I can’t tell if this clip of Peter Berg on an Israeli talk show (hat tip: Pajiba) makes me like him less or more, but I’m leaning towards more. Either way, I can tell you this: he’s definitely not boring. Ostensibly there to discuss the movie he directed, Battleship, the $300 million board-game-based turd Universal is currently drowning the rest of the world in ads for, Berg, to the astonishment of the host, instead jumped into a subject more dear to his heart: a nuclear Iran.

What the f*ck is gonna happen in Israel? You got Bibi [Israeli PM Netanyahu], and what’s the Secretary of Defense’s name? You have TWO MEN who are now dictating the policy towards Iran. It’s a real mess, because you’ve gotta decide whether it’s better, to allow Iran to be armed, and whether a nuclear Iran is less of a threat, than an attacked Iran. If you attack Iran now, they’re gonna fight you back, right? There’s gonna be blood. Israelis will die, right? No question. Would you rather take that now, or let them get a nuclear bomb. It’s the most serious issue facing our planet today.

And then comes probably the most epic fluff-piece pivot in the history of shitty entertainment show interviews…

More so than the movie Battleship, which, you know, I’m very excited to have directed, I love Rihanna, she’s a great actress, did a wonderful job in the film… My Dad was a Navy historian…

“If Iran gets a nuclear bomb, millions of Israelis are gonna die. Rihanna is great by the way. What were we talking about again? Oh right, those towelheads are probably gonna nuke you.”

Incredibly, the interview gets even better when he pivots back.

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Pretty Woman is one of the most famous romantic comedies of all time, a modern-day fairytale that fulfills every girl’s dream of being a whore until you find a super rich guy to buy you stuff. It made huge stars of its leads, then 22-year-old Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, but it turns out Richard Gere is sick of getting asked about it (which is funny, because I can think of a few worse things to ask him about). In fact, he says Pretty Woman sucked, and his new movie that no one cares about is going to be WAY better. And hey, have you heard of The Boxmasters?

While promoting his new financial thriller Arbitrage in an interview with Woman’s Day recently, the 62-year-old shared his scorn for the feelgood 1990 chick flick, telling Woman’s Day, “It’s my least favourite thing.”

Richard adds, “People ask me about that movie, but I’ve forgotten it. That was a silly romantic comedy. This is a much more serious movie that has some real cause and effect.” The grumpy star also claims his Pretty Woman character Edward Lewis helped contribute to the global financial crisis, as he glorified greedy and selfish Wall Street types.

“It made those guys seem dashing, which was so wrong,” Richard explains. “Thankfully, today, we are all more sceptical of those guys.” Despite the actor’s high-minded misgivings, Pretty Woman went on to take more than $460 million at the box office and is one of the most successful movies ever in terms of worldwide TV syndication. [NineMSN]

I honestly don’t remember Pretty Woman well enough to refute him here, but come on, know your audience, dude. The interview was with Woman’s Day, not The Economist. I would’ve gone with something more along the lines of, “Of course, I love Pretty Woman! Why, I find rom-coms almost as exhilarating as baking! But my new film is more of a thriller, about out-of-control speculating and predatory lending, which make the world financial markets all cranky and bloated like when you get your period. It’s a huge problem, which threatens our very ability to shop!”

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picture source: Drafthouse Films

According to Brandon (right) and Jason Trost (left), the sibling filmmakers behind The FP, it’s a film that’s been eight years in the making. After shooting it as a short in 2007 (though there was always a feature-length script, Jason assures), they shot the full version (on a budget of less than $100K) and took it to SXSW last March, where it was picked up by Drafthouse films (it opens in 26 markets today and is available for fans to vote to create their own screenings through Tugg.com). By the time they got to the screening I hosted at SF Indie Fest in San Francisco this past February, they were already veterans of the festival circuit, having played Fantastic Fest, Fantasia in Montreal, the Rolling Road Show and a handful of other places.

