Andy Richter: The Mr. Skin Interview

Let's start with the obvious: Are you familiar with Mr. Skin?
Yeah, I am. I don't think I've ever seen the full on--I don't remember giving my credit card out. I think one time I was listening to Stern and the guy was on and I was curious about it. I remember a magazine, Celebrity Skin, and I always found it kind of a letdown. You know, oh, Neve Campbell was nude in a movie! Then you look at it and it's just a straight shot of her nipple, and it's a nipple I guess. But that's the case with nudity in general.

What, that the set-up is better than the punch line?
Yeah, and slightly anticlimactic frequently, because once you've seen Jennifer Aniston, if you've seen her nude, it's sort of like, "Oh, yeah, breasts and a vagina." I've actually seen those before, so I don't know what I was expecting.

Well, you're known to Mr. Skin, and you may be surprised to know that some of your movies are on the site.
Oh, really.

Dr. T and the Women ...
That was a big one.

For Mr. Skin also.
No, I mean full-frontal nudity and a vaginal birth, that's huge!

But even movies like Scary Movie 2 and My Boss's Daughter, which don't have any nudity but are sexy enough to be on the site.
Scary Movie 2, what's that there for?

The scene with Tori Spelling (Picture: 1 - 2) getting nailed by a ghost.
Right, and there's also David Cross attempting to suck his own dick.

That would be for some other entrepreneur who wants to develop a Mrs. Skin. But that leads me to ask if there's anything coming up that Mr. Skin should keep an eye out for.
Nothing right now; I'm signed to do a pilot that looks like it's not going to happen, I'm writing some stuff for myself, I'm auditioning for movies. But there's not a lot going on right now for me. I mean there's stuff, but nothing that's actually coming out. It's the seasonal aspect of this kind of work. Because I did a sitcom all last year there's really not been any movie parts, and I did a bunch of publicity for Madagascar. I missed the boat on a few movies, come close, no cigar. It's just show biz. You got your feast and famine.

You're no stranger to nudity, having appeared naked on network television when you co-hosted Late Night with Conan O'Brien.
Well, fake nude, pixilated nude.

You were not actually nude?
No, I was wearing what they call a dance belt, basically a waistband, front piece, and a strap that goes right up your crack. It's flesh colored. It's for dancers to wear under their tights. So it's sort of like a male thong. It is a thong. Or there are also flesh-colored bikini briefs. Conan and I doing nudity, it was a very specific type of prop humor. Prop humor nonetheless, which is, at its root, very cheap. It was usually when we were in a pinch.

Is prop humor cheaper than puns?
Puns are about the worst. That's why there are so many puns in porno. That's like porno humor, puns, for people that are barely above the level of retarded. That's what they consider clever. They're terrible. Over the age of six if you think they're cute or funny, well, you're probably very dumb.

What about viewing nudity? Do you recall the first time you saw a sex scene in a mainstream movie growing up?
One comes to mind, and it was the whole experience, too. I was in junior high, I think. I went to see Midnight Express. I was with a friend of mine, and it was the scene where [Brad Davis's] girlfriend Irene Miracle (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3) comes to visit him and she takes off her top in the prison visiting room. She very weepily shows him her breasts. He acts like a babbling idiot. I think that was pretty shocking to me. I don't know if that was the first time I saw nudity or what, but it was one of the first times I remember. My friend afterwards said to me, "Man, when I saw that chick's tits my dick shot up like a rocket!" I wasn't put off by it, but the candor of that stands out to me. Wow, what a bold statement.

I don't think that's the reaction the filmmakers intended.
I would be too embarrassed to say, "My dick shot up like a rocket," but he seemed to be very in touch with his own reaction. Maybe the homosexual content of the movie made him uncomfortable and he had to assert his heterosexuality.

You probably have a career in psychology, if you ever decide to go that way.
I've been in therapy too much myself.

Do you have a favorite sexploitation film, a defining sexual moment on screen? For people my age Fast Times at Ridgemont High is often cited because of Phoebe Cates.
Yes, Phoebe Cates's breasts were really quite amazing, and I'm not really a big boob guy. I don't really care that much. I mean, I like boobs just fine, but I don't elevate them to sort of mythic status like a lot of men do. I'm much more interested in vaginas. I'm actually quite fond of vaginas. But her boobs, she did have amazing boobs. That specimen of youth, even when you're young, there's this brightness, just perfection. Uma Thurman (Picture: 1 - 2) in Dangerous Liaisons was a bit the same way.

How about actresses; who's your favorite sex symbol?
Most people would find me a bit of a prude. I was raised in a matriarchy, so I'm probably more of a female identifier. Women like a Pam Anderson--I don't understand the attraction at all. I don't like nine-year-old boys with beach balls under the skin of their chests, which is basically what she is. I'm more of a total-package person. I think--oh, what the hell's her name? This is how profoundly I think about this. The woman that was in Titanic and she was in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ...

Kate Winslet (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3).
Kate Winslet, I just think that there's a realness to her that's incredibly appealing and incredibly sexy, much more so than lots of sexy women. Don't get me wrong, women like Rebecca Romijn-Stamos photograph very well, but it's not the same thing. There isn't that level of attraction with Kate Winslet. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind I think she's amazingly sexy in that, and she's playing like a neurotic mess. That's probably telling about me.

I'm not going to play psychiatrist in this interview, but I know you're married to the lovely actress Sarah Thyre. Has she ever been nude on the screen, and, if not, how would you feel about that?
She's hasn't, and I wouldn't care in the least. I don't think she has unless there's some secret she's keeping from me, but I don't think she has.

No sex tape out there?
No, no. Right now she's almost eight months pregnant, so I think it's the farthest thing from her mind.

Mazel tov on the new addition coming this fall. And I saw The Aristocrats recently. You seem to be a very progressive father. You tell your then two-year-old son William one of the dirtiest jokes every told.
I think he was actually over a year old. I don't remember exactly. He was wearing his Santa suit, so it was around Christmas time, right when we moved to California. He would have been a little over a year old.

Is that the right age to expose someone to the filthiest joke in show business?
It's not so bad. I would never tell him that joke now. Penn asked me to do [the film] and I didn't think that anything would ever come of it. It seemed like how do you make an entire movie out of one joke? But I went ahead and did it anyway just to be friendly.

I knew I couldn't tell the joke as well as all these professional joke-tellers. I'm an improviser and an actor; I'm not a club comic. All these club comics, this movie was going to be their whole thing. I was just desperate for a gimmick [laughs]. Well, I'll put the kid in a Santa suit and tell it to him.

Then Doug Stanhope told it, but mine is more pointed because I was actually telling it in the child's vernacular, you know, the daddy puts his wiener in the mommy's butt, things like that. Stanhope is also telling the joke to a toddler, but it's not his child--it's actually the son of one of the producers--and he's telling it in the adult vernacular. I feel somehow, even though he was funnier than I was, mine was far more daring.

I feel, when it comes to telling dirty jokes to children, you are the master.
That's what I'm getting at. And during these times when we need to learn to laugh again, what better than profanity to toddlers? That's why this country's so great.