For your reading enjoyment, I’ve pulled together a list of 100 of my favorite quotes from the various interviews I conducted for Premium Hollywood, Bullz-Eye, Popdose, and The Virginian-Pilot this year, along with the links to the original pieces where available. As you can see, I had some extremely interesting conversations in 2009. Let us all keep our fingers crossed that I’m able to chat with just as many fascinating individuals in 2010…

1. Pamela Adlon: “In the first season (of ‘Californication’), when we had the threesome with the nipple clamps, I was, like, ‘I don’t get this, I don’t know how you’re gonna do it.’ And then, all of a sudden, there’s a crane with a camera hanging over our heads, and you’re, like, ‘Okayyyyyyy. But how are you gonna sell this? How are you gonna make it work?’ And they ended up shooting it brilliantly, cutting it together, and it just all ended up working without me having to compromise my own personal morals.”

2. Jonathan Ames: “After my first novel, my mother said to me, ‘Why don’t you make your writing more funny? You’re so funny in person.’ Because my first novel was rather dark. And I don’t know, but something about what she said was true. ‘Yes, why don’t I?’ Maybe I was afraid to be funny in the writing. But since then, seven books later, almost everything I’ve done has a comedic edge to it.”

3. Ed Asner: “I loved journalism until the day my journalism teacher, a man I revered, came by my desk and said, ‘Are you planning on going into journalism?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘I wouldn’t.’ I said, ‘Well, why not?’ He said, ‘You can’t make a living.’”

4. Sean Astin: “When somebody brings up a movie (of mine) that I haven’t heard about in a long time, I feel like a 70-year-old pitcher at a bar somewhere, and somebody walks in and says, ‘Oh, my God, I was in St. Louis and I saw you. You pitched a shutout.’ It’s real. I really did do that, because someone today remembers it.”

5. Darryl Bell: “The legend of ‘Homeboys in Outer Space’ has become much more incendiary than the actual show. It’s funny how I usually challenge most people who talk about how much they disliked ‘Homeboys’ to name me five episodes. Most of them can’t, because they just bought into the ‘oh, it’s awful, just the title. Oh, it’s terrible.’ What’s interesting is that I had a great conversation with Chi McBride, who was doing ‘The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer,’ which, if you want to talk about in terms of the imagery of what was wrong, that show was much more infamous than ‘Homeboys.’ Yet it’s not remembered in the same way because the title didn’t grab you in the same way. I remember Chi pulled me aside and he was, like, ‘Look, everyone who is criticizing what you’re doing would take your job from you in two seconds. All of them. So all I can tell you is that this is one blip on both of our careers, and we are moving on.’”

6. Adam Campbell: “For some reason, people always pick on the British sensibility, and we always come across as stupid, but remember: we used to run this country!”

7. Nestor Carbonell: “Let me make this perfectly clear: I do not wear make-up, and I do not wear eye-liner. This is something I’ve had to deal with my whole life. I remember I was in college in Boston, I had a commercial agent, and they sent me out for some print commercial stuff. And they called me into the office and said, ‘Look, we called you in to talk to you because we just want you to know that…well, we don’t think you need to wear eyeliner.’ And I’m, like, ‘What?’ ‘Yeah, it’s okay, you don’t have to wear it for print ads.’ ‘No, I’m not wearing eyeliner!’ And I kept dabbing my eyes and saying, ‘Look! No eyeliner! I’m not wearing any!’”

8. Elaine Cassidy: “The last two days of shooting (‘Harper’s Island’) was probably the most hardcore, the coldest anyone has ever been. It was like your head was freezing, and my motivation for most scenes was, ‘The minute this scene is over, I’m heading straight over to that heater to get warm.’”

9. Chris Cornell: “I started as a drummer, so I sort of took on singing duties by default. I had sung backgrounds and some lead vocals from behind the drums in different bands that I’d been in, and I’d gotten great responses for the songs I would sing. I really started pursuing the possibility of being a lead singer based on the fact that I was working a full-time restaurant job and then playing gigs at night, hauling drums around. One day, it just dawned on me that, ‘Hey, I could be in a band and be the singer, and it would be a lot easier!’”

10. Bryan Cranston: “When ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ was over, I was looking for a drama more than a comedy…but if it was a comedy that came up, it would have to be as well-written as ‘Malcolm’ was, and it would have to be a different kind of character than I played on that show. That’s harder to come by. In drama, there were more opportunities, more options for me, and when I read (‘Breaking Bad’), it was just, ‘Good night, Nurse! I’m going after this sucker!'”

11. David Cross: “I had this sketch group or comedy-show thing that I used to do, and I kind of recruited Sam (Seder) and his friend and partner, Jon Benjamin, to do stuff for that. It was really back in the day when you just had a shitty job that paid the rent, and you spent the bulk of your time just drinking, getting high, playing softball, and putting on these dumb shows. But in a good way.”

12. Richard Curtis: “(Choosing actors is) a very serious business. I was taught this by Mike Newell, who was an obsessive auditioner. I mean, obsessive. And when we were doing low budget movies, he saw it as basically a way of rehearsing the movie. By the time anyone got the part, they’d been in three times, done it, thought it through, and talked it through, so they didn’t need to get any notes when we were shooting it. So trying to find Talulah Riley or particularly trying to find Tom Sturridge (for ‘Pirate Radio’) was a long journey. We must’ve seen 50 or 60 people, everyone between the ages of 20 and 28 in the UK, and you were just looking for that strange moment that’s a bit like love, where suddenly the lines take off rather than fill you with shame and embarrassment.”

13. Andy Dick: “I went to network on a handful of pilots, and going to network is the most stressful situation anybody can ever be in. You’re supposed to be on point, you’re supposed to be at the top of your game, the funniest you can be, in about five minutes, in front of people wearing suits who really don’t care, and they’ve probably already picked their person, but they have to see a handful just to satisfy the process. It’s the most horrible, horrible process known to man. I wouldn’t want anybody to go through it.”

14. Hugh Dillon: “(‘Hard Core Logo’) was really what got me into the whole acting thing, ‘cause I just got to work with such a great director and a great cast. And, y’know, he allowed me to do a lot of stuff. I wrote the ending to that movie. So that movie was really…I just thought, ‘You know, I fucking like acting!’”

15. Chiwetel Ejiofor: “I think that this generation has witnessed, like, incredible change. And I sometimes wonder whether every generation feels that way. You know, maybe they do. The generation before me would have witnessed the end of the Second World War. They would have witnessed the first man on the moon. Do you know what I mean? They would have seen these seismic changes and gone, ‘Does everybody see it like this?’ And then the next generation…I was born in the late 70’s, so I was sort of party to the end of apartheid, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the election of Barack Obama. And you sort of feel, like, ‘Wow, this is so much,’ you know? But you really hope that the next generation absolutely does take things that they haven’t seen themselves or with their own eyes, and that they watch programs like this and realize that anything…anything…is achievable.”

16. Antonio Elias: “When I was first on (the ‘Star Trek’) set, doing the walk through with Chris Hemsworth and Faran Tahir, who plays Captain Robau, the first day we were actually filming our dialogue on the bridge set of the ship, the detail on that set was unbelievable. It was just…everything just looked real. I remember we were walking through with JJ (Abrams) and his first AD, and I literally had to stop and was, like, ‘Guys, I’m sorry, but I’m totally nerding out right now. Am I the only one that’s nerding out right now?’ They started laughing, because it was just so cool. It was, like, ‘What am I doing here?’”

17. Nick Frost: “Eight years ago, I was a waiter, and I didn’t have a pot to piss in. And now…? It’s like I said to my wife: I love the fact that, if I was in a restaurant and Steven Spielberg walked in, I could go up to him and say, ‘Hey, mate, how are you?’ I think that’s pretty amazing, actually.”

