David Cross is so deadpan, you might not even be able to tell he’s joking. Certainly when you type his text out and read it, it feels totally straight. That’s why it’s funny. He says things that are inappropriate or ridiculous in casual conversation, then moves on. It’s not that he’s “on”... more

David Cross is so deadpan, you might not even be able to tell he’s joking. Certainly when you type his text out and read it, it feels totally straight. That’s why it’s funny. He says things that are inappropriate or ridiculous in casual conversation, then moves on. It’s not that he’s “on” like a lot of comedians who aren’t comfortable unless someone’s laughing. Cross might prefer if you didn’t get it and reported a sarcastic remark as fact. Not so fast, David Cross - we’re onto you.

His new show, The Incredibly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, gives Cross another vehicle for that type of humor. The IFC series stars Cross in the title character. He created and wrote the show about an energy drink salesman sent to England to head up the company’s U.K. sales force. Todd keeps lying about his accomplishments, his abilities and even his home address. It makes his bad decisions worse when he tries to cover for his fibs.

Fans might not recognize Cross with normal skin tones. His most famous role could be Tobias on Arrested Development, where he painted himself blue as an aspiring Blue Man Group performer. He also created Mr. Show with Bob Odenkirk and popped up on The Colbert Report as liberal radio personality Russ Lieber. He’ll also be seen shortly on Arrested creator Mitch Hurwitz’ new show Running Wilde with Will Arnett, who also costars in Todd Margaret.

Consequently there's double the reason to talk to Cross right now. As Fox revealed their plans for adding Cross to the cast of Running Wilde, the man himself is gearing up to launch Todd Margaret. Relaxing in a hotel room at The Beverly Hilton, Cross kept most of his attention on Todd Margaret. The beard he sports on Running Wilde was the only reference to his Fox show.

FT: Did you try out other female names for the last name?

DC: No, that just popped into my head and I was like, “Let’s go with it.” It just fits I think.

FT: Is it ever addressed in the series?

DC: You know what? It was in the script but in editing, we took them all out. I think one stays because we couldn’t cut around it but we did have in every script somebody going, “Margaret? That’s a girl’s name.” Every episode had that but we took it out in editing.

FT: Why’s that?

DC: It was a different joke for the show. It felt a little wacky and as we were editing it we were taking some of the overt wackiness of it out.

FT: Did you want to go blue and let Will Arnett drop F bombs?

DC: Yeah. Will’s character is probably the most fun to write for because he says the most vile, awful, heinous, sexist inappropriate shit. Those were really fun things to write for and IFC’s been great at saying, “We’re not going to bleep it. Write what you want.” There are a couple of words we can’t use that have different weight in the states than they do in the U.K. Specifically “cunt” which in the U.K. is like saying, “Oh, you jerk.” Here, I don't know, women have a problem with it. I don't know what it is. So we were encouraging ourselves to push the envelope on awful stuff that Will says.

FT: Is there a different version for the U.K.?

DC: Outside of maybe two or three things that I fought for and then IFC just said, “No, we like it better this way,” there are maybe two or three things but it’s pretty much the same thing. Although Channel 4 and all the stations in the U.K., you get to show more of the show because they’re not dependent on ad revenue. So there are some differences but that’s just in the stuff we get to show, the time. It’s not content differences.

FT: When Todd chugs energy drinks and starts ranting, did you just improvise or did you write that whole thing out?

DC: Well, we kind of had the advantage of taking the stuff I riffed in the pilot, because we reshot that, and then taking the best bits out and then making that the script for the pilot reshoot. So the only thing that was improvised was the Barack Obama thing I think. Over and over again, all day, I loved it. I love the energy drink, the cheap shit energy drink that we actually got that we put the labels on. I love that it was about 97 degrees Celsius in the café when we were shooting and just getting to do it over and over again all day was just a treat.

FT: What did it actually taste like?

DC: Whatever the cheapest they can get by the gross. I don’t even know what the real energy drink was.

FT: Did you have a spit bucket?

DC: No, because we were able to cheat a lot of it but I had to down a couple of them and you see it. I definitely let a bunch spill. Meisner, heavy Meisner.

FT: Is lying always funny?

DC: Unless you’re in politics. I mean, it’s funny when you work for the treasury or the banking industry. They love it. They love lying. Or in the pharmaceutical industry. Then it’s a rip snorter.

FT: On TV, is it funny?

DC: Oh, then no. No. Absolutely not.

FT: Why does Todd keep trying to cover up?

DC: He’s just one of those guys that that is in part why it’s so frustrating. You watch him, because any of us would at some point when they’re confronted with this would just go, “Okay, yes, all right, look, I’m sorry. I lied about this thing. You’re right, I screwed up but come on, let’s start over again.” He just never takes the golden opportunity that’s handed to him, especially from Dave’s character who clearly doesn’t believe anything he’s saying. He gives him a couple of outs constantly. In episode one I go, “I live at 21 and 50 Church Avenue.” Then I come to the office, he’s like, “Hey, I went on Google Earth, 21 and 50 Church Avenue.” “Oh yeah?” “Yeah, when were you going to tell me? How long were you going to keep that a secret from me?” “What?” “You lived in a hospital?” Because one of them’s a hospital and instead of going, “All right, I made that up,” I just go, “Oh, yeah, my dad was bipolar so whatever.”

FT: Isn’t it harder to keep coming up with those explanations than to just admit it?

DC: In real life, of course but you have to have a very bright, sophisticated genius writer to do that and we were lucky enough to get me.

FT: How do you describe your comedy? Is it even possible to articulate it?

DC: Well, you’re absolutely right so I just don’t describe my comedy. I let others if they choose to do it but I don’t. I agree with you, it is a hard thing to quantify. Also, when people write about the science of comedy, it’s just boring and detrimental almost.

FT: If I used words like extreme or surreal would I be on the right track?

DC: No. I don't think so. That’s up to you. It’s also subjective and I’m inside of it. I don’t see it as surreal. I can point to a Magritte painting and I can look at certain films and say, “Oh, that’s surreal” but comedy is not really. I don't think it’s really surreal.

FT: Has this become a double PR tour for you, with Running Wilde?

DC: Not really. People have asked questions which I think are understandable and inevitable but the focus is on Todd Margaret and the Running Wilde guys were here a couple days ago. My connection with that show is much different. This one I created, I wrote and I star in. That one I’m guest acting on here and there. Absolutely ecstatic that I get to be part of the show but that’s just acting.

FT: If that took off, would it make Todd Margaret a limited series?

DC: No, Todd Margaret is my absolute most important thing to me right now creatively. I mean, I have my butterfly collection but no, Todd Margaret is first and foremost. I have a story to tell. I want to tell it. I know where it goes. I had a blast writing it and shooting it. Literally, this is trite as hell, but the best cast and crew you could ever hope for. I think IFC is going to, I imagine, continue to support it and be excited about it. This is what I want to do. Eventually I’ll have to do something so I earn some money. I can’t go for years without making any money but I would do this until the story was satisfied. It’s so gratifying. I’m very proud of it.

FT: Being a solo project, is it more in your voice than other things you’ve done?

