Opening this Friday, “Dinner for Schmucks” borrows its premise and some of its plot from Frances Veber’s 1998 “The Dinner Game.” Paul Rudd co-stars as Barry, a rising L.A. executive who finds that entering his company’s upper echelon will mean participating in a competitive Dinner for Winners. All the guests are to bring an extraordinary person who has been unrecognized by society — in other words, a dithering idiot. The winner of the nasty game is the one whose guest is the most amusingly stupid.

Barry is initially appalled by the idea and assures Julie (Stephanie Szostak), his horrified art curator girlfriend, he’ll have nothing to do with it. On the other hand, he needs to pay for his Porsche and his absurdly large apartment at West Hollywood’s Sunset Tower Hotel (in real life, you’d need a billionaire’s wealth to afford that). It’s a choice between being nice and being unemployed and in debt. Then the fates seem to reward him when, driving through a quainted-up version of Westwood Village, he nearly runs over Tim Wagner (Carell), a clueless IRS employee and ultra-naive artist committed to his “mousterpieces.” Wagner, of course, turns out to be a goodhearted type whose attempts to help his new friend backfire in increasingly absurd ways. Fortunately, most of them are funny, particularly thanks to some outstanding and often completely unhinged supporting performances from Zach Galifianakis and Jemaine Clement of “Flight of the Conchords” as an absurdly pretentious and untalented, but hugely successful, artist on the make for Barry’s increasingly angry girlfriend and all other attractive women on the planet.

“Dinner for Schmucks” isn’t going to electrify cinephiles or become a staple of screenwriting seminars, but a couple of weeks back it had proven itself to be a very effective laugh-getting machine at a West L.A. screening. Therefore, full of a free breakfast, a selection of journos were in a pretty good mood for a morning press conference at the Beverly Hilton with a number of funny and/or talented people, including stars Carell and Rudd, supporting bad guys Bruce Greenwood (“Star Trek“) and Ron Livingston (“Office Space“) as well as director Roach and writers David Guion and Michael Handelman, who are about to become directors themselves with the film version of the BBC comedy, “Cruise of the Gods.”

The first question proved to be a starting point for some light shtick between Rudd and Carell, who have worked together previously to great comic effect in “Anchorman” and Carrel’s breakthrough comedy, “The 40 -Year-Old Virgin.”

So, what was the most challenging scene in the film, Mr. Carell?

“We shot a scene where Paul had injured his back. We shot it for about a day and a half, and I had to hug Paul, for a day and a half,” said Carrel.

“That’s challenging for anyone,” Rudd admitted.

“And to lift him,” Carell continued, “because he was giving me nothing.”

“No,” Rudd agreed. “The only way to sell it is to just go dead weight.”

“So,” Carell agreed, “that was probably the most physically challenging aspect of the movie. Terrible, terrible answer. Don’t write that.”

Perhaps feeling that it was maybe a little early yet for too much silliness, Rudd — who comes from a ‘real’ acting background but has an obvious gift for comedy — gave a serious answer. “It’s always challenging. Everything you ever work on is challenging. Just to show up and try be real and not look as if I’m playing at anything. Just try and be the character. It’s always work.”

So, would Paul care to elaborate on the challenges of being a straight man while Carell is having all the “fun” in a movie like “Schmucks”?

“It’s a challenge not to ruin the take by laughing. I didn’t rise to that challenge on many occasions…It’s weird, my definitions of ‘comedy’ and ‘drama’ or ‘straight man,’ all that kind of stuff, they’re all blurry for me. I don’t really think of it in those terms,” he said, talking about how the events of the film forced him to be “reactive” which he said can be not so easy to sustain for the course of an entire feature film. He likes to think “not so much in terms of jokes,” but more in terms of the character, Rudd said.

Then, the same questioner noticed some new facial hair on Rudd. “What’s with the beard?”

“I’m getting ready to start a movie on Monday.”

“That’s a lie,” Carell interjected. “He’s just doing it for fun.”

Rudd quickly changed his story. “I came in this morning at about 6:00 A.M. and applied it with spirit gum and hair from my back. It took about an hour. And it’s like, what’s going to be fun to wear in New York City summer heat?”

