* Regular readers, both of you, may remember a number of interview pieces here and elsewhere by me dealing with a film called “Middle Men.” Well, my interview with the film’s producer and presumed model for the lead character, Christopher Mallick, has become a lot more interesting over the last few days. It has drawn some unusually strong comments from netizens, and not for no reason. The Wrap’s Johnnie L. Roberts sums up how funds deposited by Mallick’s current company, ePassporte, have been effectively frozen — leaving some people truly in the lurch — and also that this isn’t the first arguably suspicious crisis that Mallick has weathered.

I will say that if you have over $240,000 pre-loaded on a card which I gather is mainly for use on porn sites these days (not online poker as I once assumed) — I’m no one to judge on this matter, but I think you’ve got a bit of a problem.

* A much more positive story, especially for hardcore movie fans, is Roger Ebert’s announcement that he is returning the format he and Gene Siskel perfected back to its original PBS home, with a few interesting new twists including the presence of the one of the universe’s more photogenic of cinephile bloggers, Kim Morgan of Sunset Gun, alongside headliners Christy Lemire and Elvis Mitchell, Omar Moore and Ebert himself.  Nikki Finke, via TV Deadliner Nellie Andreeva, provides the turd in the punchbowl. (Please, Mr. Mitchell — don’t give Ms. Finke the pleasure of a “Toldja!” here.)

* Speaking of the amazing Mr. Ebert, be sure to check out his TIFF swag.

* William Monahan, who did such a great job turning the engaging-but-slender Hong Kong thriller, “Infernal Affairs,” into a full-bodied near masterpiece for Martin Scorsese in “The Departed” will be working with “Tron: Legacy” director Joseph Kosinski on something called “Oblivion” for Disney.

* Alamo Drafthouse will be getting into the film distribution game with a bang in more senses than one with their release of the ingenious, ultra-dark British comedy, “Four Lions,” which really does do for terrorism what “In the Loop” did for needless wars. A parking snafu created by the organizers of the Los Angeles Film Festival caused me to be 20 minutes later for the screening but, even so, I can’t imagine that the film will be anything less than one of the year’s best, even if its premise scares many away.

A highly entertaining character actor, stand-up comic, and now also a screenwriter and Internet talk show host, Kevin Pollak will nevertheless remain forever in the shadow of three men. One is wise-guy crook Todd Hockney from Christopher McQuarrie and Bryan Singer’s slambam 1995 debut, “The Usual Suspects” (currently at #24 of all-time most popular films on IMDb); the other two are, of course, William Shatner and Christopher Walken. So powerful are the Pollak impressions of these two men, I’d venture that when most of us attempt to impersonate either actor, we’re really not doing Shatner or Walken, we’re doing Pollak doing Shatner or Walken. (Though, personally, my extremely bad Christoper Walken is really a very bad impression of Kevin Spacey‘s Walken but, for all I know, Spacey got his from Pollak while shooting “Suspects.”). Indeed, I can remember a time when it seemed like nobody did Shatner and I’m pretty sure it was Pollak who kind of opened to door for all the other impressionists into the voice and mannerisms of the man Pollak calls “the Shat.”

Among the nearly 90 or more productions he’s been involved with as an actor, Kevin Pollak’s latest release is “Middle Men,” a black comedy-laced drama owing more than a little bit to Martin Scorsese. The film stars Luke Wilson as straight-arrow businessman Jack Harris who falls in with a pair of highly inventive cokeheads (Gabriel Macht and Giovanni Ribisi) and would be Internet porn kings during the late 1990s. The pair have developed the first really viable method for collecting money over the ‘net in a reasonable amount of time. Of course, things get massively complicated from there and Pollak turns up later in the film as an FBI agent who comes to Harris and his porn star girlfriend (Laura Ramsay) with a startling new reality. The film, co-written and directed by George Gallo, best known as the screenwriter of “Midnight Run,” is actually just part of an ongoing collaboration between the director and the actor-comic and now screenwriter.

