Bullz-Eye: So how did you find yourself involved in TBS’s “Who Gets the Last Laugh?” Did they reach out to you?

Kevin McDonald: They reached out to me! Yes! I was in my nice blue house in Winnipeg, and I got the email from them, saying, “Would you like to do this?” And I thought at first that I’d be too Canadian to do this. Like, too polite. I thought I’d be too nice to pull pranks on people. That’s what I thought in my blue house in Winnipeg. But as it turned out, I could do it!

BE: Did you have to fight your every Canadian instinct to do it?

KM: Yes. [Laughs.] At first I did. Because we’re too polite and too nice, and we feel guilty. But then you get into it, and…it’s not even like the cruel part of me kicked in or anything…until it did. But it wasn’t even that. It was just, y’know, “It’s a job.” And once I started getting into it, it sort of became like a sketch, only with one of the people not knowing what the script was. And that was sort of the challenge, but I got really into it. I really enjoyed it.

BE: Are you a fan of the prank-show genre as a rule?

KM: Well, when I was a kid, “Candid Camera” was one of my favorite shows. I guess that was probably the genesis of it. I’d watch “Candid Camera” at home, and I did quite enjoy it. And because we were Canadians, then we’d spend 20 minutes holding hands, feeling guilty. But then we’d watch it again the next week.

BE: The one-liner they use to describe your prank in the press release is that you leave a confusing impression.

KM: [Laughs.] I think that’s right on!

BE: Did you have a particular way of approaching the prank? Did you plot out the possible reactions you might get?

KM: Well, they sort of just plop you in the middle of it, y’know? Like, I knew what the prank was as I was going there, and, y’know, I’ve seen “Punk’d” and stuff, but I still had no idea what I was going to be doing. Then they plunk you in the middle and all of a sudden say, “Okay, we’ve got to do it now!” And you have to do it, so you just kind of get into it. It’s kind of trial by fire. Everything I’d planned out beforehand just made no sense when it was happening. So it really is like improv. It was so much fun whispering to the actors who were in on the prank, telling them what to say, and they were so good that they could talk and hear and repeat what I was saying. If you’re a control freak, it’s very rewarding.

BE: You’ve done a lot of voice work over the years. Are you still enjoying doing the cartoon voices?

KM: Oh, yeah, I love it. I’m still doing a lot of those, and it’s fun, but it’s very tiring because you scream all day. Well, not all day. It’s actually only about an hour at a time, usally. But you’re screaming for the entire hour. Especially if you’re the kind of guy who I tend to play in cartoons. I end up falling down stairs a lot, so I’m having to make those sounds for an hour.

BE: Do you have a favorite cartoon that you’ve worked on?

KM: Well, I like “Lilo & Stitch,” but I think my favorite one that I’ve done is one for Nickelodeon called “Invader Zim.” I get almost as many compliments for that as I do Kids in the Hall. It was a really smart cartoon, by a young guy who was a comic book guy. I think he was 25 or 26 at the time, but he looked 16. But he was sort of a genius. And it was really fun to do. It was a good comedy, which you don’t always get to do.

BE: Speaking of Kids in the Hall, the last time I saw you was at the TCA Press Tour, when you were promoting “Death Comes to Town.”

KM: Oh, right! Oh, yeah, that was a lot of fun. I got to bring my new girlfriend at the time. And I saw Yoko Ono in the lobby! What was she promoting?

BE: A PBS documentary about John Lennon.

KM: Right! Yeah, that was the most exciting part. [Laughs.] Seeing Yoko Ono was pretty exciting!

BE: So has there been any talk about reuniting for another Kids in the Hall special or miniseries?

KM: Yeah, we’re talking about it now. It’s kind of hard to get us all together. We almost got together last month, and then I had to cancel, so now everyone’s mad at me, including me. But we’re trying to get together to do what we did last time, which is another tour and another miniseries. That’s what the plan is, anyway.

BE: A lot of your fellow Kids tend to pop up on various sitcoms – or, in Scott Thompson’s case, dramas – but you’ve spent a fair amount of time writing for TV as well, including a stint on ABC’s Carpoolers. Would you be agreeable to taking a full-time writing gigs?

KM: Well, yeah, actually, I just did two weeks guest-writing on “Saturday Night Live,” and there’s a chance that I might do it full-time next year if it works out. But I’ve also written a spec TV script that’s getting me offers to be on a staff, so that may happen. I’d never give up performing, but for a year I might write, and my first choice would be “Saturday Night Live.” The pay is less, but who cares? It’s “Saturday Night Live”! [Laughs.]

BE: Did you get any sketches on the air during your guest-writing stint for “SNL”?