The next questioner asked if perhaps the issue of ruining takes might have arisen during Jemaine Clement’s hilarious straight faced bits. She wondered if the wacky but extremely self-serious character was inspired by anyone in real life.

“It is hard, Jemaine cracks me up. He got these guys laughing a little bit too,” said Roach. “We based the character a little bit on Matthew Barney [of the epic-length, famously disturbing “Cremaster” art film cycle] and a little bit on Peter Beard and a little bit the guy from Ashes and Snow [Gregory Colbert]. We mostly wanted to have a character who is so convinced not only that he was an artist in the most important sense of the word, but he was the best thing that ever happened to art and, really, the world… And also that he had to be convincing as a rival for Paul’s character’s girlfriend. Despite Jemaine’s character and vibe that he portrays on the ‘Conchords,’ I always thought that he was kind of hunky.”

What did the actors think about working with Clement? Had they ever bumped into him previously?

“I’d never met him before,” said Carell. “He’s fantastic. He’s a really good improviser in the sense that you never feel him going for a joke. You never get a sense that he’s waiting for his turn to say something or do something funny. He’s really just a part of the scene and always ends up making it better. He’s also a really fine actor. He committed to that character so completely. There was a sense of calmness about him and a sense of inner dignity to the character in the face of its absurdity which I just loved. He was a hard person to work with and not ruin takes because he’s so, so good.”

Rudd chimed in. “It’s funny in that it seems like it’s a character that’s broad in that his look is very defined. His style and vocation is such a specific thing, but he’s so good with subtlety. There were many, many moments when he would just kind of say something that wasn’t a joke but would just really make me laugh,” Rudd said. As an example, he referred to a line in the film when, for reasons too complicated or too silly to explain, his character is alleged to have gonorrhea and his utterly straightforward response, “I don’t have gonorrhea,” struck Rudd as funny on the set. (It is in the movie, as well.). “He’s weirdly soft-spoken about it. He’s good in everything.”

Then came the inevitable question for the actors about what attracted them to the project. (Just once, I would like to hear. “I needed the money. No, I’m not kidding. I need cash.” Most actors aren’t rich.)

Carell led the charge on this one. “Working with Jay and working with Paul, those were enormous factors for me. I liked the storyline too. I thought it was funny. It was a little weird. It had a heart to it. And I tend to like things that have a gray area to them. Like the character that Paul plays; here’s a guy who’s very conflicted. He’s not a bad guy but he’s at a moral impasse in his life. ..It actually said something very kind, ultimately.”

Rudd didn’t disagree. “Yeah, and the people involved. I thought the script was really funny. That was really it. It was kind of a no-brainer. I was so excited to get offered the part.”

Then, finally, the really fine and underrated, and usually non-comic, actor Bruce Greenwood spoke. Greenwood is having a career renaissance these days and is probably best known to contemporary audiences as Christopher Pike in the J.J. Abram’s “Star Trek” reboot. He has, however, been a busy and highly acclaimed working actor since the 1980s, notably delivering a truly world-class performance as a tax accountant dealing with an immense personal tragedy in Atom Egoyan, “Exotica.” He was also remarkably focused and memorable in David Milch’s misfired “John from Cincinnati.”

“For me it was working with Jay and Paul and Steve,” Greenwood said, praising the script and the approach. “When you have this premise of making fun of people, it has a chance of being mean-spirited [but] it has this big heart… that appealed to me on an emotional level as well.”

Ron Livingston, whose inoffensive looks and knack for putting on a vaguely insincere demeanor has put him in numerous regular guy and sleazy business guy parts, took a page from the Ringo Starr playbook. “I’m just happy to be here.”

After the laugh subsided Livingston decided to elaborate. “I think sometimes you have to try to imagine in your head what it’s going to look like. The great thing about this one was we’ve actually had a chance to see Steve and Paul work together [before] and it’s brilliant,” Livingston said. “There’s a comfort level there and a playfulness… I think Jay does a great job having character comedy meet physical comedy in a way that you don’t really give up one to jump into the other. I was just thrilled, actually, to be along for the ride.”

Then a journalist from Asia brought up the topic of both Steve Carell’s Emmy nomination and his recently announced decision to leave “The Office” once his contract expires at the end of the upcoming seventh season.