As is often the case, I was one of a number of scribblers who were participating in a roundtable with Pollak during the “Middle Men” press day at L.A.’s Four Season’s hotel. Pollak arrived in a friendly but highly subdued mood. He was a late addition to the press day and obviously has been keeping very busy. Among many other projects, he had a new stand-up special ready premiering, and an increasingly popular podcast, Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show, with recent guests including Neal Patrick Harris and John Slattery of “Mad Men.”  Pollak frankly seemed a little tired at first, though going out of his way to be funny — because that’s what you expect from Pollak. Things perked up as it went.

How did Pollak get involved with the film?

“George Gallo called me and said ‘I’ve got this script, I’m gonna direct and I’d like you to read it and be in it.’ And I said, ‘Who’s this?’ And then, here we are…I’ve known [George] a long time.”

Had he heard anything about the factually-inspired story before?

“No, I hadn’t heard the story before. Had you? I don’t think anyone did. I don’t think they went terribly public with it, these two idiots [played by Gabriel Macht and Giovanni Ribisi] in question. ‘Nutty geniuses’ may be more flattering. Maybe the story did come out briefly. Seems to me if you help create a way to change commerce forever, you would want your story told, but I’m not the one to ask as to why this is the first time we’re hearing this.”

Did Pollak research his role as an FBI agent in any way?

“No, I’ve never done any research for any movie I’ve ever done. I started out in stand-up comedy, had no formal training as an actor. I found pretty early on that all I had to offer was to be believable and authentic in whatever role I was portraying. I had a sort of natural ability to be loose in front of a camera… For me, honestly, the research is always the script. Read the script 25 times — but, literally, read the script 25 times and hopefully the writer’s done all the research that’s necessary. Because, if I’m an FBI guy it’s never about how to be an FBI guy, it’s about a guy who is with the FBI. Unless I star in the movie ‘I Was an FBI Guy’ and I don’t see that happening, to be honest with you.”

Sure, that could happen, one of us said. Agent Curt Allmans could be spun off into his own film.

“You’re my favorite!” Pollak responded in a sort of Liberace-esque voice.

Then I noted that Pollak has a co-writing credit on an upcoming film to be directed by George Gallo and produced by Christopher Mallick, the producer of “Middle Men” and the source of its historically driven story.

“I wrote it with George Gallo and it’s called ‘Columbus Circle.’ I acted in it as well and it came out fairly terrific. It tested wonderfully, surprisingly well, and is now shopping for distribution.”

Could he explain what the movie is about?

“No. It seems wildly premature, other than to say it’s a twisting, turning Hitchcockian tale. Terrific cast, Giovanni Ribisi, Selma Blair, Amy Smart, Jason Lee, myself, Beau Bridges, Jason Antoon who plays the slimy director in ‘Middle Men.’ George did a great job, again, directing. We wrote it on the plane ride from Cannes with this movie and then landed and 20 days later started shooting. So that’s probably the best part of the story… It was born of necessity.”

“Chris Mallick, our producer here who flew us all to Cannes out of the bigness of his heart and wallet, had built these two sets on a sound stage at [CBS’s Burbank studios] to do this other movie. Then, he lost the rights — this other movie was a remake… had these sets built and spent a couple million dollars building them. [He] told me the situation when we were in Cannes, the day before we went on the jet to go home. The next morning I got on the jet and said, ‘Here’s a story that takes place 90% in these two loft apartments that you built on the sound stage.'”

“Then, I, Giovanni Ribisi, Brian Tyler (the composer of ‘Middle Men’), Jason Shuman (one of the producers), and Chris Mallick beat out all the bullet points and beats of the script. Then, George Gallo and I hit the ground running when we landed. We wrote the script and started sending it out eight days later and started shooting 20 days later.”

The next question was honestly under-informed, but Pollak didn’t mind one bit. Was he still doing stand-up and, if not, did he miss it?