DC: No. I mean, the idea, the initial idea came from me but outside of that, I cowrote it with Shaun Pye. Outside of basically the pilot, it’s very collaborative. Between IFC, RDF and Channel 4, they’re all very encouraging and pretty much like, “Yeah, do what you want. We trust you.” Also there’s nothing autobiographical about it at all. It’s just this funny cool story. Maybe if I didn’t do standup it would feel more solo but it’s not.

FT: Is the Russ Lieber thing over?

DC: Oh God, yeah. I haven’t done that in years and years. That sort of had an unofficial ending I guess.

FT: They must have realized they didn’t need to fake a rival for him because he’d get real ones in politics.

DC: Right, right, as the show kind of found itself.

FT: Have you ever seen Tobias costumes for Halloween?

DC: Oh God yeah, I see pictures all the time. I’ve seen that a lot. This one guy got Tobias tattooed on his calf. That’s very odd.

The Incredibly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret premieres October 1 on IFC.

by Blogbot Log on to Reddit.com/r/IAMA/ at 11 AM (PST) today for a live chat with SuicideGirls founder Missy. Reddit subscribers will be able to ask real-time questions, while Missy and SG’s model coordinator Rambo Ustream live from the SG office as well. And while you’re on Reddit, be sure to friend... more

by Blogbot

Log on to Reddit.com/r/IAMA/ at 11 AM (PST) today for a live chat with SuicideGirls founder Missy. Reddit subscribers will be able to ask real-time questions, while Missy and SG’s model coordinator Rambo Ustream live from the SG office as well.

And while you’re on Reddit, be sure to friend us and send some link and comment karma our way too. You know how karma works – it’ll come back around to you

William Gibson will always be the cyberpunk prophet, the man whose Hugo-winning 1984 debut novel Neuromancer, about a future underworld dystopia where radically advanced computing possibilities exist in tandem with sex, drugs and political skullduggery, introduced the notion of “cyberspace” to the... more

William Gibson will always be the cyberpunk prophet, the man whose Hugo-winning 1984 debut novel Neuromancer, about a future underworld dystopia where radically advanced computing possibilities exist in tandem with sex, drugs and political skullduggery, introduced the notion of “cyberspace” to the public and predicted the emergence of a world wide web, along with computers of ever-increasing intelligence and dubious motive. In the post-September 11th world, however, his attention has increasingly focused not on a new imagined future (the branch of Matrix-style cyber fiction his work spawned chugs along regardless) but on the complexities of the present. In a recent NYT op-ed about Google’s tightening grip on our lives, Gibson conceded that “science fiction never imagined Google” and characterized the search engine as a “coral reef of human minds” with an impact so potentially transformative that it should cause us to consider new ideas like “training wheel” identities for today’s minors, whose every stupid, impolitic thought is being cached to their potential future detriment.

Gibson’s recent fiction has echoed his contemporary concerns. His aughts-focused Bigend Trilogy (Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and the newly-released Zero History) follows the atypical adventures of a handful of iPhone-obsessed, cosmopolitan scrappers such as ex-rock star/freelance journalist Hollis Henry, myopic drug addict and talented translator Milgrim, and the titular Hubertus Bigend, an amoral advertising entrepreneur and “cool hunter” whose appearance has been described by Gibson as “Tom Cruise on a diet of virgin blood and truffled chocolates,” and whose latest ephemeral fixation in Zero History is a high-end toy called a Festo Penguin, which is a remote-controlled airship shaped like a flying bird. The rootless nature of these characters, the flexibility of their identities, the volume of cultural data they must process moment to moment: it’s all indicative of a decade of whiplash change, and one in which the future points in infinite directions, depending on your vantage point. SuicideGirls recently called up William Gibson in a Seattle hotel to discuss his current state of mind.



Ryan Stewart: How’s the room service there?

William Gibson: Well, I haven’t had a chance to get into it yet, but I think it’s going to be okay!

RS: I was surprised to learn just now, from Google, that those Festo Air Penguins you write about are real. What is it about them that fascinates you?

WG: Well, I was initially attracted by their extraordinary beauty and elegance. And I assumed that, as with everything I’ve published since Pattern Recognition, that someone somewhere will Google every term and gizmo mentioned in the book just to figure out which ones are made up and which ones are real. [laughs] If you check out any of the Festo balloon remotes, they’re just hypnotic, I think. They’re hypnotically beautiful. The company has this really interesting design philosophy, in that they base everything on biologics. They actually move because they’re like animals, not because they’re built to move like animals. They work because they’re shaped like Manta rays and penguins, and I find that to be an inherently, extremely interesting way to design. So, they’re there in the book as these gorgeous things that a very wealthy man can buy to play with, but which have been turned to comically sinister usage.

RS: Speaking of sinister, you open the book by giving the lay of the land in Myrtle Beach, where the main character is traveling, and he casually notes Confederate flags among many other details that fill that environment. I’m sure that wasn’t meant to go unnoticed, though. Was that a comment on the inescapability of geography?

WG: Not exactly, but I wouldn’t be unhappy for someone to assume that. In retrospect I think it was an instinctive move to indicate that geopolitics – even local geopolitics – survive in what we increasingly take for granted as a post-geographical world. And Milgrim is really good at noticing details, but he’s also good at not telling you what he thinks about them. [laughs] He just sort of slides it by, like ‘And there’s a Confederate flag…’ What’s more telling about that chapter for me would be the traditional concrete lawn jockey boy who’s been painted green like a Martian in order to be more politically correct. And that’s something that I’ve actually seen. That’s an option in concrete lawn jockey boys, and I assume it’s done for that reason.

RS: The recent Wikileaks scandal was also a good reminder of the continued battle for preeminence between geography and cyberspace, I think. The long arm of the law couldn’t reach him.

WG: Well, yeah, and that’s something that’s been around as a concept since the early days of the Internet, but I think it’s the biggest and bluntest example. It’s the biggest one-shot example that we’ve seen. Organized Internet piracy of copyrighted material is some ways similar, in that it can become business as usual and we can become used to it. The Wikileaks case is sort of like all of those Bruce Sterling rants about the post-national digital world. There it is – it just happened!

RS: The federal agent character in the book, Winnie, was one I couldn’t help but find irritating because of her phonetic twitter grammar, which is frequently displayed. “Where R U?” and so forth.

WG: I may have been stretching a bit, with that. She was obviously texting, in a sense. I assumed that she wouldn’t have had any presence on twitter other than as a Fed and a mom, so I gave her that texty thing, you know?

RS: Do you tend to notice that, when people you’re communicating with do it?

WG: I’ll tell you where I notice it a lot -- I notice it in Youtube comment threads. But I didn’t think that Winnie would waste the keystrokes on Milgrim until something really started happening. Actually, something I was working on last night required me to look at all the tweets that appear in the book, and her tweets do become terser, but more grammatically correct. Once she’s got something to work with, she’s sending like one-word tweets, but they aren’t really abbreviated.

RS: She’s able to get her point across.

WG: Yeah.

RS: When a pop star like, say, Britney Spears puts out an album and the song titles have those deliberate misspellings, what message do you think is being communicated?

WG: I don’t think of it as a message, necessarily, although I haven’t actually thought of what Britney or her songwriters might see as a motive in doing that. I suspect that they would be shooting for identification. They want the reader to recognize them as just another person. I think they want to be relatable.

RS: The English major in me bristles at it, I guess.

