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.”

Join us now for…

Dean Stockwell: Hi, Will.

Premium Hollywood: Hi, Dean, it’s a pleasure to speak with you.

DS: It’s a pleasure to speak with you, too.

PH: You first turned up on “Battlestar Galactica” back in the second season, how much did you know about your character, Cavil, and were you given any forewarning that you’d be coming back?

DS: I had not seen the show before I did that episode, and I was very impressed with the script and the whole idea as I shot it. I had no idea that I…well, I had an idea that I would come back for another episode, yeah, or else why would they put me in it? But I had no idea that I’d come out so strongly.

PH: I presume that you were pleasantly surprised.

DS: Pleasantly surprised is right. (Laughs)

PH: So when you were playing Cavil, were you given any inkling toward the end of the series that you’d be playing a part in “The Plan”?

DS: No. I didn’t know they were going to do “The Plan,” and I certainly had no idea what my character’s role would be in it.

PH: How close to filming the movie did you find out how important Cavil was going to be to the proceedings?

DS: No one really told me. The minute I read it was when I found out, which was probably about two weeks before we shot.

PH: I didn’t know how close to the vest they played it.

DS: Well, they’re a little paranoid. They sent me a copy…I was telling Jennifer (the Universal publicist) here that they sent me a copy of the movie, and I put it on, and because they’re so paranoid and don’t want it shown anywhere, they put my name at the bottom middle of the screen for the whole damned thing, and I’m… (Starts to laugh) …I’m going, “Come on, I need to get one I can actually watch!”

Publicist: Sorry about that!

PH: Well, you’re ahead of me, anyway. This was kind of a last minute bit of scheduling, so I haven’t seen it at all yet.

DS: Oh, you haven’t seen “The Plan”?

PH: No, not as of yet, though I suspect a copy is on its way to me as we speak. I read online, though, that it’s being described as a “side story” to the series proper. Would you say that’s a fair assessment?

DS: Uh, no, I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. It’s the origins of the whole series and my role in that, which is very, very heavy.

PH: Sorry about that. I’d just gotten the impression that some of the events that take place in the film are happening simultaneous to events that took place in the series.

DS: Well, pieces of scenes from the series are used in the film, but the film pre-dates the series. It starts at the very beginning and explains what happened to all of humanity, where they’re left with just these souls on Battlestar Galactica itself and just a few on Caprica. Well, there were 12 planets in the whole deal, at the beginning, and I’m the one who decided that he was going to nuke them all. And I do. And for the whole rest of the series, I’m trying to stamp out the ones that are left alive. See, I didn’t intend for anyone to be alive! (Laughs) I wanted to get rid of the rest of them! Whereas Cavil Two, which is of course me as well, he spends quite a bit of time on Caprica with the humans who’ve survived, and he got an insight into their souls, as it were, and develops some sympathy for them. So Cavil One, who’s totally negative, “Kill ‘em all,” and Cavil Two are separated by that, and that becomes kind of interesting. But you’ll have to see it… (Laughs) …because it’s kind of complex!

PH: I plan to, I promise. So how is it to play someone who’s as morally dark as Cavil is? I mean, he’s definitely not what you’d call a nice guy.

DS: No, not a nice guy. Well, I’ve played some very negative characters, and some of them were pretty good performances, and some of them were for, uh, stupid shows. (Laughs) But what made this so unique is that the character is a machine, right? So then I feel that, as an actor, I’ve got all kinds of freedom as far as how I want to play a machine. The thing that’s interesting about Cavil Two, who lives on Caprica, is that he develops a little bit…just a little… (Laughs) …of a conscience. Or a little bit of sympathy – we’ll put it that way – for the humans.

PH: One of my colleagues described Cavil as a combination of Cain, Oedipus, and a reverse Pinocchio. How’s that for a comparison?

DS: (Bursts out laughing) That’s pretty funny!

PH: Is there any other character that strikes you as a point of reference for Cavil?

