“No Interview for You!” The Larry Thomas Interview
Interview with Larry “Soup Nazi” Thomas, who plays Osama Bin Laden in the Uwe Boll production of POSTAL—The Movie.

POSTAL NATION: Let’s begin with the obvious question: what was it like working with the Internet’s number one cult-of-hate director?

LARRY: Actually, it was just a great experience. Really, I didn’t know much about Uwe when the whole thing started. I’m not much of a sci-fi fan or a video game player, so I just met him as this really funny and insightful director [when I did] the audition.

PN: Wow.

LARRY: I’ve been lucky in my time. It’s not that I’m a comedian or anything; I’m actually trained as a serious actor. But in my time I’ve gotten to work with Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld, Mike Meyers [in addition to his legendary role as Seinfeld’s “Soup Nazi”Larry played a casino dealer in “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery”] and all these great comedic minds. So I’m a little spoiled.

PN: I can’t get over the fact that you came to Uwe with no preconceptions.

LARRY: Yeah, he was just a guy making a movie. I didn’t know anything about [the project], I only knew about the role [laughs], which was quite interesting. My manager was laughing when she gave me the message. She said you’ve got this audition for a film and I don’t know much about it but the role is Osama Bin Laden!

PN: Was there any anxiety on your part about playing the role of Bin Laden… in a spoof?!

LARRY: Umm, either way, spoof or not, there was definitely some anxiety. [Laughs] You know, I was given that message before I knew [anything about the film]. So the second step was I get the scene sent back to me and it was the first Osama scene where he does the Cave Speech. So, I kinda got the joke that, on camera, he was Osama Bin Laden, but after cut he’s this sort of prima donna actor type that wants more respect. I laughed at it and I thought it was funny and well written and I went in with that. Side note: a saw a couple of really good actors that I know and admire at the audition, so I thought, wow, this might be a bigger project than I thought. There were a couple of guys there who I sneaked a peak at their scripts, hoping they weren’t reading for the same part I was because I didn’t want to be competing with those guys.

But I went in with my choice and I think it worked; Uwe seemed amused by it, and then he just said: ‘Do it again, and after the Cave Speech just drop the accent altogether.’ And I thought to myself, a comedic director that comes up with something that I didn’t even see or think of, is somebody I really want to work with.

PN: Would you work with him again?

LARRY: Easily, in a second. I’d love to work with him again, even if it’s not a comedy, but that’s what impressed me about him, just that choice of his. I audition for a lot of sitcom and usually what happens is you go in with your idea and if they think it’s funny, they cast you; there’s no direction, nothing further, you just end up putting down on film what you came in with. So I was really impressed and I did it again and we he laughed and I thought it was hilarious. I thought on the way home that I didn’t know what this project was, but I’d love to work with this guy. And that’s all I knew about him.

PN: Well, as I’m sure you’ve discovered subsequently, this man is one of the most vilified men on the Internet among game and movie fans. They really, really hate him. Yet all of a sudden this movie arrives and even Variety has to admit that it’s got something going for it. But I’m curious to know how you reacted when you actually got the working script.

LARRY: I was on my way to Santa Barbara from Los Angeles on my way to a charity event and I had just received my script. So I said, oh cool, I’m going to take the train and I’m going to sit on the train and read my script, because I had already been cast. And sometimes for an actor that’s like an event, you know? [Laughs] I opened the script and read the first scene [on board one of the commercial jets headed for the Twin Towers on 9/11 that is hysterically funny but a little shocking]. And I just shut the script and stared ahead of me. People sitting on the other side of the aisle looked and me and asked if I was okay. And I was like: [small voice] “oh yeah…” So I sat there for a few miles on the train, thinking: What did I get myself into?

