Lonely Island Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Like Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, you goofed around with your best friends in grade school; perhaps, like them, you even extended that goofball camaraderie into high school and university and beyond, as they did. It is, however, fairly certain that you and your friends -- unlike them -- did not parlay that lifelong tradition of laughter into a series of virally infectious internet shorts (released under the banner "The Lonely Island") that earned you jobs at a cultural-institution sketch comedy show and then into the star, director and co-star roles in a major-studio motion picture. But, sitting around a gleaming table at a San Francisco four-star hotel, Samberg, Schaffer and Taccone still give the impression they're goofing off and trying to make each other laugh instead of promoting a major motion picture -- and that easy sense of friends-and-fun is up on the screen in Hot Rod. Samberg stars as would-be stuntman Rod Kimble; Schaffer took the director's chair; Taccone plays Rod's younger stepbrother (and videographer) Kevin. The threesome spoke about stuntwork, getting beaten up by your idols, the unavailable-on-DVD '80s epic Rad -- and much more; Cinematical's questions are indicated.

Cinematical: Let's start by talking about those Saturday Night Live digital shorts -- what did you learn from those that you were able to apply to Hot Rod, and what working habits did you have from those that were no help whatsoever making Hot Rod?

Akiva Schaffer: Well, the first part's easier to answer than the second part ...

Andy Samberg: Oh, the second part's easier ...

Akiva Schaffer: Well, I'll take the first part and you take the second! This is gonna work out great! ... And what you just saw happen pretty much answers the first part, which is that -- and it kind of goes before even the shorts, (even the pre-SNL shorts), since we decided to move to Tinseltown , as we call it, and tried to make it. ...

Andy Samberg: We do NOT call it Tinseltown!

Akiva Schaffer: We do ...

Jorma Taccone: I just found out recently it's called 'Los Angeles.'

Andy Samberg: He would give the DMV his address and say 'Tinseltown, USA."

Akiva Schaffer: But, doing all those shorts, I was amazed how much on the set of a movie, once you realize what the 200 people around you are actually doing, and you know their names and you're not as intimidated by the buzzing around of the 200 people -- the wardrobe people are just worrying about wardrobe, the lighting people are just worrying about lights -- how much it would actually boil right back down to the three of us and a couple of friends. Once everything got quiet and it was time to actually shoot, there was really, actually, kind of no difference between doing a short and doing this thing in terms of (how) you're just trying to make the little scenes work. It gets very small right after it gets very big.

Ian McShane, whose image in the popular imagination has recently taken a rather drastic turn -- "He used to be such a nice antiques dealer, but now it's 'c*cksucker' this, and 'f*ck' that ..." -- will be going in yet another new direction with his newest movie role. According to this morning's Variety, McShane will appear in the upcoming Lonely Island (AKA SNL -- and Lazy Sunday -- team Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone and  Akiva Schaffer) project, Hot Rod. As we reported earlier, the film -- in which Samberg stars -- tells the story of "an accident-prone daredevil who plans to jump Snake River on a moped in an effort to emulate his hero Evel Knievel and win over his hard-to-please stepfather." (Because, you know, most adults are impressed by idiotic stunts from their kids.) McShane will play the stepdad, which should give him a chance to both swear copiously and be funny, something Al Swearengen does mostly unintentionally. Plus, he'll get to wear clean clothes for once.

Though there's no indication of a start-date in Variety's latest update, when the film was originally announced the intention was to get to work next month, after SNL finished for the summer. Assuming McShane will be done shooting We Are Marshall by then, one assumes the project is still on the same schedule.