Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with another Top 10 article to run before the 10th Anniversary is over (still got an hour in LA time! Ha!) I thought I'd contribute a little something from my time on the site.
As most of you know, I've done quite a few interviews for this site in the 10 years I've been hanging about. I met Harry when I was 15 and started writing for the site when I was 16. Long, long time ago. I think I've grown much as a writer and reviewer. This site has given me the ability to learn how the movie industry works, how films themselves work and has also given me a voice to share my love of film with the world. I will always be grateful for that.
In those 10 years I have done many interviews... I've probably interviewed 150 people or more by now. A little bit of trivia for you AICN followers, my first interview to be posted on the site was with David Prowse. I was writing for my high school paper and landed a total of 3 interviews before I started posting the unedited versions on AICN with David Prowse, Darth Vader himself. Other interviews I did, included Mike Judge, MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL screenwriter John Lee Hancock and my very first interview ever... Mr. George Carlin. I was 14 and that micro-cassette tape will never be heard by another living soul. Here's a hint: CLICK - Quint: Hello? George: Hi, this is George Carlin. (13 second pause) Quint: Uh... Hi! That's enough. Somehow Carlin got through the interview and was incredibly kind to me, giving me life advise along the way.
My first interview exclusively for the site was Elijah Wood back in '98, during the shooting of THE FACULTY. This interview was also the very first time I popped what became a recurring question. What's your favorite dirty joke?
I didn't ask this question of everybody and many that I did ask it to didn't give me a joke, but I got my fair share of dirty jokes and I'd like to spend this time to copy over my favorite dirty jokes from the last 8 years of interviews. I've got a list of 10, but none of them are in any particular order. Some are favorites because of personal memories of the time, some are favorites because they're just awesome jokes. I think you'll like 'em all, though. Enjoy!
For starters, here's the very first dirty joke ever, in an interview with Elijah Wood in 1998. This joke is fumbled, which makes it really funny to me.
QUINT: Now this is one I doubt you've been asked before: What's your favorite dirty joke?
EW: (Long Pause) I'll tell you the favorite dirty joke. Let's see if I can remember it. It's a good joke.
Ok, a guy comes out from a forest and there's this other guy on the beach. The guy comes out.....ah, shit! I don't know if I'm gonna remember this. It's something like (Elijah now goes into an Italian accent), 'They fire me again, they never forget what I did. I cannot believe it'....shit!!!!! (He bangs the table rapidly multiple times trying to remember the joke)
Basically he keeps getting fired from these jobs and he's like, he keeps saying that, "I was this...." Oh, this is it:
(Italian accent back) 'I build big house. Beautiful big house. They don't remember that! Pshew! They don't remember the big house. They don't remember the beautiful pillars and house that I built. I'm not known as the house-builder!
"Then I build beautiful boat. Pshew! They don't recognize me as a boat-builder. Of course not! I build beautiful boat for them, they don't remember." "I plant magnificent garden. Do they remember that? No, I'm not known as the gardener! No! But fuck one goat......"
That's a funny joke. I didn't say it very well. I didn't say it very well, but he's known as the the goat-fucker, you see. He does all these wonderful things, but he fucks one goat......
Here's a Comic-Con 2004 joke from Jude Law.
QUINT: What's your favorite dirty joke?
JUDE LAW: Oh, geez... What's my favorite dirty joke? Um... It's a long one...
QUINT: That's fine with me if you want to tell it.
JUDE LAW: A guy (laughs)... A guy has a boil on his ass. He goes to his GP, his doctor, and the doctor says, "There's nothing I can do. I'm gonna refer you to a private doctor. It looks to me like you should go, because this thing could get infected." So, he goes to this private doctor and the private doctor looks and says, "Gee, there's nothing that I can do. This thing is out of control, but I know this specialist you should go to." He refers him to this specialist. The specialist has a look. The specialist is appalled. He says, "OK. There's nothing I can do, but I can refer you to this one guy who I think might be able to help you" and he writes the name down.
The guy follows this address. It takes him down to these docks. He's wandering around these docks and he finds this old wooden door with a name. It says on the front "Peter Puss-sucker." He opens it up and there's this guy in there who has one tooth. He says, "Let me have a look." The guy pulls down his pants and there's this huge boil on his ass. He says, "That's fine. Bend over. What I'm going to do is bite into this boil and I'm gonna suck out the poison... It's the only thing we can do."
So, he bends over and the guy bites into it and is sucking the poison out. The guy can't help it, he farts in his face. Pete stands up and says, "Jesus, man! Blokes like you make this job disgusting!!!"