DS: Not really, because the idea that he’s a machine makes him unique, and then he goes ahead and…there’s a line of dialogue where Cavil One says to Cavil Two, “I have a yen to witness a nuclear holocaust.” So it’s a yen for him. And he goes ahead and does it, and…you’re talking about billions and billions of people on all of these planets. He kills them all. I have never heard of a character in any TV show or movie or even in a book that’s that completely evil. (Laughs) Or negative, shall we say.

PH: And, yet, you still manage to get some funny lines.

DS: Well, I’ll leave that up to you. I like to include dimensions to my characters.

PH: Have there been any lines that struck you as funny, that made you laugh?

DS: Well, not one that made me laugh, but a line like the one I just mentioned to you…that quite titillated me.

PH: Did you enjoy your death scene? I should…

DS: Well, I’ve had a couple of them. (Laughs)

PH: (Laughs) Right, I was going to clarify that I was talking about your sudden “Frak!”

DS: Oh, yeah. “Frak!” Bam! (Laughs) Actually, that was funny to me.

PH: Well, there you go. I wanted to also ask you about a couple of other projects that you’ve worked on over the years…

DS: Okay.

PH: …and, of course, I’ve got to start with “Quantum Leap.” I’m a big fan.

DS: Oh, good!

PH: Did you ever anticipate that the show would come back in any capacity, perhaps as a film, or were you just resigned to it being over?

DS: Well, immediately after it closed down, there was talk about it, certainly by Scott and myself and Don (Belisario), but the guys at the studio never got off the dime and did it.

PH: Do you think that ship has sailed forever at this point?

DS: Well, I keep hearing little spasms and twits about it. (Laughs) But in my mind, it’s sailed, yes.

PH: How did you and Neil Young first cross paths?

DS: (Long pause) You know, I can’t remember first meeting him. But I moved to Topanga Canyon in 1965, and then he got in there shortly thereafter, and there was just an amazing amount of wonderful creative activity in that canyon for several years. And I had written a screenplay that Dennis Hopper encouraged me write, and it never got produced, but somehow someone got a copy of it to Neil, and…he had been going through writer’s block for the better part of a year, and his record company was pissed off at him, and someone handed him this screenplay, he read it, and it just opened him up and inspired the album After the Gold Rush, which was the title of the screenplay. And even though I had Dennis behind me and I had Neil and all of this incredible music from that album…do you know that album?

PH: Yes, absolutely.

DS: I had all of that music, and the fucking guys at Universal still wouldn’t make the movie. (Laughs) Pardon my French. But it’s just as well. Now, I look back over at a lot of years, and I don’t know if I was really ready to do a movie that, uh, people could follow. (Laughs) I think I would’ve stepped out a little too far.

PH: Well, on a possibly related note, what was the experience of working on “Human Highway” like?

DS: Oh, that was fabulous! That was great. That came up after that, and…I love Neil. I love him as much as anyone I love or have ever loved. He’s an absolutely great guy. Not only a super great artist, but also as a human being, he’s just beautiful. So we have a lot of fun, and so “Human Highway” was a lot of fun. It was…the concept was Neil’s, and it had some silly-ass things to it, but I just went with that… (Laughs) …and there you have it: “Human Highway.”

PH: Do you remember how Devo first got involved?

DS: I got them involved. I cast a lot of the people in it: Russ Tamblyn, Dennis, Devo, and several others. And not that it matters, but my favorite scene in the whole damned movie is Booji Boy in the crib singing, “Hey Hey My My.” (Laughs) That’s just fabulous.

PH: So the Canyon must’ve built some strong, long-lasting friendships.

DS: Oh, it did, yeah.

PH: Was that where you first met Dennis Hopper as well?

DS: No, I met Dennis in Hollywood, prior to that. I met Dennis around 1956 or ’57, and that’s a great, deep friendship there as well.

