Everybody Curses, I Swear!

by Carrie Keagan

  Me: All right, how fucking HOT is Hot Rod?

  Andy: Woo! Hot Rod is like the hottest fucking shit ever made.

  Me: Is it the first time in history where Hollywood has actually stolen the porn title before the porn?

  Andy: Well … A River Runs Through It? White Squall? Big?

  Me: Umm … you got me. The Big Easy, also?

  Andy: That’s just about someone who bones a lot. But that has a really small ween.

  Me: Were there any weens hurt in this movie? I mean, you are a stuntman in this movie …

  Andy: Well, there were a couple times where I sat down on my own nards, I’m not gonna lie to you. Where I got on the bike too fast and crushed a nut. Which is also a really good name for an album … Crushed a Nut.

  Me: Ooh, yeah. Definitely. You’re gonna put that out?

  Andy: We’re gonna put that out together, right?

  Me: Yes! Wait! But I need to be on the cover, looking like this … (I pull out a fake mustache, similar to Andy’s in Hot Rod.) Just like you … I will be giving out mustache rides to anyone interested.

  Andy: (Pretends to take out a cell phone.) There are so many butch lesbians who just went beep-boop-beep-beep-boop-bump.

  Me: Weirdly enough, mine’s not real but I know yours was.

  Andy: Nope!

  Me: Yes, it was!

  Andy: Nope, nope!

  Me: I was actually going to bring my own merkin.

  Andy: You were going to bring in your merkin and have me wear it on my chin like a Seattle rocker goatee?

  Great idea! I love a high-concept marketing idea! For the original Anchorman, Will Ferrell promised our audience that if they saw the movie he’d lick their balls. Oh! Speaking of balls, his costars Steve Carell and Paul Rudd, fairly unknown at that point, did one of the most fun tag-team interviews I’ve ever seen. My first sit-down with them was quite literally a sausage-fest. They were so taken with the idea that they could be uncensored that they just let loose! Paul unleashed a couple of guttural burps, Steve talked about vurping, and the pair took turns screaming, “I LIKE BIG CAT COCK!”

  Paul: You’re watching the Big Cat Cock Network.

  Steve: Coooooooooock. I’m Paul Rudd. Go see Anchorman. Coooooock.

  Paul: COCK. Cock.

  Me: So did you guys have fun working on the movie?

  Steve: Cooooock.

  Paul: Co-co-cooooooooock.

  Steve: Will Ferrell is hysterical in this movie. The swimming pool scene?

  Me: Totally in his underwear.

  Steve: Seen the package on that guy?

  Me: Huge!

  Steve: Coooooock.

  Me: Paul, you liked it. You like that scene too much.

  Paul: Guilty as charged.

  Steve: Now you can say fuck and shit and cock.

  Paul: Yeah, say it! Fucking say it!

  Me: Do it! Do it!

  Steve, Paul, Me: Fuck! Shit! Cock! Fuck! Do it! Cock!

  Paul: Balls!

  Steve: You cocksuckers better see Anchorman!

  Paul: Hey, all you cocksuckers, go check out Anchorman!

  Steve: COCK.

  Paul: FUCK YOU.

  My interviews got the celebs cursing and laughing so much, the studio reps started scheduling me in prime spots to get the talent going. My favorite was right after lunch when the talent would normally be in a food coma, and I’d go in like a shot of adrenaline. Or they’d have me scheduled at the end the day so that the junket would end with a bang, literally. In fact, much to my delight, many celebs welcomed the relief of being able to be No Good after a day of being restrained. For some the reprieve couldn’t have come soon enough as was the case with the hilarious Cedric the Entertainer at the Street Kings junket. He was on fire and had the room rolling with laughter:

  “Shit, I couldn’t wait for this interview. (Loudly.) WOW!! This is a fuckin’ relief. (Even louder.) WOOO!!! (Screaming with joyous relief.) FUCK!!!!! YEAH!!!! FUCK YOU!! FUCK OFF!! FUCKIN’ AROUND!!! HOOOO!!! Thank you so much! All the same fuckin’ questions. Everyone was asking the same (Doing an impression of a reporter.) ‘So, Cedric, how’s…’ (Yells.) FUCK YOU!!! Man, it was a fuckin’ movie, that’s what it was!! With fuckin’ actors in it. Wow! (Looks at me.) Thank you, ma’am. Wow! I thought I was gonna lose it for a second there.”