“I’ll let Jay [Roach] take this one,” Carell joked, but he eventually got around to the topic. His response, while sincere, won’t win any prizes for originality. “I always wanted to honor my contract and I felt like now is a good time for the character to move on and for me to move on personally. I want to spend more time with my wife and kids. That’s really the impetus behind that decision there.”

Paul Rudd, however, had the real bombshell. “And Steve will be playing for the Miami Heat next year.” (Yes, the press conference was the morning after LeBron James’ announcement.)

“Very exciting,” Carell added. “Scranton is burning my Jersey.”

Then, someone brought up theword “schmuck.” Now, for those of you who’ve only heard the world colloquially and assume it means nothing more than “idiot” or “fool,” the Yiddish word “schmuck” is the fairly precise Yiddish equivalent to “dick” in all its many meanings, other than as a nickname for “Richard.” It is also fair to add that the word actually derives from the German word for “jewel” — as in “family jewels” — and that Yiddish is very nearly a dead language, killed by the decision to make Hebrew Israel’s national language, and it’s been many decades since it’s been used in a sexual context by many people. A writer from a prominent Jewish publication, therefore, asked about how it ended up in the title.

Jay Roach took on the question. “The script was called that when it was first sent to me. For me, it’s kind of an ideal word for what the story is about. In modern usage it has two meanings. Like ‘don’t be a schmuck’ can mean ‘don’t be a jerk,’ which is what Paul Rudd’s character is going through and ‘don’t be an idiot’ which is what you think Steve Carrel’s character is going through… To me, it both is a funny word to say but it also resonated [with] what the two characters were about.”

The questioner responded that the offense some people might be taking was more of a generational thing, and asked if anyone involved with the film had received negative feedback from elderly Jewish relatives.

Paul Rudd seemed to think the question was intended strictly for him. “Go right to the Jew — you know, I was in schul on Saturday, and…” joked America’s reigning movie Jewish American Prince. “No, my grandfather used to call me a ‘schmuck’ all the time,” Rudd said.

After some difficulty to transcribe/describe silliness, Rudd continued. “I remember growing up, I’d say, ‘Oh, God, “putz” is such a funny word.’… I always thought like, ‘Oh, “putz” is an idiot. And I remember my dad saying, ‘Well, you know, actually a putz is a penis’ — what’s up with the all words by the way, for ‘penis’ — it always took on, I think, not so much a specificity but general ‘oh, you’re being an idiot.’… I know that there are some people, I read it too, that might take offense to the fact that it’s ‘Dinner for Schmucks.’ It wouldn’t have even crossed my mind.”

“Also, ‘Dinner for Wieners’ didn’t test well,’ added Ron Livingston.

Following a brief discussion of Rudd’s charter membership in the Judd Apatow stock company and how Seth Rogen had dubbed it “the Jew-Tang Clan,” it was on to less Hebraic matters. In particular, with Steve Carrel’s involvement in “The Office” winding down, would he be taking on projects that he was more directly involved with himself?

“I just completed a movie with Ryan Gosling and Julianne Moore, that’s the first movie my production company’s producing. That’ll come out sometime next year,” said Carrel. “I hope that I’m able to start writing again once my tenure at ‘The Office’ is done.”

The next question was on the topic of Zach Galifianakis’s remarkable performance as Carrel’s coworker and nemesis. The questioner said he felt “it looked like Marlon Brando and Andy Kaufman going at it.”

“Marlon Brando and Andy Kaufman”? Carell interrupted. “I’m trying to figure out who’s who… Now I can’t get that combination out of my head. I want to see that movie,” Carell added, but then actually addressed the question about the hard to spell/pronounce Mr. G.

“He is intensely funny and his brain works a different way than most people, and I think that’s part of what makes him so great. [It’s] that his thought processes are very unique to him. He, too, I think is a really good actor because he comes in and he enters a scene as a character and he takes in his environment. He’s really committed to the character and not just to being funny or to think of funny things to say. Everything he says comes from within his character… He was really a joy to improvise with and act opposite.”

The writer then wanted to clarify that Carell was still going to be making movies, and not “going to work in his sister’s general store,” after finishing ‘The Office.'”

“I’ll only make ‘Office’ movies,” Carell joked.

