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In the years since Tenacious D began performing music late at night on HBO, Jack Black has become a major movie star.  His lesser-known partner in the band, Kyle Gass, has had success in other musical endeavors, like his band Trainwreck.

Now, "The D" is back together for their first-ever feature film, Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny.  The film tells the musical origins of the greatest band on earth. From the rock opera opening where a young Jack Black mouths off to his father (played by MeatLoaf), to meeting a long-haired Kyle Glass at Venice Beach, to venturing on a quest for Satan’s tooth/guitar-pick, the film is filled with action, comedy, fart jokes, rock music and fantasy interludes for Tenacious D's rabid fan base.

CraveOnline: Were you guys always thinking about turning the D into a feature?

Kyle Gass:  I think it started happening pretty seriously after our HBO show and we were going to do a run at HBO.

Jack Black:  Wait a second.  We did the HBO show and that thing was cancelled?

Kyle Gass:  Not really.

Jack Black:  Whatever.  We f***in’ said, or mutually agreed that it was bullshit.

Kyle Gass:  Can we just say it was cancelled?

Jack Black: We have to say that we killed it?

Kyle Gass:  They offered us ten episodes and wanted to fire us from being executive producers.  We said, “F-you.  We’ll go make a movie.”

Jack Black: Yeah.  They said, “Yeah, we want to do a lot with you without you having any creative control.  We want you to be more like The Monkees.”  We’re like, “What? Why would we do that when the first ones were so good when with us f***in’ in charge?”

Kyle Gass: They said, “Do you want to make the show?”

Jack Black: “F*** you. We’re beyond it.  We’re gonna go make and movie, then we’ll show you.”

Kyle Gass:  You know why?  Because success is the only revenge.

Jack Black:  But then Kage was like, “Dude, f*** the movie.  The only thing that matters is the album.” Remember?

Kyle Gass:  Yeah.

Jack Black:  So then we made the album.

Kyle Gass:  And I was right.

Jack Black:  Then, you changed your tune.

CraveOnline: Was it hard to get some of the people to be in the movie?

Jack Black:  It was easy when we were talking with New Line and we were saying, “Let’s make a five million dollar movie.  It’ll be incredible.  It’ll be funny.  We’ve got f***in’ enough fans already that’s it’s gonna make money. And then it expanded and we said ‘wait a second, it’s actually more like 18 or 19 million or 20.”

Kyle Gass:  Is that okay?

Jack Black:  And then there was only one studio interested.  We went all around the horn and then New Line was the only one that said, “Yeah.  We’ll put our money on that one.” Nobody else was interested. It was too expensive. None of them thought we could do it.

Kyle Gass: We had to take no money. On the back end.  If it does well, we’re going to be on Barbados with- -

Jack Black: Mai Tais.

CraveOnline: Jack, since the show and the album you became a huge movie star.  Has that changed Tenacious D at all?

Kyle Gass:  Yeah.  I hate him.

Jack Black:  I like to think that we would never have gotten the movie made if I hadn’t built some sweet...

Kyle Gass: There you go. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. As big as Jack was getting, it could only help get a name I think.  That’s all they really think about it bankability.

CraveOnline: But has it changed you, Jack?

Jack Black: Has it changed me? Oh, yeah, we’ve gone on tour after School of Rock.

Kyle Gass:  We’ve played shows.  We’ve had great tours.  I think people seem to separate it pretty much.

Jack Black:  It was a bummer after Shallow Hal when people were carrying around the Shallow Hal billboards at the concerts.  That’s not really heavy metal to look out in the audience when you’re tryin’ to rock and there’s a Shallow Hal cardboard cutout.

CraveOnline: They’ll have Nacho Libre posters next.

Jack Black:  That I don’t mind.

Kyle Gass:  It’s just the way it is.  You’ve got two jobs.  People can separate it.

CraveOnline: How do you describe your style of humor?

Kyle Gass:  Childish, sophomoric, scatological.

CraveOnline: Satiric?

Kyle Gass:  I suppose there’s an element of that.

Jack Black:  What are we satiring? Satirizing? Damn, what’s the satirization about in this?

Kyle Gass:  The satirization really begins with, I think we’re poking fun at the pomposity of rock stuff.

Jack Black:  A little bit, kind of.

Kyle Gass: It’s really just about us though.  These guys rockin’. People respond to the weird confidence about the mission.  We have this grand mission to rock and we have acoustic guitars.  It seems to connect that way.

CraveOnline: When was the last time you were in an apartment like the dump in the movie?

Kyle Gass:  This morning.

Jack Black: No. You’ve bumped it up since then.

Kyle Gass: I had to get out of there.

CraveOnline: Was there a scene in this that was hard to get through because you were cracking up?

Kyle Gass:  We’re pretty good at not cracking up because you don’t want to blow the take. There were a couple of times.  You take movies apart so much, some weird close-up.

Jack Black:  I was laughing all the time.  I haven’t had this much fun on a movie ever.

Kyle Gass:  I think the very last scene we had a good time when we’re smoking out of the Devil’s bong and we put some real pot in there.

Jack Black: Yeah. I got too high and I was paranoid that there were some SAG secret officials there that were gonna bust us for smoking real pot. It’s too powerful.  Someone put the chronic in there. Two bong hits.  I’m a lightweight too.  So, it’s like Aaaaaaaah.  Driving home was a real challenge.

CraveOnline: Can you talk about the physical aspects of the D performance?

Jack Black:  You’ve got to be in the best shape possible.

Kyle Gass:  We’re like Jackie Chan.  We do all our own stunts. 

CraveOnline: Is what you do on stage choreographed?