WG: I was an English major too, but I married a socio-linguist, and that sort of cured me. [laughs] It really cured me of looking down on people who don’t use proper English. Languages don’t stabilize until they’re dead. That’s rule number one of socio-linguistics. And societies that have these huge, formal governmental bodies that attempt to keep their language from changing – they have languages that change just as much as anybody else’s. Like France. So, yeah, I think that God help us, Britney Spears is what’s happening to the evolution of our language. It’s an evolution that is, in my view, nothing more than an infinite number of accidents. Some of the things that are going to change the English language are incredibly stupid. But it’ll happen because that kind of evolution works, apparently, the way biological evolution works. If we could access spoken English from fifty years from now, I’m not sure how much of it we’d be able to understand, but I wouldn’t necessarily assume that the people fifty years could be said to be speaking some degraded form of English. I mean, God only knows what the Elizabethans would think of us.

RS: The book’s ostensible subject is marketing, but not really mass marketing; you’re interested in exploring a kind of niche, anti-marketing that attracts by making a product seem scarce.

WG: Well, I’m inclined to think that many of the people I know are functionally immune to a lot of mass marketing, but they’re not immune to other kinds of marketing. And if marketing is what we now do, in our supposedly largely post-industrial society, then marketing will find new ways. People will be coming up with marketing that gets you in the places the old marketing couldn’t.

RS: Marketing that sells us on the exclusivity of a thing is something I would normally associate with the rich, but the book’s vibe seems to be that there are other, positive attributes to it, in that it can attract pro-active types. It’s deep, sociological stuff.

WG: Yeah, interviews after the fact of writing a book are difficult for me, because I don’t want to present myself as someone who knows what he’s talking about. [laughs] If a book is working for me, I sort of help it write itself. I don’t start with a number of ideas that I’ve come to and then attempt to illustrate them with an act of fiction. When I commit an act of fiction I often find within it questions that I’m unable to answer. So, my position after the fact is to gesture, to point at the text and say ‘What do you think it is?’ There’s an assumption that I serve a didactic function, but I actually don’t. My motive is just to try to get people to wonder about the place of marketing in our culture and our society. I’m not going to hand them a token that says ‘Fear marketing, flee now!’ or something like that. If we did that, how would we even make a living? It’s what we do.

RS: It’s interesting how this trilogy of present-day books you’ve now completed falls neatly within a decade that’s still very undefined. Do you imagine that this decade will continue to be thought of as a decade of interruption? The September 11th decade?

WG: I don’t know if I’ll ever live to see this, but I keep waiting for the first person to call it the turn of the century. [laughs] There’s going to come a day when someone says ‘Back at the turn of the century…’ and everybody will instantly nod and go ‘Yeah...’ and ever after we will refer to it as the turn of the century. I think that will be what we call the first ten years of this century by the time we get to the 2020s or the 2030s. As to what it will be characterized by, there’s really no telling. If I were somehow magically offered a body of knowledge from the real future, but only one body of knowledge, what I would want to know is: what do they think of us? I think that would tell me everything I need to know about where they are at, and it would tell me so much more about the world I live in than I could possibly know now, because so many things are going to happen in the meantime. History is a speculative discipline, it’s not the study of a fixed body of information. Our view of the Victorians is nothing like the Victorians’ view of themselves, and I would assume that our view of ourselves is nothing remotely like the future’s view of us. And I’m inclined to think that we know way more about the Victorians than they knew about themselves. So, I don’t see any reason to think that we know more about ourselves than the future will be able to uncover.

RS: Do you feel like you’ve been well-placed to give the aughts some degree of shaping, through your work?

WG: Well, I sort of feel like I came to it with the oven mitts of genre science-fiction, which turned out to be marvelous things with which to heft the crazy, steaming casserole of the first decade of the 21st century, the contents of which we all still find quite baffling. I basically came to the task because I had the toolkit, you know? I had my standard-issue science-fiction writer toolkit that I earned sometime around 1981, and it’s really the only toolkit that I ever learned to work with. Having been an English major, I was taught that the only way to look at the science-fiction of the past, historically, is to look at the past in which it was written, which is invariably what gave it life and meaning for its author. So, when I began to write near-future science-fiction around 1981, I was very self-conscious about that, like ‘I’m writing some 1980s science-fiction here, and one day if anyone cares to look at it they’ll have to make sense of it in terms of what was going on at the moment I wrote it.’ So, I’ve kept that awareness as I’ve kept writing, but as I’ve kept writing the world outside the window was getting weirder and weirder.

RS: Weirder in what sense?

WG : Because of exponential technologically-driven change. I would look at the imaginary future on my computer screen and then look out the window or look at CNN and think that pretty soon we’re going to be past this [piece that I’m writing]. The window or CNN will offer a higher quota of cognitive dissonance than this stuff I’m sitting here imagining, I’d think. And that was really the beginning of the project that led to these three books, although the three previous books were also a kind of conscious segue into the present, but I did it in a way that was much less obvious. Those books were set in what is essentially now, or what has become an alternate past, and the thing that I kept to myself was my assumption that almost all of the characters were characters from the day in which I was writing those books, rather than the result of any attempt of mine to imagine how someone from the near future would perceive things. A character like Rydell, the hapless policeman [in the Bridge trilogy], really feels like a 90s guy. He thinks like a 90s guy and he speaks like a 90s guy and he basically is a 90s guy – there’s a lot of that in those books. And I found that this delighted me to do that, and to my amazement nobody complained. Nobody called me on it and said ‘Why do you have these archaic protagonists running around in this near future that you want us to believe in?’

RS: Your protagonists in Zero History , along with ones in Spook Country and other books, are very cosmopolitan. Their ability to function in a culturally dense cityscape is a key to their success. Do you think cosmopolitanism should be taught? Is it a form of literacy?

WG: I suppose it is a form a literacy. I try not to be too didactic a novelist, because I think that if I was I would be serving a fairly low function as an artist. But none of us are free of our biases, and I would think that it would be quite remarkable for me to write a protagonist who was a sympathetic character to any degree, who was either a racist, a tribalist, a nationalist, or a fundamentalist ideologue. Those are negatives for me, so I guess I would see the sympathetic characters in Spook Country as being defined more by their absence of characteristics like that than by anything in particular that they are into. They all seem to be people who are, to some extent, capable of caring about the people who are immediately around them. They also tend to be what I would see as not overly ambitious, although sometimes they just kind of take off. I sort of wind a character up and then set it down in a book and it goes off and develops its own mean, competitive edge, in which case I just let it do what it’s going to do, and I think that way in the end I’ll have a more naturalistic depiction of how people actually behave.

RS: Another author recently described to me a book he’s writing, which takes place in a future decimated by worst-case scenario global warming, but that’s in the background because the characters are focused on their own lives, finding happiness. That reminded me of your work, which often deals with thriving in whatever reality is given.