“I don’t miss it because I still do it. In fact, a brand new, one-hour stand-up special just debuted on Showtime. It’ll be viewable all throughout August and then on DVD September 7th — glad you asked! It’s called ‘The Littlest Suspect.’

Pollak followed that with a bit of visual laughing-at-his-own-joke business. “‘Where does he come up with it? Right off the top, I suppose.’ That’s why I wear a hat.”

And that somehow led to the old, old, old, old question about where he finds his material.

“You know, I always did impersonations, it was what I was known for. But, over the years, I ended up working with a lot of these people that I’d been impersonating. I found that I had first-hand anecdotes of being around them, [like] meeting Christopher Walken the first time after impersonating him on TV.”

“Mostly the act is storytelling of these life experiences that actually happened with these people that I’ve been impersonating. So you have the real story, you have my perspective, and then you have, alright say it, my flawless impersonation of the person within the story. So, that’s the bulk of the act.”

Have any of the people Pollak impersonated not been in love with his rendition of their voice?

“Knock wood, not yet. But I did fear doing Jason Statham in this special. I did not want to get — and still don’t want to get that — if he should be reading or listening, however this comes out, Jason, I don’t want to get that phone call at four in the morning…”

Naturally, Pollak launched into a, yes, reasonably flawless and very funny impression of the imposing Englishman.

“‘Do you know who I am? Do you fucking know who I am? What did I tell you, mate? [I’m going to] rip your fucking heart out. Do you know what I mean? Do you fucking know what I mean?’ I don’t want that call.”

Christopher Walken, however, is a fan of his impression.

“He loves it. Me and Quentin Tarantino were the two speakers when Christopher Walken got his hands and feet and signature in cement in the [Chinese] Theater on Hollywood Blvd. Why I was chosen, having never met him prior, was because of the impersonation. So that couldn’t have been more [exciting] than that moment, and that’s one of the stories in the Showtime special,” Pollak added, working in another plug.

Then I asked about the age-old high-class problem that comedians find in more serious roles that audiences, myself definitely included, tend to laugh or at least smile when he comes on the screen, regardless of the content of the movie. Is this a problem in straight films?

“‘Straight films’ — instead of all the gay work I’ve been doing.”

I meant ‘non-comedy’ roles.

“‘Drama.’ ‘Drama’ is the word you were looking for. Let me you help. The ‘drama’ word.'”

Correct enough, I soldiered on, but what about that time it takes for an audience to figure out, depending on the nature of the role, that Pollak may not be making them laugh a huge amount in a given role. Does he feel somewhat pigeonholed by that expectation?

“I don’t, I tell ya. First of all, being a character actor I’ve had the freedom — the luxury and privilege — of doing a range of different characters, but however people discover you is how they know you. So, if you saw me first as a stand-up that’s what you think of. ‘A Few Good Men‘ was a giant leap for me. It was a welcome to the big leagues basically. Also, the character was written as sort of the conscience of the piece and I was the only actor, in a cast of giants, who the audience was [saying] ‘Who’s this guy?’ That’s how so many people discovered me. If you discovered me in that movie, then you’d think of me more in that way.”

Then it was someone else’s turn again. How much has show business changed for Pollak since he started out in the 80s?

“In every way possible.”

Is it harder or easier?

“It’s harder to make a living. It’s not harder, necessarily, to work with great people or…I mean opportunity comes and goes. There’s an ebb and flow of one’s career, if you have a career. So, as a character actor you come and go depending on the needs and desires of filmmakers as opposed to the studio. They don’t turn to me to sell tickets, so it’s kind of a luxury in that regard. But, in terms of making a living, that financial part of the business has changed, as it has in every other business.”

“So, fortunate for me, I have always been able to diversify so I’ve managed to make a comfortable living. Acting in movies is not the comfortable living it once was for a character actor. Other aspects of it, in terms of the fun to be had, in terms of the opportunities, in terms of the amazing filmmakers that I’ve been able to work with, that hasn’t changed.”