PH: I know you guys have appeared together in “The Last Movie,” “Tracks,” “Blue Velvet”…

DS: Yeah, but beyond what we’ve appeared in together…well, we’re the same age – I’m three months older than him – and we’re the same height, the same weight. He’s got different color eyes, but we’re both actors and we have been for a long time, and we’re both artists and we have been for a long time. I make art, too, and Dennis makes art…on a very, very heavy scale. I don’t know if you know it, but he’s the first living American artist to have an exhibition in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

PH: I did not know that.

DS: Yes. Ever. Yeah, and he has a show on in New York now, a big one. He makes these big canvases, and there are also photographs, but he had 12 canvasses, and right after the start, he sold eight of them. And out of 140 photographs, he sold 100. He’s one of the hottest artists in the world, forget about him as an actor. Seriously, in the world.

PH: At the time that you made “Gentleman’s Agreement,” were you aware that it was going to ruffle some feathers?

DS: I was aware that it was a controversial thing. I was aware from the content of the scenes that there was something wrong in the world when people had prejudices against one race or another. So, yes, I was aware of it, and I took it seriously, just as I took “The Boy with the Green Hair” seriously: because it had a meaning. It was an anti-war film.

PH: What’s your favorite film you’ve made that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?

DS: Hmmm. (Long pause) I can’t come up with one for you there.

PH: It’s not “Werewolf of Washington,” is it?

DS: (Bursts out laughing) That was a real heartbreaker, because the screenplay was really funny. Really funny. And the fellow that directed it, Milton Moses Ginsberg, he had made one film prior to that, which was called…I can’t think of it, but it was all about a psychiatric looking through a two-way mirror at his patients.

PH: Wait, I’m on IMDb right now: it’s called “Coming Apart.”

DS: That’s right. And was it Rip Torn…?

PH: It was.

DS: Anyway, that film did well, because the guy had a lot of wonderful ideas, but none of them…none of them…had to do with the camera. Because the whole film was shot with a locked-off camera. Okay, so here we go, we’re going to start this “Werewolf of Washington,” which, like I said, had a wonderful script. But the guy doesn’t know camera right or left! He just doesn’t know it, and he can’t figure it out. Even the D.P. tried to help him, but he couldn’t do it. So it became impossible to edit the thing! (Laughs) It was really a heartbreaker, because I had great high hopes for it, and I think I have some pretty funny scenes in it.

PH: Well, I finally saw it courtesy of “Elvira’s Midnight Movies.”

DS: Oh, did you? Do you remember when I start to turn into the werewolf and my hand gets stuck on the ball…? (Laughs) I thought that was pretty funny.

PH: Just a couple more quick ones, because I know we have to go. Between working with David Lynch (“Dune,” “Blue Velvet”) and Wim Wenders (“Paris, Texas”), you were one of the kings of the alternative film scene for a few years. How was it working with them versus a “mainstream” director?

DS: Well, I think they have an artistic vision, and I think that both of them have much more of a capacity to improvise and create on the spot than other well-established directors. And…well, say, in the case of…is it David? One of them, I can’t remember which one… (Laughs) …doesn’t like to know how the film’s going to end until he’s well into it, and you wouldn’t find any major studio director starting into a film without knowing how it’s going to end. I always thought that was kind of funny. But I love both of them, and if they came and asked me to come to Asia and film a screenplay for nothing, I’d do it. They’re really great guys.

PH: And, lastly, you were in the film “Psych Out.” What are your thoughts on how it’s aged, and did you enjoy it at the time?

DS: I haven’t seen it since it was released. (Laughs) It was just…it was a money job. Even at the time. 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. (Laughs) So I can’t answer how it’s aged. Have you seen it? What do you think?

PH: I think it’s an artifact of its time, but an enjoyable one. But it’s no “Anchors Aweigh.”