WG: Yeah, yeah, and the book you describe sounds like an entirely worthy project, as described. I’ve often thought about the real future, what it might be, since that’s the way science-fiction works in our society, but the kind of book you describe is one that we too seldom see, in which there’s been some extremely big and possibly bad change, and yet if you’re shooting for high naturalism you have to depict the characters going through everything that humans go through as they grow and get old and die. It’s not all about your plot points, you know? But closer to the traditional core of genre science-fiction, it’s all about the plot. The traditional version of that [book] would be that it’s all about the climate change. And it would also be about androgenic climate change, and the characters would get some time machine and go back and kill the guy who was about to invent the internal combustion engine. That’s a deliberately childish example, but that’s closer to what genre science-fiction has done, something broad like that. There are very few books that have attempted that sort of future. It’s probably easier to do something like that with alternative histories. You change one factor and Protestantism never happens and the Catholic church is ruling the world and you come in on characters who are just fully living their lives. So, it’s been done, though we think of works like that as falling outside the genre, but nonetheless they’re obviously science-fiction.

RS: What did you think of Inception?

WG: I loved it! Loved it. And I don’t love movies because of what I imagine the director was trying to do, I just love them when they work so brilliantly. I think the previous twelve months have been a really rich film year for me, because there have been three science-fiction films that I found, for different reasons, to be wonderfully satisfying: one was Moon, one was Splice, and one was Inception . I hadn’t thought about the fact that they all have single noun titles. That’s actually kind of scary. [laughs] Inception was the action film I always wanted to see. There’ve been so many times that I’ll be watching an action film and thinking ‘I could so love this if only it was ten times smarter.’ And Inception felt that way to me.

RS: I liked it too. I thought it was bold of Nolan to sort of radically re-conceive the idea of a dream state as a kind of stable holodeck.

WG: Yeah, after thinking about it and reading some reviews, what the script suggests that they’re doing doesn’t really have much to do with any psychological model of dreaming that I know of. I say this only having seen it once, and having subsequently read quite a few reviews, although I was fortunate to see it with almost no idea of what it was about. Just through sheer luck I got a completely spoiler-free viewing, partly because I went to see it the day it came out, which is something I never do, but a friend dragged me along. What they’re doing has very little to do with any experiential model of dreaming that I’ve had in my own life of dreams. They talk about building dreams. If what the characters are saying is true, in terms of what is going on in the movie, they are making these hard constructs into which they will go and also take the victim and play some psychodrama out. But those hard constructs also aren’t really stable, because they start breaking up with spectacular and surrealistically gorgeous CG effects, for no particular reason. Somehow I don’t think that’s what it’s about. It amazes me that people approach Inception as though it were a piece of hard science-fiction, as opposed to being a Borges story. The modality that it works in is the modality of a Borges story like The Aleph or The Circular Ruins . Those are stories that are closer to myth and fairy tale than they are to hard science-fiction. So, when people attack the premise as though the premise was a failure, I think it’s probably one of those cases of the critics’ expectations being the whole thing. Maybe it didn’t meet their expectations, but that could be because it was actually something else. I loved it, and I felt this extraordinary feeling of gratitude on leaving the theater. I think it was gratitude that it had actually been possible for somebody to spend that much money on a movie that I really loved. It’s been a long time since I had that feeling.




Zero History is available in bookstores everywhere.

David Cross is so deadpan, you might not even be able to tell he’s joking. Certainly when you type his text out and read it, it feels totally straight. That’s why it’s funny. He says things that are inappropriate or ridiculous in casual conversation, then moves on. It’s not that he’s “on”... more

David Cross is so deadpan, you might not even be able to tell he’s joking. Certainly when you type his text out and read it, it feels totally straight. That’s why it’s funny. He says things that are inappropriate or ridiculous in casual conversation, then moves on. It’s not that he’s “on” like a lot of comedians who aren’t comfortable unless someone’s laughing. Cross might prefer if you didn’t get it and reported a sarcastic remark as fact. Not so fast, David Cross. We’re onto you.

His new show gives Cross another vehicle for that type of humor. The Incredibly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret stars Cross as the title character. He created and wrote the show about an energy drink salesman sent to England to head up the company’s U.K. sales. Todd keeps lying about his accomplishments, his abilities and even his home address. It makes his bad decisions worse when he tries to cover for them.

Fans might not recognize Cross with normal skin tones. His most famous role could be Tobias on Arrested Development, where he painted himself blue as an aspiring Blue Man Group performer. He also created Mr. Show with Bob Odenkirk and popped up on The Colbert Report as liberal radio personality Russ Lieber. He’ll also be popping up on Arrested creator Mitch Hurwitz’ new show Running Wilde with Will Arnett, who also costars in Todd Margaret.

This summer had the press talking about David Cross twice. As Fox discussed their plans for adding Cross to the cast of Running Wilde, Cross geared up to launch Todd Margaret. Relaxing in a hotel room at The Beverly Hilton, Cross kept most of his attention on Todd Margaret. The beard he sports on Running Wilde was the only reference to his Fox show.

FT: Did you try out other female names for the last name?

DC: No, that just popped into my head and I was like, “Let’s go with it.” It just fits I think.

FT: Is it ever addressed in the series?

DC: You know what? It was in the script but in editing, we took them all out. I think one stays because we couldn’t cut around it but we did have in every script somebody going, “Margaret? That’s a girl’s name.” Every episode had that but we took it out in editing.

FT: Why’s that?

DC: It was a different joke for the show. It felt a little wacky and as we were editing it we were taking some of the overt wackiness of it out.

FT: Did you want to go blue and let Will Arnett drop F bombs?

DC: Yeah. Will’s character is probably the most fun to write for because he says the most vile, awful, heinous, sexist inappropriate shit. Those were really fun things to write for and IFC’s been great at saying, “We’re not going to bleep it. Write what you want.” There are a couple of words we can’t use that have different weight in the states than they do in the U.K. Specifically “cunt” which in the U.K. is like saying, “Oh, you jerk.” Here, I don't know, women have a problem with it. I don't know what it is. So we were encouraging ourselves to push the envelope on awful stuff that Will says.

FT: Is there a different version for the U.K.?

DC: Outside of maybe two or three things that I fought for and then IFC just said, “No, we like it better this way,” there are maybe two or three things but it’s pretty much the same thing. Although Channel 4 and all the stations in the U.K., you get to show more of the show because they’re not dependent on ad revenue. So there are some differences but that’s just in the stuff we get to show, the time. It’s not content differences.

FT: When Todd chugs energy drinks and starts ranting, did you just improvise or did you write that whole thing out?

DC: Well, we kind of had the advantage of taking the stuff I riffed in the pilot, because we reshot that, and then taking the best bits out and then making that the script for the pilot reshoot. So the only thing that was improvised was the Barack Obama thing I think. Over and over again, all day, I loved it. I love the energy drink, the cheap shit energy drink that we actually got that we put the labels on. I love that it was about 97 degrees Celsius in the café when we were shooting and just getting to do it over and over again all day was just a treat.

FT: What did it actually taste like?

DC: Whatever the cheapest they can get by the gross. I don’t even know what the real energy drink was.

FT: Did you have a spit bucket?

DC: No, because we were able to cheat a lot of it but I had to down a couple of them and you see it. I definitely let a bunch spill. Meisner, heavy Meisner.

FT: Is lying always funny?

DC: Unless you’re in politics. I mean, it’s funny when you work for the treasury or the banking industry. They love it. They love lying. Or in the pharmaceutical industry. Then it’s a rip snorter.

FT: On TV, is it funny?

DC: Oh, then no. No. Absolutely not.

FT: Why does Todd keep trying to cover up?