Next joke came from a favorite interview of mine. I conducted a short phoner with Ted Demme when he was promoting BLOW. I spent the rest of the year in contact with him and got to know him pretty well. It came as a huge shock when he died suddenly of a heart attack. Here's his answer, a bit different than most. He gave me a couple limericks.
TD: One of my favorite dirty jokes... Oh Christ! I really suck at these man... It’s just a good ol’ fashioned limerick, I guess.
Q: Go for it.
TD: There once was a man from Bombast, whose balls were made from brass, when they clanged together they made stormy weather and lightning shot outta his ass.
Q: Good one!
TD: There once was a woman from Nantucket. No... There once was a man from Nantucket, whose dick was so long he could suck it. One day in bed, he rolled over and said if my ear was a cunt I’d fuck it. (laughs) Really bad. Really old. What can I tell ya’?
Next is a joke from a very pretty lady, Ms. Laura Harris. This is perhaps my favorite joke I've ever gotten. It's one I had not heard before or since and one I use quite a bit to prompt people to fork over a joke. You might know Laura as the southern belle hottie from THE FACULTY or her work on 24 (season 2) or even DEAD LIKE ME. What I love so much about this joke is it's incredibly crass and vulgar, but comes from the mouth of the most innocent looking thing.
LH: I have a pretty good joke actually. Ok... My friend Chris Martin tole me this joke and his dad told him, so I have to say that before I tell it. I don't want to take credit for it.
There's this gorilla and he's really, really, really horny. He really has to get laid. And he's looking around and there's no female gorillas around, so he's just walking around the forest. His hard-on is just fuckin' ripping him up. He's blue-ballin' it all the way through the forest until he sees this lion bending over to get a drink of water and he just runs up behind the lion and fucking nails him up the ass, gets off and runs away. The lion is all, "What!?!?!?" So he turns around and starts running after the fucking gorilla. The gorilla is like running really fast. He's looking through the trees, looking for a place to get away, to escape, but he can't find one. There are no trees tall enough and the lion's just gonna fucking kick his ass. He's still a head, though because it took the lion a while to figure out what went on.
So the gorilla gets to this human camp, runs into a ten, picks up a newspaper and puts it in front of him, puts it in front of his face. The lion runs into the tent and says, "Have you seen a gorilla that just passed this way?" And the gorilla goes, with the newspaper still covering his face, he goes: (Laughs) Sorry. I always laugh at the punch line before I tell it. And he goes: "You mean the gorilla that just fucked you up the ass?" And the lion says, "Oh, no! It's in the papers already!" That's my favorite dirty joke. Isn't that a good one? I like that one.
This is my most famous dirty joke. A true A-list joke here from George Clooney earlier this year, pre-Oscars.
GEORGE CLOONEY: A guy is in a bar. He's so drunk he throws up all over himself. He tells the bartender, "What am I doing? When I go home my wife's going to kill me..." The bartender puts twenty dollars in his shirt pocket and says, "Go home..." Have you heard this one?
QUINT: No, I haven't heard it.
GEORGE CLOONEY: He says, "Go home and tell your wife you were in a bar and a guy came up... he was drunk, threw up all over you, but put $20 in your shirt pocket." He goes home, walks in and his wife says, "Hap, look at you. You threw up all over yourself!"
He goes, "Honey, a guy got drunk and threw up on me and he put $20 in my shirt pocket." She reaches in and pulls out $40 and says, "What's the other $20 for?" He says, "He shit in my pants, too!"
And this one comes from Jon Favreau, who I have interviewed many times. This is the first one, when he was promoting MADE. Good joke and great "propers."
JF: I have to think about this... it's in a whole different part of my head.
These two 90 year old farmers are sitting around and they've had sex with everything on the farm and there's nothing, nothing to do. They're sitting in a shack together and they're like, "We've screwed everything on this farm. Everything. The sheep, the chickens, the cows, everything." Then one guy says, "Well, how about if I screw you?"
And the other guy says, "I don't know, man. That doesn't sound good to me." He goes, "Let's just try it. Tell ya' what. If you don't like it, just make an animal noise and I'll stop. If you like it, sing me a song and I'll know I can continue." He says, "I don't know about this." The other guy goes, "Let's just give it a shot. We've known each other for so long..." So, the one guy bends over and the other guy proceeds to sodomize him. The guy gettin' it goes, "MOOOOOOOOOOOOOnriver!"
