* In terms of raw cash, the movies had a record March this year, largely thanks to those inflated, and then extra-inflated, ticket prices for “Alice in Wonderland” in 3-D. We’ll see how long this lasts.

* RIP Corin Redgrave, of one of the world’s great acting families.

* Reading this Nikki Finke item about what sounds like the increasingly fraught auction of MGM, it really does make it seem like a million years ago when MGM was the absolute epitome, for better and for worse, of Hollywood power.

* I’m breaking a confidence here with this super-secret Twitter leak by Jon Favreau, but it appears that Harrison Ford will be in “Cowboys and Aliens.”

* Universal, which hasn’t exactly been rolling in cash lately, has pulled the plug on “Cartel.” It would have been a remake of the fact-based Italian mafia thriller from 1993, “La Scorta,” set admidst Mexico’s drug wars. Josh Brolin was set to play the lead. Mike Fleming doesn’t specifically mention insurance or the cost of security, but considering the topic and what’s been going in throughout Mexico — apparently including Mexico City where the film was to be shot — it must have been through the roof.

* Master cinephile blogger Dennis Cozzalio checks in and brings word of some cool film fests.

* Geoff Boucher of the L.A. Times notes the movie spill over from Comicon to the once very modest Wondercon and that “Kick-Ass” continues to build buzz. Even if I don’t read many comics these days, I miss the days when movies were kind of an afterthought at comic book conventions.

* Speaking of funny books, some of you may be excited by this /Film item because it involves one of the people behind The State and “Wet Hot American Summer” as well as the director of “Role Models,” i.e., David Wain. I’m just happy to see  the talented  cartoonist/”graphic novelist” Alex Robinson getting some movie love with “Too Cool to be Forgotten.”  Okay, Alex has given me free comics w/purchase once or twice, so I feel compelled to say nice things about him.

* So, Simon Dang at the Playlist writes that eccentric British actor-comedian Russell Brand, eccentric director-producer Oliver Stone, and as far-as-I-know quite stable and definitely highly prolific master documentarian Albert Maysles (‘”Primary,” the original documentary “Grey Gardens,” Gimme Shelter,” “Soul Power,” etc.) are getting together to make a movie about…enlightenment. What else?

* Another Playlister, Oli Lyttleton, notes with relief that we’ll have one less videogame movie coming up next year. “Masters of War” has been canned. Personally, I theoretically see nothing wrong with using a game as a jumping off place for a movie, except that a game’s set-up and play is not the same thing as a story. However, I wonder if the real problem isn’t so much the thinness of the games but have more to do with the usual caliber of filmmaker who isn’t embarrassed by the thought of making a movie with that kind of pedigree. Not that they should be, necessarily.

The difference here is that the script was being worked on by the outstanding screenwriter and director, Billy Ray of “Shattered Glass,” and “Breach” and this might have been the exception. Of course it was canceled.

* The Twitter-feud between critical zen master Roger Ebert and wanker-meister Andrew Breitbart of the 99% moronic Big Hollywood blog and the #1 supporter of the 100% bogus ACORN expose (which fooled Jon Stewart and me, to my embarrassment)  is getting some attention from Salon, this time over Werner Herzog’s brilliant documentary “Grizzly Man.”

Lately, Big Hollywoodite Leo Grin has, at least in this post, been trying to claim Herzog for his team. If Herzog did openly align himself with the right in any way, they’d call him just another Hollywood liberal, or perhaps say his film was pro-Nazi, the moment he made a film that in some way, shape, or form did not align with right orthodoxy. If they’ll turn on Clint Eastwood, they’ll turn on anyone. Sort of like the bears and Timothy Treadwell.

Bullz-Eye: Hey, guys!

Stephen Warbrick: Hi, Will.

Christy Karacas: Hi, Will!

SW: I don’t know if there’s too much differential between our voices.

BE: I think I’ll get the hang of it after I get talking to you guys.

SW: I’ll talk in a real Brooklyn-y accent, if that’ll help.

BE: Nice. That’ll definitely help. Well, I’m definitely a fan of the show…

SW: Oh, good!