KM: I had one that made it to dress. It was very exciting that they picked it. It was on the Melissa McCarthy show. But it was one of the ones that was cut before the show. But I have the DVD of it, so I see it every now and then and cry. [Laughs.] But it was really fun. Melissa McCarthy was great. She was so great. She made the sketch so much better than it actually was when I wrote it. It was so exciting to watch. That’s another case where they just thrust you into it and assume you know what to do, because the writer of each sketch also produces the sketch, so you have to tell the actors what to do, the set designers what to design, talk to hair, makeup, and wardrobe, make sure the cue cards are right, get the music cues set… It was very exciting.

BE: You also did a stint writing for “The Martin Short Show.”

KM: Yes! I was a writer and a performer on that. But my favorite part was the writing. Even though I loved the performing. But it was very exciting to work with Martin Short. I’d write during the day and sometimes do a sketch at night if I got one in, but I’d be in my writing office and I’d go down to the floor where he was filming a sketch and just watch him work. Just to watch his process. I’ve yet to understand his process, but it was exciting to watch. Like, he’d be certain of the lines, he’d be certain of a character, and he’d do take one, take two, take three. But for takes four through seven, he knew he had it, so that’s when he’d start playing with it and finding things and improvising. That was so exciting to watch a true, bonafied comedy genius work. I got to see all those takes and see him improve it and improve it… That was very exciting. That was the best part of the job.

BE: Do you have a favorite project that you’ve worked on that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?

KM: I liked the movie “Sky High.” I thought that was going to be a bigger hit. I did it with Dave Foley and Bruce Campbell. It was a high school for superheroes. Kurt Russell was in it, too, and he was great. I was the smart guy with the giant head. [Laughs.] I wish that’d gotten more love, because that was actually sort of good. Oh, and there’s another one, one that I wish had gotten more love for the Kids in the Hall: “Brain Candy.” It cost eight million and grossed three million. So that’s my big one for wanting more love.

BE: Lastly, how did you enjoy the experience of working on “That ‘70s Show”?

KM: That was great! That happened because of the Kids in the Hall. Mark Brazill, who’s the creator of the show, and Topher Grace, they came to our reunion show at the Wiltern Theater, and they were about to cast for the part of Pastor Dave. And they thought, “Oh, Kevin McDonald! He looks like a pastor! And he’s Canadian!” If you’re really Canadian, you seem kind of priest-like. I understand that. So they asked me to do it, and that was fun. I think it was for three seasons that I would come do stuff. And those kids, they were so young, but they were all Kids in the Hall fans. And they were all nice. I don’t have any bad stories! They were all nice. Now, I heard bad stories. [Laughs.] From the crew. But I don’t have any bad stories. They were all very nice to me!

David Steinberg began his career in comedy with Chicago’s Second City, quickly gaining fame as a stand-up through his appearances on “The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson” while also courting controversy by performing comedic “sermons” on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” In 1981, Steinberg began to shift his focus from performing to directing, starting with the Burt Reynolds film “Paternity,” and has gone on to become one of the more prolific sitcom directors in the business, but he recently stepped back in front of the camera to host the new Showtime series, “Inside Comedy,” which airs Thursdays at 11 PM. Steinberg spoke with Bullz-Eye about his new gig, detailing the trials and tribulations of securing classic clips to accompany his interviews, while also discussing some of his past efforts as an actor, director, and stand-up comedian.

[NOTE: All photos appear courtesy of TheDavidSteinberg.com.]

Bullz-Eye: This is certainly not your first time hosting a show where you interview comedians: you also brought us Sit Down Comedy with David Steinberg. Not that there isn’t still plenty of material yet to mine, but what inspired you to take another crack at it?

David Steinberg: I felt that I hadn’t really done it the way I wanted to. That’s why we first started this as a film. Starting it as a film was really good, because then you get so much material, and it’s sort of looser or whatever. And then I settled on this notion of putting two people together and how they connect, but not in any specific ways. They just go together by what they’re talking about. And once I arrived at that, I thought, “This is gonna be good!” [Laughs.] Of course, making it that good…it was time consuming, but it was great, great fun. I worked with some incredible editors, and there was a lot of archival stuff that we talk about that…well, they know that they’re talking to another comedian. That’s the bottom line. And then, archivally, I didn’t just do the clichéd version. I handpicked the clips that I wanted and then begged people to let me use them. [Laughs.] Archival stuff takes so long to get people to sign off on.

BE: Was there anything you wanted to use that, even with all of your pleading, you still couldn’t get?