You ruined my career. I did the whole interview and I was all good, all the way through, then I hung myself with the last joke. You know who told me that joke, actually? Rhys Ifans. Do you know who that is?
Q: OF COURSE! (SEAMAN SIDENOTE: Rhys Ifans was the hilarious roommate to Hugh Grant in NOTTING HILL)
JF: He told me that on The Replacements. Give him a little shout out. He could tell a joke. He was so funny. So, yes. Give him propers.
This one is another of those "foul jokes from a pretty woman" types. This one I got at last year's Comic-Con from Maggie Grace, of LOST fame. She was there promoting THE FOG, which turned out to be a miserable movie, but I got a really nice joke outta her, a joke gotten from everybody's favorite southern loner castaway.
MAGGIE GRACE: Umm... alright. This guy goes through this horrible break-up with his girlfriend and goes into a bar. He's just slamming 'em back, right? There's a woman tending the bar and she's like, "Man, why are you so down?" The man says, "My girlfriend just broke up with me. She says I'm too kinky."
She goes, "Oh, my God! My boyfriend just dumped me. He said I was too kinky!" He goes, "Really, what time do you get off?" So, they hit it off, they hook up... She agrees to leave with him when her shift is over and they go back to her place.
She's like, "Well, I'm just gonna go slip into something a little more uncomfortable" and leaves for a few minutes. She comes back and he's halfway out the door. She's like, "What's the deal, man? I mean, I thought we were gonna have a good time."
He says, "Honey, I already shit in your purse and fucked your cat. What else do you want?"
(laughs)
QUINT: Awesome.
MAGGIE GRACE: Except it's so much better in a really dirty southern accent. It really requires the southern delivery.
This joke is on the list because I truly believe this dirty joke is somehow the key to figuring out the secret of life. From Mr. Gordon Liu (and his translator) when I did an in-person interview with him to promote KILL BILL V.1.
QUINT: I DON’T KNOW IF THIS IS GOING TO TRANSLATE VERY WELL, BUT I HAVE A STANDARD QUESTION THAT I ASK EVERYONE I INTERVIEW. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE DIRTY JOKE?
[Lizhi, the translator, cracks up… Liu ponders for a moment]
GORDON LIU: If you see some food appearing, go ahead and eat it, but don’t try to kill it. Don’t try to hurt other people.
Told you. The meaning of life is in the above. I just know it.
I think my interview with 5 of the creative team behind the indie flick HOOLIGANS is the best interview I've ever been a part of. Director Lexi Alexander and stars Elijah Wood, Charlie Hunnam, Claire Forlani and Leo Gregory were all present and two of the jokes from that interview make it on this list. First up is Charlie Hunnam's, which is a bit fumbled, but that only makes it funnier... it's a tag-team with Charlie, Elijah and myself.
CHARLIE HUNNAM: (laughs) No, I was actually gonna ask Elijah this anyway... Just hypothetically, if we were to go camping... No, I fucked it up already!
[Laughs]
CHARLIE HUNNAM: (To Elijah) If you don't react in the way I need you to react, it falls flat on its face and I've been humiliated enough today!
ELIJAH WOOD: Wait, what? Is this a set-up joke?
CHARLIE HUNNAM: It's a set-up joke. Hypothetically, if you were camping and you wake up in the morning and your mate has fuckin' split. You kinda come together and you realize that your ass is kinda sore and there's a used condom up your ass... Would you tell anyone?
ELIJAH WOOD: ...
CHARLIE HUNNAM: No, right? How could you tell anyone? (He turns to me.) Would you tell anyone?
QUINT: No.
CHARLIE HUNNAM: Do you wanna go campin'?
The final joke brings everything full circle. Elijah Wood gave me the first joke and he upgraded in the HOOLIGANS interview from SXSW 2005.
ELIJAH WOOD: Alright, I've got another one. There's a burning building. In the burning building there's a lesbian couple and a gay couple. Who gets out first? (Pause) Well, the lesbians because the gay guys are too busy packing their shit and the lesbians are outta there lickety-split!
[Biggest laughter yet]
ELIJAH WOOD: I think it's better than the goat-fucking one.
Thanks for sticking with us here for the last 10 years. I hope you've enjoyed the look back at the history of the site today. It doesn't feel like so much has happened, but when I look back at the early days I can't help but feel a little wowed by the expanse of time. It's been a real trip these last few days. To kick off the next 10 years I have a pretty full week ahead of me with at least 2 set visits going live. So keep your eye on the site, squirts!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