  On occasion, I have also been used as a ringer. My favorite memory was at the junket for the Oscar-winning biopic Walk the Line, where I was brought in to try and liven up the talent in an attempt to save the day. Rumor had it that the star of the film, Joaquin Phoenix, had allegedly taken some sort of “mind trip” to keep the day interesting and appeared to be astral planing during the interviews. The whole thing was running way behind. Nobody knew what to do, so they thought the best way to combat crazy was to send in crazier. Apparently, that was me.

  A frantic junket producer approached me and filled me in on what she described as a “complicated” interview room and how I might be able to help uncomplicate things.

  “We know you’re not supposed to go in for another two hours, but we’re going to put you in right now.”

  “All right. What do you want me to do?”

  “We don’t care!”

  I went in all guns blazing and he just continued keeping busy trying to win the Guinness World Record for not blinking. Was he floating in another dimension, was he in the early stages of prepping for his infamous documentary I’m Still Here, or was he just being difficult because he hates doing press? Well, it turned out that none of that was correct. There were no drugs, no hate, just someone in pain. Poor thing. Joaquin definitely ranks high on the “interesting” scale, but he’s also a nice guy, so I did a little digging to find out what had happened that day. Apparently, early in the day, a journalist had decided to bring up his brother River Phoenix’s death in his interview, which threw him off and trainwrecked the day for everyone, including me.

  Every celebrity has topics they don’t want to go into, especially during a lighthearted movie promotion, but some press can’t resist the temptation to poke the bear. Kind of like that British journalist from UK’s Channel 4 News who poked Robert Downey Jr. into walking out of the interview during the Avengers: Age of Ultron press day. In this situation, Joaquin was very sensitive to a very personal tragedy and lost it. No doubt he was actually in another dimension, just not for the reasons anyone thought.

  While the junketeers tried to have fun with the celebs, the celebs would also find ways to have some fun with the junketeers. Sometimes bored celebrities at junkets fuck with the press and play a game we call “secret word” where, before you walk into the room, they pick a word they try to subtly work into your interview. Macaulay Culkin did this to me with the word “guacamole.” It’s a private joke with everyone but you, and you know it the instant it happens. Everyone starts giggling, and everything gets thrown off. It happens a lot. Having said that, there were certain occasions on which this game was played when the planets would align in my favor and the chosen word would be a dirty one. On those glorious days, I felt like I was getting soaked by a gushing geyser of obscenities from a broken fire hydrant on the hottest day in summer.

  In the beginning, we had a little pushback from a handful of publicists who were trying to figure us out. I remember one very powerful female flack, from one of the biggest agencies in Hollywood at the time with A-list clients, who did not like us at all. In fact, we got a call from her people—I love that the PR rep even had her own people—tearing into us, saying that she believed junkets were an “inappropriate place for this kind of behavior. It’s unprofessional and distasteful.” Which was a scary call to get because you never know how these things domino and turn into a shit-storm and then before you know it, you’re FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition). It’s a small town.

  So we handled it in the only way we knew how. We were straightforward, honest, and polite. Kourosh and I always had a big thing about being super polite. It was our belief that what we did on camera requ
ired us to hold ourselves to a higher professional standard. You can’t fuck around with people on camera and then motherfuck them behind the scenes. That’s what the tabloids did. That was not us. I would always jokingly say we were good people who say bad words. So we told her that we certainly didn’t mean to offend anyone, that we were just having fun. That it’s just language and it plays to a certain audience. We were interested in building a relationship, and if anything crossed the line we’d take it out for her. Our mea culpa worked, and she ended up becoming one of the biggest supporters of NGTV and me. What she and other flacks realized over time was that we were getting positive feedback from the celebs, and it was a big part of the reason they kept asking us back. At the end of the day, it was just a bunch of words, the intent was to make people laugh, and it was always in context. I’m sure it also didn’t hurt that my interviews were dominating YouTube.

