Q: Were you studying Willem Dafoe in “Spider-Man”?

Christopher: I looked at “Spider-Man” but honestly that did not help me.  You know what helped me?  Looking at “Scary Movie”.  Looking at “Airplane”.  Looking at spoof and I needed to do it I was amazed and one day I came in and I gave…I said, “did you see “Scary Movie 4” when that wonderful actress—I don’t remember her name—but she played the best friend of Anna Ferris.

Q: Regina Hall.

Christopher: Regina Hall, she’s in this one too.  She was so funny.  She did this thing with the spasm with the Alka Seltzer suds coming up and oh my God. I had to rewind it and play it 3 more times.  I laughed every time.  It was just sick and I just said that is funny.  I get it--good.  So I brought it and shared it with some of my co-stars and they were like yeah, we should have looked at this.  I went yeah it’s great. This is what we’re doing.  This is an island unto himself.  This is spoofing. This is parody.  This is not comedy—straight comedy—this is parody comedy.  So it’s comedy with a twist.  Comedy with almost smart comedy.  It helps if you’ve seen “Spide-Man”.  It helps if you’ve seen the “Wolverines” and all the super hero movies.  A lot of our fans that will come to this have but even if you haven’t it’s still funny.

Q: So how was it acting opposite Leslie Nielson and Marion Ross?

Christopher: Well, I didn’t do enough with them.  I mean, I came in and killed Marion which is great.  It’s a good time.  Mrs. C, you’re going down—bang!  And I didn’t get a chance to work with Albert enough.  Of course he was there a couple days, so I came down to the set and watched him work.  He has the presence and the charisma and the just the unique Leslie Neilson delivery.  You could give this man anything to say and he can make it work.  It’s something totally retarded.  I basically lifted from him when I had to say that line about “well you know…family and Lance is doing a family I have…fruitcake? No, never married. Fruitcake?  No just never met the right woman.”  It’s just the way he just kind of… anyway they did that a lot of times too and it’s funny.  But that’s the way he did it.  He’s so good. 

Q: You’ve done a few movies since “Superhero Movie”.  Could you talk about some of the other films you have coming up?

Christopher: Well, yes.  I went headlong into a drama after this wacky spoofing that we were doing. It’s written by a man who’s written like 14 movies all together and also happens to be a brilliant lawyer in that he makes hundreds of millions of dollars for his…representing IBM against CBS or something he’d win.  So he’s this guy who’s a real genius from Yale and this is a true story of his life in college when he’s 15…of the people…it’s not like you know where Bush went with the whole…what was that called….the skull and bones.  It’s a different thing.  It’s like the beginning of group therapy and this was back in the 60’s and 70’s and he--well actually 60’s when he was doing it maybe longer—but it still goes on every year.  The 15 of the sharpest, brightest people—not unlike this room—would get together and see how they’re going to impact the world and then this is a movie with the shade of if you will of someone dying and having their wish that we’d get together and talk about and work the program that we came up with in college, and it still goes on to this day from what I hear.  And it’s really interesting and it was all about failed dreams or compromise or settling for something and things like that.  And people who didn’t settle are still out there chasing albeit with you know a little peccadilloes like alcoholism, but doing what I love to do and that kind of thing.  One guy ran a studio and it was like a Brad Gray.  It was a very interesting story based on real people and that was very interesting.  Shot it in New York City.  I have several more coming out. I have a love story that’s really beautiful based on a true story also called “My Sexiest Year” and Harvey Keitel plays the dad.  Frankie Muniz is the son and the model of his sexiest year is Amber Valetta.  So I book in the movie playing him 25 years later and having spent that summer we flashback into the amazing summer where his mother is dying of cancer played by Frances Fisher, and he has to go live with his dad who’s sort of this wheeler-dealer gambler guy down in Florida.  And it’s a great story, this kid meets this model and she embraces him and then he’s coming of age thing and everybody assumes he’s the hottest kid in the world because he’s down with all these rich people down in Florida.  And Frankie Muniz does a great job.  Harvey does a brilliant job as always.  It’s my 3^rd movie with him.  And I play him grown up so I have a love scene at the end of the movie with this girl that I come to give her thanks for letting me become a very successful novelist. And I track her down and she’s doing the old Lana Turner…not Lana Turner. It was one of those other great actresses back in the day--ended up being a waitress in an airport diner, you know after being a super successful actress in Hollywood.

