Thank you.
Thank you very, very much. (applause from audience)
Always a pleasure to see you.
Always nice to have you.
I bow to you.
I treat you with more respect than Brokaw.
(audience laughs)
No, no. I love the man.
He's been good to us.
I want to say, first of all,
it's gotta be...
You've had this amazing success in the last year
with American Pie. Yeah.
That film went through the roof.
Ooh.
Big time. That's a showbiz expression.
It means it did well.
Yeah. Went through the big shop window.
That's right. Yeah.
I've never heard that expression.
Oh. Well. You just made that up.
Uh, but it was extraordinarily successful.
Best pie screwing movie I've ever seen.
(audience laughs) See?
Now go back to the big shop window thing.
Did uh...
Now, how have you dealt with that success?
Has it, you know, been odd for you?
Well, I mean it's been great.
I mean, you know, the success of that movie's
been absolutely wonderful.
The sad thing is, you know, it's a movie.
You know, they're doing a sequel coming up soon,
but they can...
You know, no matter how many sequels they do,
and no matter how old my children become,
it's a movie I will never be able to see with my children.
It's just one of those movies
you don't see with your children.
Yeah, it's got a little,
some off color stuff. Well, I mean you got a...
You know, we got a little uh...
You know, a little uh...
There's a kind of a masturbation thing,
there's a, you know, humping a pie thing,
there's a bit of oral sex,
there's somebody drinking a beer with something.
And I'm saying, you know what?
You can't sit down beside your children,
and kinda elbow them going,
"Hey, what do you think of that one, huh?"
(audience laughs)
"Hey sweetheart, look at this. What do you think?"
(Conan laughing)
"It's your old man in there."
"You see what he did to that pie, huh?"
Yeah. My son was supposed to come to the premiere,
I don't know if I told this,
but my son was supposed to come
to the premiere last year when it opened,
he was 16 at the time.
And he had talked to a friend of his before the opening,
who had seen a sneak preview of it,
and the friend said, "Boy, it's really funny.
It's a very funny movie."
And my son said, "Yeah, I'm gonna be seeing it
tomorrow night with my dad."
And the guy goes, "Ooh, big mistake."
(audience laughter)
"Big mistake. Don't see it with your father."
And then my son had to come up and say,
"Well dad, you know, maybe I won't go to the opening,
and I'll see it with my friends."
And I'm really glad that he made that decision
because, you know, not having seen the film,
Right.
I was glad that, you know,
my son and daughter weren't there.
Well, this is a different movie, this Best in Show.
It's not, it's a different film you're doing now.
Yeah.
You have a very different look in this movie.
You don't look much like you do right now, in this film.
No. Well I had a...
I wanted a look that would knock about 40 points off my IQ.
Right.
So I had a little dental thing done.
Okay.
Um...
And there's the look right there.
(audience laughter)
Let's get in tight on that. Now we're not talking
Barnum and Bailey here,
but it's just enough
to kind of accentuate the facial features.
And what it does do is,
it kind of dumbs you down about 40, 50, 60 percent.
And the thing is,
that while I was on the set and had these teeth in,
it was very difficult to have people take you seriously
when you're talking about just about anything
because they uh... Right.
For some reason they would chuckle,
they would giggle, they would laugh.
I couldn't quite understand why,
and then I realized, "Hey! I still have my teeth in."
(Conan laughing)
Those are nice. I like...
They come out and go down.
Yes, they do! (laughing)
(audience laughing)
You do look like a moron.
Now... Thank you.
Thank you very much.
You had to train for this film.
This film was about dog...
Should I finish the interview the teeth in?
Yeah, I think so.
Lets keep the teeth in for this.
All right. (audience applauding)
You had to train because you play a...
Tell us. Well what we have,
this film is about dogs.
I'm losing my concentration a little bit, I have to admit.
I'm sorry. I'll take them out.
You should take those out.
This film is about dogs, and the world of dog shows.
And this is, again, like our last film, Waiting for Guffman,
a completely kind of improvised-
(audience applause) Thank you, thank you.
Uh, a completely kind of improvised movie,
which is kind of fun.
But it's about the world of dog shows,
so we did have to, as a cast,
we'd play the owners and the handlers
that enter our dogs into these shows,
so we did have to train, and uh...
And what do they have to know?
What special skills do you need to know
if you work as a dog show, you know, trainer or judge?
What do you have to know? Well, what you have to do
is be able to present your dog so it shows well.
We had to, you know,
a larger dog you have to walk your dog into the arena,
you have to know how fast to walk, so that the...
In other words, if you're walking a large dog
you would walk slower because the dog has longer legs.
If you're walking a smaller dog you have to walk quicker
so that the dog walks quicker,
and his gait is showing itself off.
More attractive, right. Yes.
The more difficult thing for me
was what they call stacking the dog, because...
Which is, you know, the dog I had was a smaller dog,
it was like a terrier.
We have a little example back here.
And yeah, you were kind enough to...
So this is like the size- How does it work? Yeah.
This is the size of the dog that we had
to kind of work with. Right.
And stacking the dog means that
when the judge is examining your dog in the event itself,
you have to lift the dog from the floor
so that the judge doesn't get down on his hands and knees,
and have to examine the dog on the floor.
So you have to lift the dog onto a table
so the judge can examine him more easily,
but you have to lift the dog up and place him
so that he's already set in his best showing position.
So the tough thing was, you know,
I don't know if I can demonstrate here,
but the left hand goes under the neck on the dog, like so.
And the right hand goes around the.
(audience laughter)
(audience applauding)
You split your fingers.
I don't know what you call them on television.
Is that a correct thing?
Fingers is fine, yeah.
Oh, fingers. (audience laughs)
So the right hand here goes right around the.
(audience roars with laughter) And this is the...
Testicles. Testicles maybe. I'm not making this...
Oh, testicles. That's right. I'm sorry.
So you...
So what you do is, you lift the dog so he stays straight,
and you put him down,
and he is in the perfect position.
And it's not an easy thing, and I thought...
This is the perfect position?
Oh, I guess if I'm the judge.
No, if you're the judge,
this sets the dog straight,
so his head is right cause your hands under here,
and his back legs are spread like so
because your fingers are...
Stop doing that.
That's arousing me,
and I want it to stop.
(audience laughs)
Now, we're pretty much out of time.
Is there anything... Oh.
So that's pretty much it?
Yeah, well I wanted to...
Do we have time? Cause I wanted to...
It's a tricky kinda thing, and I didn't know whether...
Do you want me to give it a try?
I would love for you to just uh, you know...
Okay, let's do that. I'll try it.
Cause it's kind of a tricky thing.
Now I'm gonna use this just to keep things going here.
I'm gonna use this in case you need help.
You'll use that one. What do you want me to use?
Well I want you to use another dog
that we're bringing in here.
(audience applauding)
Come around.
You wanna come around?
Hi sweetie. What's this?
Hi sweetie.
Look at this little dog.
And what would I do?
Okay. Well the dog is up like this. First of all...
Can I just...
Yeah. Hi, honey. Look.
It's beautiful. All right.
I'm not touching this dogs.
(audience laughing)
I don't know this dog.
We're gonna take a break,
but best of luck with the film.
That was a sweet ending when you kissed the dog.
And now I'll kiss you.
Eugene Levy everybody.
We'll take a break.