Then the topic turned to acting with Giovanni Ribisi. Though offhand I can’t remember any scenes in “Middle Men” with both the Ribisi and Pollak characters together, apparently they do work together in “Columbus Circle.” Were there any conflicts between Pollak’s intuitive style and Ribisi’s more intense approach that might have him tagged as a “method” actor. (If you read to the end of my Bullz-Eye interview with Ribisi, you’ll see a particularly vivid example of that.)

“I’ve worked with method actors before. I don’t know if he would be considered a strict method actor in the full sense of the word, the people who study the so-called [Stanislavsky] method. In the past, working with method actors, I’ve found that there’s very little fun to be had, which confused me. I didn’t understand why anyone would want to do this if they weren’t having fun. I was quite relieved with Giovanni… While his work ethic was one that made it very important to him to do good work, and he’s his own biggest critic, there is a tremendous amount of fun to be had and silliness between takes as opposed to a ‘don’t look me in the eye’ type of thing.”

The topic then turned to Pollak’s various audiences from various gigs and his best known role.

“The weird thing about ‘The Usual Suspects’ is that it regenerates a new audience because it’s one of these weird rights of passage in college. By the time you’re a sophomore, if you can’t speak ‘Suspects’ you’re a loser, like to this day. I thought [that] would fade and it’s now 15 years later and that’s still the case. So, that sort of helps to regenerate a new audience.”

“Even when I tour as a stand-up, the audience tends to be my similar to my age, who know me as a stand-up first. Then, a whole bunch of 20-somethings who know me from these other movies, or who have seen me do Christopher Walken who’s a hero of theirs and who just want more of that.”

“Now, I’ve just started doing this online talk show, ‘Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show,’ and now, almost a year and a half into it, I’m running into people who are just coming up and saying, ‘I love your podcast.’ It streams live video every Sunday afternoon. I check the audio download numbers — 1.2 million audio downloads in the last three months…because of that it’s starting to reach that critical mass and people are coming up and saying ‘I really dig the podcast, dude…'”

“I found early on, if you’re not creating, you’re waiting, and I don’t enjoy waiting. I never know when someone comes up and I see in their eyes that they’re about to recognize me, what they’re actually going to say. It can be a little annoying when they say, ‘What’s that thing I saw you in?’ Then we’re screwed because as much as I want to explain, I wasn’t with you when you saw it.”

It’s been nearly 15 years since producer James L. Brooks bankrolled a feature version of a short film made by some Texas youngsters, and that movie (“Bottle Rocket”) introduced the movie world to director Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson, and his brother, Luke. Since then, Dallas-born Luke Wilson’s movie-star handsome likeness has become a highly familiar to filmgoers, playing both leading men and supporting roles mostly in comedies like “Legally Blonde,” “Old School,” and Mike Judge’s criminally maltreated “Idiocracy,” as well as “Rushmore,” “The Royal Tenenbaums,” and a classic cameo in “Anchorman.” (He was the anchor who — spoiler alert — got his arm was sliced off with a sword by Tim Robbins.)

To this day, Wilson has a habit of turning up in odd and interesting places, like a series of well-known commercials for AT&T or in the uneven but entertaining “Middle Men,” in which Wilson very credibly stars as a Texas businessman who gets much more than he expected at the intersection of e-commerce and adult entertainment. He is also preparing to play the part of Laura Dern’s flaky ex-husband on “Enlightened,” a new TV series from cult writer-producer Mike White (“Chuck and Buck,” “School of Rock“) with episodes directed by Oscar-winner Jonathan Demme.

At the risk of creating an embarrassing but perhaps partially correct impression of a man-crush, in person Luke Wilson is a highly charismatic guy. Behind his highly colloquial speech — I’ve left out a lot of “likes” — is an intelligence that, without giving away much of anything, dispenses with a lot of the usual show business interview platitudes. Now in his late 30s, he also appeared thinner than his slightly chunky appearance on “Middle Man” or his recent AT&T commercials. That was because Wilson had deliberately gone over his normal weight by about 25 pounds for the role of a hard-driving businessman and family guy.