DS: Yeah, for Jonathan Winters, I had a clip of him in an old Dean Martin roast where he’s roasting (Ronald) Reagan, and in it there’s a wide shot where you could see Dean Martin, Reagan, (Don) Rickles, Phyllis Diller, and… [Sighs.] You know, it’s generally not the original inheritors of the celebrity estates that are the problem. It’s the grandchildren, who don’t even know or understand what it means to be celebrating Jonathan Winters. They asked for so much money everywhere that we couldn’t use it. I ended up having to go with just a tight shot of Jonathan instead. So, y’know, just stuff like that drove me nuts. For the most part, though, I got everything I wanted. Some were just so exorbitant that I just couldn’t do it. But I’m happy with it.

BE: Speaking of Jonathan Winters on Showtime, he also appeared on The Green Room with Paul Provenza not so terribly long ago. It’s great to see people as yourself and Paul continuing to give him the props he deserves.

DS: That’s right, yeah. I will say that the younger comedians tend to look after the older ones. Richard Lewis goes out to Santa Barbara and spends time with him, and Sarah Silverman has done that with Phyllis Diller. It’s very interesting, the comedy community. It’s more surprising and tight-knit than you would imagine.

BE: When it came time to pull together your guest list for the show, did you have an even blend of close friends and a wish list?

DS: Yeah. A lot I knew, and a lot I didn’t. Like, I didn’t know Chris Rock very well, and he proved to be one of the more interesting interviews. There are a whole lot of interviews that are still in the can that are so good: Judd Apatow, Ben Stiller, Lily Tomlin, Carol Burnett, Dick Van Dyke… I tried them in the first round, and…they’re great, but it was how things matched up. But I’m optimistic that we’ll get a second year. The level of celebrity in these people is huge. They’re all the best and the biggest.

BE: What’s the percentage of Canadian content?

DS: [Laughs.] Well, Martin Short and I are the Canadian content. But I would love to have gotten Eugene Levy. I do use a lot of SCTV. You know, I put that group together in a show that I did in the ‘70s (The David Steinberg Show). So, no, not a big percentage of Canadians for someone like me, who’s so pro-Canadian. [Laughs.]

BE: When you appeared on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, you stumbled into some controversy with one of your bits on the show.

DS: Yeah, well, I was doing sermons. [Laughs.] It was something I’d developed at Second City: I’d take a suggestion of any Old Testament personality and do a sermon about them. I’ve got the background in that from my family and from having been at a yeshiva and all that, so I really knew it well. For a comedian, anyway. [Laughs.] Not for a scholar. So I did an album of the sermons, and it was very popular, but it was also very controversial even then. Tom and Dick (Smothers), Tom especially, just couldn’t get over the uniqueness of it, and he said, “Let’s put it on the air!”

So when he put one of the sermons on the air – I think the first one was Moses – I’d gone to New York, and I came back a week later and, because we were friends by this point, we were hanging out, and he said very excitedly, “I want to show you something!” And he opened up the door to this room, and there were just bundles and bundles of mail. And I said, “What’s that?” He said, “It’s your hate mail!” [Laughs.] As if I should be so pleased and excited by this! He was thrilled that it created such an uproar. But then he was told not to do another sermon. Of course, he says, “We love Steinberg, we’re going to have him on again!” Anyway, after I did another kind of Second City sketch with Tommy, he said, “God, the audience still wants more of you. Why don’t you do another sermon?” And the one I chose to go with was Jonah. And the rest is history: it became the reason they were thrown off the air.

You know, there were other political reasons. History sort of rewrites itself, and they say that…Tommy and Dick have sort of been playing down how the sermons were the reason for them going off the air. Because when you listen to them now, they don’t really sound that controversial. But having been the person who did it, it was a completely irreverent presence on television, probably the likes of which had never been there before. So they walked right into the trap of giving the network what they wanted, which was a reason to throw them off, because who isn’t offended by religion?

BE: Before you appeared on Comedy Hour, you were actually a writer on its predecessor, The Summer Brothers Smothers Show, correct?

DS: That’s right. Yeah, Bob Einstein and I wrote for the show. And before that, I was…I sort of broke as a stand-up comedian a couple of years before that. I was already on The Tonight Show as a sort of regular. In fact, I’d already guest-hosted The Tonight Show by the time I was working with the Smothers Brothers.

BE: You were – and, I guess, still are – the youngest person ever to guest-host The Tonight Show.

DS: Yeah, still am. [Laughs.]

BE: How weird was that, to find yourself in such a lofty position at such a young age?