18. Jim Gaffigan: “I’m kind of a guy who’s missing a little bit of the guy gene. I love steak, but the notion of golfing is the last thing I would want to do. I love women, but I’m also a mama’s boy, and some of my best friends are women. So I’m kinda half guy’s guy.”

19. Corey Glover: “I always thought that the Grammys were, you know, the industry patting itself on the back. There is nothing wrong with that, and I appreciate it for what it is. But, you know, the day after we got this Grammy, I got on a subway and went back to Brooklyn. A Grammy and a token will get you on the subway. I appreciate it, and it’s great, and people look at it and say, ‘Wow, that’s really cool!’ And it is very cool. It’s very interesting, and I love it. But I’ve still got to get to work. In fact, what it means is that I’ve really got to get to work now, because, y’know, most people are expecting things from you that…well, I don’t know what they’re expecting, but whatever it is has got to be better than this piece of brass, you know?”

20. Bobcat Goldthwait: “Kurt (Cobain) was a fan of my standup, which was pretty weird. I know when people hear that, it’s kind of like finding out that Jimi Hendrix really liked Buddy Hackett, but he interviewed me at a college radio station before they broke and did Bleach. And then, like, about two years later, I was opening for Nirvana at these huge sports arenas.”

21. Elliott Gould: “Groucho Marx, in his later days, gave me the best review I’ve ever had and probably will ever have. I changed a light bulb over his bed, and when I came off of his bed with the used one after putting the new one in, Groucho said, ‘That’s the best acting I’ve ever seen you do.’”

22. David S. Goyer: “You know, we didn’t intend to have so many British people (in ‘FlashForward.’) Basically, it was who came through the door first. We cast Joe Fiennes first. We decided we wanted him to be American. I had seen him play American before a number of times, I knew he could do a pretty good American accent. So we decided, alright, he’s American. I’m ashamed to say that Sonya Walger…I didn’t actually realize that the actress in ‘Tell Me You Love Me’ was the same actress as in ‘Lost’ – I thought they were two different actresses – but her accent was quite good in ‘Tell Me You Love Me,’ so that happened. When Jack Davenport and Dominic Monaghan came along, we cast Sonya and Joe first, they said, ‘What about playing American?’ And I said, ‘You’re too late, our quota has already been filled.’”

23. Javier Grillo-Marxuach: “ABC Family wanted a Latino lead in (‘The Middleman.’) They thought that, because I’m Latino, it would be a great match. It’s funny because when Kate Juergens, who is the senior VP of ABC Family, called me with that suggestion, I was, like, ‘Absolutely not.’ She was, like, ‘Wait a minute, but you’re Latino. Don’t you want to put Latinos on TV?’ ‘Well, I do, but I don’t want to make this character into a stereotype. I don’t want there to be necessarily be salsa music playing whenever she gets on the screen and stuff like that.’”

24. Greg Grunberg: “I never root for a failure. I learned that when we were on ‘Felicity.’ There was a show that failed on the lot, and suddenly all of this food showed up on our set. I was, like, ‘What is this?’ And they said, ‘Oh, they cancelled this other show right before their lunch.’ And I said, ‘Throw that food away! We don’t want to touch that food! There’s no way I’m eating it!’ So I never root for anybody, because it could happen to you in two seconds.”

25. Sammy Hagar: “I would be happy to try to do a record with Van Halen. But they’ve only done one record since I left the band. They did one record, the Gary Cherone thing, and that’s it. What the fuck is the problem? You know, don’t blame me. Don’t be pointing at me and saying, ‘Fucking Hagar, fucking Hagar.’ I’m here, brother!”

26. Daryl Hall: “(‘She’s Gone’) was well-played in the R&B scene, and then ‘Sara Smile,’ which was on the silver album (Hall and Oates), was the third single released, and that broke in the R&B community, too. So our first success was on black radio – which was sort of natural, given our background – and then we crossed over onto pop radio. So that’s really how we came in: very much through the back door.”

27. Harry Hamlin: “I loved playing (Aaron Echols on ‘Veronica Mars.’) I was really sad when I got my head blown off, but…that seems to happen to me. I seem to be murdered on all of these shows. But, okay, as long as the checks don’t bounce, I’m all right with that. Besides, when Aaron Echols was killed, as I recall, he’d just had sex with a beautiful young girl, he was smoking a Cuban cigar and drinking a rare, 18-year-old brandy, and watching himself on television. If you gotta go, I think that’s probably the way to go.”

28. Dhani Harrison: “We were sitting around one day, and (Alex Rigopolos) just said to me, ‘Do you think they would ever go for a Beatle (‘Rock Star’) game?’ ‘It would be amazing, wouldn’t it?’ I said to him. Actually, I think I said, ‘It would be amazing because I could kick your ass at ‘I Am the Walrus’ while dressed as a wizard in Shea Stadium.’”

29. Lance Henriksen: “We’d be doing these really dark, dark metaphoric stories (on ‘Millennium’), and occasionally it would come in on you, because you do long hours to begin with, so you’re tired at the end of the day, working into the night. A couple of times, I went, ‘I’ve got to see the sun; I’ve got to go to Hawaii and lay on a beach, man, this is burning me!’”

30. Brian Henson: One of the criticisms of “Farscape” when we were on the air was that it was hard to catch up, that if you missed a few episodes and then tuned in, you might feel lost, and that might get you a little angry. That’s really why getting this show as a box set is a science fiction fan’s dream: because they really Aeryn’t episodes. You start at the beginning, and you’re gonna watch an 80-hour movie…and there’s no other 80-hour movie on the market!

31. Susanna Hoffs: “To anyone who’s trying to be an artist, in any medium, it’s a very odd and lonely and nerve-wracking and scary process when you let anybody see what you’re working on. You have to learn to listen to your instincts. Absorb other people’s advice, opinions, or whatever it may be from the outside world, but at the end of the day, you have to be true to whatever it is that you’re trying to say in that work.”

32. Michael Ironside: “One of the young production assistants (on ‘Terminator: Salvation’) stepped over to my chair and said, ‘Mr. Ironside, are you any relation to the Ironside who was in ‘Top Gun’?’ And I said, ‘I am, yes.’ And she grinned and said, ‘I knew it! Talent must run in your family!’ And she walked away. And all of the producers and directors kind of looked at me uncertainly, and I said, ‘What are you guys so uncomfortable for? That’s an incredible compliment. I do look like the father of that guy, for Christ’s sake!’”

33. Howard Jones: “There are, broadly speaking, 2 parts to my audience. The first group are the fans that are actively engaged with my output for the whole 26 years, and the second a more general or casual audience that only knows the ’80s work. I don’t find this a problem. I’m happy to have an audience that knows me at all!”

34. Chris Kattan: “With the Roxbury guys (on ‘Saturday Night Live’), I think the breaking point was when Stallone came on and wanted to do the sketch just because. And we’re, like, ‘Well, now we’ve got to create a story, so, what, are we bopping our heads with Rocky? What are we doing?’”

35. Phil Keaggy: “I think people are starting to get used to the idea thati t was impossible that Jimi Hendrix could ever have heard me and would never have said anything about a guy who, at the time, was only nineteen years old. We actually recorded our first album at Electric Lady Studios two weeks after his unfortunate death, so I just can’t imagine how he could’ve heard me. I think it’s just a rumor that someone’s kept alive, and it must be titillating enough to keep an interest there. But it’s just a strange, ironic sort of thing. I’ll never be in the category of Jimi Hendrix, and I couldn’t understand him saying something like that, anyway, even after all these years.”