I have this joke about my career where everything that really looked like it was going to be great somehow fell through. So whenever I start a new project I look for all the things that could possibly ruin it and now I’m sitting there thinking: Oh My God, this movie is never gonna get made because nobody is going to shoot that scene. But I calmed down and read the rest of the script and I laughed my head off, I loved my stuff in it. And then we get to the set and on the first day of filming we drove into the trailer park to start [shooting]. I had the scene where, in the middle of the gun battle I call George Bush on my cell phone and ask him to get me the heck out of there. As we pull into the trailer park, we’re all in this van and I see this rickety old pay phone right out at the mouth of the trailer park. The idea just kind of hit me and I turned to Uwe and I said as sort of a joke: ‘”What if Osama had to use a pay phone and he’s fishing for change? He immediately just looked at Brian [Knight] and said: “Let’s rewrite that.” I knew that POSTAL couldn’t possibly be bad once we got on the set. There were certain signs about the way he worked and the presence of Brian Knight as his 1 st AD and co-writer. I felt like I was working with Mel Brooks or Woody Allen because he’s got this great comedic mind, but he always appreciates a good comedic idea [from somebody else]. Not that he was being soft because once in a while you’d suggest something and he’d just shrug: “Nahh.” But since he did build a cast of good, comedic actors, it was good to let us [do our thing].

This movie has to work. I’ve been in movies before where the script read really well and the director was good but then the editor just killed it. But they’re still worth watching, they just didn’t come out like “Airplane” or “Blazing Saddles.” But with POSTAL, I said you just can’t mess this stuff up. And Uwe’s still tightening it up. By the release date there will be a tighter version.

PN: So perhaps Uwe has found his medium?

LARRY: After working with him and hearing the stories I went out on the websites and I even put a few posts out there myself just to see what kind of people these people are. And I gotta admit—these people are insane. Some guy will say something like “How dare they make fun of 9/11? The Jews never make fun of the Holocaust.” And I merely emailed this guy back and said that I’m Jewish and my people have been making fun of the Nazis [as in “The Producers”]. I even pointed out that the Three Stooges made a short called “You Nazi Spy” in the late ‘30s. Well it turns out it was released in January of 1940 [with 1940 technically being the final year of the ‘30s decade]. For the next month I was bombarded with these nitpicky, picayune, insane responses. “What are you talking about the late ‘30s? It’s COULDN’T have been released in the late ‘30s!” Believe me, you don’t want to argue with these people.

PN: There’s an old joke that debating online is like running in the Special Olympics; even if you win, you’re still retarded.

LARRY: And it was crazy that I got involved in this! Finally, my last response to one of the guys was: “You’re absolutely right, silly of me not to have checked imdb.com first. Blah blah.” So then the guy writes back to me: “It’s so refreshing to hear such a nice argument, to debate with someone so adult!” Meaning I just totally gave up and told him how clever he was.

I’ve never experienced crazy people before like the ones who hate somebody like they hate Uwe.

PN: It’s almost a fetish in some quarters.

LARRY: I just want to say: “See the movie!” I went back and screened “Bloodrayne”, which I thought was perfectly entertaining and “Alone in the Dark”. At the cocktail party he screened the new one, “In the Name of the King” and I liked it. I don’t usually like those kind of movies; I wasn’t even entertained by the LotR movies. But I really thought Burt Reynolds did one of the best [jobs] I’ve ever seen him do and Jason Stratham is a great up-and-comer. I liked it. So maybe “House of the Dead” was really bad, but people improve. And POSTAL is just a different animal for him; I think his built-up anger is going to make him choose some shocking final scene just to piss people off. And I think POSTAL will be a great movie whether he does or not. Some of my friends who came to the screening said it’s almost like two movies; part political satire and part of it just a guy saying: “Screw you!” [to his critics].

Whatever he wants the finished product to look like, it will be a good movie. And most of the people that see it will admit that. Then it’s up to the ticket sales, but everybody will admit that he’s totally turned his career around with this movie. It’s really something original, something you really haven’t sat through before.

[In addition to his work in POSTAL, this amazingly articulate actor will also be seen in the indie comedy “Working Title”.]

--Interview by Bill “The Game Doctor” Kunkel

TALKIN’ POSTAL!

POSTAL NATION: First, the obvious question: You have a very famous surname. Are you related to—?

CHRIS: No, no, no, no. But it’s a funny story; I worked with this director Matthew Robbins years ago who directed a movie called “Dragonslayer” and Matthew went to film school with Francis Ford [Coppola]. And he kept insisting to me: ‘You’re related, you’re related! You look like family!” So, long story short, he brings Francis down to the set while we were shooting in San Francisco. It turns out we’re from the same part of Sicily, Messina, and turns out we’re from the same part of Brooklyn, but his family moved up to Detroit then came out West to Napa and my family stayed in Brooklyn and joined the mob. So, I don’t go to Thanksgiving, let’s put it that way.