DS: You know, I was so stupid. [Laughs.] You know, with the stupidness of youth, I thought, “Oh, this is pretty great, now I’m hosting The Tonight Show.” Only when I look back now do I go, “Oh, my God, what an incredible thing has happened to me…” At the time, though, I was, like, “Okay, so this is happening.” I was not a guy that was after stardom in any big way. It was just, like, “How do I get really good at this?” And so was the whole community that I was with. Tommy and Dick, they were happy to be stars and all that, because we needed that to be able to do what we wanted to do, but what we really wanted to know was, “How do we get better and better and better?” Comedy was breaking from its old formula, and we were sort of exploring new avenues in the late ‘60s.

BE: The Smothers Brothers managed to blend both comedy and music on their show. You did somewhat of the same thing not much later, when you hosted Music Scene.

DS: Oh, and the performers on that show were unbelievable. It was B.B. King, Janis Joplin…I mean, it was the biggest music stars of the era. Smokey Robinson. John Sebastian. It started out with a group of us from Second City – The Committee, which was a Second City offshoot – but they ended up firing everyone except for me and Lily Tomlin as the hosts. And we were married to Billboard’s Top 100, so every week, no matter what was the popular song, we had to parody it. It was kind of an early Saturday Night Live sort of thing, really. But what we never counted on was that “Sugar, Sugar” would be the number-one song for five weeks in a row. [Laughs.] After three weeks of doing increasingly lame parodies, we just couldn’t figure out what to do with it. But then Lily was whisked away to do Laugh In, and I was left as the host, and…we knew the show was going to be going off the air in about eight weeks, so they said, “You can have anyone you want as a co-host.” So I got Groucho Marx to be my co-host one week, Steve Allen another week…it turned out to be a pretty trippy show in the end.

BE: How was Groucho as a co-host?

DS: Groucho was incredible. We were really good friends. I wrote a draft of the play Minnie’s Boys, and I spent about six months with him. He was lecherous and funny…up to form, basically. [Laughs.] There was a thistle in his kiss, so to speak. He was as acerbic as could be.

BE: Of your standup albums, I think 1974’s Booga! Booga! is probably the best known, if only by virtue of the fact that Sony reissued it in the ‘90s, but there are three others. Is there any one of that bunch that particularly stands out for you?

DS: Well, Disguised as a Normal Person has pretty good material. It’s all the material I was doing in the late ‘60s, and that came out in 1970. Booga! Booga! is very honed. I’d started to get it down good. Before that is The Incredible Shrinking God (1968), a not-easy-to-get album, but that was just the sermons, recorded at Second City. But the last album I did, which got really good reviews and I think maybe even a Grammy nod, was a concept album I wrote with Don Novello. It was called Goodbye to the ‘70s, and we wrote it in 1975.It was about an Arab takeover in America, and I became the sell-out, the Bob Hope type sell-out who was best friends with the Arab President. And that was…maybe we smoked a little bit too much grass. [Laughs.] But I remember it as being very good at the time.

BE: You mentioned The David Steinberg Show earlier. I have to admit that I’ve never actually seen it, but I’ve often seen it referenced as a precursor to The Larry Sanders Show.

DS: It was. In fact, I think Garry (Shandling) even talks about it. But it was a precursor by so many years that you can’t really think of in those terms. But, yeah, I played a character who was an egotistical version of myself – which some people would say is a redundancy – and it was a show within a show. I was sort of copying the old Burns & Allen show. Marty Short plays sort of a sleazy lounge-singer cousin of mine, and John Candy played the Doc Severinsen of the show, Spider Reichman, who worshipped Dizzy Gillespie. It was written by Ziggy Steinberg, one of my closest friends, and…we loved it. We loved doing it. It was just great. It’s sort of an iconic show. Marty’s particularly amazing it. But, then, he’s just amazing, anyway. He’s the funniest human being ever.

BE: I know Dave Foley is also a big fan of the show.

DS: Yes, he is. And then he and I worked together on The Wrong Guy, which is probably one of my favorite things that I’ve ever directed.

BE: Yeah, he’s said it’s one of his favorites as well. But it’s a film that earns decidedly mixed opinions: either it’s a comedy gem, or it’s not funny at all.

DS: That’s absolutely true. You never know what people are going to like or not like. It was a real comedy writer’s film. I got more work as a director from that, just from show runners and comedy writers who knew that it was good. Good or bad, though, it probably still would’ve done better if the company hadn’t gone bankrupt.

BE: Speaking of directing, your first time behind the camera was for Paternity, with Burt Reynolds.