Moving on, the next topic was the similarities and differences between “Dinner for Schmucks” and the more theatrical French film “The Dinner Game,” adapted by director Frances Veber from his own play. Jay Roach was quick to praise the prior film which, unlike “Schmucks,” does not include an actual dinner.

“It’s more ‘inspired by’ than ‘based on’ but it was a great hook… Frances is like the Mike Nichols of France. I’m sure he’d rather just be the Frances of France. He writes great farce, ‘La Cage Aux Folles,” “La Valise” and all these films. He’s a hero of mine and I felt lucky to get to be able to work on a story of his.”

And then the radio interviewer next to me was astute enough to address a question to Bruce Greenwood, asking him about the differences between doing a broad comedy like “Schmucks” as opposed to the sometimes deadly serious films he’s been best known for until recently. “Not that there weren’t some thigh-slappers in ‘Exotica,'” he added.

“But they were naked thighs,” Greenwood interjected, commenting on Atom Egoyan’s tragedy-laced 1994 drama set in a Toronto strip club. As for doing this kind of broad comedy, he apparently had a fairly hard time at first.

“I spent the whole first day just weeping into my handkerchief. I just couldn’t stop laughing…vIt was great fun to be around.”

But is the actor’s cliche that “dying is easy but comedy is hard” true?

“Yeah. I’m used to doing stuff where you say what’s in the script,” said Greenwood, getting a laugh. “The first couple of days I just watched these guys with my jaw on the floor and then Jay says, just go at it. See what happens. It was a lot of fun.”

A discussion with the writers followed regarding a key difference between the lead character in “The Dinner Game,” who starts out the film as fairly unsympathetic, and Paul Rudd’s more conflicted character, who desperately wants money and success but who is almost as appalled as he should be by the “Dinner for Winners.” Was it perhaps a studio decision to please the presumably more darkness-averse American audience?

The answer, we were told, was not really — at least not consciously. “It seemed a little bit more interesting to us if you could see both sides of his character, and if he at the start of the film was a little bit at war with himself,” said Michael Handelman.

“In the original, that character very much is sort of a jaded guy who you feel like has lived a sinful existence for a very long time. There’s something about Paul being a younger guy where we wanted to deal with someone who was at a turning point in his life,” said David Guion.

“Paul is really at a turning point in his life,” kidded writer Handelman. “We don’t know if the good or the bad Paul is going to win.”

“Bad Paul,” said Paul Rudd.

And then it was my turn to ask a question. Correctly noting that the movie involves an awful lot of extremely well-off characters but wrongly noting that the poorest person in the film drove a Porsche — I should have said the poorest male person not bearing a special invitation to the “Dinner for Winners” — I wondered how much our present economic morass was weighing on the minds of the creators.

“We definitely thought that it was opportune,” said writer Handelman, “to have them working at a hedge fund or a private equity [firm]”

“We actually talked to a number of people at hedge funds when we were writing the thing,” Guion added. “They were all extremely concerned that this would cast people in the financial sector in a negative light. That would be the end of it for them,” he said to some laughter.

Handelman chimed in, saying that would be doubly true if word got out that, “on top of everything else, [they] played games likes this.”

Then, I noted a scene in which Zach Galifianakis, as he’s practicing mind control over Carrel, briefly turns a bright beet red, returning to semi-normal right before our eyes. Was that as real as it looked?

“That was all Zach,” said Jay Roach. “That is just him losing himself in his belief in his ability to control somebody’s mind and putting every aspect of himself into it. The funny thing about that is when we sent it to the lab, and I just got involved in the color timing, they tried to time it out, they thought it was a mistake. So, I got it back and I said ‘What happened?’ they said, ‘We wanted it to match.’ I said, ‘No, no, no, that was real.’ There’s no digital effect. That is all just the very blood of Zach Galifianakis rushing to his face to show itself.”

The next questioner asked Steve Carell whether he got any “secret pleasure” from working with the stuffed mice and the amazing and rather beautiful “mousterpieces” created by his character (actually, veteran animators and artists, the Chiodo Brothers) which may be the single best aspect of “Dinner for Schmucks.”

“Not so secret. I was astounded by the detail in those mice dioramas,” Carell said. “The man hours [and] the attention to detail and the commitment to those dioramas, they were astounding. I think honestly things like that really help you with a character. Because, to sit in a room with all of those and look at how meticulously they’ve been put together really informs the characters a lot. It really tells you a lot about who this guy is …I was very thankful and grateful to [the Chiodos] for how exquisite those dioramas were.”