36. Lisa Lackey: “Often they would come to me (on ‘Rude Awakening’) and say, ‘Uh, you know, we just can’t really hear your accent. Can you be just a little bit more Australian?’ And I was, like, ‘No!’ I mean, how do you be ‘more Australian’? I wasn’t born in the back of the Outback. I was born in Sydney, I grew up in a city, I moved to the farm when I was bit older…I don’t think I’ve ever said ‘mate’ in my entire life!”

37. Zane Lamprey: “I think a lot of the charm of (‘Three Sheets’) is in its honesty and its candor. I do my best to never try to be cool or look good, because I think that endears me to the fans of the show, so if by making myself vulnerable or self-deprecating or whatever, then…I just feel like it makes the show more enjoyable and more relatable. So therefore I’m going to be myself. If I don’t know what something is or if it tastes like crap, I’m going to say it. If I drink too much, you’re going to know about it, and if I pay the price the next morning, I’m going to be honest about it.”

38. Stephen Lang: “I was relatively buff (before ‘Avatar’), because I was working in a tanktop half the time on stage, anyway, but I just went kind of into hyperdrive after that and really worked to beat that old body into shape, to get that carcass where…I didn’t want to be looking at it and see anything hanging where it shouldn’t be hanging.”

39. Wallace Langham: “(William Petersen’s last day on ‘CSI’) was a really tough day to shoot for all the usual reasons, but, sadly, my father was passing away…and, actually, after we had finished filming, I got the call that he had died. It wasn’t a surprise, but…you know, I knew that would be the day, oddly enough. Once I got the call where they said, ‘Okay, you’re going to be shooting on the 10th,’ I just had a feeling. I thought, ‘Okay, the irony of life has always served me well,’ and true to form, it was a very heavy day on all levels.”

40. Lucy Lawless: “I haven’t actually used the merkin yet (on ‘Spartacus: Blood and Sand.’) It’s still a virgin merkin. I haven’t actually done anything that is quite full frontal nudity, though there are some men sort of wandering around in the altogether. They’re always going to baths, the Romans draping one another down with oil and stuff. It’s just a fact, so we show it. One of the gladiators is gay, and there was no taboo on homosexuality in those days, so we allow it. There’s no stigma attached to it. We don’t demonize or play it up or make him mince around with a bow around his neck. He’s a great big manly gladiator and he happens to be in this relationship with a gorgeous young man. It just shows you how we’re not in Wyoming now.”

41. Bill Lawrence: “My kids aren’t allowed to watch (‘Cougar Town’). That’s crazy talk! My God, they’re barely allowed to watch ‘Scrubs’! And even then, only certain ones. I let them watch that damned musical, and they sang ‘Everything Comes Down To Poo’ for six months.”

42. David Lewis: “There’s that scene in ‘Harper’s Island’ where Cameron (Mink) is tied up and sort of hanging from a beam, and I was kind of groping her, and I’m, like, ‘What can I do here?’ And she’s, ‘You can do whatever you want, it’s all cool, we’re acting.’ So I’m groping away, but the producer comes over and says, ‘Um, you gotta do less groping.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Yeah.’ And, meanwhile, people are getting cut in half and having their heads chopping off. But I can’t put my hands near her breasts, because you can’t have that on TV. But impaling someone with a whaling harpoon? That’s okay.”

43. Damon Lindelof: “Hopping around time in a non-linear storytelling fashion (on ‘Lost’) allows you to bring back characters who are dead and, in some cases, buried. Now that time travel is the story itself, it opens up even more doors. So when an actor reads that they’re getting killed off on the show, they’re basically, like, ‘Okay, but should I still bother to show up next week?’”

44. Joe Lo Truglio: “The internet may have saved the State reunion…and any future State collaborations, considering we’re about as big as the Waltons and half of us are on one side of the country and the other half is on the other. E-mail is really the only possible way for us to communicate…and it’s a little bit easier. because we’re not all in the same room.”

45. Dolph Lundgren: “(Filming in Russia) was a nightmare. It was really bad. But then it kind of resolved itself. We were shooting in Red Square, which is always the toughest location, I suppose, outside of the Kremlin. You can get fined in Russia, but we had the permits and everything, and we came in with our actors and crew from Bulgaria…and then we lost the permits the night before, and the only time we could do anything was on the weekend. Everybody was ready to shoot themselves. The producers were, like, ‘What? What?!? You’ve got to be kidding me!’ We could’ve turned into instant alcoholics.”

46. Rod Lurie: “A reckoning is coming on the state of the internet journalism, because right now, the way it’s set up, there is so much room for libel to squeak through that you’re going to see…they’re going to rewrite the rule book on journalism very soon. They have to, because the bloggers are getting away with so much rumor-mongering about public officials and even private figures because they don’t have editors and they don’t have fact checkers and they don’t have lawyers. There is going to be a price to pay somewhere down the line.”

47. Jennifer Lynch: “(‘Eraserhead’) may seem like a dark film, but my father and I watch it, and all we do is laugh. It was Disneyland everyday on the set. That’s when I fell in love with film.”

48. Ken Marino: “I’m assuming that there’ll be a new group of people who’ve never seen ‘The State,’ and they’ll go, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard a lot about this, I’m looking forward to seeing it.’ And then they’ll watch it (on DVD) and be, like, ‘Who the fuck…? What is this? What are they making fun of? Who is that?’”

49. James McEachin: “I got an interview to come and do (‘Play Misty for Me’), and…Clint Eastwood wasn’t really that much at the time. You know, he wasn’t the Eastwood that he grew up to be, so to speak. I walked into the office and the door was opened, so I just sat down and started reading and looking at some things, and all of a sudden this guy comes through the door and says, ‘Hey, man, how are you doing?’ We struck up this conversation and we started talking. ‘What are you here for?’ ‘Well, I’m going to interview for this movie.’ And we just continued with the conversation, and I really didn’t know it was Clint I was talking to, to be honest with you. A few minutes later, (producer) Bob Daley showed up and said, ‘What are you doing in here?’ And Clint said, ‘Hey, leave the guy. We’re talking. Can’t you see we’re talking?’”

50. Duff McKagan: “Playing in (the Neurotic Outsiders) with John Taylor was great. A lot of pussy every time we played a gig. So many chicks. It was, like, ‘Wow, John, really? So this is what it was like, huh?’ And there would be like a couple guys with mohawks and a guy with, like, a jean jacket coming in to see me and Jonesy!”

51. Ian McKellen: “I’ve played an awful lot of people that other people would call villains, but that isn’t a very helpful attitude to have if you’re about to play them. They are just people, and they may do dreadful things and say dreadful things, but your job as an actor is to know why they do them or say them.”

52. Colm Meaney: “I do go back to Ireland, and I’ll probably be doing a film in Ireland in January, and I guess that kind of keeps me classified as ‘the Irish actor,’ but the last four or five projects that I’ve been in are either American or English, so I don’t feel terribly trapped in that. But sometimes, yeah, you would like to not be called ‘the Irish actor.’ You’d prefer to just be called ‘the actor.’”

53. Jonny Lee Miller: “I think Danny Boyle’s got it in his head that we all still look too young (to do a ‘Trainspotting’ sequel.) But, I mean, I don’t look like anyone I play, anyways, so I don’t really know where that comes from. Because, you know, you change yourself for the roles. I’m actually not Scottish, either!”

54. Katie Morgan: “There’s lots of things I never did (in porn). Like, I never did do the butt. And I had rules of no more than two at a time, on account of things that I do and don’t do. Ya can’t leave people standing around bored! So, yeah, all sorts of stuff. I was actually quite picky!”

