Surf's Up for Mario Cantone

CraveOnline: Is Mikey based on somebody that you know or people that you’ve met?

Mario Cantone: It wasn’t a stretch, believe me. I think they based it on Jerry Schmitt who the head of press and marketing here who I adore. He’s a great guy, so he’s kind of like Jerry a little bit. They call him Mikey in it and I in fact I think he did some of the scratch tests before they hired me. Yeah, so, but it was fun. I love this. I’m so glad I can sell this without bullshitting you because it’s really, really good.

CraveOnline: Have you seen it with and audience and kids?

Mario Cantone: I haven’t seen it with children because I’m afraid of them. After having a children’s show for five years called Steampipe Alley out of New York, I had enough. It’s funny, a lot of people do these movies for their children. They’re like, 'I want my children to be able to [see it].' I don’t have kids, I don’t want kids, not that I don’t care about kids but really could care less. Really, so I do it for me. I’m a huge [fan of] the classics like Bambi and Pinocchio and Lady and the Tramp, I love that stuff. It took me a long time to get used to the CGI stuff. That did happen. It’s too cold. When I saw Toy Story, I was like, 'Well, the kids look like toys too. This is all plastic' but then finally I think it softened up. The backgrounds finally, every animated movie has a style. If you look at Pinocchio it’s got a watercolor kind of wash to it. If you look at Sleeping Beauty it’s very angular. If you look at Bambi, it’s very pastel. Dalmatians it’s very sketchy. That’s the beauty of an animated film. They have a style and in some of these CGI ones the backgrounds of the suburban neighborhood look like a suburban neighborhood. It’s too real. The grass looks like grass there’s no flair to it. There’s no style to it and I think that’s shit and that has to stop. It does. I don’t like it. I like it to have a look. This movie has a look to it and it just has to have a lot of heart, you know. I love animation, I really do but I don’t do it for the children.

CraveOnline: What about all the pop culture references which this movie doesn’t have but all the animated movies now throw that in there?

Mario Cantone: It’s a little annoying sometimes. Like when I saw Shrek 2, I was like, "There is too much pop culture references and this doesn’t take place at that time. It’s not within the frame or the vocabulary of the time it takes place" and that is kind of strange to me and they steered away from that with this and it stays within the world. And I think it’s when you’re doing a character like a character monologue in your standup act. If you’re doing a character like when Lily Tomlin does a character or Whoopie Goldberg does a character, they stay within the vocabulary of that character. If you go outside it then it makes no sense, it makes no sense at all. So I think you have to stay inside the framework. But with Shrek now, anything is game. I think the 3rd one there probably more product placement than anything, but I haven’t seen it. I’m sure it’s very good.

CraveOnline: You’re clearly a huge fan of Shrek.

Mario Cantone: I like Shrek. I liked the 1st one a lot but the 2nd one I thought, "This is odd." I haven’t seen the 3rd one. I liked the first one a lot, but I thought the 2nd one there was too much of like what you said, it went outside the reference of the time.

CraveOnline: Have you ever thought of doing our job? You’d be pretty good at being a critic.

Mario Cantone: I would be good at it, huh. Well, it’s because I’m a bitch, that’s why.

CraveOnline: Are you trying to say something about us?

Mario Cantone: I love you guys. I just had an interview with Kelly Slater who’s adorable and very, very nice and I kind of flipped it on him and started interviewing him and we had this conversation and it was great. I think that’s the way it should be.

CraveOnline: So they told you this little bird with long legs and you’re riding a whale. Was that just too bizarre for you?

Mario Cantone: No, I loved it.

CraveOnline: How did you control the way anyway?
 
Mario Cantone: That’s a very good question. I have a remote control in my beak. No, I don’t know. That’s a very good question. We don’t know. That’s my ride. That’s my bus. That’s my Amtrak. That’s my Acela train that I get on. That’s a good question.

CraveOnline: You said you got started doing Steampipe Alley in New York. Why do you gravitate towards kid’s entertainment if you don't really like them?

Mario Cantone: I know, it’s that crazy. It’s really very odd. I just always loved animation. I just live for it. I was doing another animated film for three years with another company that unfortunately fell apart. It was very disheartening because I loved the project very much.

CraveOnline: Is that American Dog? That's still happening.

Mario Cantone: I’m just not in it anymore. No one’s in it anymore except for John Travolta. It’s very upsetting because Chris Sanders who wrote that script and was directing it I mean I was close to that project. I was with it for three years. It was brilliant. This guy is brilliant. And in what he was doing with it was phenomenal and unfortunately there’s a book called The Disney That Never Was that should be a chapter because you’ll never see it. You’ll never see what it was going to be which was stunning. Stunning. But anyway, you have your disappointments in life and it’s too bad but hopefully. I love doing this stuff.

CraveOnline: So why do you think penguins are so big?

Mario Cantone: I guess it started with the March of the Penguins, right with the documentary which is a great documentary and then Happy Feet. I could barely get through Happy Feet. Just give me a break.

CraveOnline: Happy Feet's on your animation sh*t list?

Mario Cantone: I liked Happy Feet but let me tell you something about Happy Feet. Happy Feet is a very good movie and the guy is brilliant. I loved Babe, those are great films. My problem with Happy Feet is it slid all over the place. I think if they could have done it like Babe with real penguins, they would have because they looked like real but they couldn’t so they had to animate them. Before the humans showed up I thought they’re going to use real people because that’s what they did in Babe. That’s the style they kind of went for and the backgrounds were realistic. It looked like the Arctic. That wasn’t my problem because I like that they have that style. That’s unique. My problem with it is that if you’re going to make a musical, get a song writing team and make a f*cking musical. Make a musical. I don’t want to hear Boogie Wonderland and Kiss by Prince in a show because if each one of them had their songs that was a really good musical comedy score, then you’ve got a picture. Then you’ve got a hell of a movie and that’s my problem with that movie. Write a score. Don’t cheat and get an Earth, Wind and Fire song. Let Philip Bailey sing that, ok?