Did he ever find himself playing with them or dressing them in his spare time?

“I’d rather not go into the details of that,” Carrell said. “I do hope, at some point, to own one for my house. I don’t know whether it’s the Ben Franklin or the Evel Knievel but I would love to have a mouse diorama in my own home to display proudly.”

Then another questioner asked Paul Rudd about a scene requiring him to literally speak into actress Lucy Punch’s crotch, playing an inordinately determined past “Fatal Attraction”-style hook-up for his character.

“Into a cell phone? Speaking into a woman’s crotch? You’re asking me?” queried a concerned looking Rudd.

“She’s trying to get the first line of her story,” Carell sagely commented. “I didn’t go for the bait with dressing the mice. ”

Getting a bit more sincere, Rudd said “I was very nervous and uncomfortable… I actually turned the color of Zach Galifianakis.”

Shifting gears, what did the cast think of “The Dinner Game” as it compared to “Dinner for Schmucks”?

“Really, I approached this the same way I approached ‘The Office,” said Steve Carell. “I still haven’t seen the original ‘Office’ because I didn’t want to do an impersonation of Ricky Gervais. I still haven’t seen the French film because I didn’t want to have that inform what I was going to do with this one. I tried to look at it as a blank slate. I’d like to see it now that the work is done. I’ve heard only great things.”

“To prepare for this,” said Paul Rudd, “I watched the British ‘Office.'”

Then came the obligatory praise for the director who, as per Paul Rudd, really does come across like “a self-effacing guy” despite being married for quite some time now to Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles. “My wife’s really into Paul,” Roach added.

Seeing as “Dinner for Schmucks” is a remake, someone wondered how would Roach and company feel about having one of their movies remade?

“I would love to see a remake of ‘Austin Powers.’ Especially in a completely different culture. The Brazilian version of ‘Austin Powers’ or the Ukrainian version would be [great]. I would be so flattered if someone thought to do that.”

“I’ve had some I’d like to remake” said Bruce Greenwood, the highly experienced actor whose diverse credits include 1986’s “The Malibu Bikini Shop.”

Did anyone in the cast have the kind of unusual or extraordinary hidden talents that might get them invited to the Dinners for Winners.? Carell admitting to playing two very “unsexy” instruments — the baritone horn, a sort of “mini-tuba,” and the fife. Bruce Greenwood discussed his bowl-making hobby, which he said was not a joke, and Ron Livingston admitted to juggling “a little.” Paul Rudd demonstrated that he can do a strange but hard to describe thing with his tongue.

Then Jay Roach was asked about, wait for it, the state of comedy today and how it’s changed, and whether he felt a need for his comedies to have “morals.”

“I don’t know how much comedy’s changed. I grew up watching Woody Allen films. ‘Annie Hall’ sort of convinced me to go to film school. I remember how that film… how funny it was, obviously, but how it made comedy as a way of coping with heartache,” Roach said.

“I think that’s what attracted me to this story. It’s about a character who has coped with his own pain and separation from his wife, in a very unusual way, through his mice [dioramas]… It wasn’t so much meant to be a film with a moral as much as a film where you enjoyed watching how one person’s approach to life, which might seem off-center, odd, or idiotic, could actually inspire another person to get more in touch with their better selves. But [that’s] mostly just because the characters were struggling to find a way to be, in a funny way.”

This is another one of those cases where, although I wasn’t rooting for this person to get the call from Karim, I was still very much looking forward to talking to the actor in question…and, in fact, I enjoyed the interview so much that, although I’m not going to mention the person until after the jump, I will at least say this much to random web surfers who happen upon this entry: you don’t have to be a dedicated viewer of “Harper’s Island” to click onward. You could just be a fan of the work of David Milch (“Deadwood,” “John from Cincinnati”), or of “Supernatural,” and you’d still enjoy reading what lies after the jump.

So what are you waiting for?

(Special thanks go out to Bullz-Eye’s legendary layout man, Brian Smith, who – even though his wife is expecting a child at any minute – still found time to help a brother out by putting together this week’s header graphic for me, since I had a computer crash last week and still haven’t rescued Microsoft Office from the old system. His graphics work kicks the ass of anything I’ve done…but, then again, that’s what he gets paid to do, and I’m taking comfort in that.)