After screening the film to a raucous, largely drunken crowd (what do you expect when you let a site called “FilmDrunk” get involved), Brandon and Jason, joined by their sister Sarah (The FP‘s costume designer and a former Project Runway contestant), Lee Valmassy (L Dubba E in the movie), and Art Hsu (KCDC), took the stage for a Q & A. Valmassy, a seemingly soft-spoken, slightly built eccentric who’d apparently just gotten back from China, addressed the crowd in fluent Mandarin, then took a backseat for most of the rest of the Q & A, bearing bizarrely little resemblance to the manic screaming Mr. T he plays in the movie. People at the screening after party walked right by him, having no idea they’d just seen him in the film. Meanwhile, the Trost siblings (Brandon the reserved eldest, Jason the brash youngest, Sarah the glib middle) showed that the hardest part of moderating a discussion with them isn’t getting them talking, but getting them to pause long enough for people to ask questions. All the while Art Hsu, the glue holding the film together in a lot of ways and the lone person on stage not from Frazier Park, competently played the role of professional actor like the professional actor he is. The dynamic was much the same the next day when I met Brandon, Jason, Sarah, and Art for this interview, trying not to sound like I’d woken up that morning with a wallet full of singles from a late-night trip to a strip club. Read our chat below (thank Adam for transcribing) or scroll to the end for the mp3 version.

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Whether you know him as that dude from The State, that dude from Stella, the director of Wet, Hot, American Summer and Role Models, the guy who played Rabbi Jewy McJewJew in Children’s Hospital (which he also writes and co-exec produces), or as the director and co-writer (with the brilliant Ken Marino) of Wanderlust, chances are you’ve probably laughed at something David Wain has created. I was lucky enough to catch him by phone on the eve of the release of Wanderlust, Universal’s commune comedy starring Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd, and surprisingly he did not immediately hang up on me. In fact, Wain (second from left, with Marino, Rudd, Justin Theroux, and Judd Apatow) even answered my dumb questions, be they about Jo Lo Truglio’s penis (it was fake, thank God), Kathryn Hahn’s armpits, Hollywood’s male infidelity taboo, and whether Jennifer Aniston is legally required to appear in her underwear. Enjoy. (And yes, before you ask, this was supposed to go up weeks ago, but daddy drinks, and transcribing is hard. Nonetheless, Wanderlust is in theaters now).

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I’m a huge fan of Children’s Hospital. I was just wondering what the difference is between doing a studio movie like this and something like Wainy Days or Children’s Hospital?

No difference. Next question.

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So I got to do a roundtable interview with Tim & Eric a few weeks back, which I was hoping to post last Friday, to coincide with the movie opening. Obviously that didn’t happen, but you know how it is, things come up, you get busy, your wife and kids start nagging you, a gang of terrorists take over the water park, etc., etc., (*pantomimes glug glug glug*). Nonetheless, it’s here now. I’ve got a transcript below and an mp3 version at the end, if you want to hear the audio. I’m not going to tell you it’s the greatest interview ever, but if you’re at all into Tim and Eric, it’ll probably make your bub bubs bounce. (No guarantees).

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VINCE: I’ve always wondered what your casting process is like. I mean, do you guys ever just see someone funny looking on the street and ask if they want to get dry humped in front of a green screen?

ERIC WAREHEIM: Our producers absolutely do carry around business cards. The nice thing is, everyone in Los Angeles is an actor, or wants to be an actor. So we have this large pool of people to pick from. But most of them we get from casting sites — LA Casting, some others — really shitty websites where people are cab drivers during the day, but they’re also acting. Everyone’s got a head shot, so that’s why you see a lot of interesting faces and unique performances in our work.

TIM HEIDECKER: And sometimes we’ll be shooting something and we’ll have an extra, and we’ll see the extra and be like, oh that guy is great, and we’ll bring him back and get him closer to camera. And then suddenly we give him a line, and then suddenly we bring him back and he’s starring in the next thing we do. A lot people don’t work, but it’s a gut kind of thing.

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