DS: Yes. Burt gave me my first directing job, which was not a little thing. He had to fight Paramount to get them to let me direct it. But it started my whole career. He and I were really good friends, and…I think Burt Reynolds was one of the most underrated comic personalities of the ‘70s. He was as good on The Tonight Show as any comedian who was ever on the show. Things sort of took a turn later on, but at his peak, he was quite remarkable. Yeah, Paternity was first, and then Going Berserk… [Starts to laugh.] It’s not a good movie. But it became a cable stable, and it was also shown as a midnight movie in places like Washington. Not quite Rocky Horror, but…

BE: What made you decide to make the shift from actor to director?

DS: Well, you know, I never really liked acting that much. I did like standup, but I just couldn’t be on the road anymore. I always thought I could direct, though. I always felt…I liked, when I was on the set, to help everyone. And I was a fan of films. I know my movies very well. So I just got interested in it, and…I was still doing comedy, doing gigs all the way through the ’80s and up through the ‘90s. I was still doing The Tonight Show every six or seven months or so. But the directing just built and built and built, and all of a sudden it was a career.

BE: You’ve worked on just about every major sitcom at this point. Who would you say was the most surprising person you’ve worked with, someone you knew about but, when you got the show, left you thoroughly impressed?

DS: You know, from an acting point of view, the women were so impressive that it was unbelievable. I mean, on a show that’s a little broad, like, say, Designing Women, Dixie Carter and Annie Potts, Judith Ivey and Jan Hooks, they were unbelievable to me. The acting chops were incredible. I always remember that in particular. I couldn’t get over the comic abilities and sensibilities of Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt on Mad About You, either. I’d ask them to talk faster, and they talked faster, to the point where it felt like we were doing a Howard Hawks film. That was great.

BE: Lastly, you’ve helmed several episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Given his seemingly natural state of crankiness, is it even possible to direct Larry David?

DS: [Laughs.] It is possible. It’s totally possible. Larry’s very collaborative, actually. He’s a much more generous guy than he plays on TV. [Laughs.]

Bullz-Eye: First of all, in case you haven’t heard, I should let you know that we put you into our Director’s Hall of Fame last year.

John Landis: Oh, thank you very much!

BE: Our pleasure. After all, we’re a guy-centric site, and it would be fair to say that you’ve made a few movies that have been appreciated by many a man over the years…including, of course, “¡Three Amigos!”

JL: [Laughs.] So did you get a chance to watch the Blu-ray, then?

BE: I did. It looks fantastic.

JL: Yeah, I was able to restore it to the way it’s supposed to be seen. I’m very pleased with the way it looks.

BE: I was actually going to ask you about that process. I presume there’s at least a little bit of difference when it comes to restoring a comedy for Blu-ray versus, say, a full-on special effects extravaganza.

JL: Actually, no. [Laughs.] That would be an untrue presumption. I mean, every picture’s individual, and it depends on the look you were going for with that particular movie. When they made the Blu-ray for “Animal House,” I was upset. I thought they made it much too bright and clean. “Animal House” is supposed to look dirty and funky. [Laughs.] I remember the technician, when I had to check it, he kept writing on his chart, “Image degraded per director.” But every movie you make, you try – or at least I do, anyway – for a different kind of look. On “¡Three Amigos!” I was really trying to go for those beautiful westerns that Hollywood used to make in the ‘50s. The Technicolor pictures. We wanted the colors to be incredibly vibrant. You know, the old DVD wasn’t even the correct aspect ratio. So I’m happy that I got the chance to restore it.

BE: Well, as I say, it looks fantastic. And sounds great, too.

JL: Yeah, it’s a great score. It’s a unique situation where Elmer Bernstein, I asked him…I said, “Listen, I want you to satirize yourself.” And that’s what he did. [Laughs.] He’s doing his wacky version of “The Magnificent Seven,” and I was just so pleased with that. And the songs by Randy Newman…I mean, the movie’s got incredible music.

BE: And the Singing Bush. I mean, come on…

JL: The Singing Bush is Randy Newman! [Laughs.]

BE: Absolutely. Did you have to prod him at all to play that part?

JL: Yes. [Laughs.] But he did a great job. The role he was born to play!

BE: You and your stars – Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, and Martin Short – reunited for an Empire Magazine article not so long ago.

JL: Right, that was recently. It was only about four months ago, I think.

BE: It was a great article, although as I read it, I couldn’t help but think, “Gee, I’m sure he loved being reminded that ‘¡Three Amigos!’ made less money at the box office than ‘Police Academy 3.’”

JL: Yeah, but ‘Police Academy 3’ was a gigantic hit!

BE: Well, sure. But when you look back on classic films of the ‘80s, ‘¡Three Amigos!’ would seem to rank higher than ‘Police Academy 3.’

JL: Maybe, but…I make a movie that I want to see. When you make a film…Peter Bogdanovich famously said, “The only true test of a movie is time,” and there are movies that were originally failures, like “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which was such a failure that it bankrupted the company, but it’s considered a great American film…because it is! [Laughs.]