Kyle Gass:  You pretty much have to choreograph for the movie.

Jack Black:  You have to block basically.

Kyle Gass: Because lighting is so difficult.

Jack Black:  But, on stage they did a lot of camera movement and let us do whatever we want.  It was pretty lose up there.

Kyle Gass:  Keep it fresh and relaxed.

CraveOnline: Your music is really good.  Does it have to be good before it’s funny? What comes first?

Kyle Gass:  I think it’s important for us that it’s as good as we can do it just musically-wise.

Jack Black: Yeah.

Kyle Gass:  I think it’s what makes us a little different from some guitar comics. We love music and just try to make really great songs.

CraveOnline: Do you start with the tune before the words?

Kyle Gass:  We usually have an idea and we do a lot of improv and Jack will riff a lot of the lyrics.

Jack Black: Kyle is always a bubbling cauldron of tunes.  He’s always playing and working on little melodies and riffs and then I would need to have something that I think is funny, a concept that I want to riff on, or, I need a type of song that I want to make that we’ve never made before.  Then we can just start jammin’ and always recording.

CraveOnline: How much of this story is true?

Jack Black:  Glad you asked.  It’s all true except….

Kyle Gass:  His father is one of the most supportive men.

Jack Black:  My parents were always very supportive of my rocking.

Kyle Gass:  He was not a fundamentalist Christian.

Jack Black:  No. I was actually raised a Jew.  I went to Hebrew school and got bar mitzvahed.  So that was a lie. But the rest… true.

CraveOnline: Are you still a good Jew?

Jack Black:  No.  After my bar mitzvah I never went to synagogue again.  Too much Hebrew school.  I started to resent it because I didn’t like school and then, on top of that, you’re gonna send me to extra school? Hebrew school on top of school?  Maybe if it had just been Hebrew school but don’t sent me to another place.  If it had all been in one place.  If it started at eight and ended at three, okay but then you start tacking on more school, it’s crazy.

CraveOnline: How much did you practice the power slide and how was the car chase?

Kyle Gass:  We had to go to special driving school.  No, we had stuntmen to do all that.

CraveOnline: The director said you got carsick, Kyle.

Kyle Gass:  Well, they have a special car that they make to do stunts that has these huge wheels and it kind of spins around and you’re sort of driving it but they’re driving you in the car.  It’s a barfy ride.  I’m not gonna lie to you.  It’s a barf machine. It’s fun though.

CraveOnline: And the power slide?

Jack Black:  I got a little rug burn, yeah.

Kyle Gass:  But it was a pretty old school special effect.  We were just being pulled.

Jack Black:  And Kyle didn’t lean back far enough.

Kyle Gass:  We did it all day, okay?

Jack Black:  People ask, "Is there anything you would go back and change?" Just that one thing, the power slide.

CraveOnline: Whose idea was it to have in the beginning KG be more aggressive or more the leader?

Jack Black:  That’s just kind of how it was.

Kyle Gass:  It really was.  What’s true?  It’s all kind of emotionally true but I was older and Jack was kind of….

Jack Black:  Kyle was never like a fraud.  I don’t think he was ever going to put one over on me like he did in the movie.

Kyle Gass:  But, I knew that you were a fan and I started to take advantage of that and be the smart guy.

CraveOnline: How did you meet?

Kyle Gass:  We met in ’89 through a friend.

Jack Black:  I had been a fan since ’86 or ’87 because I had gone to see him.

Kyle Gass:  But Jack got in a production that we were doing in the Actor’s Gang called <I>The Big Show</I> and I would do all the music usually for the Gang stuff and Jack came in there and started contributing and threatening my very existence.

Jack Black:  That’s right.

Kyle Gass:  But it was a case of if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.  I couldn’t beat him.

CraveOnline: Are you more comfortable doing the acting part of it or the music?

Jack Black: Acting or music. No, they’re altogether. What is that saying, what do you like better?

Kyle Gass: Breathing in or breathing out.

CraveOnline: If you guys had to rock off against each other to save your souls who would win?

Jack Black: If we ever had a mountaintop battle –

Kyle Gass: I think we did one time

Jack Black: A cage match? Well, it depends, if Kage is going to come out and we’re going to say, “Choose your weapon, we’ll only use singing,” I would probably slay him. But if he says, “Step into the cage and let’s go guitar battle,” Kage would definitely kick my ass.

Kyle Gass: That’s the title of my solo album.

Jack Black: Step into the Cage?

Kyle Gass: Yeah, I like that.

CraveOnline: So why is Tenacious D the greatest rock band in the world?

Jack Black: We have never said that we are the greatest rock band in the world. Other people have said it, and it’s always flattering, but the reason we are great, or whatever you want to call us, I think is because of our chemistry, Kyle and I. Sometimes you get lucky, me and Kyle stumbled upon each other and immediately it was apparent that when me and Kyle were friends walking down the street it was like peanut butter and chocolate, lightning and thunder, together we’re ten times the rock beast that we are alone. We’re not just twice as powerful when we’re together, but ten times as powerful, like a rock transformer.

CraveOnline: Are you hoping for a sequel?

Kyle Gass: Oh God yes.

Jack Black: It’s got to be a hit though, you can’t just have a sequel to a non-hit. Has there ever been a sequel to a non-hit?

Kyle Gass: They’ve done things where just because people know the name it’s still worthwhile to make a sequel.

Jack Black: Like what, Lawnmower Man II?

Kyle Gass: Yeah, there are always movies like I don’t remember the first one dude.

Jack Black: We should start doing the sequel now then, just plan on it being straight to video.


Check out the exclusive clip from Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny here.