAMER: Pretty accurate. Let's move on to some of the news stories that Americans are talking about. Right now, we're all wondering what was up with this Christian Bale assault case, and maybe you can explain it to me. Apparently in the UK, you can go to jail for verbal assault? What's up with that?
RUSSELL: In England, we have such good manners that if someone says something impolite, the police will get involved. Christian Bale, I believe whilst in a restaurant, rolled his eyes at the lighting. That is an offense punishable by five years in prison in the United Kingdom. I admire Christian Bale and I think he's one of the greatest living actors on the planet currently, but we cannot shirk when it comes to good manners. If it's true that he also dropped a napkin on his way to the lavatory, then I think that he should possibly receive the death penalty.
DEFAMER: How about the U.S. presidential election? Do you follow it at all?
RUSSELL: I think that the idea of democracy is an illusion and regardless of who becomes president, the status quo will maintain power. It's irrelevant who you select as the totem of power in the country, because the country will be run in the same way — but I would rather have a black president than a white one. I would have ideally liked a hermaphrodite president, if it was up to me entirely, but until a hermaphrodite stands, I'll support Obama.
DEFAMER: Maybe we'll get there someday.
RUSSELL: Well, one can only hope that the rights of hermaphrodites will be recognized! Yeah, a hermaphrodite president — I just haven't found a hermaphrodite whose policies I agree with, even though I do like the idea of having mutual, opposed genitals.
DEFAMER: Lastly, I want to know your thoughts on the most important issue of our time...
RUSSELL: Yes.
DEFAMER: ...Brad and Angelina just had the twins.
RUSSELL: Thank God. The thing is that they're both so stupidly beautiful and good-looking and attractive that their children are born looking gorgeous! It's unsettling. That first one they had, she had sort of a Marilyn Monroe mouth. I don't think they should breed, those two people. I think their adoption policy is probably better because when their genes come together, it creates a storm of attractiveness so potent that it could one day bring down the planet.
DEFAMER: And no one needs all that on a baby.
RUSSELL: No one needs that on a baby! No one needs a baby with eight-inch-long eyelashes.
DEFAMER: All right, Russell. Congratulations on passing your quiz!
RUSSELL: Pretty good, wasn't it? Didn't I do well?

[Photo Credits: MTV/Mark Mainz, X17, Splash]

We caught up with Apatow shortly after the show, where he talked to us about what it felt like to stand in the live-comedy spotlight after all these years, gave us a little taste of what to expect in his upcoming movie, Funny People, and submitted to a round of Desert Island DVDs that you might find surprising. It's after the jump.

DEFAMER: Congratulations on what we'd call a very successful return to your stand-up roots. What spurred this on? Was it research for Funny People, or did Funny People come out of a desire to revisit the world of stand-up?

APATOW: I figured if I was going to make a movie about stand-up comedy I, unfortunately, needed to start doing it again. Mainly, because I have to start writing jokes for the stand up sequences in the movie, but also so I can remind myself how it makes you feel great and like crap, almost simultaneously.

DEFAMER: Is that how it feels?

APATOW: You get a high, but I always feel ashamed afterwards. Embarrassed about what I said. Embarrassed about the ego it takes to think anyone would want to listen to you talk. The instant need to do it again. It's like comic crack.

DEFAMER: So Funny People is going to be like Punchline, only with Seth Rogen in the Sally Field role?

APATOW: The movie isn't about stand-up comedy. It's about a few characters who are having a crisis, but what makes it different is that they are people who make comedy.

DEFAMER: Your willingness to collaborate and promote lesser-known talents is probably one of the first things people think of when they think of the "Apatow" brand: You're not just getting one vision, your getting a bunch of complimentary sensibilities.

APATOW: It was an easy show for me because I knew that no matter how well or badly I did, I had Seth Rogen, Charlene Yi, Million Dollar Strong, Craig Robinson, Bill Hader and Russell Brand coming on after me. No matter what the show would be fun. The idea was to put on a show that starred all of the people who have acted in our films. So many of them are great comics so it made for a great, raucous show.

DEFAMER: Now onto the hardballs: You're stranded on a desert island with no one but a naked Jason Segel. Miraculously, you happen to have your three favorite L.A. takeout meals, and five favorite movies or TV series on DVD (excluding your own) with you. What are they?

APATOW: My five DVDs would be Mad Men, Season Three of The Wire, Broadcast News, Being There, and Punch Drunk Love. My three take-out meals would be PF Changs, Vitorrio’s Pizza, and A Votre Sante chicken and asparagus—so I don’t feel unhealthy.

DEFAMER: Seth Rogen did a bit in his act about being considered a bear by the gay community, and how he wished there was a straight equivalent. Have you ever been pegged as a bear? Ever thought about making the first mainstream bear comedy—or, failing that, a movie with a prominent gay character?

APATOW: I almost wrote a movie which was about gay characters but I ultimately realized I didn’t know enough about the subject. That may have been the moment when I first realized I had heterosexual tendencies.

DEFAMER: And finally, what can you tell us about this mysterious Sacha Baron Cohen project about Sherlock Holmes that you're producing?

APATOW: Sherlock Holmes is being written by Etan Cohen, one of the writers of Tropic Thunder.

DEFAMER: Hmm. Mysterious. Thanks, Judd!