CINEVEGAS: ‘I’m Excited As Hell’
Artie Lange screens Beer League
//assets.lasvegasweekly.com/assets/images/icons/favicon-64.png
Las Vegas Weekly
The R-rated trailer for Artie Lange's Beer League recently premiered at the first annual Howard Stern Film Festival, and has since been nominated for Trashiest Trailer at the 7th Annual Golden Trailer Awards. Artie's already been getting fan letters telling him it's amazing, "And it's not one of those trailers that shows all the jokes," he promises. He'll be here on Friday to present two screenings of the film—the second show was added after tickets to the first show quickly sold out. Fire!

Your Vegas adventures are legendary among your fans. The last time you made a high-profile appearance here back in May of 2004, our local CBS affiliate fell for a prank phone call and reported on TV, the Internet and in a bulletin sent all over the country that you had died at the Hard Rock. How's it feel to have the world premiere of your film in the city of your fake death?

Hey, look man, Vegas has been good to me in the craziest sort of way. I'm excited as hell. And it's great because, of all the film festivals, this one seems the coolest to me. It's appropriate, I think, and I'm excited about it.

Is Beer League based on Gameday, the 17-minute short featured on your stand-up DVD, It's the Whiskey Talkin'?

It's very different from that, but it's the same in the sense that it's Jersey guys playing softball. [Gameday] was a film I wrote myself and raised the money for myself. It was a fun experience, and we loved how it came out. When I showed it to Frank [Sebastiano, cowriter and director of Beer League], who I met doing Dirty Work, he was like, "Fuck it, this is our fuckin' rated-R softball comedy."

Just how involved were you with the making of this movie? It's not called Artie Lange's Beer League for nothing.

Yeah, I'm a little embarrassed by that. The distribution company that picked it up, Echo Bridge, were like, "Look, we just think this is better to remind fans what this is, and discern it from Broken Lizard's film [Beerfest, scheduled to hit theaters around the time of Beer League's September 15th nationwide release]." I'm not thrilled with [my name in the title], but hey, it is what it is. I mean, my agents, they think like agents. They're like, "Look, it'll make you more famous. You're gonna be like a brand name."

You could get auteur status, like "Tim Burton's" Nightmare Before Christmas.

[Laughs] Yeah, "Bernardo Bertolucci's ..." whatever. Saying ["Artie Lange's ..." ] out loud still makes me a little nauseous. But this is my first time as a cowriter and producer and the lead lead, so this movie is the closest to me.

The trailer reminds me of 1970s comedies.

Basically, the way I describe this movie is The Bad News Bears [from the original, 1976 film] grow up, become insane alcoholics and join a softball league ... and some of them have coke problems. We even put a black guy in [Beer League] for Ahmad.

I just watched the original Bad News Bears last year for the first time in a long time, and I'm amazed at what they had those kids say.

Let me tell you something: It's so hard to find funny kids, and all those kids were funny! And look at the moments that they just couldn't have nowadays because of political correctness: Tanner, who's a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Southern California kid, had to say stuff like, "Jews, spics, niggers—and now a girl!" Not only did the kids have those lines, they delivered them brilliantly. Like that scene where Walter Matthau's in the tree with Ahmad, when he takes off his clothes. Walter Matthau says something and Ahmad goes, "Don't give me any of your honky bullshit, Buttermaker!" And Walter Matthau goes [in a Walter Matthau voice], "Let's not bring race into this, Ahmad; we got enough trouble as it is."

You have an almost photographic memory when it comes to quoting movie dialogue, especially The Godfather. Did you set out to make Beer League a quotable movie?

A key to a good comedy is quotable stuff. So yeah, there's lines in there that we hope people will remember, absolutely.

Got any favorites from the movie?

There's a stand-up joke I had that's really politically incorrect. It's more on the racial side, but [Beer League's about] real Italian guys from Jersey. And this really happened to me: I had a buddy who had this system for college basketball where he would only bet on teams in the Big East with a white point guard. And he said they won 70 percent of the time. I actually tried that system and lost like eight grand in a week, so I told him: "The only time a white point guard is a good thing is when your sister tells you she's dating a point guard." We put that in the film. [Beer League's filled with] crazy, politically incorrect, '70s-style jokes, and that's one I really like.

The crowd for your screenings will probably be different from the typical film festival audience.

I can't wait to see those two crowds mingling.

Somebody should make a pre-show announcement to your fans that yelling out "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater is a bad idea.

You know, in stand-up I can't start talking until I say it ["Fire!", AC/DC-style]. But you're right, it may be an issue.