PN: So what was it like working with the world’s most notorious director?

CHRIS: You know, deep down, Uwe’s about the sweetest, coolest guy you’ll ever meet. He’s just so caught up in wanting to rock the boat on the Internet with the videogame people. [But] working with him is really great because he leaves it open and, at first, that’s a little frightening because I’m usually all over the place with my acting, [especially with] comedy. But once you get used to that he leaves you alone and lets you do whatever you want, which is a really rare thing in making movies.

PN: The strange thing about the POSTAL movie is that we’ve gone from having the critical establishment, from the NY Times to the blogosphere, declare Uwe the Ed Wood of the 21 st Century. Yet with this movie, even the Hollywood bible Variety said it was… pretty good! How the hell did that happen?

CHRIS: POSTAL is NOT bad, you know? First of all, I don’t know why critics go to see a movie like POSTAL because it’s supposed to be fun, it’s supposed to be in-your-face and [intentionally] insulting and anyone who reviews it as if it’s supposed to be “Schindler’s List” is an asshole. But POSTAL, having said that, is pretty good! My only critique would be to cut five minutes out of it and tighten it up a little. Like in any of the fight scenes, you could do that and not lose any of the movie. Other than that the movie’s great. Uwe might have discovered what he should really be doing—satirical comedies, trying to make a statement through his movies instead of doing horror movies based on videogames. There’s not a lot of leeway [in videogame horror movies] for a guy who’s trying to make political statements.

I don’t know about the logistics, whether a POSTAL 2 could happen, but they’d be stupid not to do it. I have a real sense that POSTAL’s going to be a hit. It’s gonna clean up on DVD but I’d like to see it at least break the Top Ten and just get a little momentum going in theaters.

PN: You’ve even worked with Uwe again since POSTAL, true?

CHRIS: I shot “Far Cry” with him in the middle of last summer and he’s producing “Alone in the Dark 2” but he’s not directing. I think he’s focusing on promoting POSTAL and “In the Name of the King.”

PN: What did you think of his real world smackdown with the Internet critics, the “Raging Boll” fights? I thought it was brilliant promotion.

CHRIS: You know what? It was a brilliant gimmick, [but] I wish he would have done it now, right before the movie’s coming out. Because, shit, it made the L.A. Times!

PN: You know, it’s almost too late now, Chris, because Uwe’s actually getting such good reviews for this movie, even on the Internet, it might not be so easy to find people willing to fight him.

CHRIS: Yeah, he’s going to have to move up in weight, fight the critic from the LA Times or the NY Times.

PN: You know he wanted Harry Knowles, but he had to settle for waxing a reviewer from the Ain’t It Cool News site instead.

CHRIS: You know, I wouldn’t want to fight Uwe. He’s a boxer, and if you’re gonna put somebody in the ring who has trained as a boxer up against someone who hasn’t, the person who hasn’t is fucked. I don’t care how good a shape you’re in.

PN: Did you have any familiarity with the POSTAL games before you got involved in this movie?

CHRIS: You know what, I hadn’t, but once I started working on it and befriended Vince, Mike and his buddy from New York—I started hanging out with the whole Postal Nation, so to speak. And they gave me a copy of the game so when I got home I started playing it and was fascinated by it. It’s awesome and I think the translation between the game and the movie is kinda brilliant. Because the game has a sense of humor and I think it was important for the movie to be that more than just a guy who was pissed off and killing people.

Uwe’s a controversial guy, but he’s done POSTAL justice.

[In addition to his role in POSTAL, Chris co-stars in a big budget release scheduled for a 11/16 release. It’s “Beowulf”, a Robert Zemekis film, co-scripted by comic book scribe Neil Gaiman, and Chris co-stars with the likes of Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, Ray Winstone, John Malkovitch, Crispin Glover and Robin Wright Penn among many other first rank thespians. Chris described it as “exactly like the POSTAL set.”]

--Interview by Bill “The Game Doctor” Kunkel