55. Kevin Nealon: “Me and Conan O’Brien and Robert Smigel and Dana Carvey wrote a script called ‘Hans and Franz: The Girlyman Dilemma,’ and it was going to be co-produced with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he was going to co-star in it. We had a deal with Sony, we got paid to write it, and it was a musical, but it never got made because…I think Arnold kind of backed out at the last minute because he was getting cold feet because ;The Last Action Hero’ had come out, where he was parodying himself. But it was a really funny script, and I wish it could’ve seen the light, because I think it would’ve done really well.”

56. Kyle Newman: “I think everybody should see (‘The Star Wars Holiday Special’) to realize how bad something can be. There are some cool things in there, but it’s two hours long, and you could probably cut it down to about two minutes and twelve seconds of cool material. The animated Boba Fett sequence is great, and there’s some cool stuff, but overall, the whole format of a variety show in the ‘Star Wars’ universe is just a train wreck.”

57. John Noble: “Because I was so heavily pumped to get (an Emmy nomination) this year, you try not to think about it, but it starts to permeate into your thinking. It was actually quite a relief when it didn’t happen, because I’ve been in the business for so long that you kind of grow aware what goes on, so I went, ‘Oh, no? Okay, back to work.’”

58. John Oates: “I haven’t had a mustache for 20 years and people actually still talk about it! But I kind of understand it on the level that the mustache is back in vogue, you know. It’s back in style, and there is a lot of talk about it. My mustache took on this iconic kind of symbol of the era, of those decades in a way. Of course I didn’t carry the ‘stache torch singlehandedly…”

59. Chris O’Dowd: “I actually fly back to London this weekend to start learning how to ride a horse (for ‘Gulliver’s Travels’), so that’s going to be interesting. I’m fucking shitting myself. And I’m a big guy; I’m, like, 6′ 4″, so I have no idea what size this fucking horse is going to be. So I’ve decided on day one, I’m just going to let him know who’s boss. Which will consist of me quietly whispering into his ear, ‘Mr. Horse, you are the boss.’”

60. Ed O’Neill: “I used to say things like, ‘My name’s not Al (Bundy), you know?’ Not to the press, but to fans. ‘My name is actually Ed.’ I’d find myself saying that, and I’d think, ‘Who do you think they think you are? They only know you from that!’ And finally I just got…I don’t know, I guess a switch went on for me, and I realized, ‘This was the greatest job that you’ve ever had in your life. Why are you acting like an asshole?’ So from that minute on, I kind of…well, I hate the word ’embraced,’ but I just kind of went, ‘Yeah, okay.’ ‘So you’re Al, right?’ ‘Yep!'”

61. Patton Oswalt: “I think most comedians go through that (period), where you have to change or evolve. You don’t want to just keep doing variations on the same themes. And, besides, it would look kinda creepy for a guy my age to be doing stuff that, like, a 20-year-old would do. ‘Yeah, this is bullshit!’ It’s, like, ‘Really? You don’t have bigger concerns at this point in your life?'”

62. Aaron Paul: “I have had viewers that come up to me, and they’re, like, “You know, we used to watch (‘Breaking Bad’) as a family, and once the melted body came falling through the ceiling, my mom was just, like, ‘I can’t watch this show anymore. This is just way too disturbing for me.’ So it’s not for everybody.”

63. Jim Parsons: “(Wil Wheaton) was so fun to have on the set, and he was such a good guy, just in general. He seemed to be completely okay with the fact that his entire name became a mantra of vengeful hate. That didn’t seem to bother him.”

64. Andy Partridge: “I don’t like people turning up and A) wanting to stare at me, B) wanting to play me their music, C) wanting to be my best friend. You see, I just…I’m very private, and I hate all that. I usually try and be pleasant to them, but inside I’m going, ‘Fuck off and die! Fuck off and die!’”

65. Ron Perlman: “I like doing voiceover work. I just like it in general, because you’re constantly working on a very first-instinct level. You show up, you get in front of the microphone, you look at the lines, you say the lines, and then you move on. You work on a really primal level, is what I’m saying. You don’t have to shave. You don’t even have to wear pants. But, uh, that wasn’t your question.”

66. Danny Pudi: “You know, you’re just sitting with Chevy, then you’re doing a scene with him and acting, and all of a sudden you go, ‘Omigod, that’s Chevy Chase!’ And then you’ve got to keep acting. ‘Danny, your lines? Your lines…? You’ve got to keep going!’ ‘Oh, sorry, sorry!'”

67. Gordon Ramsay: “Chefs aren’t very good at sleeping. Guy Savoy said to me 20 years ago, when I was in his kitchen and said, ‘Sorry, Chef, I’m a little bit tired,’ he said, ‘Tired? How many hours sleep did you have last night?’ I said, ‘Six.’ He said, ‘Fucking way too much.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Think about it: the average person sleeps for eight hours a day, so when you get to sixty years of age, that means you would’ve slept for twenty years. Does that scare you?’ I said, ‘Yeah!’ He said, ‘So shut the fuck up, sleep four hours a night, get to sixty, and only have slept for ten years of your life!’”

68. Dileep Rao: “I think my beard (in ‘Drag Me To Hell’) is getting a better IMDb rating than I am.”

69. Francis Reader: “There’s a certain period in your life, I think, where if music is something that you’re passionate about and it’s something that gives you a thrill…what you feel about the music in a critical way doesn’t come into it. If I hear anything from, like, the year 1979 or 1980, when I was first just getting knocked over by music, reading the charts every week and taking the radio to school, it doesn’t matter what the record is or if it’s the craziest comedy record or whatever. It just gives me such a thrill of nostalgia that I can’t not like it and can’t not enjoy that moment.”

70. Andy Richter: “I never try to think that (a show is too smart for the average viewer), just because I think you put yourself in the position where you go, ‘Well, I tried to do something smart and funny, and I guess they want dumb shit, so I’ll try and write dumb shit.’ You just have to do the best job you can. Otherwise, it’s just too soul-deadening.”

71. Talulah Riley: “It was (Nick Frost’s) first-ever bedroom scene and my first-ever bedroom scene…not that we were actually doing much, but we did have to lie sort of semi-nude under the sheets. And he was incredibly sort of vibrant and outgoing, but then he suddenly got very, like, ‘I’m engaged and I’m getting married!’ And I was, ‘Okay, that’s good. I just won’t be touching you, then!'”

72. Robbie Rist: “Sometimes people will bring up these odd things that I did a one-off from. Like, I did a ‘Knight Rider,’ and I’ll get an E-mail from a ‘Knight Rider’ fan who says, ‘Look what I did to my car!’ And I don’t know if you know about this, but there is a sub-cult of ‘Knight Rider’ fan who trick out their cars to look like KITT. I’m, like, ‘Really? Isn’t there anything else you can do? Do you make that much money? Because I have projects I’d like to get off the ground, so how about you don’t make KITT and you give it to me?'”

73. Krysten Ritter: “It was just a little weird coming into the seventh season (of ‘Gilmore Girls’), where everyone is already set in their ways and their dynamics, and you sort of feel like you’re coming into a party late. So I was just, like, ‘Ugh! How do I make friends?’ It’s like high school dynamics!”

74. Joan Rivers: “The only good thing about age is that I get out there and…I say I’m working better than I ever worked. That started about seven years ago in Edinburgh. I just said, ‘Oh, what, am I going to censor myself?’ I’ve been fired, I’ve been broke, I’ve been bankrupt, I’ve had to go to court to get my name back, I’ve been publicly humiliated. Screw all you. Now I’m going to tell you what I really think about Jennifer Aniston, that little miss boo-hoo. So, no, I don’t censor myself at all now. But, you know, ‘fuck’ is in the vernacular now. It was good enough for Shakespeare. When Jane Fonda can say ‘cunt,’ it’s over. It’s done.”