BE: You’ve been at the helm of quite a few films that continue to be reflected upon both on and between their key anniversaries. Is “¡Three Amigos!” one that surprises you with its endurance?

JL: No. Because it’s very funny. [Laughs.] And I think that the Amigos themselves are very sweet. And…there are not that many movies you can watch with the whole family, other than Disney or Pixar films, where the parents enjoy it as much as the kids.

BE: I discovered this morning that if I go to Google and type in the words “would you say,” it instantly attempts to finish the phrase with “I have a plethora of piñatas”?

JL: [Bursts out laughing.] Is that true?

BE: That is absolutely true.

JL: That’s…odd. [Laughs.]

BE: But it’s also, I think, a testament to the enduring fan base for that film.

JL: Well, that’s also the wonderful Alfonso Arau and Tony Plana. They’re so great.

BE: Are there any lines that stand out for you personally as favorites?

JL: Oh, many. I think my favorite, the one that I quote the most, is when Dusty Bottoms comes to the Mexican village and the peasants feed them and give them lunch, and Chevy says, “Do you have anything besides Mexican food?” [Laughs.] My wife and I were three months in India, and I found myself saying “do you have anything besides…Mexican food?” all the time.

BE: One of the things I noticed in re-watching the film – something I can’t say as I paid attention to before – was that, in the scene where the Amigos meet with the head of their movie studio, you’ve got three guys working together who would go on to be three of the most popular guest voices on The Simpsons: Phil Hartman (Troy McClure), Jon Lovitz (Artie Ziff), and Joe Mantegna (Fat Tony).

JL: Oh, you know, I never thought of that! [Laughs.] That was Joe Mantegna’s first movie. And Jon Loviz and Phil Hartman, they’re in it because I really wanted Lorne (Michaels) to see them, to put them on “Saturday Night Live,” and…he had a prejudice against L.A. at that time, and because they were from a comedy group in L.A. called The Groundlings, he didn’t want to know. So I gave them parts in the movie so he could see how brilliant they were.

BE: If you listen to Joe Mantegna in the scene, he’s essentially doing his Fat Tony voice.

JL: That’s so funny. That never occurred to me. I didn’t even make that connection. Did you watch the cut scenes on the Blu-ray?

BE: I did, yes.

JL: Okay, so you know there was originally a lot more of them in the film.

BE: Yep. It wasn’t until recently, though, that I learned that Sam Kinison had originally been in the film…not that there’s any trace of his work left, unfortunately.

JL: Yeah, he was this cannibal mountain man. I wish we knew where that footage was. It’s only about four minutes worth, but it’s very funny.

BE: A number of surprising films from the ‘80s have emerged as cult hits. Is there one of your past films – not necessarily limiting yourself to the ‘80s – that you feel is ripe for reevaluation?

JL: Well, I’ve been really lucky, in that most of my films – not all, but most – have had a tremendous life. They’re still showing “Animal House” and “The Blues Brothers” and “An American Werewolf in London” and “Trading Places” and “Coming to America.” They’re all sort of still out there. And, of course, my work with Michael Jackson. All of that stuff is still very relevant.

BE: Speaking of Michael Jackson, I wrote in your entry for our Director’s Hall of Fame, “Kids, ask your parents if they ever made a point of tuning in to MTV at the top of the hour in order to catch an airing of ‘Thriller.’ If they tell you they didn’t, then ask them what it was like to grow up in a cultural vacuum.”

JL: [Laughs.] There was a time where it was, like, all “Thriller,” all the time!

BE: What were your thoughts on tackling that project? I mean, Michael Jackson is obviously someone high-profile enough to find him worth working with, but did you have any trepidation about doing a music video?

JL: Well, I didn’t want to do a music video! [Laughs.] When Michael first called me…he’d seen “An American Werewolf in London” and was very taken with Rick Baker’s work, and he just really wanted to turn into a monster. That’s what he wanted: “I want to turn into a monster onscreen.” And I said, “Instead of doing a video, which is just a three-minute commercial for a record, why don’t we do a short?” And it was meant to be…well, it was, actually, a theatrical short. Disney actually distributed it with “Fantasia” before it was on TV. And that’s why it’s 14 minutes: because it’s the length of a theatrical short. So it ended up being like a little movie, and I had no problem doing it. It was great fun.

BE: Having read your bio, I know you worked at least to some extent on “Once Upon a Time in the West.”

JL: I was on that movie for over a month!

BE: Did you learn any life lessons from Sergio Leone?