Premium Hollywood: Hey, Jim, how’re you doing?

Jim Beaver: Hey, Will!

PH: Good to talk to you.

JB: Same here!

PH: Well, as a well-known character actor, arguably the most famous face on the show besides maybe Harry Hamlin and Richard Burgi, did they approach you to be on “Harper’s Island,” or was it your traditional audition process?

JB: I think it was probably kind of a mixture, because Jon Turteltaub, one of the executive producers, is an old, dear personal friend of mine, although I’d never worked for him before. And then the other executive producer, Jeff Bell, I had done a series for last year called “Daybreak.” So I think they knew pretty early that they might have some interest in me, but at the same time, I did come in to audition. So I think it was a mixture of the two.

PH: How quickly did you and Elaine Cassidy (Abby) pull together your characters’ father-daughter relationship? I would think it’d be a little easier than most such situations, just because the characters hadn’t been close in ages.

JB: Well, the material in the script was very rich in terms of suggesting how that relationship should be played, and Elaine is a very intuitive and empathetic actor. Just from the very first moment that we met, the relationship seemed to build rather naturally, except for the fact that, in real life, we didn’t have any strain between us. But I think we grew very fond of one another very quickly, and it made it very easy to play, “What if these two people who cared about each other had this big strain in their relationship?” So I think it came together rather quickly and rather organically.

PH: I’m sure I’m not the only viewer who, when Madison dropped the bombshell that it was the sheriff who’d kidnapped her, said, “No way, man, I’m not buying it!” Did you know at the time that line appeared in the script if it was true or not?

JB: (Laughs) At the time that line appeared in the script, I don’t believe I did know whether it was true or not. The way they structured the production…for about 99.999% of all of the information, the actors were kept in the dark up until we saw the scripts, and if the script alluded to something we didn’t understand, then we didn’t find it out until the next script explained it. So, no, I think when…you know, to me, I really enjoyed the game of making a show this way, where I and the other actors were guessing along with the audience…albeit, y’know, several months earlier. (Laughs) And so sometimes they would have us say or do things that completely caught us by surprise, and, yeah, at the point that Madison said that the sheriff had kidnapped her, I had no idea whether I had or not.

PH: I’ve heard some of the actors say that they would sit around and work out the intricate explanations as to how their character could be the killer.

JB: Oh, yeah. Yeah, you know, it was kind of a parlor game with us at nights and on the weekends and sitting around on set, trying to figure out and trying to eliminate possibilities. I don’t think anybody wanted…I think everybody was kind of anxious to find out, but I don’t think anybody wanted to be told in advance. I’m not sure. It kind of would’ve ruined the game, like, while you’re watching a tape of the game, somebody coming in in the second inning and telling you who won. (Laughs)

PH: One of the photos I’ve got for this piece is of you looking at your cell phone, and I was going to put the caption, “Karim Zreik? Oh, hell, I’m not answering that. They can’t kill me if I don’t answer!”

JB: (Laughs) That’s funny!

PH: How did you find out that you weren’t coming back to “Harper’s Island”?

JB: Well, apparently, from what I’ve heard from the other cast members so far, I’m kind of a solitary example, because Karim (Zreik) didn’t tell me. I got a call from Jeff Bell, one of the executive producers, and so because it was from Jeff, I wasn’t particularly expecting what he was calling about. But I was sitting in my apartment, probably watching television, and he called and…y’know, it was very business-like. It was, “Well, Jim, we’re gonna kill you off in this next episode.” And I said, “Oh, okay. How does it happen?” It wasn’t a lot of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. I figured ten episodes out of thirteen, when two or three people are getting lopped off every episode, I was doing pretty well to make it that far.

PH: You defied the odds, definitely.

JB: Yeah!

PH: When you were in the forest, that scream you gave…? I really believed you had been hit in the leg with a knife.

JB: (Laughs) Well, you know, it’s funny, because the first time we rehearsed it, I think I was probably trying to be a little too much John Wayne, because the director said, “Uh, you know, Jim, this really, really, really hurts.” “Oh. Okay.” So the next time we took it, I spit my larynx out somewhere in the forest there. It was a pretty miserable day, but it wasn’t because of the stake in my leg.