  Even though the reps weren’t sure what we were up to in the beginning, luckily they gave us the chance to show them what it was. It was a huge accomplishment for us. Another top male publicist, who repped virtually every top comedian, took a big chance on us, and the result was as life-changing as when I met Kourosh. He repped British actor Sacha Baron Cohen, aka Borat, the fictitious, blissfully ignorant reporter from Kazakhstan. When I got approved to interview Sacha, I was ecstatic, but little did I know that this interview would be the beginning of a chain reaction that would send me and NGTV into the stratosphere.

  The one-on-one with Sacha was to promote the movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. We had to submit questions ahead of time because he’d be in full-on Borat character and wanted to be prepared. He was doing a few dozen interviews and, obviously, wanted to make sure everyone got great stuff. Sacha is a genius and an absolute pro and probably didn’t want to wing it. We were a bit perplexed about what to ask on paper. Normally, my interviews were very off-the-cuff, but in this case we needed to make an exception. For the three people who don’t know this, the character of Borat was totally sexist and pervy, so I walked into the interview dressed to impress the man of the hour wearing a super-low-cut, tight leopard-print shirt. His eyes bugged out and his jaw dropped like Stanley Ipkiss in The Mask, and I knew it was “game on.” He threw the prepared questions out the window and went way the fuck off-script. So I did, too.

  Borat: Uh-yees … a-very na-ice a-whoa-whoa-woo! A-VERY na-ice.

  Me: Thank you! I very much enjoyed your documentary. Can we talk a little bit about the cock that you bring with you?

  Borat: A-yes, a-maybe we talk in uh twenty minutes. I have a journalist is coming to talk with me … and then we can … uh … take away de cameras, we will uh …

  Me: Can we keep the cameras? Because that might be more fun.

  Borat: A naughty-naughty! A-whoa-whoa-woo!

  Me: Maybe I can stay and just hang out and watch you do your interview. I’ll just come over here then.

  I stood up, walked over to Borat, sat on his left knee, and slid my arms around his neck. I could tell Sacha was unsure what was happening but stayed in character.

  Borat: I am uh-semi-turgid …

  Me: I don’t think that’s semi …

  Borat: Whoa whoa … uh I think I make ejaculate.

  Me: Does anybody have a towel?

  Borat: No problem, I will be able to come turgid again … give me just three hours, no problem.

  Me: Three hours I have to wait? Well, I don’t know if I can wait three hours.

  Borat: Whoa-whoa-woo. Uh tell me … very a-naice … a-how much?

  Me: Oh, I’m free!

  Borat: I would-uh pay-uh, fifteen dollars, no problem, for you.

  Me: Fifteen dollars? That’s more than I get paid doing this! Wow, you’re rich!

  Borat: You are very pretty. You remind me of my sister.

  Me: She’s number four prostitute in Kazakhstan?

  Borat: She is now number six prostitute of Kazakhstan ever since the tour of de Pussycat Dolls in my country. They became number one to number five.

  Me: Hey would you do me a favor? Would you say hello to No Good Television?

  Borat: Uh-my name uh-Borat, hello uh-No Good ah-Television … naughty-naughty, yes … ah-bye bye.… I am fully turgid again.

  Up to this point, my interviews were getting maybe thirty thousand views. The Borat interview went viral—ultimately doing close to ten million views—a huge number even by today’s standards, but in 2007 it was unheard of. It was validation that if I just kept doing what I was doing and kept my shirt on, we might have something special. It was the first domino to fall. People were starting to catch on. From that point onward every interview we released online got millions of views.

  The next thing I knew, I was on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter sitting on Borat’s lap being touted as the new secret weapon in film marketing. WOW! I have to admit that that was one of the most amazing fucking things to ever happen to me. I was one of the first online personalities ever to be on the cover of an industry trade magazine. This was long before the current age of the YouTube star, and I was really honored to be taken that seriously so early in the digital game. The only way I can describe the whole experience is it felt like I had been shot out of a confetti cannon into the stratosphere, transitioning into an orbital space dive and landing only after completing a triple lindy.