What was that like?

“It was great. Pasta, Mexican food, beer — all the things you kind of avoid. Obviously, as an actor you kind of look up to all the people who push themselves and it’s not like it was a super-important part of the role but…you get a little older, stop exercising, and you don’t eat very well and in a week you can have 12 pounds. It’s not like I did a De Niro,” he said referencing the actor’s astounding 1980 transformation from near-perfect human specimen to fat slob and back again as boxer Jake LaMotta in “Raging Bull.”

How about taking those 25 pounds off again?

“More difficult! Still working on it. Of course I tried the stuff of ‘Well, I’ll just eat right but I won’t start jogging,’ but you gotta really do both. I played sports growing up so I got to be in shape but, definitely, as you kind of pass 30, pass 35…I thought I might be immune,” he added, getting some laughs from the table.

How did Wilson approach playing a character loosely based on his producer, Christopher Mallick.

“I always kind of envied actors who got to play a real person or got to do research. I always had these roles where it was pretty much just right there on the page. You read about somebody playing Dian Fossey, or Hunter S. Thompson and Johnny Depp going to live with him, you think ‘God, that would be incredible.’ I just thought that now was the perfect time to do this and it was helped by me being not computer savvy at all. I wanted to learn about that. I liked that fact that Chris…was there every day, every shot…We’d eat lunch with him, go to dinner with him. He was a cool guy. He wouldn’t give straight-on advice but you could ask him any questions you wanted to. I just found that really interesting.”

“It helped kind of relax me because it was a different role for me. It’s not that I didn’t think I could do it but you just get told enough ‘Well, this is a really different role for you’ and you start to think, ‘Wow, it is. Should I be doing “Legally Blonde 3″?’ So it was great to have the chance to see that this is a real guy, and he’s just a businessman that actually did get in over his head.”

Then, came a question about, of all people, Bill Murray and his unorthodox approach to promoting his current film, “Get Low,” which led to him bailing out of two press days in Los Angeles but going to a film festival in Poland and dumpster diving on David Letterman. The justification for even asking Wilson about this was that he appeared with Murray in “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tenenbaums.” Was his attitude towards promoting those Wes Anderson films in any way similar?

“No, I think he might have had a more traditional approach back on those movies but he’s always been a totally different guy. Like I heard he doesn’t have an agent anymore, he has a 1-800 number. I hear that and I think ‘This guy’s a genius.’ Also, what you forget about him is that he’s now been in the business over 30 years, so I can see him getting a little tired of, ” Wilson paused, probably not wanting to say something along the lines of “idiots like you guys.” Fortunately, he came with something more diplomatic. “He probably doesn’t want to go on ‘Entertainment Tonight’ or something…”

Then, quizzed about his involvement with AT&T, Wilson volunteered that people were actually coming up to him to discuss the service provided by the telecommunications giant.

“The first time it happened to me, I was making a connection in the Denver airport. Some guy said something to me about ‘service.’ I was [thinking] ‘What the hell does that have to do with movies?’ and ‘What movie was I in the service industry?’ I had not seen the ads. All of the sudden they were on all the time. I had friends say, ‘Hey, if I wanted to watch the football game with you, I’d have had you over at my house.’ It shows the power of the medium — you’re making movies for 15 years and then people are saying ‘Hey, you’re the AT&T guy!’ ‘I guess I am!'”

His role as a commercial spokesman doesn’t limit the kind of roles he can take in any way, does it?

“I honestly like to be busy. It’s how I’m the most happy… It makes me want to write my own stuff. I like being on the set, like the guy who directed those AT&T ads was Errol Morris who did ‘The Thin Blue Line’ and all these incredible documentaries. To get the chance to be around him day-in and day-out was really incredible. And, yeah, it’s interesting to work for a big company like that.”