75. Saul Rubinek: “I have a very good recollection of working on ‘Death Ship.’ We called it ‘Death Shit.’ I was glad I was killed off quickly. But you’ve got to remember that it was my second movie. I think I had done one movie before that. I was thrilled. You know: no mortgage, no kids. I was just thrilled to travel down to Alabama. We were in Southern Alabama, and all I remember was that, as I was leaving the production trailer, I saw all of my fellow cast members in the water. And there was a production report saying that under no circumstances should the actors be in this water, it’s polluted, and you will have to be hospitalized. But apparently nobody had told the actors. And that’s when I began to understand something about the nature of independent movies.”

76. Vik Sahay: “(Playing with Jeffster at Comic-Con) was absolutely the scariest thing I have ever done. I literally skipped over the ‘what a great moment’ to ‘oh, my God, I can’t believe I have to do this.’ And when I was up there, the people were, like, “Oh, my God,” and they were all screaming and stuff. But I didn’t hear a thing. I was just in my own little bubble of horror and panic, utterly, utterly blanched with terror.”

77. Rob Schneider: “Carsey-Werner cared more about power and control than they cared about comedy, so I’m glad I got the fuck out (‘Men Behaving Badly’) after a season and a half. I would never work for those people again. I would rather do any other menial job than to ever work for that company again. Totally. That’s one the reasons I never want to do television in America: because I had such a horrible experience with Carsey-Werner. It was a really funny show, and they talked me into it by saying, ‘We’re gonna make it just like the British show.’ And then they fucking lied to me. Fucking bunch of liars. And then on top of that, they watered it down, so it was more like ‘Men Apologizing For Trying To Behave Badly.’ That’s what they should’ve called the show.”

78. Campbell Scott: “I’m 47, I have gray hair, and yet people still come up to me on the street who are in their twenties, who weren’t even born when ‘Singles’ was made…well, they were pretty tiny, anyway…and they say, ‘Oh, I love that movie ‘Singles.’’ And I always say, ‘How old are you?’”

79. Amy Sedaris: “I don’t really consider myself to be a comedian. I mean, it’s not like I’m sitting around writing jokes or anything. I just like dressing up and pretending to be other people.”

80. Paul Shaffer: “Some ten years ago, I got a book deal and tried to do it. I wrote three stories up, and I just never had time to go back to it. So this time, when I was re-introduced to David Ritz, who is the A-list celebrity biographer, just a couple of years ago, he said, ‘If you ever want to do a book’… I thought, ‘Well, that’s the way to do it: do it with somebody, and that way, he has the responsibility of turning it in on time.’”

81. Craig Singer: “As filmmakers, we all kind of borrow and steal. I don’t think it’s an intentional tribute, but you’re influenced by things that you’ve seen, and a lot of times it’s about where you wish films had taken you. So you’re using your imagination to say, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if…’ Or, you know, ‘I’ve never really kind of seen this executed quite in this way before.’ So you try to keep it fresh, and if you’re gonna steal, steal from the best.”

82. Kevin Smith: “It’s not like someday my kid’s gonna be standing over my grave, and somebody’s gonna hang her a folded flag and say, ‘You know what? This is ‘cause he did 24 hours straight on Twitter.’ But it’s just one of those little personal victories, like, ‘I wonder if I can do this.’ And I did it. A stupid goal, but I accomplished it. Life’s all about…for me, at least…having very stupid achievable goals. That way, you always feel like a winner.”

83. Rich Sommer: “(‘Mad Men’) was my final audition of the pilot season. It had been three miserable, horrible months where I had zero callbacks, zero positive reception, one of those pilot seasons that makes you pretty sure you are never going to be an actor and never want to be an actor. And then that happened.”

84. Jon Stewart: “I think, in general, most of the people who come on (‘The Daily Show’) are relatively sophisticated media professionals. There’s not a lot of, ‘Wait a minute, how did you get access to comments I made three years ago?’ They’ve been around the block, so you don’t often get people who walk away angry. Now, you do get people who walk out oblivious. Rob Blagojevich came on, and…look, he’s either been the victim of one of the greatest travesties of justice to a political figure or he’s a sociopath, because he’s just out there going, ‘I’m telling you, I didn’t do anything!’ But I don’t normally hear people say, ‘That was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen!’ They’re pretty hip to the game.”

85. Dean Stockwell: “I’ve got categories of jobs, and one of the categories is ‘money jobs.’ If one of those comes along and I have to make a living, even if I don’t like the script that much, I’ll do it and just try to stay above water, which I’m able to do most of the time. I try not to sink with the ship.”

86. Tom Sturridge: “You know that scene at the beginning (of ‘Pirate Radio’) where I take The Count a cup of tea in the studio, and he shakes my hand, gives me a hug, and slaps me on the arse? That’s genuinely the first time Tom Sturridge met Philip Seymour Hoffman. Literally, I’d hadn’t seen him or exchanged words with him before. Richard just called me on set and said, ‘Take him a cup of tea.’ So that’s what I did. And the smile of delight as he slaps me on the arse is purely mine.”

87. Kurt Sutter: “The great thing about having a serialized drama (like ‘Sons of Anarchy’) is that I’m allowed to bring up events and circumstances that have happened in the past in other episodes to show that this kind of violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It has ramifications. It has repercussions. Whether it’s a week from now or five years from now, you know it will play out. Nothing is ever tied up into a perfect knot.”

88. Matthew Sweet: “I never cared about covers. I really only wanted to do new songs of mine, always. I went straight to writing and had this kind of empty hole. I remember one time I was standing with Brendan O’Brien, maybe during The Thorns, and he can play, like, any song in all of rock history on any instrument. He’s a complete hot dog with that kind of thing. He was playing something, and he said, ‘Come on, play along,’ and I was, like, ‘I don’t know how to play that.’ ‘Oh, come on, what are you talking about? Quit fucking faking it!’ He thought I really knew them, but I really just don’t know that many songs.”

89. Amanda Tapping: “It’s just so much fun making (‘Stargate’) that, as long as they keep asking, I’ll keep doing it. It really is one of those dream gigs. It sounds hokey as hell, but it really is just so much fun. Samantha will be rolling through the Stargate in her wheelchair, going, ‘Where’s my gun, dammit?’”

90. Alan Thicke: “The key to writing for Richard (Pryor) was to just push his buttons and then know when to push the buttons on your cassette recorder. You’d get him started, then surreptitiously start recording when he got inspired and started walking around the room and improvising in character. Then you’d get it all transcribed and take credit for it.”

91. Lea Thompson: “My kids can’t watch (‘Howard the Duck’). By the time I get in bed with the duck, they are, like, ‘Turn it off, mom. You in bed with a duck is just pretty much a deal breaker.’”

92. Sam Trammell: “Most of the time when people have to get naked, it’s for a sex scene or it’s post-coital, and they’re in a bedroom and it’s kind of a closed set. But with Sam (on ‘True Blood’), it always seems to be because he’s turning back into himself from being an animal, so I’m always outside. Like, way out. Like, out for everybody to see.”

93. David Wain: “Everyone who went to college and especially people working in media seem to know at least one person from Shaker Heights. There’s just something about that place that made people go to the coast.”

94. Dave Wakeling: “If you look at the history of IRS (Records), you can see there’s a certain point right about the time when ‘Tenderness’ came out, just before, where all of a sudden songs on IRS were starting to enter the top 40. And I think that they’d had enough success with the college charts and the independent charts that they could now afford to enter the top-40 lottery game. There had been jokes running around IRS that the only way you could get a top-40 hit on IRS was if you had a vagina. Miles (Copeland) liked his girl groups!”