CraveOnline: Do you still keep up your standup?

Mario Cantone: I do. I haven’t done it… God, I just did the Madeline Kahn Ovarian Cancer Benefit the other night with Robert Klein and Whoopie Goldberg. It was at Caroline’s in New York. First time I’d been on stage since November. That one-man show which I adored and loved sucked the life out of me I gotta tell you. It was tough. And I want to do new stuff and it’s tough to write because I write on stage and I haven’t been going on stage that much so I’ve been going back and forth to Vancouver doing The Men In Trees show and hopefully the Sex in the City movie is going to happen this fall. If it does, I’m in it which would be nice so it better get done.

CraveOnline: How was your experience doing Men in Trees?

Mario Cantone: They just ordered 22 more for next year and I don’t know if I’m going back. Maybe if they ask me, I would. It was fun. It was a good time and it was a good set to work on and I had a really nice character. It was a little mellower than usual for me and I got plot line and I got to do some dramatic stuff. It was fun. Orlando Jones was my lover on it and we had to do an ice skating dance. We had to do an ice skating dance and we had to have an argument during the ice skating dance. So they hired two stunt men, great guys too, not figure skaters, stunt men. So they’re trying to do this gay ice dance and it’s like, 'Where’s the gay flair?' It was like watching two straight guys trying to do gay porn. It just didn’t work and I said to my director, 'These guys can skate like hockey players but you’re not going to get the dramatic flair that you need.' Not that I’m the greatest skater in the world but I ended up doing all my own stunts and doing the dance and it was really fun. Orlando’s double was this light-skinned black guy that looked nothing like him. My double kind of looked like me except he was much butcher and had a wife and three kids, which also I do by the way. [Goes into deep "manly" voice] I have a wife and three kids. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t like homos, I got a wife and three kids, just because I play a gay bird…

CraveOnline: Wait, your cartoon bird is gay?

Mario Cantone: I don’t know. Scientifically seagulls are gay, do you know that? Did you know the majority of seagulls are gay? So a sandpiper is pretty close to a seagull. He’s pretty flamboyant, this bird and the only thing that’s missing is a musical number. I wanted a musical number. I want a musical number in the sequel.

CraveOnline: Did you ad lib in the studio like you're doing now?

Mario Cantone: Most of it. I couldn’t say f*ck but there was a thing they wished they could put in it. There was a little Julia Child thing that I do when I was making the party up and I started talking about [in Julia Child Voice] "Baked stuffing a sandpiper bird which has a lot of bones in it. You have to braise it because if you braise it the meat will fall off the bone. If you roast it like a pheasant you’re pulling like rubber." So I did a whole thing like that and they loved it and they were going to use it at one point and then they didn’t use it. There was a few other things they didn’t use that I thought were really funny but there’s more to come. I think this movie might be a big franchise if it does as well as it should there should be sequels and the series and blah, blah, blah. And I told them no one else is playing Mikey.

CraveOnline: So you said the Sex in the City movie is a go?

Mario Cantone: They called me about my availability, but nothing’s negotiated with myself or I don’t know if any of the girls have negotiated, I have no idea what’s going on. All I know is it better get done because I want to do it.

CraveOnline: Were you ever worried if they did a movie, they’d be able to incorporate all the characters?

Mario Cantone: Yeah, sure. But I for surely know that I’m in it a good amount so that’s exciting to know. Michael Patrick King was kind of the creative force behind that show. He’s going to be writing and directing the movie. I’ve known him for 24 years. We started doing standup together in New York at the Improv. He always had a director’s mind. He’d always throw things out at me and go, "Okay, you da, da, da, da, now go." And I’d do it. He was always very brilliant. Brilliant boy. I think he’s one of the best writers and directors in television, so I love him. It’s very exciting, I hope it happens and with him at the helm it should be a damn good movie.

CraveOnline: As a comedian, what do you think of some of the recent controversies with Michael Richards and Don Imus. Aren't comedians supposed to get away with being outrageous?

Mario Cantone: Well, I think if you do it with the right point of view and it’s funny, you can get away with almost anything. But there’s certain things I think people are still afraid of and I think there’s certain words you can’t use. Whether it’s the n-word or the other ‘F’ word as it’s called now, which is very thrilling for me by the way, kids. Faggot. Yeah. It’s finally being taken seriously as a derogatory term. I always said the homosexuals and the Korean’s are the last two people to be made fun of and it’s acceptable. I was like I’m going to buy a deli and screw everybody up. This is ridiculous, but I was talking about Isaiah Washington and I was like, "I really don’t think Isaiah Washington is a homophobic man, I just think he’s a very angry guy." He’s certainly had altercations with people that weren’t gay. Someone had to start it off and be the scapegoat for it to be taken seriously and he is the one. He’s the first one. So he’s going into gay rehab what the hell was that? What, do you go into rehab with a bunch of screaming homosexuals and lip sync to Sister Sledge? I mean what’s going on? It also depends on the way you use certain words. I live in the projects in New York City, so I know all these kids and they all know me and one young kid saw me on the street. He was a young black kid about 17-18 years old and he literally was like, "Yo man, you dat comedian that does that Liza Minelli thing? Yo, that’s hysterical! You’re hilarious, man! Hey, you my nigga, you my nigga!" And I felt 10 feet tall after that. I was like, "That is awesome." So, I said I’m going to save this and do this bit on stage and not be afraid of saying that word because it’s coming from a really great [place].