Interview

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Danny McBride is going to show you how to punch. And kick. And he's going to do it badly. McBride plays tae kwon do instructor Fred Simmons in the indie comedy The Foot Fist Way, and keeps the funny coming this summer with roles in Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder and David Gordon Green's Pineapple Express, in which he appears alongside James Franco and Seth Rogen, his interviewer here.

SETH ROGEN: Well, you're making big movies now. I won't ask you what that's like. Obviously you can't say in a magazine all the great stories that I get to hear. But a few years ago, you made the smallest movie ever, The Foot Fist Way.

DANNY MCBRIDE: Yeah, it really is. My family has shot home movies that I think would almost be on a par with this.

SR: And now you're making giant movies.

DM: It's nuts. I hope that I'm not getting spoiled. Because The Foot Fist Way was like, we were crashing in the same apartment, and no one was getting paid, and we were just going to work, and getting drunk together at the end of the night, and there were no bosses, everyone was just friends-and that's an incredible experience. But yeah, it's been nuts to go from that to this kind of level of shit so quickly. But luckily, the big things have all been cool. Tropic Thunder was a blast, and a good excuse to hang out in Hawaii for three months, and Land of the Lost has just been incredible, too. Everyone is so nice. And as big as that movie is, there's really only like four actors in it, so it feels really small. So it still feels intimate, but it's just gi-normous.

SR: The food is probably better.

DM: The food is incredible. It's the best food I've ever had on any movie.

SR: I remember when I first moved to L.A. to do Freaks and Geeks, and then I came back after a few months to visit my friends in Vancouver, and I'd gained like literally 30 pounds from free Dr Pepper on set.

DM: Yeah, it's easy.

SR: I had a hard time controlling it.

DM: I know. Yeah, people don't understand that. But that was one of the first things, like, "Fuck, I gotta stop going to craft service." I will fuckin' put down all the Cheetos, all the Planters Peanuts, everything-in my mouth.