95. George Wallace: “When (Jerry Seinfeld’s) first child was born and we had the bris, and I was honored to hold one of the baby’s legs, which is supposed to be for the daddy and the granddaddy. I said, ‘Whenever I walk into that house, that boy looks at me like, ‘I know you from somewhere.’”

96. Patrick Warburton: “You know, my mother actually thinks my soul is in peril for being on (‘Family Guy’), and after I watched last Sunday’s episode, I thought, ‘Geez, maybe she’s right.’ You know my rationalization is that it is just absurd, crazy humor, and…what the fuck. It is a deplorable show. It’s horrible.”

97. Carl Weathers: “(‘Rocky’) was so simple and, at the same time, such a complicated movie in a way, and a feat that John Avildsen pulled off, to shoot a movie in so few days with so little money that looked so much bigger than it actually was. The right people came together at the right time…and it worked. It just worked. And nobody thought that movie was going to be what it was. In all honesty, *I* thought it was going to be huge, but I was so young, naïve, and inexperienced that that doesn’t mean very much.”

98. George Wendt: “It’s maybe every third person now (who calls out ‘Norm!’ when they see me). It used to be every other person. It’s faded a bit, but not too much. They’re always going to remember me that way. I decided a long time ago that if I’m going to let this make me crazy, I’m going to be certifiable, so I just roll with it.”

99. “Weird Al” Yankovic: “If Michael Jackson hadn’t given his blessing (for ‘Eat It’), it’s hard to say the direction my life would’ve taken. If my second album hadn’t done well, that might’ve been it for me. But with Michael Jackson signing off and giving me his support…I mean, I’ve been able to ride that for quite some time.”

100. Andrew Zimmern: “The single greatest pleasure that I have in doing (‘Bizarre Foods’) is when I meet families with 6, 7, 8-year-olds, or teenagers, who say, ‘It’s something the whole family can watch, and it lets us show our younger children that one man’s ‘weird’ is another man’s ‘wonderful,’ and we all kind of live in the same place.’ It’s just the best part of my day.”

If you’re unfamiliar with the motion picture in question (which lets out most of our UK readership, as the film was released across the pond back in April), here’s the official synopsis from Focus Features:

“Pirate Radio” is the high-spirited story of how 8 DJs’ love affair with Rock ‘n’ Roll changed the world forever. In the 1960s, this group of rogue DJs, on a boat in the middle of the Northern Atlantic, played rock records and broke the law, all for the love of music. The songs they played united and defined an entire generation and drove the British government crazy. By playing Rock ‘n’ Roll, they were standing up against the British government who did everything in their power to shut them down. The band of rebels is led by The Count, played by the Academy Award-winning Philip Seymour Hoffman, Quentin (Bill Nighy), the boss of Radio Rock, Gavin (Rhys Ifans), the greatest DJ in Britain, Midnight Mark (Tom Wisdom), Doctor Dave (Nick Frost), and Young Carl (Tom Sturridge), who comes of age amidst the chaos of sex, drugs and rock n roll. The film features an unbelievable selection of music including The Beatles, The Stones, Beach Boys, Dusty Springfield, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Smokey Robinson, David Bowie, Otis Redding, Cat Stevens just to name a few. The film is laugh out loud funny and speaks to the rock n roll rebel in all of us.

A few other bits which might interest you: it also stars Kenneth Branagh, Rhys Darby (“Flight of the Conchords”), Chris O’Dowd (“The I.T. Crowd”), Ralph Brown (“Meadowlands”), January Jones (“Mad Men”), and Jack Davenport (“Coupling,” “Swingtown”), and it was written and directed by the always-enjoyable Richard Curtis, the man behind “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill,” “Love, Actually,” and the “Bridget Jones” films.

Here’s the trailer for your viewing enjoyment:

In a turn of events which obviously leaves me pleased as punch, I have been invited to participate in the press junket for the U.S. release of the film, so stay tuned to Bullz-Eye and Premium Hollywood for further coverage, including discussions with Mr. Curtis and some of the stars of “Pirate Radio.” Rest assured, my first question will be, “Who decided that Americans couldn’t appreciate a title like ‘The Boat That Rocked’?” (I’m guessing I’ll learn that some higher-up decided, “Hey, the kids love the pirates, so maybe we can trick ’em into thinking this is actually about pirates!”)

Stay tuned for…

Chris O’Dowd: Hello, Will!

Bullz-Eye: Hello, Chris! How are you?

CO: I’m really well. I’m walking on the beach in Venice.

BE: Now that’s a nice place to be. I’m stuck in Virginia, and it’s definitely not beach weather.

CO: Well, may I gloat as I walk. (Chuckles)

BE: Oh, please do, I’d appreciate that. (Laughs) Well, it’s a pleasure to talk to you.

CO: Thanks very much.

BE: I’m glad the “The I.T. Crowd” has finally gotten a DVD release over here. They put it off forever, but it’s here at last.

CO: Yeah, it’s terrific. I guess they kind of, you know,they’ll wait for more series to come out before they start releasing it around the world.

BE: Well, I know it was originally in talks for release as soon as they were talking about bringing an American version to air. But when that fell through, suddenly they yanked it from the schedule.

CO: Right, yeah. It always works like that.

BE: But it’s hilarious and, certainly, the comedy transcends British-ness…to say the least.

CO: Oh, that’s great. I’m glad you enjoyed it.

BE: So what was your IT or computer background when you first took on the job?

CO: Well, I mean, I knew a little bit about computers and stuff, and I have a lot of problems with computers. Not necessarily technical problems, more like spillages and dropping stuff on laptop. More like hand-to-mouth problems than Windows Vista or anything. My brother-in-law is an IT guy, so I kind of use him a little bit for research for it. And he’s also kind of a grumpy IT guy, so I kind of used him a little bit for the characterization.

BE: Excellent. So how much of a geek would you consider yourself to be?

CO: I’m, like, 18% geek. If I were to have to put a number on it, which I think I do, I’m going to go with 18%.

BE: That’s not really a bad geek to normal quotient, I think.

CO: No, I mean, I like a lot of websites and some nerdy websites, but I’m also able to play tennis.

BE: Just going outside is half the battle.

CO: Yeah, there you go. I’m not afraid of the sun.

BE: So how well developed a character was Roy when they first handed you the script? I mean, did he evolve considerably from script to first filming?

CO: I mean, I guess the bigger change was that, in the script, he was English. So then to make him Irish, because I ended up getting cast in it, was the biggest change. But other than that, it was pretty much there. Graham (Linehan, who created the show) likes to say that the characters essentially…both Roy and Moss are versions of him at a different time of his life. So Roy is Graham at 25 and Moss is Graham at 15. So there’s a lot of characterization there. The writer is kind of basing it slightly on himself.

BE: So does Graham get out much these days?

CO: No, he’s got two kids, so he hasn’t left the house since ’98. I think.

BE: How quickly did you feel the show became a hit in the UK? I mean, I got the impression that “Have you tried turning it on and off again?” became a catch phrases almost right out of the box.

CO: Yeah, I mean, it did. And it had a very specific audience very early on, and there was a lot of people that really, really loved it. But I kind of feel that it really took off, in terms of the whole country, after the second series came out. People had watched the repeats of the first series, and then the second series, we kind of ventured out of the office a little bit more, so it became a bit more universal. I think around then, people really, really took to it.

BE: We did a review for the first season set for our site, and the fellow who did the review observed that he didn’t feel like it really took off as its own series until the fourth episode.

CO: Yeah, and I think that’s probably fair. Like I said, I think for me it was even the seventh or eighth episode, then it really kind of came into its own.

BE: Well, I think that he felt it was more of a traditional office comedy in the first three episodes, but then when you got the kind of surreal bit of bringing the Goth employee into the picture…

CO: No, I think that’s a really good point. It’s the reality of the show that kind of permeates all of the normal, standard sitcom kind of stuff is what makes the show individual. The more of that that we throw in, I think the better.