DC: He’s just one of those guys that that is in part why it’s so frustrating. You watch him, because any of us would at some point when they’re confronted with this would just go, “Okay, yes, all right, look, I’m sorry. I lied about this thing. You’re right, I screwed up but come on, let’s start over again.” He just never takes the golden opportunity that’s handed to him, especially from Dave’s character who clearly doesn’t believe anything he’s saying. He gives him a couple of outs constantly. In episode one I go, “I live at 21 and 50 Church Avenue.” Then I come to the office, he’s like, “Hey, I went on Google Earth, 21 and 50 Church Avenue.” “Oh yeah?” “Yeah, when were you going to tell me? How long were you going to keep that a secret from me?” “What?” “You lived in a hospital?” Because one of them’s a hospital and instead of going, “All right, I made that up,” I just go, “Oh, yeah, my dad was bipolar so whatever.”

FT: Isn’t it harder to keep coming up with those explanations than to just admit it?

DC: In real life, of course but you have to have a very bright, sophisticated genius writer to do that and we were lucky enough to get me.

FT: How do you describe your comedy? Is it even possible to articulate it?

DC: Well, you’re absolutely right so I just don’t describe my comedy. I let others if they choose to do it but I don’t. I agree with you, it is a hard thing to quantify. Also, when people write about the science of comedy, it’s just boring and detrimental almost.

FT: If I used words like extreme or surreal would I be on the right track?

DC: No. I don't think so. That’s up to you. It’s also subjective and I’m inside of it. I don’t see it as surreal. I can point to a Magritte painting and I can look at certain films and say, “Oh, that’s surreal” but comedy is not really. I don't think it’s really surreal.

FT: Has this become a double PR tour for you, with Running Wilde?

DC: Not really. People have asked questions which I think are understandable and inevitable but the focus is on Todd Margaret and the Running Wilde guys were here a couple days ago. My connection with that show is much different. This one I created, I wrote and I star in. That one I’m guest acting on here and there. Absolutely ecstatic that I get to be part of the show but that’s just acting.

FT: If that took off, would it make Todd Margaret a limited series?

DC: No, Todd Margaret is my absolute most important thing to me right now creatively. I mean, I have my butterfly collection but no, Todd Margaret is first and foremost. I have a story to tell. I want to tell it. I know where it goes. I had a blast writing it and shooting it. Literally, this is trite as hell, but the best cast and crew you could ever hope for. I think IFC is going to, I imagine, continue to support it and be excited about it. This is what I want to do. Eventually I’ll have to do something so I earn some money. I can’t go for years without making any money but I would do this until the story was satisfied. It’s so gratifying. I’m very proud of it.

FT: Being a solo project, is it more in your voice than other things you’ve done?

DC: No. I mean, the idea, the initial idea came from me but outside of that, I cowrote it with Shaun Pye. Outside of basically the pilot, it’s very collaborative. Between IFC, RDF and Channel 4, they’re all very encouraging and pretty much like, “Yeah, do what you want. We trust you.” Also there’s nothing autobiographical about it at all. It’s just this funny cool story. Maybe if I didn’t do standup it would feel more solo but it’s not.

FT: Is the Russ Lieber thing over?

DC: Oh God, yeah. I haven’t done that in years and years. That sort of had an unofficial ending I guess.

FT: They must have realized they didn’t need to fake a rival for him because he’d get real ones in politics.

DC: Right, right, as the show kind of found itself.

FT: Have you ever seen Tobias costumes for Halloween?

DC: Oh God yeah, I see pictures all the time. I’ve seen that a lot. This one guy got Tobias tattooed on his calf. That’s very odd.

The Incredibly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret premieres October 1 on IFC.

by AJ Focht School is back in session and this is your chance to grab that nerdy guy (or geeky girl) that you missed out on last year. But before you rush in head first there are a few things you should know. While Bob Suicide has been helping all you geeks get down with the right look (and smell!),... more

by AJ Focht

School is back in session and this is your chance to grab that nerdy guy (or geeky girl) that you missed out on last year. But before you rush in head first there are a few things you should know.

While Bob Suicide has been helping all you geeks get down with the right look (and smell!), I thought I would go a step further and offer tips for those of you who are perhaps contemplating dating a nerd for the first time. First of all, bear in mind the rules and rituals of geek bonding are very different from those that apply when you’re dating a member of the general population. Nerds tend to be a bit more, let’s admit it, eccentric than, well, normal people. What makes us nerds so great is that we fully commit ourselves to a project, or video game, or whatever – in the extreme. This can also be a drawback if you are not well versed in the ways of nerdom. Some of our habits, hobbies, and even speech can come off wrong if you are not privy to the way of the nerd.



Here are five helpful tips to make sure that you and your nerd don’t have an epic fail:

First and foremost I warn you of 1337. Most everyone is versed in the basics of 1337 sp34k (pronounced leet speak), knowing things like: g2g, brb, afk, ttyl, etc. Nerds take 1337 to a whole new level. We punch in acronyms for everything and use Lol Catz speak as well. If you don’t understand what we are saying it can be a huge turn off. I personally know a female nerd who refused a second date when the guy asked what she meant by, “Halo thar.”

The second thing you must know is, our princess is in another castle.

This is just one of millions of quotes that your nerd may drop on you from out of no where. Nerds love there quotes and will use them whenever they feel the situation is right. Your nerd may yell out, “Nuke ‘em Rico!” in the middle of the mall, be assured that this is not abnormal – unless it happens more than ten times a day (then you might have a case of geek Tourettes on your hands!). You will also be expected to know these seemingly random quotes and where they come from. If you don’t, they will end up keeping a running list of movies to show you and games you need to play.



[Yulia Suicide in Don't Panic]

Just for caution sake never ask them any favor starting with: “Will you kindly…” and, don’t panic, but don’t forget the cake is always a lie.

Another thing to be cautious of is invisible trophies; by which I of course mean achievements. If your nerd is a gamer, which not all nerds are, they are likely an achievement whore (though they may never admit to it). We all get a sick sense of satisfaction when we get an achievement. Achievement scores are becoming more common on every platform. Just think of it as our way of showing off how much of a nerd we are. Whatever you do, don’t question our sanity if we spend two hours reloading the same save to complete the near impossible (this is actually perfectly normal – and acceptable – geek behavior).

I would recommend practicing staying up late on occasion. You don’t need to be up till 4:00 AM all the time (although your nerd might be), but you should be able to do it at least once a month. The reason being, nerds love midnight releases. The average person might catch a big blockbuster film at midnight but a nerd will catch that and five more before the next big opening night. We want to buy our movies, games, and books at midnight release parties. Most importantly, we will want to bring you with us. We also like to stay out after these midnight releases, typically to go grab late-night breakfast. If you can make these events it will make us all that happier (and more obliged to do “civilian” things with you).

I also feel the need to warn you, virtually all nerds are well versed in the ways of the Zombie Apocalypse. It would not be unusual for your nerd to ask you what your ZA escape plan is at any given moment. We want to know that you are ready to survive with us through the ZA. Also keep in mind, in the event of the ZA we will not hesitate to put a bullet between your eyes if you are bitten. It is our way of saying “I love you.”



Speaking of “I love you.” “I know,” is a perfectly legitimate response to, “I love you.” Han Solo used it and who are we to argue with Han Solo.

