David Spade Talks About "The Benchwarmers"

In Theaters April 7

David Spade always slammed the film industry with his Hollywood Minute on Saturday Night Live, but now he’s got a weekly show devoted to it. Yet he keeps making movies so obviously he hasn’t burned all his bridges. Perhaps it’s because he leaves his own group of colleagues relatively unscathed.

“As long as I lay off Sandler I’m okay,” Spade said. “I wind up only working for him I think. Joe Dirt, Dickie Roberts, they were all for him. So basically I am in my own little world. I don't know. I don’t do that many other movies. I kind of do with these guys and then work, I do standup on the road. I thought I would probably do another sitcom or something but I kind of got into this Showbiz Show and I like that now.”

The Benchwarmers casts Spade along with Rob Schneider and John Heder as grown up dorks who stand up for the young dorks by beating Little League teams in a baseball tournament. They still suck, but just being middle aged men gives them an edge. To look as dorky as possible, Spade wore a bowl cut wig that he found while hosting SNL and grew a moustache modeled after ‘70s icon John Holmes.

“Oh, my little porn one? I just thought like ‘70s porn, what does it look like? I see these guys, they shave the top part. Actually, Sean Penn does that too. And there’s one part where I wear these ‘70s shades when I’m at the Batmobile, I walk out. I forgot to take them off so I had them on in the scene because halfway through they were like, ‘Wait, did you have those on?’ Yes. It’s like the Tom Cruise thing where it’s so bright, he’s always got one eye closed like that because there are so many fucking lights in your eyes. So he’s turned into this guy and I turned into accidentally wears shades guy. So anyway, I wore those and I looked even funnier like ‘70s because I had these big ‘70s like Aviators. So anyway, that’s funny. Come on, Joe Dirt had a funny wig, let’s go. It’s wigs.”

If it seems like all of Spade’s movie characters are extensions of his real life mumbling sarcastic self, that’s because he has a lot of input in the scripts. Actually, it just means that the directors like his persona and want to include it in the character.

“With those guys it’s great because it’s always going to be kind of close because they know me and they know me in real life so they kind of know my little mumbly jokes they can put in. [Benchwarmers director] Dennis Dugan does so many takes it’s ridiculous so we just say, ‘If you’re doing so many, just make up stuff.’ Like at the end you’re just so bored you just make up. We have so many angles too. We have the catcher looking at me, when I’m batting. So I’m just like, ‘Dude, kabang.’ And that stuff makes me laugh because then he just goes, ‘Keep going.’ So I’m like, ‘Strike, you know, pulled something. I used to run track.’ You can see me laughing at myself because I don’t know what to say because there are no lines.”

Now that The Showbiz Show show is a hit, Spade was faced with the dilemma of how to cover his own movie on his spoofy entertainment news show. “Every situation is tough. We have some people actually want to do the show. They call and say, ‘I want to do something on your show’ and then we don’t know what to do with them because we don’t do straightforward interviews which is the easiest. ‘Oh yeah, you want to do it? Come on, we’ll interview you about your movie.’ But that’s kind of going against what we do, so we have to think of just a joke or trick. Kid Rock I think we were going to do maybe an Inside the Actor’s Studio about his sex tape. But we don’t really do sketches so it’s kind of weird, we’ve got to find how to do it. We were going to morph him into James Lipton and do a real interview, like, ‘Tell us about your role’ like he’s talking to Al Pacino and then it’s Kid Rock sitting in the same background going, ‘It wasn’t really a role, it was just me and this dude getting BJs’ and Lipton’s going, ‘Yes.’”

For his own movie, Spade set up correspondent Andrew Daly at the press junket. “He was just a junket guy and so he just talked to Rob and Jon. He was in love with Napoleon Dynamite and he just talked about that movie and had him sign something, he didn’t even talk to me. Then I said, ‘I was in the movie too’ and he goes, ‘I didn’t see you, what’d you do?’ I go, ‘I was Richie.’ And he goes, ‘Richie, Richie…’ I go, ‘He was one of the- - you know Ritchie, dumbass.’ He goes, ‘I just watch him because it just makes me laugh. The second time I see everybody else.’ So then we did that little bit and then after I walk up to him with the camera behind me like I don’t see him. I go, ‘What the f*ck, was that a bit?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, you knew I was doing that.’ I go, ‘I didn’t know. That’s not funny to me. That’s about me.’ I go, ‘Uh, I love Napoleon Dynamite. Was that the whole joke?’ He goes, ‘Yeah.’ I go, ‘It’s lame and I’m not going to put it on.’”

Most of the community gets the show and playfully dreads their inevitable appearance in Spade’s fake headlines. But he admits that even he doesn’t like being the butt of a joke. “I think it’s like Letterman or Chris Rock. Everyone kind of does jokes about everyone and that’s just kind of the drill. You just hope they don’t do it about you. But I’ve had them do it about me and I don’t like it. I say it’s fine but I don’t like it.”

The Benchwarmers opens April 7 and The Showbiz Show airs Thursdays at 10:30.