In person, one other thing you notice about Luke Wilson is that his Texas drawl is a bit more pronounced than it is in most of his movies. Noting that my favorite Wilson film, Wes Anderson’s underrated debut, “Bottle Rocket,” was in many respects almost a modern-day western, was there any chance of Wilson appearing in a real western?

“Somebody asked me today ‘Is there anything you’d like to do?’ That’s definitely at the top of the list. I’d like to do a sports movie too, but being from Texas and being a big Eastwood fan, last night I was watching ‘High Plains Drifter’ for, like, the fiftieth time and I would definitely like to do a western. Those kind of themes, simple stories, and just the idea of being on location in New Mexico or Montana just seems like it would be incredible.”

How about working again with his brother, Owen?

First he’d have to catch up with his peripatetic sibling, who is currently shooting a film with Woody Allen and he would also include the other acting Wilson brother, Andrew. “It’s just a matter of getting us all together and buckling down and trying to write a good script. Which I think we’d like to do.”

What about the fact that “Middle Men,” in something of a mini-“Bottle Rocket” reunion, reunited Luke Wilson with James Caan? Caan gave one of his best later-career performances as the only real criminal in the 1996 comedy.

“He was the first big star that we worked with. We would always kid around that we were high-fiving ourselves back then. ‘This is incredible. James Caan!’ Then you’d look at him on the set and he’s like ‘What am I doing here? I was working with Coppola. I was working with Michael Mann’… And, really, that’s how he was the first two days. We were [thinking] ‘God, this poor guy.'”

“He thought we looked weird. We sounded weird. There’d be takes where I’d say something and he wouldn’t even do the line. He would just look at the director… He really [adjusted] after a couple days. Maybe he just admitted defeat,” Wilson said to some laughter. “He was really nice to us and a really good guy. I’ve kept in touch with him over the years. So, yeah, 15-16 years later to get the chance to work with him again was really, really cool.”

Does Caan still think Wilson talks weird?

“Yeah. I’m sure he does. We had a real funny take one night where we’d been working all night. It was four in the morning. We had the scene where he opens his door and [says], ‘What’s this?’ and I say ‘It’s 150 grand.’ They said ‘action,’ he opened the door and I said ‘It’s 150 grand.’ He goes like, ‘No, see, I say “what’s that?,” you say “It’s 150 grand,” and then he slams the door and I think, ‘This could be 1995. This is like old home week.'”

He’s definitely not a household name, but if you’ve ever bought anything over the Internet, Christopher Mallick has had an impact on your household. If your purchases include an occasional picture of illicit sex or gratuitously naked people, that goes double.

Mallick is the producer and inspiration for the highly fictionalized new film, “Middle Men,” which covers the early days of Internet porn as seen through the eyes of businessman Jack Harris (Luke Wilson). Harris makes millions and gets in way over his head after meeting up with a couple of drug addled fools and geniuses (Giovanni Ribisi and Gabriel Macht), who, in the process of selling dirty pictures, have developed a way to safely and securely collect credit card numbers over the Internet so they can sell dirty pictures.

In real life, the one-time chief executive of Paycom pioneered the technology that makes buying anything from a DVD to a raincoat to a monthly membership in ButtBusters.com easy, safe, and more or less confidential. He is said to have many outrageous and hilarious behind-the-scenes tales that provided background for the fictional film.

“Middle Men” is actually just the start as Mallick appears to be very serious about the film industry. He’s got more projects coming along the way including films with writer/director George Gallo and a documentary about former porn people, “Exxxit: Life After Porn,” directed by Bryce Wagoner and written and produced by “Middle Men” co-writer Andy Weiss.

I met Mallick during a recent press day at the L.A. Four Seasons. There was a last minute change in the planned location of the room, from the second floor to the first floor, where we were to talk. When I arrived, I found Mallick — who is apparently slightly camera shy (that little picture to the right is it as far as available online photos are concerned) — in a wheel chair, wearing a leg brace, and, I am told, the company of a bodyguard, who apparently was so good at his job I didn’t even notice he was there.