PH: I was going to ask you how you enjoyed the scenes in the woods. I’ve gotten mixed reports from the other actors.

JB: Well, that day, that one day with the spike or whatever it was that went into my leg, the day we shot that was the single most miserable day of my entire career, in terms of physical discomfort.

PH: Wow.

“That better not be Karim calling, because…oh, phew, it’s only Jeff Bell!”

JB: It was right around freezing, and it was raining buckets all day. Everybody else was bundled up in three or four down jackets, and they all looked like the Michelin Man, and I was out there in street clothes, crawling around in the mud and covered in fake blood. And it took all day. It was wet and miserable and very, very cold. But, you know, what, give up show biz? (Laughs)

PH: So what is it with you and sheriffs? You’ve played half a dozen of them in your career. Is it the beard? Does it give you the authority-figure vibe?

JB: I don’t think it’s the beard, because most of the sheriffs I’ve played have been before I…I grew the beard for “Deadwood” back in 2002, and just because so many of my jobs have overlapped, I haven’t been able to get rid of it! (Laughs) But, no, I don’t think it’s the beard. In fact, I think I’ve only played two sheriffs with beards, and I’ve always wondered about it, because I think they probably look askance at that in real life, but…I don’t know, it seems to be one of the niches I fit in pretty easily. It’s probably a certain dry or quiet aspect to my onscreen persona. I really don’t know. It’s kind of a kick for me, because every other show, every other film that comes along has a sheriff in it, so it’s been a nice thing for my career. But I don’t quite know how to explain it. (Laughs) I’m not nearly as tough as I play, so it can’t be that!

PH: Well, I guess having your character killed on “Deadwood” has probably saved you from being asked over and over again what you’ve heard about a “Deadwood” movie.

JB: Well, no, it actually hasn’t. (Laughs) I still get asked.

PH: Oh, well.

JB: Everybody who followed that show really wanted to see some more of it, as did I. It was not only one of my favorite jobs ever, but it was also one of my favorite shows ever, even if I hadn’t been connected with it., and I would’ve loved to have seen it extended somehow. But I’m afraid that ship has long since sailed.

PH: Were you surprised at the way Ellsworth’s storyline developed with Alma, or was it something that you kind of saw coming?

JB: No, I didn’t see that coming at all! I mean, c’mon, you saw me in the beginning of that show: I had green and yellow and black teeth, stringy hair, and a Gabby Hayes beard. I was covered in filth. Yeah, of course I’m going to marry the richest woman in town! No, I was really pleasantly surprised, and that’s one of the things I loved about doing “Deadwood.” To me, that was one of the greatest character arcs in television history! (Laughs) I always likened it to a Roy Rogers movie where Gabby Hayes marries Dale Evans. Yeah, I was very surprised. I mean, of course, it came on gradually, so I began to see things coming, but I certainly never expected anything like that when we started.

PH: Did you have any more idea what “John from Cincinnati” was about than anyone else did?

JB: Not particularly. (Laughs) I…the thing with me is that there isn’t a word David Milch could write that I wouldn’t willingly get in front of a camera and say. I trust him as a writer and as an artist, and I think he had powerful and meaningful things to say with that show. I think not all of them were made clear. I do feel like the show suffered from a lack of support from the powers that be at the time, because it started out to be a 13-episode season, and then it got cut down to 12, and then 11, and then 10. And all the time, David is having to restructure in order to get as much of his concept for the first season into a reduced season. I think it just got harder and harder for the message to come through. I think…well, I look on that show kind of like I look on great music: I don’t always understand what it means, but to me, there was always a sense that something wonderful was happening. Even if I didn’t quite understand it. (Laughs) But I think it might’ve cleared up quite a bit if it’d been given a second season.

PH: Any talk of you making it into a trifecta and doing a stint on “Last of the Ninth,” his new HBO series?

JB: Well, the last I heard…and don’t hold me to this…was that HBO didn’t pick it up. But as far as David Milch is concerned, I’m always up for a trifecta. I’ll sweep up on one of his sets, because he’s…I always felt I knew what a genius was until I met him. It’s been a total honor and privilege to have been associated with two of his shows, and I hope the chance arises again, but from what I’ve heard, “Last of the Ninth” isn’t going to be it…for me or anybody else. I’m not real sure where things stand, but my understanding is that they’re not going forward with it.

