CON: Hot Rod

The first big panel of the first day of Comic-Con was Paramount’s panel and they kicked it off by bringing out the
HOT ROD boys of Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccome and Akiva Schaffer. There were some “Lonely Island” fans in the house giving them some major love. Andy started by saying he’s always wanted to come to the Con to hang out but Paramount is keeping them so busy they don’t have any time to see anything. They wondered what to do first so they decided to run a clip from the movie.

The clip opens up with Samberg talking to Ian McShane as his father who’s gravely ill on the couch. Samberg explains that he needs to raise the money ” to get you better so that I can beat you to death!” McShane humiliates him and Samberg says he has to run off to his happy place. He finds a place in the woods and starts to look down until some FOOTLOOSE-esque music starts playing (I wish I knew what the exact song was…) and he starts smoking, drinking and prancing around. You might have seen the scene in the trailer with him using a log as a pommel horse. After numerous flips and jumps and dives, he trips down a ravine into a neverending fall. It goes on and on and on as he hits the ground, gets launched up in the air and everytime you think it’s done, he continues to fall.

After the clip was over Andy said, “Wow that really hurt,” and they were ready to take some questions. The mic wasn’t working in the audience so they just started being goofy, fellating the microphone, making crazy faces. The questions were ready to begin and it didn’t take long before someone mentioned “Lazy Sunday” and “Dick in a Box.” Andy explained that the idea for “Dick” came from their joint love for early 90s R&B like Jodeci and Color Me Badd. Andy said it was actually Jorma who had the idea for the Dick in a Box. He joked that it was a trick his grandma used to pull on him. But they all agreed the making the digital shorts were very similar to making the movie, other than there were a lot more people around.

An “Awesometown” fan got up and asked about the series and Akiva explained that was the case of Hollywood taking something pure and good and destroying it…kinda like what happened with the Comic-Con. The boys were generally just goofing off, laughing and making jokes, many of which wouldn’t be all that funny if I repeated them here. They were all really hilarious though and the clip was a riot. I kinda wish they were screening the film at the Con cause I’d love to see the final product.
That said, we only have a week to wait for the film’s full release
on Friday, August 3rd. Stay tuned for some video interviews with the boys on JoBlo.com next week.