Christopher Mallick: Sorry for the bum leg here.

Premium Hollywood: Did you have an accident?

CM: I did. I tripped and broke my knee and my ankle.

PH: Ooh. I sprained my ankle recently and that was bad enough.

CM: It’s not fun.

PH: Okay. Obviously [“Middle Men”] is largely based on your life experiences. I’ve read on the Internet that you were telling a lot of hilarious stories, but they all were off-the-record, they couldn’t be told. I need to know what we can talk about, on the record.

CM: Anything you say with that recorder is on the record.

PH: That’s very true. Of course, I’m presuming that you didn’t actually cover up the murder of a Russian gangster.

CM: (Smiling) Not as far as you know.

PH: Or [accidentally] got involved with underage…

CM: No. We were actually very instrumental in stopping a lot of child porn. We were one of the original funding entities for a large web group that’s out fighting for children’s rights and protecting children on the Internet. We’ve actually worked with the FBI. We had an office with the FBI within our office and we actually recovered children as a result of some of the work that we did.

PH: That’s very good. I’m trying to remember the name of that organization. Believe it not I’m actually aware of them.

CM: ASACP…

PH: I actually interviewed there once.

CM: Really. It’s Joan Irvine [who’s] the woman who started it.

PH: So, as much as you can, tell us, what is the real story of “Middle Men”?

CM: I think generally as you see it in the film it’s portraying my life fairly accurately during a 5-6 year period in terms of what happened to me economically, socially, in pretty much most of the areas of my life. Of course, George Gallo and Andy Weiss, who wrote the script, exaggerated certain things and made things far more interesting and more cinematic than just a guy sitting down and saying, “Hey, guess what happened to me?” or what I did. So, I think that it’s based on a true story, but it doesn’t mean it’s all true. A lot of the characters are composites of people I’ve known and some made up out of whole cloth by the writers.

PH: So, to try to sort of tease things apart…One thing that was interesting to me about the movie was that the Luke Wilson character… he’s a straight arrow, but he does work with [sketchy individuals]. First we see him with the character played by Robert Forster, who loves to kneecap people. Later on, he doesn’t seem too nervous about getting involved with this very scary Russian gangster [played by Rade Serbedzija]. Was that something that you would have been comfortable doing?

CM: You know, I’ve had a wide and varied set of experiences in my life. I learned a long time ago, especially from my father, you can deal with all sorts of people. It’s what you do in your dealings with them. You can deal with gangsters and not break the law. People do it every single day, all over the world. If you have a store in New York City, somebody’s picking up your trash. Those guys may or may not be affiliated with some other industries that may or may not be illegal. Does that make you a part of organized crime because you’re paying someone $500.00 a week to pick up your garbage at your 500 square foot store in Soho? I think the answer is “no.” It’s just part of your life. I sort of view things that way. It’s what I do is what I’m responsible for. I don’t feel like and I know certainly that I haven’t done anything to my knowledge that’s illegal. But I’ve dealt with some rough guys and I’ve dealt with some very professional and nice people and everyone in between.

PH: Of course, in the entertainment industry, aside from the adult industry, there’s a long tradition of [involvement by organized crime].

CM: The entertainment industry is made up of saints. All we do is tell the truth 24/7, and when we leave our offices, we go home to our families, and then we give money to charity. That’s it, that’s all that happens with these guys.

PH: Well, tell us one of your favorite stories that you actually can tell.

CM: I think the terrorist plot in the film [in which G-Man Kevin Pollak recruits the Luke Wilson character to gather intelligence on Middle Eastern bad actors] while it’s a little askew from what happened [is one]. An interesting story is right after 9/11, CNN ran a list of the [hijackers] and people who had tickets who they suspected of being [hijackers]. Back then — this is ten years ago now — we recorded it and I took it into one of my partners and said, “Let’s run these names through our database.”