(Writer’s note: A call to Red Board Productions, which produced “Deadwood” and “John from Cincinnati,” resulted in uncertainty where things stood with the HBO deal. I was told, “We filmed part of it, but we’re not making it at the moment.” HBO confirmed the bad news, saying, “We are not going forward with ‘Last of the Ninth.’ Milch, however, is developing other projects to pitch us.” So based on the phrasing at Red Board, does that mean the show could yet end up somewhere else? Or is that just wishful thinking on my part?)

PH: Since turning up “Supernatural,” do you ever wear flannel off the clock anymore?

JB: Oh, my gosh, I never wear flannel! (Laughs) You know, the sartorial similarities between me and Bobby Singer are pretty much restricted to baseball caps, and if I ever got on a show where I could cut my hair off, I wouldn’t even wear those. Yeah, I kind of like the look they have for Bobby, but I don’t dress like that. And, of course, they’ve got him so layered up that every time I run into a fan in real life, they say, “Oh! You’re so much thinner than you look on television!” (Laughs) With enough layers, you start to look kind of paunchy…and, of course, I’m actually built just like Jared and Jensen.

PH: Of course.

JB: Exactly like them.

PH: So was the role of Bobby Singer always intended to be a recurring one, or did it turn into one over the course of the evolution of the show?

JB: I think it turned into one. Again, that was a case where I had worked for the producer, Robert Singer, my namesake… (Laughs) …years before on a show, so we knew each other, but when I came in to do that first episode, it was just a one-shot, a guest appearance, as far as I was concerned. And I believe it was just a one-shot as far as they were concerned. But I remember the crew saying, “Well, hey, we rarely get guest stars who don’t die, so maybe you’ll be back!” And then it turned out that I came back right away. I think it was the second appearance when they began to think, “You know, this character could actually fill a slot we need in the structure of the show.” But I’m not sure that they had any idea of that at the beginning.

PH: I know Katie (the lovely publicist for “Harper’s Island”) is going to be getting on the line any minute, so I’ll go ahead and make this my last one, but I interviewed Allen Coulter when his film “Hollywoodland” was released on DVD…

JB: Oh, yeah!

PH: …and you were credited on the film as “Biographical Consultant.” How does that work? Do you go through the script with a red pen, circling things and writing, “Dubious claim, never substantiated”?

JB: Well, you know, I didn’t have a technical title on that show. Allen and I at one time shared an agent, and this agent – Paul Alan Smith – knew that I had been working for years on a biography of George Reeves, and when his other client, Allen, ended up directing it, he put us together. Basically, they asked a lot of questions of what I thought had happened and how certain things worked, and they sent me the scripts, and I looked at them and said, “This never happened,” or, “This wouldn’t have happened.” And in some cases, they took my advice, and in some cases, they were far enough along in the production process that they couldn’t make the changes. So there are some things in the film that I wish weren’t in the film, because they weren’t completely true to real life, but by and large I thought they did a wonderful job with the film. And I also thought that they were enormously attentive to what I had to say. Whether they could make use of everything I had to say is a separate matter, but they really wanted to know as much true information as they could find, even down to the point where they called me up and asked me to send pictures of the real-life versions of even minor characters, so that they could cast closer to the physical types. And in a lot of cases, these were people who didn’t…nobody would’ve known the difference other than maybe relatives of the people. (Laughs) So they were very attentive to detail, and any failures of detail, I think, had more to do with things like budgets and the fact that I came into the process relatively late in the pre-production. A lot of things were set by the time I became part of it.

PH: Well, it’s been a real pleasure talking to you, Jim. I’ve got your new book, “Life’s That Way,” sitting in my Amazon shopping cart as we speak.

JB: Oh, well, thank you!

PH: I’m really looking forward to reading it, and I’ll include a link to the website, too.

JB: Oh, great. Thanks a lot; I appreciate that.

PH: Hey, anybody who can go from writer to actor…as a writer, I appreciate that.

JB: Oh, well, thanks. And, trust me, that’s the easy direction to go. (Laughs) Going from actor to writer is a little tougher!

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