BE: Now, I understand that “Superjail!” originated – indirectly, anyway – as a result of a short you guys did called “Barfight.” Is it true that it was just a case of one of your friends passing it on to someone at Cartoon Network?

CK: Pretty much.

SW: Yeah.

CK: It was funny. We made “Barfight,” we were going to enter it into film festivals, but it got rejected from every festival we were going to enter it into. So we were, like, “Fuck!” I mean, I stopped doing animation for awhile, and…Steve, I forgot what you were doing.

SW: I don’t even remember. (Laughs)

CK: But, yeah, for a couple of years, it was just floating around, and our buddy Dave Hughes, one of the editors on it, worked at Adult Swim and showed it to them, and they got in touch with us and were, like, “Hey, why don’t you try pitching a show here?” So that was pretty awesome.

SW: Yeah. (Laughs)

BE: Well, it’s definitely the kind of show where you just absolutely do not know what’s going to come next.

SW: Well, that’s good. We try to keep you on your toes. (Laughs)

BE: But how do you approach writing an episode of the show? I mean, do you just take a general premise and then go completely apeshit from there?

SW: Yeah, we’ll definitely have one general premise, and then try to build maybe one or two smaller subplots off of that, and then just go from there and keep adding and subtracting things until it feels right. And then you’ve got to get it approved, and that’s a whole different thing. (Laughs)

BE: Given what I’ve seen in there, I have to wonder what wasn’t approved at various times.

SW: Ah, it’s usually the weirdest things. Nothing violent ever gets kicked back. It’s usually weird little things.

CK: It’s usually weird copyright things, like, “Oh, that’s a name of something,” or stuff like that, which is really surprising. We thought we were going to get really censored, but they’ve actually been pretty cool about encouraging us to push it.

BE: I have to say that the theme song by Cheeseburger…which is your band, right, Christy?

CK: Yep.

BE: I was absolutely convinced that it was a classic ‘70s glam stomper that I had just not heard before, like by Slade or someone.

CK: Oh, awesome!

SW: That song’s great. I love that song.

BE: But I couldn’t find it on iTunes!

CK: It’s on there. Look up “Cheeseburger” or “Coming Home.” I think it’s available just as a single, ‘cause it wasn’t on our first record. But it’s on there. And, actually, we made a music video for it, and that’s one of the extras on the DVD, also.

SW: Good plug. (Laughs)

BE: Yes, very organic.

SW: It’s funny, ‘cause we originally had that 10CC song (“Rubber Bullets”) on there, and when we found out it was expensive and that we couldn’t get the rights, we were all bummed, but they took a crack at it, and, man, once I heard the song, I was, like, “Yeah, it’s better than what was there.”

CK: We were shocked, ‘cause we were so in love with “Rubber Bullets.”

SW: Yeah, but your song worked out better.

(Writer’s note: I never did find it on iTunes, but you can pick it up through Amazon.com’s MP3 Store.)

BE: With the Warden, there’s obviously a visual similarity to Willy Wonka, but I swear that David Wain is channeling Willy Wonka through Jello Biafra.

CK: (Laughs) He’s great.

BE: Did you give him a template of how you wanted him to sound, or did he just come up with the voice himself?

SW: No, I think it’s pretty much just his voice!

CK: Yeah, he was, like, the last character to nail the look and the voice. For so long, we would describe him as a Willy Wonka type, but we didn’t want to just draw him like Willy Wonka. But, finally, we just said, “Fuck it.” I mean, he is like Willy Wonka. Why shy away from it? And the voice we couldn’t find, but when we heard him, we said, “This guy just sounds perfect!” We don’t even really give him much direction. He just reads it, and it’s perfect. He’s so good.

SW: We’re just so starstruck. (Laughs)

BE: How did Tim Carrington come to be the live-action version of the Warden?

CK: Well, he’s a friend of mine, and we’re fans of his band (Les Savy Fav), and we just wanted to do that live-action thing. I mean, David was in L.A., I think he was shooting “Role Models,” but…he’s kind of too big for us. (Laughs)

SW: Too big to lie in the garbage. (Laughs)

CK: And Tim’s just kind of a crazy guy, so we thought, “What if ‘Superjail!’ was just some homeless guy’s dream and wasn’t really real?” But he worked out good.