-So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Tommy Lee gives good phone. He's the consummate professional when it comes to interviews. Don't be fooled by his easy going charm and natural flirtatiousness; Behind it lies a disarming intelligence and an instinct that knows exactly how to perpetuate and sell the rock & roll myth we all... more

Tommy Lee gives good phone. He's the consummate professional when it comes to interviews. Don't be fooled by his easy going charm and natural flirtatiousness; Behind it lies a disarming intelligence and an instinct that knows exactly how to perpetuate and sell the rock & roll myth we all want - and need - to buy into.

It's not that he's is being insincere - far from it - it's well documented that the drummer-turned-multi instrumentalist walks the walk as well as talking the talk. However, all rock & roll shenanigans aside, when it counts, Lee seriously has his shit together - like on the designated press day for his new Methods of Mayhem album, A Public Disservice Announcement.

Fielding questions from an endless procession of rock critics and music writers can be a tedious task. It's therefore not uncommon for artists to flake entirely or give jaded responses. However Lee is diligently going through his record label supplied phone list, giving his all and - no doubt - successfully connecting to each of the journalists on it on some level.

It's this balance of work vs. play that has helped Lee stay on top of his game for over three decades - that and the fact that he is still genuinely excited to be making music and talking about it with those that love it too. Thus, though SuicideGirls are not the type to wait around for the phone to ring, we found ourselves doing just that one Friday afternoon...


Tommy Lee: I'm sorry I was late. We've been going over each interview - I've been doing them for hours.

Nicole Powers: Last time we spoke you were very generous with your time, so I figured it was that kind of thing.

TL: Cool, cool.

NP: Are you just sat in an office somewhere, talking to people like me one after another after another.

TL: Pretty much, yeah, that's the drill.

NP: Well tell me what questions you're sick of answering, and I promise I'll avoid them.

TL: No, you know what? I got really excited about this [interview], because "A" I dig all the SuicideGirls stuff, and "B" it says here that you guys are premiering "All I Wanna Do," which is one of my fucking favorite tracks on the record. It's just nasty for the sake of being fun. You've got to have a good fucking sex song on the record. If you don't, you kind of suck right?

NP: Hell yeah. Especially on one of your records.

TL: Exactly. It'd be weird if there wasn't one...It's one of those tracks that had almost a Nine Inch Nails "Closer" vibe to it, kind of. It just started sounding more and more, as we were fuckin' with it, like a full on stripper track. That's where it just went. Just the sound of it is sexy, you know.

I don't know if you know about the process, how the record was done; I basically collaborated with the entire world on this record. The tracks were written and recorded, and then I put one track up online a week for thirteen weeks - we did 13 tracks. People could download the songs, record on them and send me back their submissions.

I would go through them and pick out the best of the best and use little snippets from all around the world to complete the process. So we had these really bitchin' melodies, and hand drums and stuff from India - if you listen to the song, you can hear that stuff in there. And it just started turning into this really sexy sounding track. That's kind of how that thing just took off...There's another fuck song on the record. It's called "Fight Song," but that's more of a hate fuck.

NP: Yeah, that's kind of angry.

TL: Totally. That's for the people that like to get a little more aggressive, you know.

NP: We last caught up with you in February 2009, when you were promoting Mötley Crüe's Saints of Los Angeles release. What's been going on with you since then?

TL: I've been working on this Methods of Mayhem record for a little over a year now. Mötley decided to take 2010 off, so I was like, this is a perfect time to make a new Methods record. 'Cause the last one I did was in 2000 and it's like, fuck, 10 years went by; it's time to make another one, let's do this.

NP: The last Methods of Mayhem record was born in part out of your stint in jail. At the time you were also getting into Buddhism...

TL: Yeah, yeah.

NP: So the Methods of Mayhem project is ironically part of a greater spiritual journey for you.

TL: It totally is. I call it my adult playground, or my adult sandbox. I totally get to go fucking crazy stylistically. I get to do whatever it is I want. Because I can't really do that with Mötley. We do a certain thing and that's what we do. So when I get a chance to do this, I fucking love it. I just get to go crazy.

NP: Right, 'cause your role in Mötley is very defined; you're the drummer. Whereas with Methods of Mayhem, you're playing guitar, you're doing vocals...

TL: Yeah, pretty much everything right. Once again, I could just let it fucking rip. I love, love, love to sing and play guitar too, you know, and keyboards, and pianos, and turntables, and all kinds of shit. I get a chance to play with it all...Like I said, it's my chance to sort of freak out.

NP: How does the creative process work for you? 'Cause it's got to be very different from working with Crüe, where you're part of a machine that functions in a very specific way. With Methods of Mayhem there's a blank page, and you have to create something out of nothing. How do you go about that?

TL: It's kind of like whatever you're feeling, you know. I'm a fan of so many different styles of music. Whether it's a making a nasty dance club track or making a really aggressive metal track like "Fight Song," or a pop/rock tune like "Time Bomb" or "Blame." I am all over the place. I truly get to exercise all the fucking demons when it comes to this.

NP: I love the progression of the album from rock through to dance. I have a dance background, so the last three songs ("All I Wanna Do," "Back To Before" and "Party Instructions"), the way they roll into each other, that really hits a sweet spot for me,

TL: That's fuckin' awesome. I'm glad. That's so cool. Finally! You have no idea how many fuckin' interviews I do with a lot of fuckin' rock meatheads that just don't get that. I'm telling you, you're the first person that actually appreciated that. I did that for people like you, so that you could enjoy those songs back to back. Because what happened was, I had this very eclectic record that had pop, rock, and electro dance stuff on it, and I couldn't really [make it work] by making the record go all over the place. So what I did was I sequenced it so it took you on a journey through some rock, metal, pop, and then I wanted to close the album out with full-on club banger shit.

NP: What's the actual nuts and bolts process of laying the tracks down?

TL: I have a really bitching studio at my place. That's pretty much where I spend most of my time. If I'm writing something, I'll kind of compile things. That's what I kind of do. I'll be like, "That will be cool for Mötley," or "That's bitchin' for Methods," or "Maybe another artist would like this," and I'll send that track on. So it's a little bit of everything. I kind of compile it there, and then I figure out where it's going to go.

People ask too if I have some sort of method; it really changes from track to track depending on what I'm inspired with. Sometimes it's a fuckin' badass drum beat that will start a song. Sometimes it's a guitar riff. Sometimes it's a piano progression, a melody in my head, a lyric, an idea. Some sort of event, or some sort of experience that happened that's like, "Oh fuck, I've got to write about this." It's always something, it's just never the same. It always starts somewhere within those things I just mentioned.

NP: You're quite the accomplished musician on the quiet. It's not just drums, it's guitars, keyboards, computer programming...

TL: I love it all. I do. I really, really do man. And a lot of people don't know that, that's what's cool too. I think the more I do this, the more people get to know that I don't just play the drums.

NP: What's the current line up of Methods of Mayhem? I know DJ Aero has been a staple.

TL: Yep. DJ Aero is still with me. I have a new guitar player, J3, his real name is John Allen III, and a new drummer, Will Hunt, who's my buddy. [We're] minus TiLo. He's a super hip-hop kid. He's off doing his own thing, so you won't hear of any of those hip-hop elements or influences on the record because he's not part of it. It's just the four of us

NP: You released the "Time Bomb" video last week.