Q: Who plays that role?

Christopher: Amber Valetta. She plays the super model and then we cut 25 years later and she’s…

Q: Oh so she just ages. So you come back to thank her for sleeping with you?

Christopher: Pretty much and how I wrote that book about that and all that stuff around that book.  That was really interesting and how that just made me a man that summer.  It’s really a kind of a cool thing.  It played down at the South Beach Film Festival—the Miami Film Festival. It will come out this summer—or later maybe fall.  And let’s see what else I’ve got going.  I’ve got…we talked about “Fanboys”.  Oh, “Player 5150”.  Very interesting story.  And that’s all we are really goat singers, we’re just storytellers.  This ones about gambling or the perils thereof.  And Ethan Embry does a great job in it.  I played his dad in “Dutch” and I’ve seen this kid grown up and he takes his shirt back and he has a tattoo of a cross like this…and I say what the hell is that?  He said, “that’s what happens when you start acting when you’re 9 in Hollywood”.  Wow.  Anyway, but he’s brilliant. He plays this guy who gets in a little bit over his head and you see the gambling and he can get himself out of it and he’s…I’m the bookie and I don’t want my stuff and I want it. I want it when I want it. I can lend you stuff. I can carry you for 3 months and I get very angry.  It’s a wonderful compassionate villain; I like to call that one because he gives a guy a break. He’s like I’ve got people to answer to too.  And Bob Gunton’s in it.  I answer to him.  So it all gets passed down this thing, so anyway he gets it—I don’t want to give it away too much but it is a allegory for what you can get in trouble to if you start gambling over your head.  Simple little things like betting on ball games like you know what you guys are doing here in the basketball thing.  He gets a little bit over his head and it’s a good lesson I think so that’s good. 

Q: Do you see any theatre in the future?

Christopher: I absolutely do.  I am hoping…the hardest thing about the theatre right now is I have a family here in L.A. and as much as I love doing theatre I only want to do it in New York because I want to make…you want to make every minute count.  You want to do the best of the best.  I had that chance to do that.  I did “Chicago” and playing Billy Flynn and I absolutely loved it. They loved me.  It was one of the highlights of my career.  Going out there was the 10 year reunion, they had called me back to do a second stint and you look out in the audience and there’s Barbara Walters and Sidney Lumet and Sydney Pollack and you kind of go…and they’re all dressed up in monkey suits and you’re going…and you come out and there’s 10 Roxy’s and 10 Velma’s and 8 Billy’s and 5 Amos’ and it’s just crazy.  They choreograph this whole thing--all the big stars that have played these parts over the years and done it for so long. It was a home run and it was chills. Every time you stepped out on the stage, another actor would step out in the part and you’d step away and then James Naughton would come out and sing one of the songs.  They’d clap for about 3 minutes and it was just whoa, great.  I love it and I want to do it but the commitment is a year when you want to create something you want to make some noise and do it so right now I’m doing the replacement parts because it’s…I’m in and out in 3 months.  I’ll miss my kid graduating or something and I’ll kick myself.  So it’s not about another movie or another gig, it’s about life first and that’s why I was go grateful that we shot this movie in Los Angeles.  So when I wasn’t working, I was in my own bed, kissing my family and I was extremely grateful, because it very easily could have been in Canada or Vancouver or Toronto or something.

Q: Do you see a sequel to this one?  There’s been “Scary Movie 1, 2, 3,” would you like to play that role again?

Christopher: Knock wood.  I would and the thing is you can die in a movie and in these movies, “I thought you were dead. Yeah, I thought you were too.  Anyway” That’s how they fix it.  It’s so funny. We laugh so hard. I pray that we do sequels.  It’s all about how this one performs. They have a lot riding on it.  You try to pick a weekend that’s going to be great but there’s like “21” is getting plastered everywhere and that looks good and the other thing looks good.  You never know.  Spoof people who love those action movies, which there are plenty, are going to be attracted to this movie so I think it’s going to do well.  So we pray for a big weekend.  Something with a 2 in front of it would be nice.  A 3 maybe.