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This interview with Brett Ratner in The Advocate is almost a year old, but I missed it when it came out, and ripping on Brett Ratner is always timely.  Let’s start with something embarrassing and out of context:

[Ratner] There’s no hair on my ass. I have no hair on my balls.

Swell.  What else can you tell us that we’d never want to know?

[Advocate] Rush Hour 3 follows a trend in action films. Being gay has increasingly become a punch line. It happens several times in this film.
[Ratner] Which ones? Where? I don’t remember.
[Advocate] What about when the girl takes off her wig and Chris Tucker becomes angry and accuses her of being a man?
[Ratner] No, no! That’s from my personal experience. My first blow job was from a man, but I didn’t know it was a man.

That’s where that comes from. It’s based on personal experience. It happens to a lot of people.

Well, perhaps not a lot of people, but I can see how you’d think that when you’ve been hanging with Eddie Murphy.  But back to the interview.  Could you explain comedy to us, oh brilliant gagsmith? 

You meet a girl in a bar, and it turns out she’s not a girl. I think a girl should tell you if she’s a girl or a man–that way it’s your preference. It’s comedy. Look, in this movie we don’t pull any punches. We make fun of black people. We make fun of Chinese people. We make fun of French people. We make fun of gay situations. We make fun of whites. It doesn’t matter. It’s the type of movie it is. It’s a fish-out-of-water comedy. You have to have those types of situations to have the comedy. That specific idea was because it’s happened to me. It’s happened to my friends. We’ll get together with a girl, and it’ll turn out to be a guy. The reaction is “Oh, shit!” if you’re not gay, which is funny, I think. Getting into the situation is funny. I laugh whenever I see one of my friends talking to a girl, and I’ll ask, “Is that a man or a woman?” It’s funny, especially if you don’t know about it.

LOL! That is funny!  Of course, to make a proper comedy you must have those situations.  Slip guide rod A behind curtain junction screw D (see fig. 2b), add Chris Tucker, and voilá, you’re on a speed train to laugh city!    But wait, Brett, you haven’t told us what makes you so great!

I love Jackie and Chris. They’re my friends. I’ve known them for years and years and years. They’re a great comedic duo. There are very few of them that exist in the history of film. The combination of Jackie’s physical comedy and Chris’s verbal comedy, it’s just an amazing combination.

Wow, that was douchey.  Could you name drop some more? 

[Advocate] Roman Polanski? He plays a cop that gives Chris and Jackie a body cavity search in Rush Hour 3.
[Ratner] Legend! I mean, he’s my hero. The guy is like…He’s a fan of Rush Hour. That’s how I got him to be in it. We’re friends, but we met because he saw Rush Hour and loved it. Then we became friends. I asked him to be in the movie, and he said, "OK, you’d better write a sequel." I called to tell people, and they said “Roman Polanski is not going to be in this movie.” I said, "Yes, he is," but they didn’t get it.

Thank you.  And yes, I’ve often thought of Money Talks as a modern-day Rosemary’s Baby.  What other embarrassing things can you tell us?

[Ratner] You don’t like the finger up the butt? (apparently referring to a scene in Rush Hour 3) Is that the gay thing you mentioned?
[Advocate] That’s one of the things.
[Ratner] But that feels good sometimes!

Thanks, Bret.  Just to ratchet up the creepy, I’ll leave you with this recent Ratner-directed video for jailbait sensation Miley Cyrus’ “7 Things”.  I can see why they let music video directors direct films. Experience shooting center-framed girls singing against a white wall background is to clearly invaluable.