SW: Tim was the only guy willing to lie in a real pile of vomit for that shoot.

BE: So if the Warden is Willy Wonka, who’s Jared’s point of comparison? Or does he have one?

SW: Hmmm. Who is Jared’s point of comparison?

BE: He’s about the height of an Oompa-Loompa…

SW: (Laughs) No, I wouldn’t say he’s any Willy Wonka reference. He’s just that…that counterpart, y’know. You say one thing, I’m always going to think it’s wrong, and I should suggest what’s the right thing to do. But he’s got his own problems.

CK: I think he’s also, like, everybody in their everyday work, being a sucker at the office. You’ve always got to deal with some asshole boss, and…I dunno, there’s the guy who always makes your life hell.

SW: And Jared’s the kind of guy who always says, “I’m quitting this job today, that’s it,” but then the next day, sure enough, he’s there.

BE: I think my favorite episode might be “Don’t Be A Negaton.” M. Wartella strikes me as if he’s doing a Paul Stanley impression, and there’s a lot of stuff that reminds me of the KISS merchandising phenomenon taken to the absurd? Was that a point of inspiration for the episode?

SW: Actually, it was Diamond Dave more than anyone.

CK: Yeah, David Lee Roth was the big one. But I think that one started out as more of a cult episode, where we were talking about stuff like…what’s that cult?

SW: Oh, the Heaven’s Gate guys?

CK: Yeah. And we just started joking around the room and I think we were, like, “Well, what if it was this rock ‘n’ roll dude owning a cult, and then he started turning it into a space cult like Heaven’s Gate?” When we write those, it’s, like, a bunch of people in a room, riffing ideas, so that it turns into kind of a weird snowball of ideas.

BE: How did you come to get M. Wartella to voice D.L. Diamond?

CK: Well, he was working on the show. He was doing character layout for the pilot, and then he was going to work on Season 1, so when we had writing meetings for Season 1, we’d bring all of the animators in and just try to get everyone in for, like, gags and ideas. And he just started talking in that voice, and we said, “You’ve just got to do that voice!”

SW: Yeah, it was perfect. (Laughs) I remember he was all bashful when he was doing it in the booth, too. He didn’t want to stand in front of the window, and he wanted to turn the lights out and everything. It was pretty funny.

CK: Yeah, he was, like, hiding in the corner with the lights off, but then this crazy loud voice…

SW: …this voice comes out at you, and you’re, like, “There it is!” (Laughs)

BE: With the Twins, it took me a second to figure out why I recognized the look: “Logan’s Run.” What led you to decide to give them that look? Were you just fans of the film?

SW: Yeah, I just…I saw that film really young, and I always just really liked it. I don’t know why we did that, though. I think because we just think of them as these kind of glammy space guys, kind of like something from a glitter band, and then “Logan’s Run” came up and…I don’t know. It’s just a ‘70s glam look for them, something spacey and cool.

CK: Yeah, ‘70s glam and space attire are kind of synonomus with each other. (Laughs)

BE: And there are a lot of other great ‘70s references, too…or, at least, I think there are. For instance, the organ in “Dream Machine” certainly strikes me as being like the one in the “Dr. Phibes” movies.

CK: Yeah! (Laughs) What was the other movie we were watching, too?

SW: Oh, “Dr. T”?

CK: Yeah, it’s this Dr. Seuss movie, and he had this crazy organ with all of these kids playing it. We didn’t go that nuts with it, but…

SW: Another creepy reference.

BE: And the music during the Terror-arium sequences certainly seemed reminiscent of “Planet of the Apes.”

SW: (Laughs) Oh, that was definitely a reference.

CK: Yeah, when we were doing the music, a lot of times we’d go to these Jerry Goldsmith soundtracks that were really percussive. I think it’s because we grew up on that stuff that we like it so much.

SW: Also, it’s just better. Let’s be honest.