BE: Now you had plenty of television experience prior to coming aboard to this show. You had worked on “The Clinic” and “Roman’s Empire”.

CO: That’s right. Well, “Roman’s” is actually after “The IT Crowd”.

BE: Oh, okay. Sorry.

CO: No, that’s alright. I guess I did it after we shot the first season of “The IT Crowd.” But, yeah, for three years, I had done kind of like a medical drama in Ireland. But I was essentially playing the comedy character, I guess. So I would just be kind of wheeled in to do a couple of gags and then leave again, never leaving the comfort of my chair. It was a great ground in. It was a nice way to learn how to shoot very quickly, which you generally have to do on a sitcom set.

BE: So when did you first get into acting? I mean, were you someone who did a little bit of stage first and then moved into television beyond that?

CO: Yeah, I went to university and got a degree in politics. While I was there, I got really involved in the drama society and everything. I did a lot of plays, then decided to go to drama school in London. I went and did that, then shuffled around doing some terrible part time job for a year or so until I got a break. And that was maybe seven or eight years ago.

BE: How often does the degree in politics help you out these days?

CO: Not once yet. I imagine it’s only a matter of time.

BE: Surely any day now.

CO: My major was in Northern Irish conflict, so I just need for that to kick off again for me to really come into my own. So hopefully there will be a bit of terrorism up north soon, so I can look clever.

BE: I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.

CO: Yeah, thanks.

BE: So how well did the cast of “The IT Crowd” gel when you all first got together? Had you known either of the two?

CO: Yeah, I knew them both, actually. We all kind of…it was a very organic process of getting together, because Richard and I had done a film together called “Festival”, where we didn’t actually have much stuff together, but we hung out a lot. And so he was the first one cast, and when they were stuck looking for my character, he suggested me. So it was him that put me up for it. And then I got cast. And Katherine I had been in drama school with, and I thought she would be great. So I asked them to audition her for it, and she got the job. So it kind of worked like that. So we all knew each other and we got on really well. And we get on so, so well now. It’s amazing.

BE: I actually was familiar with Richard before I was familiar the rest of you, I guess courtesy of…

CO: Oh, “Garth (Merenghi’s Darkplace”)!

BE: Yeah, absolutely.

CO: Oh, yeah, it’s such a great show, isn’t it?

BE: Yeah, they played it over here on the Sci-Fi Network, but they didn’t know what to make of it, so they moved it over to Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network. I don’t think they knew what to make of it, either. But I just thought it was hilarious.

CO: Oh, yeah, I think it’s such a great show. He’s such a clever guy. He wrote and directed that as well, you know.

BE: I did. And “Dean Learner”, I’ve seen some clips of that as well.

CO: Yeah, there’s some funny stuff in “Dean Learner”.

BE: So although I haven’t actually seen his episodes yet, I knew that Matt Berry is also on “The IT Crowd” as well.

CO: Oh, you’re going to love it. He does such a great job in the show.

BE: Yeah, his song “One Track Lover” from “Darkplace”…

CO: Oh, God, that is the funniest, funniest thing, isn’t it?

BE: I’ve actually got an MP3 of it on my iPod.

CO: Lovely. He put out an album you know.

BE: I did not know that.

CO: Oh, you’ve got to check it out. Check out…I want to say it’s called “Witch Hazel” or something. So maybe Google “witch hazel.” (Writer’s note: I have no clue what O’Dowd was thinking about, because it turns out that Berry’s album is called Opium.) It’s a whole album…because he kind of tours singing songs and doing a very odd comedy performance.

BE: Well, there’s a clip of a live version of him doing “One Track Lover,” so I knew he had done some concerts. But I didn’t know he actually had an album out.

CO: Oh, check it out. You know, it’s really well produced. It’s like a normal album, but it’s kind of funny and quite surreal.

BE: Well, having not seen anything from the second or third seasons yet, how does the dynamic change on the series between the first one and the second?

CO: I mean, in a way, I think we become more comfortable as performers. In terms of dealing with the audience and stuff, it becomes a bit more…not necessarily naturalistic, but a bit more like we’re in control. And we’re driving the comedy rather than the comedy driving us. Sometimes I felt in the first series that we just got caught up a little bit trying to make the jokes sound great, rather than making the characters look good and letting the jokes speak for themselves. If that makes any sense.

BE: Yeah, I understand that.

CO: So I think that, as the dynamic got a bit better, it became more character-based as a comedy, because we were doing it a bit better and he was able to write that in. So the relationships are stronger, and then once the relationships are strong and you believe them, the situations can become even more absurd. You know, in the first episode of the second season, I end up pretending that I’m disabled for the entire episode. There’s also a gay musical called “Gay.” I mean, it’s quite full on high farce but really natural and funny.

BE: Actually, speaking of gayness, a friend of mine over in the UK, when I asked her if she had any questions for me, said to ask you, “Did you enjoy your gay kiss when you became football hooligans for the day?”

CO: Oh, yeah, that was funny. I mean, I found it very odd that…Richard really got into it. I mean, a little bit more than I was comfortable with. You know, the kissing was fine, but when he dropped the hands, it was a bit full on for me. You know, we hadn’t even been out for dinner.

BE: Yikes. Well, I wanted to ask you a couple of things about some other stuff you’ve been working on.

CO: Sure.

BE: Now are you still working on “Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel,” or is that fully wrapped?

CO: No, that’s done. That’s out in a few weeks.

BE: Alright. Excellent.

CO: And a film of mine came out last week…or this week. Actually, it opens today in London, called “The Boat That Rocked”.

BE: Oh, okay. Right, I saw that on your IMDb page.

CO: Yeah, it’s a new Richard Curtis film. But it comes out stateside on the 28th of August.

BE: Well the time travel film, the concept alone had me immediately psyched.

CO: Sure, yeah, it’s really fun, you know? And we’ve got Anna Faris in it. It’s essentially about three guys…I’m kind of the leader, who is obsessed with time travel. Then we go to a pub and start drinking, and then one of the guys goes into a toilet and comes out and he’s gone 15 minutes into the past. So, like, it’s a really low key time travel movie where we never actually leave the pub, but we travel forward and back in time. And then towards the end of the evening, we’re not sure whether it’s really happened or whether we’ve just drunk too much.

BE: Nice. Yeah, I saw a description where they referred to it as a cross between “Dr. Who” meets “Shaun of the Dead”.

CO: Wow, that’s nice. I could live with that.

BE: You were in “How to Lose Friends & Alienate People,” albeit briefly.

CO: Yeah, very, very briefly. Somebody said that Bob Weide was making a movie in London, and they called me up, like, a couple of days beforehand, and asked if I wanted to go in and do, like, a day on it. I said, yeah. I’m a big “Curb Your Enthusiasm” fan, and he directs that, so I was there with bells on.

BE: And with “The Boat That Rocked”, I had actually read about it, I just didn’t realize it was coming out quite so quickly. What was your knowledge of the whole pirate radio scene from the ‘60s, before going into the film?

CO: I mean, my parents had told me a lot about it, and I’m really into the music of that time. So I listened to a lot of the recordings, and luckily there is so much stuff on YouTube and everything now. So to get the tone and the taste of it right, I just listened to a lot of stuff. And then we were all taught how to work the equipment of the time, which was really fun.

BE: Cool. So what’s the soundtrack of the film like? Is it a mixture of the popular and the obscure?

CO: Yeah, it’s incredible. I mean, there’s just so much great stuff on it. You know it’s The Kinks and The Who. I think there is some Hendrix on there. It’s really, really great. It’s just every track is a classic track.