JL: No. But he was very sweet and very funny. He had this ridiculous Italian accent – he didn’t speak English very well then – and I enjoyed watching him direct Henry Fonda, who he called Hank, and say, “Hank-a, I want-a you to…” [Starts laughing.] It was really funny. But the guy was brilliant. I love that movie.

BE: Do you have any Robert Shaw stories from working on “A Town Called Hell”?

JL: Just that, boy, that guy could drink unbelievably. [Laughs.] He could consume amounts of alcohol that could kill most people.

BE: I don’t know if you’re familiar with the website Splitsider.com, but they recently did a piece called “The Lost Roles of ‘Animal House.’”

JL: [Laughs.] No, I’m not.

BE: They ran through a list of people who’d either been seriously considered or at least thought about for various roles in the film. I hadn’t known that Meat Loaf was more or less in contention for Bluto.

JL: He was on the list, yeah. If we couldn’t get (John) Belushi. I remember it was Josh Mostel, Meat Loaf, and…there were like five or six guys. But John was the only one we actually offered it to, and he took it.

BE: And I can’t help but smile at the thought of Jack Webb playing Dean Wormer.

JL: Well, now, he was my first choice. I went to Jack Webb, and he thought I was nuts. [Laughs.] I mean, I had long hair, and…he did everything but call me a Jew commie faggot. But he sat there, drinking Scotch, and he listened to me. But he had no interest. The casting that I was always disappointed in was when I made “The Blues Brothers.” For Bob – of Bob’s Country Bunker – I had lunch with Roy Rogers. And Roy was a very nice guy, by the way, but he just couldn’t be in an R-rated film.

BE: Were there any musicians you wanted in “The Blues Brothers” that you couldn’t wrangle?

JL: Little Richard. At the moment, Little Richard…you know, he finds and loses Jesus all the time. Just my luck, he found him at that moment. [Laughs.]

BE: In the case of a film like “The Blues Brothers,” where you had to deliver a shorter cut at the studio’s request, is that something always gnaws at you for the long haul, or have there been occasions when you were, like, “God help me, but it might just be better this way”?

JL: Well, I mean, for “The Blues Brothers,” we trimmed it tremendously and made it a lot shorter, but most of the time came out of various musical numbers and stuff. For the most part, the answer is “no.” The only time I’ve ever had a studio really fuck with me was on the sequel, on “Blues Brothers 2000,” where they really just kind of destroyed that movie. But I’m still proud of the music in the movie, which is incredible, and the people who are in it are extraordinary. I’m happy that we were able to document those artists and put them on film. But that’s the only time I ever had a studio really fuck me. [Laughs.]

BE: Did you have fun working with Paul Mazursky on “Into the Night” both as a director and as an actor?

JL: I did! He’s one of those guys that I don’t think people remember what a big filmmaker he was. He made some very interesting movies.

BE: I’d expect it was a kick to be able to threaten him onscreen as you did.

JL: Did I threaten him? Oh, yeah, I had a gun! [Laughs.] Paul’s actually a very good actor.

BE: You’re obviously best known for your comedies, but do you ever have an interest in venturing more into drama?

JL: Oh, sure. I mean, you know, there’s this interesting thing, and it’s true not just to critics but in the industry, too, and I’ve never really understood it, but…if you’re a filmmaker and you can tell a story through the juxtaposition of images, which is how movies are made, then genre doesn’t matter. If you can direct a film, you can direct any genre. But directors get typed just like actors, and if you have great success in comedy, then that’s what they want you to do. And it’s frustrating. [Laughs.]

BE: I was talking to Carl Gottlieb recently, and he said the same of screenwriters, suggesting that there was a time when you wouldn’t think twice about having the guy who wrote “The King’s Speech” write “Transformers 3,” or what have you.

JL: That’s absolutely true. But that’s gone. Now, you know, the executives…they’re like Winnie the Pooh: a bear of very little brain. [Laughs.]

BE: I was curious about the experience of working with Bob Hope on “Spies Like Us.”

JL: Well, Bob was literally on his way to the airport. [Laughs.] He was in London, and I called him up and…he was doing a Command Performance, and I asked him if he would be in the film, since the film is clearly my attempt at doing a kind of “Road” picture, a Hope & Crosby kind of picture. He said, “Sure! Give $35,000 to the Boys Club of America, and I’ll do it!” And I said, “Deal!” And he just literally stopped by. I had it lit and ready, and…I’ll tell you, it was an interesting thing. I don’t know if you remember, but in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Bob Hope started making these bad movies, and he became…well, he was not the Bob Hope of the ‘30s and ‘40s, let’s put it that way. And he came in, and he said, “What do you want me to do?” And I told him, and he said, “No, no, show me.” Which, you know, most actors don’t want you to do that kind of thing. But I found myself doing an imitation of Bob Hope from the ‘30s. [Laughs.] I did that, and then Bob…well, basically, he was doing an imitation of me doing an imitation of him from the ‘30s. But being Bob Hope, he was great at it! He just came in and did it. One take. He did it, and he left. And I was honored to have him in the picture.