CK: (Laughs) Shit now totally sucks.

BE: Are there any other ‘70s tributes that you may have slid in that are more obscure?

SW: Hmmm. It’s been awhile now. I can’t even remember.

CK: Sometimes we’ll do them and then I forget we were kind of, like, ripping something off, and then you realize and go… (Depressed voice) “Oh. Right.” I can’t think of any right off the top of my head, but I’m sure there are a million of them. Oh, wait: the Dream Police kind of look like Cheap Trick a little bit. (Laughs) I’m surprised we haven’t been sued, like, twenty times by now!

SW: Hey, it’s all parody. No one understands what the parody law is.

BE: I know you guys have said that you’ve been influenced by Tex Avery, but there’s at least one overt example of it in “Ladies Night,” with a notable eye-bugging moment. Who are some of your other animation points of reference and influences?

CK: Well, we like a lot of those old “Sesame Street” cartoons. They were these short things that were weird and cool, like the pinball countdown. I like Bruce Bickford. He did all of those things like “Baby Snakes” and these psychedelic things. But we also like a lot of cheesy stuff, like “He-Man.” (Laughs)

BE: I heard that Aaron (Augenblick, executive producer) contributed to “Yo Gabba Gabba.”

CK: Yeah! I think he was working on that at the tail end of when we were finishing up. But it’s a pretty big place.

BE: So what would you guys say is your favorite episode of the first season?

CK: That’s hard. I like ‘em all. But I think I really like the “Time Police” two-parter.

SW: Yeah, I like that one, too. That one and “Compaticus” are my two favorites, I think.

CK: Yeah, “Compaticus” is pretty good, too, actually. (Laughs)

BE: The end of that episode was oddly moving, actually, with the whole “I am the new god of war” line.

SW: Yeah, we get that from that and from…the one with the little girl, Baby Cancer.

CK: Yeah, what the hell’s the name of that episode?

SW: (Laughs) I’m drawing a blank right now! It’s the inner child one.

BE: Oh, “Mr. Grumpy-Pants”?

CK: Yeah, “Mr. Grumpy-Pants.” There you go. Jesus. (Laughs) It’s been awhile.

SW: Yeah, did you hear that, Adult Swim? Are you ready to pick this up yet, or what? It’s been so long, we don’t even remember the episode names! (Laughs) But, yeah, people seem to either really be, like, “Oh, I can’t believe you did that,” or, “We love Baby Cancer!”

CK: Yeah, my one friend who loves the show, he’s, like, “That episode, though, I hate! That was too much.”

BE: It’s funny, though, because for all the violence that’s in the show, that one bit really is, like, “Wow, really? A kid with cancer?”

CK: (Laughs) You’ve got to draw the line somewhere.

BE: So what is the deal with Season 2? I’d heard it was happening, but from what you just said, it sounds like maybe it hasn’t been picked up after all.

SW: There’s nothing official, but we’ve been writing some new scripts, so we’re hoping the DVD sells well and they get psyched.

CK: Yeah, so we can get going!

SW: Yeah, ‘cause we’ve got lots of cool new ideas! (Laughs)

CK: Yep. And lots of mayhem.

BE: Something I wanted to ask about was the fact that you guys don’t really utilize a lot of guest voices in your episodes. I mean, there’s one that apparently has Rachel Dratch in it, but…

CK: Nope. (Laughs)

BE: She’s not?

CK: No.

BE: That’s funny, because according to IMDb, she is.

CK and SW: Really…?!?

BE: Yep.

SW: I wish. She’s awesome.

CK: How dare she try to take credit for that? (Laughs)

SW: What voice does it say she was?

BE: It just says “voice.” But it says she’s in “Ladies Night.”

SW: No, I don’t think she is. I feel like we’d know.

CK: Yeah, she’s definitely not. There’s no money, so…

SW: David Wain’s, like, the biggest voice. There’s not enough money to ever have anyone. Plus, we like to get a lot of our friends do it, but we always have to do stuff through the union, like, through AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and all that crap, which kind of sucks, ‘cause it’s fun to bring your crazy, weird friends in and have them do cartoon voices. But, yeah, the budgets are pretty small for these shows, so we’ve got to spend it on animation. Actually, the voice of Jared was a buddy of Steve’s from his basketball team. (Laughs)

CK: How’s your voice? Do you wanna get in there?