DS: (Laughs) Yeah, that was a nice film. But if I had to pick a favorite, it’d be “The Boy with the Green Hair.” That’s got such an underlying meaning to it. And the main players on that film…the director and two of the producers were blacklisted by the Hollywood Blacklisting. The director, Joseph Losey, never made another film in the United States. He said, “Fuck you,” and he left. He went to England and made his career there. Because they thought this was an anti-war movie, which of course means that they were Communists. (Laughs) Totally crazy. Totally crazy. And I wouldn’t be surprised if I was still on a list somewhere.

PH: And with a title like that, it seems like it would be so innocuous. But it’s actually quite serious at its heart.

DS: Oh, absolutely.

(Writer’s note: Not that you probably have the time to veg out in front of your computer and watch the whole thing, but the entire film – this is Part 1 of 12 – is up on YouTube.)

PH: Well, Dean, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much.

DS: Thank you, Will. I’ve had a good time!

PH: And I hope to see “The Plan” in the very near future.

DS: Cool. I hope you enjoy it!

Was it a great finale? Absolutely. Was I blown away? Not entirely.

Let’s start at the beginning (which is always a good place to start) — more flashbacks of life on Caprica. Bill is thinking about retiring and entering the private sector, Roslin has a blind date with a former student, Lee gets to know Kara. Great, let’s move on.

Back in the future, Baltar’s vision tells him that he will “take mankind’s remnants and guide them to their end.” Last week, after watching him struggle with the decision in the hanger, I wondered whether or not Gaius would in fact volunteer to go along with the rescue mission. The truth is that it should have been obvious that he would. Creator Ronald D. Moore wasn’t about to take one of the main players out of the game in crunch time.

After an emotional scene between Roslin and Doc Coddle, Laura had a great line:

“Don’t spoil your image. Just light a cigarette and go and grumble.”

Then the planning began for the assault on the colony — that’s when the episode really got going. The final four move Sam to the CIC (more on this later) and Galactica prepares to jump.

Like just about every battle scene in the entire series, this one rocked. Galactica jumps in and immediately starts to get pummeled by the colony’s weapons. After the terrific rescue mission on New Caprica, the show had a lot to live up to, and once the birds were away and Bill ordered his crew to ram the colony, Moore and Co. had cleared the bar. It was very cool to see Lee leading a group of Centurions into the colony. Even when they’re on “our” side, they still scare the ever-loving crap out of me.

It’s still a little incredible that Kara’s group would find Hera so quickly, but Boomer came to their aid. She broke that Cylon’s neck (!!!) and got Hera out of there. It just goes to show what kind of an effect that little girl has on people/machines. After a great scene with Boomer, Athena, Helo and Kara — with Kara’s great line, “Uh, can we not tell her the plan!” — Athena kills her “sister” and the group makes its escape. When Boomer said that she owed the old man, I thought she was referring to the fact that she once tried to kill him, but apparently she was talking about one day when she was a rookie and Bill gave her another chance to complete her raptor landing. (Maybe it’s just me, but I think she owes him more for the attempted assassination.)

Meanwhile, on Galactica, Gaius and Caprica Six are chitchatting while they’re waiting for something to shoot. That’s when they both see both visions, who say, “You will hold the futures of humans and Cylons in your hands.” Now there has been a lot of speculation about what his/their visions represent, but they’re not crazy and they don’t have chips in their heads (or at least Gaius doesn’t). Moore said on “The Last Frakking Special” that Baltar’s visions were divine. They were guiding him down this path, and his storyline over the last few episodes revolved around his possible redemption. He turned over the keys to Caprica’s defense systems to his Six and that allowed the near-destruction of the human race. Granted, he didn’t know that’s what he was doing at the time, but he is still responsible for his actions. Anyway, Baltar starts firing his gun and it turns out that Lee and his gang are just around the corner. Then there was this subtle yet fantastic interaction…

Baltar: Sorry about that.
Lee: Doc, you did good.