BE: I just wanted to jump back to the comment I made earlier about unlikely films from the ’80 developing cult followings. I recently wrote a review of the “Clue” miniseries that was done for The Hub, where I made an offhanded comment about how the movie version of “Clue” – which you co-wrote – had a fantastic cast but maybe wasn’t necessarily what you’d call a great movie…though, in fairness, I haven’t seen it in 20 years. But there was a downright vehement reaction from the readership, the general premise of the replies being, “To hell with you! It goddamned well is a great movie!”

JL: [Laughs.] Excellent! Good for those guys! Well, on “Clue,” I wrote the outline, and then I couldn’t solve it. I created this situation I couldn’t solve. I knew the butler goes, “And then this is who did it,” but I couldn’t figure it out! And then Tom Stoppard worked on it for awhile, and then he gave up. And then I was in London, and there was this wonderful TV series called “Yes, Minister” that was written by Tony Jay and Jonathan Lynn. And I met Jonathan and I asked him to write it, and he wrote it. And then…I’ve forgotten what happened, but I was doing another movie, and I said, “Listen, Jon, I’ll try to get you for this, if you’d like to direct it.” And he did!

BE: Do you have a favorite project that you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?

JL: Oh, gee, that’s interesting. I don’t know. You know, you make movies, and they sort of have a life of their own. They go out into the world… [Laughs.] …and depending on where I am and who I’m with is the movie they want to talk about. But…yes, I can think of one. My only children’s film was called “The Stupids,” and I’m quite proud of that movie, but it was unfortunate: I made it for a company called Savoy, and they went bankrupt while I was in post-production, so my film, along with a number of movies, went on a shelf. And Mike Eisner and Disney tried to buy it, and that would’ve been great, because it was PG. Maybe it was even G-rated. Captain Kangaroo’s in it, for God’s sake! [Laughs.] It has puppets! It’s a children’s film!

But it sat there for about three years because Victor Kaufman wouldn’t sell it without the other movies. You had to buy the whole slate of Savoy movies. It would’ve been great if Disney had bought it, because it would’ve said, “Walt Disney presents ‘The Stupids.” But it was eventually bought by New Line, and that’s when they were doing the “Freddy’s Nightmare” movie. I’ll never forget it: I went to a screening and…they had never seen the movie. They bought it for a lot of money, but they’d never seen it! [Laughs.] These schmucks, they thought it was a teenage tits-and-ass movie because a girl named Jenny McCarthy, who was a model in Toronto, she had a small part, but in the years that it sat on the shelf, she became Playmate of the Year and a celebrity. So they thought, “Tom Arnold? Jenny McCarthy?!?” They thought it was gonna be a tits-on-the-beach movie! So when they saw it, they went, “This is a children’s film!” I went, “Yeah…?” And they were really upset about it and kind of dumped it. And it always bothered me, because if you show that to the people who it’s aimed for, which is ages 7 to 10, it plays great. [Laughs.] I’m very happy with that picture. So that’s the one I wish had gotten more love.

BE: Lastly, given how many times you’ve turned up in front of the camera, do you have a favorite of your appearances as an actor? And just to clarify, it doesn’t need to have been a role where you actually had to speak.

JL: Um, I don’t know if you know this, but I’m not really an actor. [Laughs.] Do you remember those commercials that Robert Young used to do, where he said, “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV”? I always feel like I should be saying, “I’m not an actor, but I play one in the movies.” Because I’ve been in a shitload of movies. I’ve been in over a hundred films. But…I don’t know, I like my little moment with John Belushi in “1941.” But the film’s not great. [Laughs.] And…I don’t know, I also enjoyed “Into the Night,” because it was kind of slapstick. I enjoyed doing that. I didn’t intend to be in the movie, but I had hired these Persian actors, these Iranian guys, and they were very serious actors and they got the scary, but they couldn’t do the physical comedy. I was trying to do this deadly Keystone Kops slapstick, but they just had trouble with the physical stuff, so I ended up just going, “Fuck it, I look Persian, I’ll do it.” So I’m in there, and, really, the only reason I’m in there – and it worked quite well – was just to get them to be able to do the falling-down stuff like I wanted it. But you’ll notice I don’t speak in that movie. Sorry, I don’t speak Farsi. [Laughs.]