Getting by with a little help from your Friends

A few months ago, I covered Run, Fat Boy, Run. I was excited to see the movie because it had Simon Pegg in it, and, well, not surprisingly, I'm a fan of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (I do have taste, after all).

Here's the trouble with that, though: Pegg didn't write/direct/produce/etc. Run, Fat Boy, Run or anything else that he usually does with his stuff. He just starred in it. As a result, it is not the signature Simon Pegg stuff you'd expect, and it pretty much kind of sucked.

BUT! There was still junket fun to be had. Pegg as nice enough at the roundtable, kind of more resigned than you'd expect from someone known for his whip-smart humor. Also, he clearly had had some colored hairspray put on his head by a makeup person to fill in his balding-ness for the cameras. But I chose not to mention that to him.

Then we got t meet the writer, Michael Ian Black, whom you may recognize from Reno 911. Let me say this about Black: he is weird. Just an odd bird. His jokes weren't funny, he was more just a sad case. A rather huge downer meeting him. Maybe this is because his movie blew.

But then things improved. Why? Because we got to meet, oh yes, David Schwimmer. That is to say, Ross from Friends. Schwimmer has been trying his hand at directing things around town since Friends ended, and that includes Fatboy. Unfortunately, he isn't nearly as gifted at directing as he is at playing everyone's favorite innocuous hard-up, much-divorced lover of Jennifer Aniston (have I mentioned the movie wasn't good?). But still, getting to sit two feet away from frigging Ross Geller is pretty insane, and he was totally nice.

The craziest thing was, he was possibly the least remarkable of all the Fatboy folks we interviewed that day. In fact, everyone actually paled in comparison to Thandie Newton (Beloved, Crash), who was the love interest in the movie. The thing about Thandie Newton is
A. she is ridiculously gorgeous and B. always seems very serious, ice queeny on camera.

Well, guess what? Only one of those things is true in person. That is to say, she's still inhumanly gorgeous, but the woman is absolutely hilarious. You would never know it from how she is cast on screen, but dear lord. She immediately let loose with a string of expletives that would make even me blush, and then told lots of sordid stories about the gross pranks she and Simon Pegg would play on each other (culminating in her putting candy bars and dirty underwear in his toilet to make it look like someone pooed in there). I am still reeling. She absolutely stole the show, and was delightful. Schwimmer who? That's what I say.