Succinct and to the point, that was one of the most touching moments in the entire finale (for me). Lee has always been one of Baltar’s harshest critics and for Gaius to do enough to earn a compliment from him (which was no doubt boosted by the Doctor’s decision to stay on Galactica), it was a major milestone in Baltar’s road to redemption.

So Hera runs off as Helo is shot, and the whole opera house flashbacks begin. This was a very cool way to intertwine the show’s past with its present and give meaning to those dreams. I’m guessing this was Moore’s plan from the start. Usually, when you’re writing fiction, you know how it begins and how it ends, and you’ll figure out the middle later. I think once Moore introduced the opera house dream, he knew that it was going to come full circle as all the parties involved search for Hera on Galactica. The dreams made Caprica Six and Baltar look nefarious, as if they were snatching the girl away. But in fact, they had the best interests of the girl at heart. This all led to Baltar and Caprica Six taking Hera into the CIC, where the final five were positioned above them, same as the dream. Very, very cool.

All right, so somehow Cavil gets a hold of Hera, and instead of Bill or someone else putting a bullet in his “brain,” Baltar finally redeems himself. If he’s not on Galactica (the one true, selfless act that Lee was talking about earlier this season), then he’s not there to convince Cavil to give up the girl, and who knows how that confrontation ends. Gaius talks about the visions, refers to them as “angels” and gets Cavil to buy into the whole “let’s break the cycle of violence” plan, providing that the final five give the cylons the key to resurrection. Only the plan goes awry when Tyrol sees Torry’s memory of killing his wife — so he flips out and kills her. Cavil, ever the survivor, says “frak” and offs himself. This doesn’t make any sense to me.

Anyway, now it’s time for Starbuck to take over. Moore did a great job of setting up this scene. From the final four hearing “All Along the Watchtower,” to Hera giving the drawing to Starbuck, to her interaction with her “dad” in the bar, to her working with Anders to try to put the song into some sort of numerical connotation, it was a long, fleshed-out journey. Of course, the fact that she jumped Galactica to a second Earth (which oddly enough, has all the same continents as the original Earth) requires a huge leap of faith. It’s clear now that Moore is pushing the idea of intelligent design, which he (possibly) sees as a compromise between the inaccuracies of the Bible (as they relate to established science) and the finality of atheism. This is confirmed when Bill, Gaius, Coddle and a few others are observing a tribe of prehistoric humans walk by. The fact that humans evolved independently requires some sort of a belief in divine intervention.

At some point, Starbuck/Lee have a flashback to the time that they met, and it turns out that they almost slept together. But the most important part of the flashback was Kara revealing that she isn’t afraid of death. It’s not that she doesn’t know fear, she does, but she’s not afraid of dying, which was yet another clue that she was not human (nor cylon). Whatever she is — some sort of angel that walks the Earth, twice — she is built in such away that she’s not afraid of death, and this lack of fear has allowed her to do amazing things in her time with the fleet. Regarding the other flashbacks, I think we were supposed to see just how close Bill was to not being in charge of Galactica at the time of the attack and what it took for Roslin to convince herself that a move into politics was the right thing for her. I’m not sure why it took sleeping with her former student (though that’s admittedly a bit on the sketchy side, even that late in life), but that’s what it took.

Back to New Earth. Not unlike the finale to the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, this one had about five or six endings. It’s understandable — the viewers want to know how each major character moves on, and it’s impossible to do that quickly. I think that this is why they decided to do a two-hour combined finale instead of breaking it up into two episodes. It just wouldn’t have worked as well separately.

All right, so the assumption is that the fleet is willing to give up all of their technology and live and breed with the natives. There’s no other way to explain the lack of technology, so I guess I’m willing to buy it. I just have a hard time believing that the fleet, after arguing about every little thing, would be so homogeneous in its position on this.