BE: Well…

CK: Will you work for cheap? (Laughs)

BE: I will absolutely work for cheap. You’ve got my number. (Laughs) Well, I guess I’ll just close by saying that, of all the imagery in this show, and there’s certainly some gross stuff in there, but the most disturbing may have been the tequila worm.

SW: You know what’s funny? We just thought that was funny, and…we got into so many weird discussions about how it needed to say something more crazy or weird. Remember that?

CK: Yeah.

SW: It was, like, “You can’t just have him say that.” It was such a stupid little…

CK: I know, it was just a throwaway thing.

SW: It was just a little joke of this gross-looking worm, and we could’ve even just had it burp or go, “Bleacchhh!” But there was this really big debate about, “What should it say?” (Laughs) What did you say in that last interview?

CK: “The more you talk about it, the less interesting it sounds.” (Laughs)

SW: (Laughs) Yeah, you just kind of have to watch it.

CK: It’s true. Which is good, because you can’t really do it justice by describing it and trying to talk it through and figure out what’s what. Just watch it. Or, better yet, buy the DVD!

BE: (Laughs) I don’t think I’m going to get a better closing line than that.

CK: But now I’m going to sound like a dick!

BE: Oh, wait, that’s a better closing line.

CK: (Laughs) Shut that recorder off!

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.”

Ken Marino is a busy working actor — his recent gigs include stints on the CW’s unjustly slain “Reaper” and the Starz Network’s “Party Down” — and is doubtless usually too focused on whatever project’s in front of him to look back. This week, however, sees the long-sought DVD release of “The State,” the sketch comedy series that Marino (along with Michael Ian Black, David Wain, Joe Lo Truglio, Thomas Lennon, Ben Garant, and many more) did for MTV way back in the young and innocent ’90s. Never a huge ratings success, “The State” has nonetheless acquired cult status in the years since its cancellation, and its arrival on the home market is the answer to many fans’ prayers — making Will Harris’ recently conducted interview with Marino something of a “State” retrospective (and a perfectly timed one, at that). As it turns out, Ken hasn’t seen those old episodes in years — and wasn’t all that hopeful about seeing them on DVD:

“David (Wain) kind of headed the campaign to get it done, and he dealt with the outside forces that were trying to put it together or to block it or whatever, so I would just get E-mail updates. At a certain point, I just got numb to that. I was just, like, ‘Oh, it’s never gonna happen.'”

Reminiscing about his State days, Marino opened up about the writing process, the troupe’s battles with MTV, the origins of the infamous phrase “I want to dip my balls in it,” and the long-lost album the State recorded for Warner Bros.:

“”From what I remember, it’s a drunken mess. We were, like, ‘Okay, if we take all our money and get tickets and go to the Bahamas to record it at a recording studio down there, we won’t really make any money, but we’ll be in the Bahamas for two weeks. You wanna do that?’ If you listen closely on a number of the pieces, you’ll hear ice in our glasses making noise, because we were constantly drinking whatever local flavored drinks were around.”

To read the rest of the interview — including Ken’s thoughts on a “Reaper” movie and Jane Lynch’s recent departure from “Party Down” — click here!

Stay tuned for…

Joe Lo Truglio: Hello there, Will.

Bullz-Eye: Hello, Joe. How are you?

JLT: I’m good, sir. How are you doing?

BE: I’m doing great. Pleasure to talk to you.

JLT: Pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for having some interest in talking to me.

BE: Definitely. I definitely dug the movie…and not just the movie, but the additional ad-libbing scenes that are in the special features of the DVD.

JLT: Oh, thanks very much. Yeah, we had quite a fun time there on that set. For some reason, nonsense Elizabethan came very easy to me.

BE: So how was it doing the live action role playing? It seemed like it would be fun, but…well, when I was talking to David (Wain), I said it looked like it was you guys were walking a tight rope by trying not to make fun of the people who really participate in such activities.