  It seemed that, overnight, I had developed a tiny bit of clout in Hollywood, and I got a ton of supportive messages from the most powerful publicists and movie studio reps, congratulating me. What was so touching and humbling was that so many of them had become my friends and had been rooting for me to succeed. Let’s face it, if it wasn’t for them taking a risk and giving me a chance to go in there and do my thing, none of this would have happened. I owe a great deal to all of them to this day. It’s a bit of a thankless job being a studio, agency, or personal publicist, but they are the engine of this business. They are a pretty amazing group of people who constantly innovate and get shit done: all under the radar. My hat’s off to them.

  All of a sudden, our phones were ringing off the hook, and people wanted to interview me. I was featured in USA Today and pictured sitting with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg on the set of Superbad. I ended up on the front page of the Los Angeles Times calendar section, where they ran a huge article on me being the alternative to Charlie Rose with a photo of me in bed with the stars of Reno 911, Tom Lennon and Robert Ben Garant. I got a call from The Tonight Show! Syndicated entertainment newsmagazine show Extra made a deal with us to feature mini episodes of NGTV at the end of their shows. In the press release announcing it, the executive producer of Extra called me “Barbara Walters on acid and Red Bull.” I had never dreamed of being in the same sentence as Barbara Walters, but I suppose if it was going to happen, it was only natural that it would include a hallucinogenic drug. Anyway, after that, our access was wide open, and it started an A-list train that, gratefully, hasn’t stopped to this day.

  We also started getting invited to do exclusive set visits for what would ultimately become some of the biggest comedies. Back then, there was nowhere to put this kind of content. There was no Funny Or Die or anything else like it. So we got these exclusive opportunities, interviews, clips, and Red Band trailers and became the place to launch raunchy comedies. Before Michael Cera and Jonah Hill became household names, I got to hang out all day with them on the set of Superbad—or as it’s known in Israel, Super Horny. Jonah and I went way back to the very beginning of his career, which made this set visit extra special.…

  It took place at a very interesting moment in time. Unbeknownst to any of us, the birth of our brand and the reemergence of the hard-R-rated comedy were about to intersect in a profoundly impactful way. Hot off their success with Knocked Up, Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen reunited for this movie. It was Seth and Evan Goldberg’s first script, which was loosely based on their lives, to be made into a film. Jonah and Michael were starting to get some buzz, but Christopher M
intz-Plasse and Emma Stone were complete unknowns. It had a relatively small budget of twenty million dollars, and while everyone involved hoped it would do okay, I don’t think the studio was sure it would cause much of a stir. It was so dirty that I don’t think they knew exactly how to market it, and so they were doing their best to think outside of the box.

  I guess that’s where we came in—the dirty network with a huge male audience. They pretty much gave us the run of the set and access to interview everyone with no limitations. Hell, they even gave me a cameo in the movie. The whole experience was SuperAWESOME! When it was all said and done, we launched a channel dedicated to the film, garnering millions of views for my interviews, and spearheaded the promotion for the film, which ultimately became a massive hit and a defining moment for our brand. We were so proud to have played a small part in its success.

  That day began at 6 A.M. in the Valley. I remember Jonah was a little under the weather, but when he saw us, he perked up and gave us his all. Seth and Evan didn’t know what to make of me, but our filthy format was second nature to them, so they were hilarious. I ended up making a bit of an impression on them, which I’ll get to a little later. That day was also the start of a beautiful relationship between me and Judd Apatow. A kinship built on a bridge of obscenity. The set visit made for some unforgettable exchanges with the cast. I mean, can you imagine Mary Hart having this conversation?

  Me: What’s up, you guys! I am on the set of Superbad with the number one and number two cocksuckers on the set. What’s happening, you guys?

  Jonah: Who’s the number one cocksucker?

  Me: I don’t know, but you guys can decide amongst yourselves who’s going to be number one and number two.

  Michael: If it’s based on who sucks more cock …

  Me: Then you win?

  Michael: How do you rank these things?

  Jonah: Ummm … I’d say by the amount of penis you put into your mouth. That would be the ranking system. I can’t speak on behalf of Michael, but for myself, I … I … I …

  Michael: He’s number one in his own eyes.