BE: And then you’re also part of the TV series “FM”. Is that right?

CO: That’s right, which is a show that I think airs its final episode of the first season tonight. Where I play a modern Indie DJ.

BE: You’re just making the radio rounds.

CO: I’m just trying to free myself from being a nerd. So I go to play DJs and sportsmen.

BE: Well, with that series, who was responsible for picking the artists who performed on there?

CO: On “FM”? I guess the producers were, you know.

BE: Okay. I didn’t know if the cast themselves got to have any say or not.

CO: I mean, we kind of…I think I vetoed a couple of bands, but that’s as far as it went.

BE: Well, I saw that Hot Leg, with Justin Hawkins singing, was in the first episode.

CO: That’s right; he is in the first episode.

BE: I have yet to hear his new band, but I was a huge Darkness fan.

CO: Yeah, I was a Darkness fan. I haven’t heard his new band, either. He’s a nice guy, though. He was really fun.

BE: So where do your personal music tastes lie?

CO: Oh, I mean, I go through phases, you know? I listen to a lot of Indie music, a lot of new bands and stuff. But then I’ll also listen to…I like a lot of Gospel stuff. Sam Cooke and Al Green, Dorothy Cole, and stuff like that. And then I’ll go into a bit of a Dylan phase for awhile, and then people who are trying to imitate Dylan. You know, it comes and goes.

BE: What’s the word on “Gulliver”?

CO: “Gulliver’s Travels” starts in three weeks time. I actually fly back to London this weekend to start learning how to ride a horse.

BE: Oh, nice.

CO: Yeah, so that’s going to be interesting.

BE: I take it you have no equestrian background at all?

CO: I really don’t. I’m fucking shitting myself. And I’m a big guy; I’m, like, 6′ 4″, so I have no idea what size this fucking horse is going to be. So I’ve decided on day one, I’m just going to let him know who’s boss.

BE: Probably the best way to handle it.

CO: Which will consist of me quietly whispering into his ear, “Mr. Horse, you are the boss.”

BE: So when you found out who all was going to be in the cast of the film (Jack Black, Jason Segel, and Emily Blunt), did you just completely shit yourself? /strong>

CO: Yeah, I mean, it was really exciting. I went to see “I Love You, Man” last night.

BE: Oh, that’s great, isn’t it?

CO: I loved it. I kind of fell in love with Jason Segel a bit. So I’m really looking forward to working with him. During the audition process, I did some stuff with Jack, so I got to meet him and he was really nice. So I’m really excited about it, they are great people.

BE: Be sure to quiz Jason Segel all about his Muppet movie he is writing.

CO: He’s writing a Muppet movie?

BE: Absolutely. He has apparently finished the script.

CO: I didn’t know about that. Wow, how exciting!

BE: So back to the “The IT Crowd.” I know you were not cast within the American version that was planned, but how much were you all involved on the backend? I mean, were people coming to you to find out how to play your character in the American version?

CO: No, I never talked to any of them. I mean, they did ask me to be involved quite early on, but I was shooting that “Roman’s Empire” thing, so I couldn’t do the pilot. But I haven’t seen it, I don’t really know anything about it, to be honest.

BE: Okay. Yeah, I mean, I know the situation was that the network changed presidents and the new guy was less thrilled than the old guy, but…

CO: Yeah, yeah, that’s what I heard.

BE: Did you ever hear any reports from Richard about his experience working on the pilot?

CO: I think he had a good time, you know. The only problem, I thought, was that it was the same script and it was the same blocking, so it might have been a bit boring. That was the only thing that struck me about it.

BE: Well, that’s what they kind of did with “The Office” in the States, too. The first couple of episodes were identical to the original, and then they expanded.

CO: Yeah, it’s surprising that they didn’t really learn from it. Because I really thought the American “Office” just really took off when they stopped worrying about the British one. I don’t know why they didn’t try to do the same.

BE: Right, exactly. And actually, on a related note, when “The IT Crowd” originally premiered, were “The Office” comparisons…did you just get tons of those from the critics immediately?

CO: No, I mean, because the tone of the show was so strange. I remember before anybody saw the show, everybody was, like, “Oh, God, another show set in an office.” But then once you watch the show, I mean, it’s just so completely different in tone and characterization. I can’t remember any critic mentioning “The Office.” They are just so completely different.

BE: Right. I just didn’t know…the mere fact that they were set in an office, a lot of critics enjoy using the easy crutch.

CO: Yeah, absolutely. I guess they did before they saw it. But also Graham, you know, is a very renowned comedy writer in Britain, so he would generally miss all of that kind of crap. Do you know what I mean?

BE: Oh yeah, definitely. I’ve got the “Father Ted” box set, so I’m definitely well versed.

CO: Yeah, I mean, anybody who decides to write a program about three priests on an island is never going to get hassled for doing nothing original.

BE: Oh, and something else I meant to ask about. Neil Hannon does some of the music for the show.

CO: That’s right. He does the theme tune

BE: Yeah, I’m a very big Divine Comedy fan.

CO: Oh. yeah, he’s a great guy.

BE: Do you have any idea how he got hooked up with the show? I know he had also worked for “Father Ted,” too.

CO: Well, he did a lot on “Ted,” I guess, so Graham and he must be kind of close, and he got him again.

BE: Does he, like, pop ’round the set or anything?

CO: We’ve played poker a few times, and he really likes the show.

BE: How’s his poker face?

CO: Pretty terrible. I think I actually won the Divine Comedy back catalog.

BE: Oh nice. Very nice. If you could get that reissued in the states, that would be great.

CO: I don’t even mean the CDs. I mean I think I won the rights. And it was just on a pair of queens.

BE: Well, that’s just ridiculous. So what’s your favorite episode from the first season, if you can think back that far, given how far ahead you are now?

CO: God, let me think. What is there? God, remind me what there was.

BE: Well, I have to admit, my favorite episode was when you premiered the Goth character. There is the episode about stress, the episode where Moss starts the fire.

CO: Oh, yeah. Actually, I think that’s the same episode.

BE: Actually, I think you’re right. Sorry, I forgot what was the A story and what was the B story there.

CO: You know what, I’m going to go with the Goth in the cupboard as well. Yeah, I think that’s really funny. Noel is so funny in that.

BE: Cradle of Filth does not get enough sitcom love, for my money.

CO: Oh wow, that’s amazing. The Cradle of Filth. The Funeral.

BE: Does Richmond continue to pop up during the show beyond the first season?

CO: He does. He’s in the second season, but not so much in the third season, because he did his own show. But hopefully he will be back for the fourth.

BE: I understand that Denholm has a bit of an issue where he, uh, goes to hell at some point.

CO: That’s right. That’s really funny. Matt Berry comes in and plays Denholm’s son. After Denholm dies, then he…at some stage, he blacks out and he sees his father down a very lightened corridor and thinks that it’s the doorway to heaven, but then Hitler jumps out. Chris Morris tells him it’s not Hitler, it’s just a fancy dress party in heaven.

BE: What’s your favorite absurd quirk about Roy’s character?

CO: Oh, it doesn’t really come to the forefront in the first season, but later on, we find out that he is really, really cheap. Somebody lends him 20 pounds, and he spends the rest of the episode trying to get it back.

BE: Do you have a favorite of the geek related shirts that you wear or have worn?

CO: Oh, yeah, I like the “Look at the fucking manual” one, with Chairman Mao on the front. What is it? RTFM, or something like that.

BE: Right. Yeah, “Read the fucking manual.” Excellent. Alright, well I think that’s pretty much everything I’ve got here.

CO: Great. Thanks so much, man. Hope you enjoyed the beautiful day on the beach.(Laughs) Thanks very much, and thanks for talking to me!