JLT: Yes, well, I think David Wain – the director – really wanted to not put the live action role players in a bad light. There is something endearing about their complete and utter insane commitment to the game. I think the most interesting part to me was having a stunt coordinator who did “The Bourne Supremacy”, and…of course I’m blanking on his name. Jeff…Imada! But having him choreograph these fights with foam swords and Styrofoam shields was quite funny to me, considering what he had worked with in the past.

BE: What was your favorite bit of attire you got to wear?

JLT: I think my favorite…although it was a little painful, I think it really kind of completed the character…was the chain nail hood that I was wearing. Although it was somewhat uncomfortable at times, I threw that on and, suddenly, the crazy, Elizabethan metaphors started flowing much easier after that.

BE: So how long did it take to film those scenes, all told?

JLT: Um, let’s see. You know, that sequence, they were shooting, I think, for about a week. I mean, it was spread apart. It was kind of split up by days, but I think all told, probably between like…probably around seven days, I think, for all of that to be shot. That sequence, anyway.

BE: What was the most challenging part of it for you?

JLT: The hardest part was not cracking up at Paul and Ken Jeong and Matt Walsh. The objective, I’ve found in these movies where I’ve been fortunate enough to work with so many people I know, is to try to crack the other person up while the camera is rolling. That is always a fun game to play and, usually, when you do that, you’re able to get some great ad-libs and some good moments. The biggest challenge was not laughing, I think.

BE: Who was the greatest accomplishment of the people in the cast when you made them laugh? Was there one in particular that was the hardest to get to break?

JLT: You know, Paul is pretty hard to break. He’s pretty poker-faced when he does his stuff. I would say Paul. I was going to say Matt and Ken…uh, Matt Walsh and Ken Jeong…but they’re suckers. I could break them pretty easy.

BE: Now how was it working with Christopher Mintz-Plasse? I mean, obviously, you had been on the set with him on “Superbad” as well.

JLT: Yeah, “Superbad,” that was great. I think Chris did a terrific job. I know he was in a tough spot coming out of “Superbad,” where he had to kind of break out of being McLovin, and I thought he did a great job of having a slightly different take on the “geek” teenager. It was great to work with him again. He’s very willing to ad-lib and improv with you. Like, he’s very open for trying different things. For someone as young as he is, it’s a great skill to have.

BE: Cool. Now obviously you’ve worked with David Wain as a director more than one time. In fact. you found your way into both “The Ten” and also “Hot Wet American Summer.”

JLT: Yes.

BE: Sorry, I meant “Wet Hot American Summer.” I always flip flop that.

JLT: Yeah, wet hot, hot wet…you can mix and match all the words. They all pretty much come out to the same type of porn name. (Laughs) Like I said, it’s been a blessing really to work not only with David so many times but also with Ken Marino. And Kerri Kenney, who was also in the movie. David is a terrific director, and I think what makes him a great director is that he’s very collaborative; he’s very calm in the midst of what could be a terrible production storm. “Role Models” was not the case, but certainly “Wet Hot” had its troubles. When you have someone who’s grounded and focused, you know, everyone takes their cue from the director. So I think that’s what makes him really great to work with: he stays calm and is always ready for actors to bring in ideas to him.

BE: David said that “The State” reunion for Sketchfest never would have happened without email.

JLT: The internet may have saved “The State” reunion… (Laughs) …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.

BE: Has there always been enthusiasm at the idea of getting back together, or did it take some coercing?

JLT: It didn’t take coercing. I think the biggest problem wasn’t egos; it was really schedules. So many of us have been busy, and the entire group from the get-go wanted to do something. I think we knew even towards the end, way back in the day when we were kind of splitting apart, that we wanted to do something together again. We just needed our time away. So there was no coercing, it was really scheduling, and the group wanted to find the right opportunity and the right venue really to make that comeback. I think Sketchfest was a great opportunity for us to see what it’s like to be on stage together. We had done a smaller reunion show last March, at the UCB Theater in L.A. We had a great reception, and it was nice because it was a smaller theater and a more intimate setting, in a sense. It was kind of back to our roots. The Black Box Theater was around 100-150 seats, if that, and it was a good starting point. I think Sketchfest was the big coming-out party, and the group is certainly talking about doing a tour of some sort this year. So we’re excited. Again, the biggest challenge for us now is scheduling.