TL: Yeah, did you see it?

NP: I certainly did. It cracks me up. When you were editing that video, how did you decide on the optimal number of crotch shots to express what you wanted to say?

TL: [laughs] I knew you were going to ask that. That's hilarious! It has a lot to do with the director's girl. She was all about the crotch shots, so I think she put several of those in there. I like my crotch, and so I didn't say anything bad about it. I was like, "Oh, that's cool."

NP: You aim to please.

TL: [laughs] That's funny. I knew you were going to ask that.

NP: It had to be asked. You can't say that I'm the only person that's raised the issue today?

TL: You actually are the first person that's brought that up.

NP: No way.

TL: I'm serious.

NP: I don't know whether that's a good or bad thing.

TL: No, it's a good thing. It's funny because I wondered if anybody else was going to bring that up.

NP: And only a SuicideGirls had the nerve.

TL: I figured that only my girlfriend brings that up, but you brought that up.

NP: Well you can rely on SuicideGirls to go there. You're not worried that your crotch may distract from the music?

TL: No. It's just enhancement, right?

NP: I feel it enhances the situation.

TL: Right on.

NP: Talking about enhancing the situation, I don't know if you know this, but your body has actually been worked on by a Suicide Girl - Bobbysox, who's a tattoo artist.

TL: Oh, yeah. She is so cool. She actually did this really cool mermaid on my leg...She's a fuckin' amazing artist.

NP: How long did that take?

TL: We spent, fuck, probably 6 or 7 hours together. She didn't finish it, and, you know what? If you talk to her, I don't know, she's not still mad, but she got upset. Because she did this really bitchin' outline, and, fuck it, I was really impatient and got a buddy of mine [to fill it in]. I really wanted to finish it and get the color done and stuff. I told her I finished it and she was like, "Oh my god, how could you do that? Somebody else finished my work!"

NP: Dude, I'm going to kick your ass for that one. You can't fuck with someone else's art. It'd be like telling Michelangelo, "Oh, I just finished painting the Sistine Chapel. I got someone else to color it in. "

TL: That's pretty bad. I think it's probably like some tattoo taboo isn't it?

NP: That seriously is. You have committed a tattoo crime.

TL: I've committed a tattoo crime - fuck! I told her, I have some more room on my legs that I would like her to play with, so maybe I can do a full piece by her. But, fuck, I was so inpatient and my excitement overwhelmed me. I just fuckin' went for it.

NP: Michelangelo made the Pope wait, I'm sorry, a Suicide Girl can make Tommy Lee wait.

TL: [laughs] Oh, fuck, that's good. I've got to remember that.

NP: You're in so much shit. We have to figure out an appropriate punishment.

TL: Okay. [laughs] Oh, that's fuckin' great. You know what? She said that she's not mad, but I really think she still is.

NP: Oh, she's mad, yeah. If you were an artist, and you cared about your shit, you would be mad.

TL: I know. Fuck! That was bad. That was bad. When she tattoos on me next, she's gonna fuckin' grind on me extra hard I'm sure. She'll be like, "Yeah, you fuck. Here you go. Thanks for finishing my work."

NP: Yeah, she'll use an extra large needle so it's extra painful.

TL: Exactly, right? The machine is set on stun. Oh fuck, here we go.

NP: Well, I should let you go because it’s late on a Friday afternoon, but before I do, I should ask, will you be touring with this album?

TL: Yeah, actually the guys started up showing up yesterday for rehearsals. We got our first show, it's just one song, a performance on Jay Leno's show this Wednesday night. Then we're gearing up for the end of fall / winter dates. I'll have those tour dates to announce shortly, but yeah, we're getting ready to go do it. How fun.

NP: And you said that Crüe were taking 2010 off, so does that mean that you're back together in 2011?

TL: Yeah, the summer of '11, we're going to fire up Crüe Fest again. So there's a couple of months in the summer when that's going to happen. In the meantime, I'm taking Methods out to go rock that shit.



A Public Disservice Announcement is in stores now. Go to TommyLee.com/ for news on all things Tommy Lee and upcoming Methods of Mayhem tour dates.

by Nicole Powers With her idiosyncratic style, DIY aesthetic, and kick-ass attitude, Tank Girl, who made her debut in Deadline in 1988, is without question a proto-SG. I was therefore jolly chuffed to receive a spiffy, glossy bound copy of her latest adventure, Skidmarks. Written by Tank Girl co-creator... more

by Nicole Powers

With her idiosyncratic style, DIY aesthetic, and kick-ass attitude, Tank Girl, who made her debut in Deadline in 1988, is without question a proto-SG. I was therefore jolly chuffed to receive a spiffy, glossy bound copy of her latest adventure, Skidmarks. Written by Tank Girl co-creator Alan Martin and drawn by the awesomely awesome* Rufus Dayglo, the gzillion thrills a minute plot is basically Wacky Races for an audience with a penchant for punk rock, smelly chicks (Tankie rolls with a pungent aroma), on-fire farts (see previous) and esoteric references.





Having grown up in a universe somewhat similar to Martin and Dayglo’s, these seemingly random and bizarre nods to popular culture perhaps make more sense to me than most. However I was particularly confused and disturbed by a reference to Genesis, the well-shite** British band that was once fronted by Phil “I-Dumped-My-Woman-By-Fax” Collins. If Tank Girl had been kicking their collective butts, or nuking the entire world supply of We Can’t Dance albums, I might have understood. However the band’s inclusion in a non-painful, non-violent, and non-deadly context seemed, quite frankly, the far side of wrong.

Then I turned another page, and, thanks to an essay Martin had helpfully included in Skidmarks, much about life, the universe, and Tank Girl suddenly became clear:

Since reading Martin’s Cool-Crap-Continuum manifesto, I’ve begun to reassess the world according to its terms. Hipsters are so cool they’re clearly crap; sherry (the fortified wine, not an SG) is so spectacularly naff it can only be drunk in public by the coolest of the cool; then you have pretty much the whole Silverlake zip code, which became so painfully trendy at one point that no one who really knew what’s up could be seen within a 7 mile radius of Sunset Junction (fortunately that tragically-hip situation is now somewhat rectified). As for Justin Bieber, I’m still trying to figure out his precise place in the continuum, or if he’s just the exception that proves the rule***.



The Cool-Crap-Continuum is reprinted by kind permission of Tom Green, who said I could – honest. Tank Girl and all related characters (c) 2010 Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett. All Rights Reserved.

The trade paperback of Tank Girl: Skidmarks, which collects together the 4-issue Skidmarks mini-series for the first time, is out now from Titan Books. A trailer for Bad Wind Rising, the forthcoming shocking new saga, which sees Tank Girl kicking Booga to the curb, is available to view on ‘ver YouTubes.

* Throwing luv n’ pencils right back at ya.

** “Shite” is a British colloquialism for the word “shit,” which, when correctly pronounced, rhymes with the word “kite.”