Back in April of 2008, I wrote the following on the blog entry for this season’s (first) premiere…

Based on what I’ve read, it does appear that the fleet will find some version of Earth this season. They could arrive in our past, our present or our future, or they could arrive to an alternate version of Earth. They could be the first humans to settle on Earth (maybe the two hybrid babies are Adam and Eve – though all the technology would be a problem) or they could arrive to a futuristic Earth that has the ability to fend of the Cylons. A grimmer possibility is that they arrive to find that the human civilization destroyed itself, not unlike the ending of “Planet of the Apes.”

It turns out I was almost right. (Mind you, this doesn’t mean anything — I floated all sorts of theories on this blog so I was bound to have one or two that turned out to be right.) They did find a “Planet of the Apes”-type Earth, but they found it early in the season, which opened up more possibilities for the finale. It was revealed that Tyrol’s son wasn’t really his son, so the Adam and Eve thing was out (which is probably good, since Moore is going with more of an intelligent design explanation) but it did turn out that Hera was Eve…mitochondrial Eve, that is.

So let’s see…

— After killing Torry, Galen is sick of people and wants to live and die alone. In about five years, I picture him sitting in a tent somewhere cold (with a huge, grizzly beard), wishing that he had some interpersonal interaction. Before he leaves, Tigh says that he would have done the same thing to Torry had she killed Ellen. Apparently, Tigh is the only one who is allowed to kill his wife…

— We were treated to a semi-useless flashback of Ellen and Tigh in the strip club where she says that all she wants to do is spend time with him. So now they get to spend a lot of time together. (How’s that going to work if they don’t have any booze?)

— Helo is going to teach Hera how to hunt. No, Athena is. No Helo is. I get it. They’re happy. (At least Helo didn’t die — when he got shot, I thought he might be Moore’s sacrificial lamb.)

— Bill takes off with Laura to show her some wildlife. The way he said goodbye to Lee and Starbuck (after saying, “I don’t have much time left.”), I thought he was going to fly off into the sun. After all, he can’t leave that raptor lying around for future scientists to find, right? So I’m assuming that after he buried Laura, that’s just what he did. (I’m not sure why he kept talking about the cabin after she died though. I think that’s where the title of the last three hours, “Daybreak,” came from.)

And here’s a tip: If someone tells you that they think their “work is done,” don’t look away. They’re just going to disappear. Starbuck is apparently some sort of angel (who can’t see Baltar’s angels) who was sent to Caprica to help guide the fleet to New Earth. Moore didn’t have a whole lot of options with her when he said that there would be no more “surprise cylons” after they revealed the final five. She couldn’t be a cylon and she couldn’t be human, because she found her body on Earth. So she had to be something else. So that’s what she was — something else.

And then there’s Baltar and Caprica Six, who decided to start a farm. Baltar knows about farming because of his dad, which was one of the purposes of his flashback. And this is one of the problems I have with Lee’s intention to break the cycle by saying, “no cities.” People are eventually going to settle down. When they learn how to grow things, they’re going to stay in one place, and that’s how towns are developed. When there are towns, there are eventually going to be cities. And when there are cities, there are eventually going to be killer robots. Or I guess that’s what Moore is saying.

When we jump forward 150,000 years to modern day New York, was anyone really surprised? It was a really cool transition — the camera hovering over Central Park before shooting up to show all the skyscrapers — and that’s when Moore actually made his cameo. He was the guy holding the magazine about mitochondrial Eve that the vision of Caprica Six was reading.

I get the sense that the vision of Six and the vision of Baltar are actually angels that can take any form. In this case, they took the form of Baltar and Six so that they could communicate with the real Baltar and Six. Moore left them in that form for the final scene for continuity’s sake, as it would have been strange to see two new actors in their place. Moore gets a little preachy here with all of the “technology run amok” talk, and the implication is that we’re headed towards destruction if we continue down this path. I’m not sure exactly what path he’s talking about, but given the montage of shots at the end, he’s most likely referring to the work being done in the world of robotics. I’ve heard this story before.

