Gentlemen Broncos' Mike White On Playing an 'Albino Slick Rick' and the Status of School of Rock 2

That scene where your albino python, um...

Craps on me.

Yes, craps on you. I wonder if you could talk a bit about how that little bit of movie magic came to life? And also it reminded me of your cameo in Zombieland, which also involved fecal matter, to some extent.

[Laughs] Interesting strain in my performances this month.

It's your Brown Period.

Well, in both cases I think someone's having a laugh at my expense. Because Ruben Fleischer, who directed Zombieland, used to be my assistant, and I think he wanted to pay me back by immortalizing me on the crapper. And I think Jared, too, just got a kick out of it. He has a sort of sadistic streak to him. It wasn't real snake shit, but it smelled as bad, and I was like [he makes a puking face] ready to throw up, and Jared was of course laughing his ass off.

As if the real-world action of Gentlemen Broncos isn't strange enough, you're cast in an even weirder, ultra-low-budget film-within-the-film, shot on a consumer VHS camera from the 1980s. It's like the dark side of Sweding. How serious is the business of shooting something so ridiculous?

I mean this is what I love about movies. One time I was in costume, as Bronco, in this weird robe and sword. And we were out in the desert at this weird, underwater scuba certifying place in the middle of the desert? It's the weirdest place. And you're surrounded by all these extras in costumes and looking around and thinking, "How did this happen?" I mean, it's cool that we're getting paid to do this, but it's never where I saw my life going.

The surreality of it becomes so [intense]. It happened on Nacho Libre, too. Jared just layers crazy on crazy on crazy on crazy. And it was especially difficult being Dusty. Jared wanted Dusty to have no facial expressions, no intonation in his voice. So I have a real python on me, fake snake poop, Jennifer Coolidge trying to crack me up with all her weird shit, and Jared is going, "Don't make a face! Don't make a face!" It was like a Zen meditation exercise.

What's crazy is that it seems like it's a total stoner movie, and yet Jared's a total Mormon and has never drunk or smoked out in his entire life. And when I read the script, I was like, "Dude, this really feels like a stoner movie. As someone who's smoked a lot of pot, I don't think I could have come up with all of this. It's like, where does it come from?

You seem to really enjoy going for it along with him, though. What was it about Jared that initially drew you to him as a collaborator?

I think there's something about Jared that I relate to. He grew up in this Mormon community, my dad was a minister growing up. I didn't grow up in a city. There's something about Jared's stuff, one of the reasons that it crosses over, is that it's born out of boredom. A lot of people mainly in the big cities don't experience it as much, but you get out a bit, maybe into the hinterlands, and long afternoons with not a lot of entertainment -- you just start picking up weird hobbies and doing weird stuff just to fill the time. And that's the kind of stuff that I feel comes out in the Napolean Dynamite world and this world. Everybody has their own folk art, or some creative bent to pass the time.

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