*** Seems there’s no beating the crap out of that underage tool.

Famously discovered by Dustin Hoffman, whose children were fans of his one-man plays in Manhattan’s East Village, Jonah Hill was already going places in the comedy business when he had the good fortune to acquire a second mentor in comedy mogul Judd Apatow -- the rest is history. After killing with... more

Famously discovered by Dustin Hoffman, whose children were fans of his one-man plays in Manhattan’s East Village, Jonah Hill was already going places in the comedy business when he had the good fortune to acquire a second mentor in comedy mogul Judd Apatow -- the rest is history. After killing with smallish parts in Apatow-directed comedies The 40 Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, the acerbic young comedian (then 24) landed a lead role specifically tailored to his strengths in Superbad, a teen bromance more foul-mouthed and uninhibited than any of the 80s comedies that inspired it. Superbad’s massive success opened up even more doors for Hill, who, at age 27, is already broadening his horizons with more dramatic fare like this year’s indie smash Cyrus and the forthcoming sports drama Moneyball, opposite Brad Pitt. He’s not likely to forget his comedy roots, however, as evidenced by his straight-man role opposite shot-out-of-a-cannon British comedian Russell Brand in this summer’s sleeper hit Get Him to the Greek. With the Greek DVD dropping this week, SuicideGirls called up Hill to get an update on his whirlwind life.




Ryan Stewart: One thing I enjoyed about Get Him to the Greek is that it sort of revels in rock star behavior, even though in the real world that’s pretty much a thing of the past. It should come back, right?

Jonah Hill: You know, I don’t know about that. After shooting the movie I personally needed a break from rock star behavior for about…oh, forever. [laughs] I think you can watch the movie and take a few different things away from it: you can maybe think that, yeah, there should be more rock star stuff going on out there. But I kind of watch it and think, hey, being normal and just hanging out at home isn’t really so bad either!

RS: I guess there are no longer any rock stars around to misbehave anyway, unless you count Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. I can see Paris goading someone into putting drugs in their ass at the airport the way it happens in the movie, can’t you?

JH: [laughs] I don’t know! Look, I think people should do whatever makes them happy, you know? If you want to live that kind of rock star lifestyle – and I’m not referring to them, because I don’t know them – but if you want to live a rock star lifestyle that’s your prerogative. You should just try and be safe and happy. And if you don’t want to do it, then don’t!

RS: Did you use method acting in that airport scene, by the way? Or was that just a good performance on your part?

JH: Well, you know, I spent the weeks beforehand starting out with a quarter and then I worked my way up to a watermelon…[laughs] So yeah, that was a very strong method acting choice.

RS: Did Russell ever do anything wacky on the set, or was it mostly good behavior from him? I just saw that TMZ video of him getting “citizen’s arrested” at an airport.

JH: All I ever really saw was him being a really hard-working, great guy. He really is a wonderful guy. He’s extremely smart and extremely nice, and I really like him and the people he has around him. I mean, he definitely has his eccentricities and things like that, but he’s a really good guy. I appreciate him a lot, you know?

RS: Was there anything you two did together on screen that you were especially proud of, but that maybe got cut out in editing anyway?

JH : Yeah, there was a whole sequence where we did a bunch of cocaine and then we just ran through Central Park. Russell’s character makes me do cocaine with him and then we go jogging in Central Park and there’s this really cool, hilarious montage, but the problem with it was that it came right after the absinthe montage, which was better, so we couldn’t really have two weird, “us being messed up” montages right next to each other because that would be weird, you know?

RS: Right. I bet you also went back and added more Puff Daddy material after you saw him knocking it out of the park. He pretty much owns the movie.

JH: Yeah, I think Nick may have added more stuff in once we knew. As soon as he showed up we became really excited about how hilarious he was. Everyone was fired up about him, definitely, because he was so great.

RS: Were you riffing off pages of jokes and not really lingering on any one thing, or were you all about tinkering and trying to get each joke down perfectly?

JH: I think I would say that both would be an accurate way of thinking about it. I like to improvise a lot, so I’ll try a million different things and see what sticks, but then at the same time when I see that something is working I’ll start thinking about how to word it perfectly and how to make sure that we’re getting it across in the cleanest way possible. And when I say “clean” I don’t mean content-wise, I mean the best-delivered package, delivering it to the audience in the best way possible.

RS: I noticed that your character from Forgetting Sarah Marshall isn’t ever mentioned in this film at all, even though Russell is playing his same character. Does your guy exist in the universe of Get Him to the Greek? Is he at home watching all of this on television or something?

JH: [laughs] I think he must be in some weird prison in Hawaii.

RS: Did you actually think about tossing something like that in? A quick nod to him?

JH: Oh yeah, we kind of talked about every possible thing you can imagine for him. We thought of all sorts of ways to work it in. It was like ‘Are they going to meet each other?’ ‘Should we just reference him?’ And then at the end of the day we just kind of decided that he’s one guy and this is going to be a different guy.

RS: You didn’t want to confuse the audience?

JH: Yeah. We knew that we didn’t want him to be the same person that I was going to play in this movie, so we figured let’s just not even waste time explaining it. Let’s just go with the fact that one guy is one guy and the other guy is a different guy, and not even really have it be a discussion. That’s kind of how we approached it.

RS: Do you have any weird tastes in movies that people wouldn’t assume? Do you secretly love Highlander movies or something?

JH: I think that my tastes wouldn’t necessarily reflect what you know me for in all cases. Of course I do love all of the classic comedies that you could imagine, but I also really love Paul Thomas Anderson. I love Alexander Payne and Scorsese and also Spike Jonze and Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach. I really like those filmmakers a lot, and I also love Bennett Miller, who I just worked with. I made a drama with him called Moneyball, and we just finished that. So, I don’t know, I do like all kinds of different things. I have very eclectic tastes in music also, so it would be just as hard to answer something like ‘What kind of music do you like’ because I have super-eclectic tastes in music.

RS: So, would you say that the comedy duo of you and Russell Brand is more or less retired at this point? Or is there a trilogy idea kicking around?

JH: I think anything’s possible, so I don’t really know. I don’t really even think like that, I only think about what the story is that we’re trying to tell and what kind of movie we’re trying to make as opposed to ‘Let’s figure out something that we can do with this person,’ you know? That said, I love Russell and I would love to work with him again, but it just all depends on what it is as opposed to who it is, you know? It’s more like ‘What are we trying to make here?’ It can’t be ‘Let’s find something for us to do together, no matter what it is.’

RS: You’ve been pretty vocal about wanting to transition into directing at some point in the near future. Do you admire the way Ben Affleck was able to pull off that 180 degree change? People are going to think of him primarily as a director now.

JH: Oh yeah, I admire it beyond comprehension. He’s kind of the perfect example of that, although Jon Favreau is a great example too. And also Ron Howard is a great example of it too, you know? Yeah, man, I don’t know Ben Affleck – I met him maybe once or something – but just as a fan I think that it’s incredible to make that transition. I look at it like that’s exactly what I want to do, and he just kind of pulled it off flawlessly! But you have to also remember that the guy won an Oscar for screenwriting, you know?

RS: Good point. When should we look for your first effort behind the camera?

JH: I would say hopefully I’ll start in the next year or two, definitely. That’s kind of what I’m gunning for. I don’t know what it’s going to be, though, and I wouldn’t want to speak on what kind of movie it’s even going to be, because then it might end up being something completely different from this awesome thing that everyone was waiting on. But it really is my goal, and I am trying to figure out how to accomplish it.





Get Him to the Greek is available September 28th on DVD and Blu-ray.