'Silly' pays off in star vehicle

LOS ANGELES - Andy Samberg, arguably the first Internet-video star to carry his own Hollywood movie, is holding court at a posh Beverly Hills hotel, just a few blocks from the desolate apartment complex he once called home.

Five years ago, the mop-topped comedian could be found subsisting on cans of chili, working a night-shift temp job at a film-editing facility, sharing an apartment dubbed "Lonely Island" with two childhood chums, and shooting comedy shorts on the streets of Los Angeles with borrowed camcorders.

Now, sipping an iced fruit elixir as he lounges barefoot in jeans and T-shirt at a poolside cabana, Samberg can afford to relax.

"We've gone so far away since then and now we're back," he says with a smile.

Samberg returned to Los Angeles from New York, his home base since landing a gig on Saturday Night Live two years ago, to talk about Hot Rod. In the comedy, written by Pam Brady (South Park), Samberg stars as self-styled stunt rider Rod Kimble, still living with his parents, who dresses in a cape and stages invariably catastrophic performances on a Moped scooter for his small-town neighbors. When he learns his sadistic stepfather (Ian McShane) needs a heart transplant, Rod and his crew (including Isla Fisher) plan a spectacular 15-bus jump to raise money for the operation.

Samberg, 28, had no problem embracing his character's curious case of arrested development, even at the risk of looking like a buffoon. "I like to turn all of the negative attention inwards and take the hits for the sake of everyone else. A lot of my comedy was developed through having two older sisters and trying to annoy them until they laugh," he says. "I definitely have that younger brother style."

While it may be Samberg's name on the marquee, he shares credit for the movie's comedy stylings with longtime collaborators Akiva Schaffer, who directed Hot Rod, and costar Jorma Taccone, who plays Rod's geeky younger brother.

"The things we found funny at age 16 are the same things I find funny today," Samberg says, "so it was not a big stretch to get into this character. All of us could be described as being sort of stuck in adolescence in our everyday behavior."

Samberg, Schaffer and Taccone became best friends during junior high school in Berkley, Calif., where they bonded over a shared passion for hip-hop, Pee-wee Herman and the Zucker brothers' Airplane.

Samberg later studied film at New York University's Tisch School for the Arts.

"The professors there gave me bad marks because my short films were so silly. I'd hear things like, 'We don't feel like you were taking this very seriously.' But it's easy to confuse the content with the effort involved. It's hard work making something really stupid!"

After college, the trio regrouped in Los Angeles intent on breaking into show business by creating comedy videos and posting them on their thelonelyisland.com Web site.

"Akiva sparked this attitude that we needed to shoot our own stuff and develop our own style," Samberg says. "Jorma and I took to it ferociously, and tried to be as prolific as possible. Having a Web site helped our cause because anyone who heard about us could just click to see what we're about. It's a lot easier to show someone a joke than to explain it."

Their big break came when Lonely Island was brought on to create spoofs for the MTV Movie Awards hosted by Saturday Night Live alum Jimmy Fallon. SNL producer Michaels recalls, "Jimmy called me up and said, 'These guys are the first ones in, they're the last to leave, and they're really funny. I think they're the real thing.' "

Michaels brought the comedians to New York. He added Samberg to the 2005-06 cast, and hired Schaffer and Taccone as writers. "Where one Lonely Island guy leaves off and the other begins is blurry," Michaels says. "But in the audition process, Andy just popped for me. There's a sweetness to him, what he was doing felt fresh, and of course I thought he was really funny."

In December 2005, a few months after joining Saturday Night Live, Lonely Island created an SNL video that became its first YouTube hit, "Lazy Sunday." It starred Samberg and SNL castmate Chris Parnell as rappers bragging about how many cupcakes they could stuff into their mouths, and barking out their plans to attend The Chronicles of Narnia. By the time Samberg awoke at 5 p.m. Sunday, recuperating from a late post-show cast party, the bit that had aired only hours earlier had become an Internet sensation after a viewer uploaded the clip on YouTube.

"People find it hard to believe because we're kind of, like, dorky-looking white dudes, but I love rap music," Samberg says. "All three of us grew up on hip-hop and R&B culture in the Bay Area, so it's a genuine part of our lives, although I would never aspire to be a real rapper."

Michaels, who is also a producer of Hot Rod, describes the "Lazy Sunday" breakthrough as akin to the perfect storm.

"It was not like anything that had ever happened before. You could see that Lonely Island has an original voice, and the fact that it felt so homemade made it even better. I think this picture has some of those elements as well. Hopefully, it resonates and finds an audience, or else the studio is going to be very upset with me," he says, laughing.

Saturday Night Live spawned another musical Lonely Island hit in December, when Samberg and SNL guest Justin Timberlake played silky-smooth R&B crooners whose smarmy endearments lead to an outrageously lewd - and hilarious - punch line. To date, that video has been viewed on YouTube more than 23 million times.

Championed by Michaels, Samberg says he was undaunted when he started work on Hot Rod last summer in Vancouver, despite his lack of feature-film experience.

"We were pretty confident because the script was great and ridiculous to start with and we were given carte blanche to make it our own. Secondly, it was still the three of us, so we knew we would protect each other creatively. And third, Lorne and the studio gave us a lot of creative control.

"They told us to do our thing, and I'm glad about that. I think it turned out awesome."Movie

Hot Rod

Opening Friday

in area theaters