The vision of Caprica Six says that she thinks this time it will be different, saying that something unexpected may come up because “that too is in God’s plan.” This is when Baltar says something odd, and I’m not really sure what it means…

“You know it doesn’t like that name… Silly me. Silly, silly me.”

Okay, so he’s referring to a higher power, one that he knows well enough to know that “it” doesn’t like to be called “God.” I’m assuming the “silly me” comment refers to the fact that humans will have no other name for “it,” though he may mean something else. Thoughts?

Also, who knew that Bob Dylan didn’t originally write “All Along the Watchtower”? I bet that’s news to him!

So that’s it. The end of a great science fiction show (maybe the best ever?) and less importantly, the end of this blog. I hope everyone enjoyed reading my scatterbrained thoughts each week and that this forum allowed fans to enjoy the series a bit more. During the finale, there were two previews — one for “Caprica,” which I fully intend to blog once it starts, and another for “Battlestar Galactica: The Plan,” which is a two-hour event that shows how the cylons developed their plan to attack Caprica. I knew about the former, but not the latter, so needless to say I’m excited to see what Moore comes up with. I just hope that whatever it is, it doesn’t take away from the finality of the finale. (Try saying that ten times fast.)

3/22 Update: Here’s a link to an interview with Ronald D. Moore. He discusses a number of the last minute decisions, but doesn’t shed any light on why the fleet was so willing to give up its technology.

I’m not clear on why we spent much of the episode back in Caprica City before the attack. The first scene was with Bill talking to someone about something that he did not want to do. After just meeting Gaius, Caprica Six met his elderly dad. She set him up in a nursing home, so maybe that’s how she earned Gaius’s trust, eventually leading to his betrayal of his fellow humans. We saw Kara and Lee’s first meeting, though she was his brother’s girlfriend at the time. And then there was Roslin — after losing her entire family in a car accident, she had a bit of a mental breakdown.

One of the last flashbacks was of a drunk Lee having an encounter with a pigeon.

What’s the point?

I have no idea.

Back in the present, Kara continues to work on the meaning of her song, even trying to turn it into some mathematical formula, but she’s not having much luck. Gaius pleads with Lee to give his “people” representation in the government and Lee asks him if he’s ever made a single selfless act in his life. Later on, when Bill asks for volunteers, it looks for a moment that Gaius is conflicted and may join them, but when we cut to the final shot of the hanger, I didn’t see where he was. My guess is that he’s ultimately going to stick with the fleet.

That’s about it. Not a whole hell of a lot happened this week, save for Bill’s decision to go after Hera. Based on the reconnaissance, it’s going to be tough to get close to the colony…

Next week should be interesting.

It’s been so long since the first season of “Simon & Simon” hit stores – we’ve passed the two-year mark and we’re heading for three – that fans of the series may have feared that they’d never see any more of the adventures of private detectives Rick and A.J. Simon (Gerald McRaney and Jameson Parker) released onto DVD. Fortunately, Shout! Factory has picked up the torch that Universal dropped. While it’s unfortunate that there aren’t any special features on the set, the packaging reminds us that it is indeed a bonus that Shout opted to spend the coin to include the “Magnum, PI” crossover episode that kicked off the second season of “Simon & Simon.” As far as the show itself goes, it’s relatively pedestrian as detective shows go, but it does manage to rise above its one-liner concept – “They’re detectives and they’re brothers!” – thanks to the performances of McRaney and Parker as well as Mary Carver, who plays the boys’ mother, Cecilia Simon. Guest stars this season include Ray Walton (“My Favorite Martian”), Eddie Albert (“Green Acres”), Richard Anderson (“The Six Million Dollar Man”), Dean Stockwell (“Quantum Leap”), and Richard Kiel, a.k.a. Jaws in the Bond flicks, but don’t go looking for Downtown Brown to rear his head. Alas, Tim Reid didn’t become a regular cast member ’til Season 3…and as it stands right now, there’s no word on whether Shout has plans to release that or not.

Click to buy “Simon and Simon: Season Two”