Cross currents: David Cross

David Cross’s multimedia assault begins this month. On June 19 and 20, Cross and Bob Odenkirk, the duo behind HBO’s sketch-comedy cult hit from the ’90s, Mr. Show, reunite for the Just for Laughs fest. June 19 also marks the opening of Harold Ramis’s biblical comedy Year One, in which atheist Cross plays Cain. And in August, the stand-up comes out with his first book, I Drink for a Reason (Grand Central, $23.99). We called the native Atlantan at his NYC apartment, the day before he flew to London to shoot a pilot starring Will Arnett and Amber Tamblyn.

Time Out Chicago: Are you still dating Amber?
David Cross: Still fucking her. Just fucked her ten minutes ago.

TOC: Your book bio’s up-to-date, then: “currently fucking Amber Tamblyn.”
David Cross: Well, it’s always, like, “the author currently resides in Pleasant, New Hampshire, with his dog, Dr. Dog.” I wanted to do the “currently” with something different.

TOC: And how does Amber feel about that shout-out?
David Cross: She laughs. Her dad laughed even harder than she did.

TOC: Sorry—are you strangling a parrot?
David Cross: That’s my dog’s squeak toy. I give it to her whenever I’m giving an interview to try my interviewer’s patience.

TOC: It’s working. So what happened to the show you had in the works with Bob Odenkirk, David’s Situation?
David Cross: We shot it live as a sitcom, and it truly was a blast to do, and then we went to cut it together. There was a palpable feeling missing from watching it on a 32-inch screen. We tried at least five different versions. It was good, but it wasn’t great. We wanted to do a Mr. Show 2.0 type of thing.

TOC: You’ve said that, despite the cult success of Mr. Show, you’ve had trouble getting a new series off the ground. Is that still the case?
David Cross: Kinda. I did sell a pitch to HBO a couple years ago, but what they offered me budget-wise and payment-wise was so insulting. To write, star and produce a show, they offered me $5,000 more than I’d made at the end of Mr. Show ten years ago. I was like, “Fuck that. I will never work for them again.” One of those stamping-away kind of things.

TOC: In your stand-up, you’ve done a mincing gay guy ordering a pizza, an amputee drummer, a guy raped by the Virgin Mary. Do you see it as equal-opportunity offense?
David Cross: Given those examples, sure. The only person I try not to offend is my mom. She’s just tickled I’m on stage and on her TV box in Florida.

TOC: What would offend your mom?
David Cross: Stuff about her—like the truth. Oh, I’m not kidding.

TOC: Judging from the trailer for Year One, it seems like one of those it’s-funny-because-it’s-anachronistic running gags. Is there more to it?
David Cross: There’s definitely some of that, but I wouldn’t say it’s just that. Harold Ramis is a very thoughtful guy, and that’s reflected in the film.

TOC: He said the film’s “not an attack on religion; it’s an attack on mindless fundamentalism.”
David Cross: Yes. But attack is too strong a word. It’s not Last Temptation of Christ.

TOC: Paul Rudd plays Abel to your Cain. Did you find Paul, as Entertainment Weekly put it, “the most lovable movie star on the planet”?
David Cross: I saw him as the most fuckable movie star. He was absolutely insatiable.

TOC: Between him and Amber, you must be wiped.
David Cross: It’s really tough. I’ve only got so much to go around.

TOC: Did you get to play out any latent fantasies by killing off our most lovable, or fuckable, star?
David Cross: The joke to me, just to me, was all these girls all over America, who have no idea who I am, are gonna go, “Oh, it’s Paul Rudd! He’s so cute! I love Paul Rudd!” And then I’m gonna kill him within 60 seconds, and they’re gonna be like, “What? No! That fuckin’ guy we gotta watch? Bring back the cutie!”

TOC: I hear they built a six-and-a-half-acre reproduction of Sodom an hour outside Shreveport, Louisiana.
David Cross: It was fucking amazing. Some guy has a sand farm; he farms sand. They constructed this fucking massive set.

TOC: As a native Southerner, what was it like—filming Sodom in the South?
David Cross: That kind of Sodom is the Sodom that is inside every redneck’s secret fantasy, like all the latent homosexuals in the Baptist church. Extras would get out of cars with Christian fishes on the back and get to pretend—quote unquote—they were attracted to 13-year-old boys.

Cross and Odenkirk play the Lakeshore June 19 and 20. Year One opens June 19.

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