He said, “You’re crazy.” “Let’s just see what happens.” We had a hit and it was a guy that subsequently was arrested. One of the [hijackers] who went down with the plane had bought a membership to a site with an online check. We traced the check to a bank in San Diego, called the FBI, who was down the hall from us, and said, “We have a hit.” These guys are apparently sitting in an apartment, ordering pizza and porn on their way to meet Allah…I have a great deal of respect for anyone’s belief, but that takes it a little far. [Anyhow], they found the check, went to the apartment, found the phone record, found the cell phone number that one of these guys was using. One of the would-be bombers in Chicago was holed up in the Hyatt in Downtown Chicago and the FBI raided it, on CNN, and arrested this guy. I think it helped in some other things. So, that to me was one of the more interesting aspects of my career. It was always the same story. No one had ever bought online porn. No one ever used their credit card to buy anything. I would go into a car dealership, for example, and I would have my company logo on my polo shirt or whatever. I’d see the salesman. They look at the shirt, they look at the name of the company, and then you’d see a light go off. Then they’d realized, “Oh, that’s the name I see on my credit card bill.” I think the terrorist story and things like that sort of speak to what the movie is based in, which is hypocrisy. Everybody’s saying one thing and doing something else. For me, the theme of the movie is hypocrisy, and redemption.

PH: Speaking of being honest, I have gone to certain sites…

CM: No, say it’s not true.

PH: And seen ads for the movie.

CM: Yeah.

PH: You guys are advertising — or somebody’s advertising — really heavily on free porn sites.

CM: I think it’s the porn community. Because, to my knowledge, we’re not writing any checks. Paramount certainly isn’t. But I think you’ve got people that see this is a movie that’s going to promote their business and promote traffic. The trailer is pretty amazing. So, we’ll see. I have seen e-mails from people saying, “Hey, what’s this about?” As far as I’m concerned, great. Those people buy tickets. The same guy whose going to “Toy Story 3” is going to come to “Middle Men.”

PH: One of the things which is not specific to porn is that you and your partners really did revolutionize e-commerce. This is a huge part of our economy now.

CM: I think it’s something everyone takes for granted. Kids now, and even people my age, you forget when you couldn’t by something online. The technology that was developed as a result of this business and being able to do things in real time. You’d go to Amazon when they first started and you’d buy something and they’d say it’s going to be shipped, and then two-days later you’d get an e-mail saying your credit card’s been declined, because they weren’t doing real-time transactions. This business, because of the volume, set up all the fraud parameters for Visa and Mastercard… The money that is generated from this industry is put back into a lot of technology and research and development by the people developing the content. And it’s for one purpose, to keep more of the sales than they had in the past. It’s evolved to the point where we worked actively with Visa and Mastercard for setting up rules for how e-commerce would work and what they would allow and what they wouldn’t.

PH: But now you’re a movie producer.

CM: I am.

PH: One of the things we want to talk about before I forget is the documentary, “Exxxit” with three Xs…

CM: “Life After Porn”

PH: What is the story on that right now?

CM: It’s going to be released in October, I believe, in New York and L.A., maybe a few other markets and then we’ll do a day-and-date video-on-demand release through a distributor that we’re working with. We’re getting pretty good feedback on it. We think it’s very interesting. We’ll have a press screening or two for it and have all you guys come out. It’s a very interesting account of what happens to these people who were actually performers, actors, however you chose to characterize it.

PH: Are you in the film at all?

CM: No. It’s all “BC”: “Before Chris.”

PH: Can you name any big names that we might know who’ll be in it?

CM: 15 or 20 including Mary Carey, Houston, Nina Hartley, Asia Carerra. Their stories are amazing and heartbreaking and interesting. As odd as it sounds it’ll tug at your heartstrings if you have them.

PH: Oh, that’s not so odd.