BE: And the DVD is very much in the works, I understand, even though it’s been forever on the schedule as TBD.

JLT: The DVD is an enigma wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in molasses, sunk at the bottom of a pit of quick sand. (Laughs) It’s amazing how long it has taken for the set to come out, and the group was discouraged with that. But we know that MTV is behind it now and pledges to us that it will be out, hopefully this summer. It’s a great set, and I think that our fans will really appreciate it. We have a lot of great or unreleased material. We have commentary on all the episodes, early promos, and…we’re excited about it. And, teah, we were told it’s going to come out in the summer .

BE: Now I know when you were doing comedy in New York, you also ended up finding your way onto an episode of “Law and Order” and an episode of “Third Watch”. Did you just throw your hat into the ring because you needed the work, or what?

JLT: That works like this: if you want to be taken seriously as an actor in New York, you must appear on one of the “Law and Order” shows. If you don’t, you have no right to be an actor. You’re not valid. You don’t count. It’s, like, you have to get on that show. Otherwise…I mean, come on, everyone and their mother has been on “Law and Order”! It was just one of those cases where I just went in, auditioned, and got the part. The actors of New York owe a lot to Dick Wolf.

BE: And you’ve also done quite a few video game voices as well.

JLT: Yeah, that was exciting for me. I had never done motion capture before and then…you know, after you have a sketch comedy show on cable, there is something humbling about being in a spandex one-piece suit with ping pong balls. You learn to kind of embrace what you have at the moment. It turns out I had a blast making those video games, in particular “The Warriors,” because “The Warriors” is one of my favorite films. So having the opportunity to play Vermin, the hairy chested Italian, was nothing less than a godsend.

BE: What’s your favorite film that you’ve appeared in that people might not have seen? Even if it’s just a small role.

JLT: You know, I have to say, I’m really proud of Artie Lange’s “Beer League.” Artie’s terrific, and Frank Sebastiano, they both wrote a great script that was completely unapologetic and really raunchy…and, I think, very loyal to the old school sports movies like “Slap Shot” and “Bad News Bears.” I’m certainly not saying it’s as good as those films, but I think it has that spirit of those films, definitely. I think more people should see the movie.

BE: You’ve also appeared in “The Baxter,” and you’ve turned up in “Reno 911” – both the show and the movie – as well. Of the films you’ve done within the “State” family, do you have a favorite?

JLT: Um, gosh. I would probably say “Wet Hot” was my favorite of all those, just because there are so many incredibly talented and, at the time, up and coming comedians that are in that movie. It was such a blast to shoot that movie; we had such a great time. So far as “Baxter” goes…well, I love working with everyone in “The State”. I mean, they’re good friends and people that I respect and look up to as comedians. But that also was a great experience for me working on “The Baxter” with (Michael) Showalter. I would just like to throw out that the upcoming “Reno” season is approaching, and that’s another great opportunity and I’m really happy with the work that we all did on this season. And aside from that, there’s a web series that I just recently produced with my partner A.D. Miles, who is now writing on the Jimmy Fallon show. And that web series is called “Hot Sluts Rated R”, which is basically “Flashdance” meets women-in-prison films meets 80’s soft core porn. It’s about a group of foul mouthed waitresses who try to achieve their dream in a terrible night club called Scenarios. And that will be launching on Atom.com in April.

BE: Okay. Awesome. I’ll definitely keep an eye out for it.

JLT: I appreciate that.

BE: All right. Well, pleasure talking to you. I’m going to see a screening of “I Love You, Man” next week, so I’ll keep an eye out for High Voiced Guy (Lo Truglio’s character in the film).

JLT: (Laughs) Fantastic. Thanks a lot, Will. It was a pleasure speaking to you.

BE: No problem. Thank you.