Biography

I think Eastbound & Down (2009) is one of the great television shows, ever. And I thought that the structure of it, how each episode begins just minutes after the last one ended, it's like watching a three-hour movie. A hilarious movie. So I was so excited. It's funny how much more excited I was to be asked to come do one scene of "Eastbound & Down" than I've been about some of my other jobs. I mean, I was just over the moon to get to go and work with those guys. Holy shit, it's so good. It's so funny. I think that's a great show, and just so, so dirty.

[on Step Brothers (2008)] I just love that movie. I think that Adam McKay and Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly and those guys, that's truly what subversive is. It's coming up with really high-absurdist insanity and putting it on 3,000 screens and actually having a big hit. I mean, you look at that movie and just how fucking weird and absurd it is, and to think that that's been embraced by enormous amounts of people, that is really incredible. I think that's a great movie. I'm so proud just to be a small part of it. "Step Brothers" itself, when I did it, I don't know if I had any idea that it would become a defining moment in my career and life like it has, and I'm really happy that that's the one that ended up being that for me. There have lots of moments where I thought maybe something would be that, and it just didn't happen, and I'm happy that it didn't, because those things ended up being really lame. But this has kind of ended up being that for me in a lot of ways, and I'm happy for that, because it's so crazy, and such a cool movie.

[on making Piranha 3D (2010) 3-D] It was 115 degrees in Lake Havasu, Arizona, where we were working, and the entire movie takes place outside during the day. So it was miserable, but it was really fun because they were cool people, like Paul Scheer, Elisabeth Shue and Jerry O'Connell. It was really fun, but the movie itself - apparently it's the bloodiest movie in history, which is easy to believe, because at the lake we were shooting at, they had a tanker truck filled with fake blood that would just pump into the lake continually during this one massacre scene. So apparently gallon for gallon, the bloodiest movie of all time. So take that information and either come see it or avoid it.

[on Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)] That was my first real job, my first real movie that I got, so I was so excited. I thought, "Well, this is it, bro". Like I was blowing off my friends and - no, I don't think I was, but I really did think, "Well, this is it". And it wasn't it. It was "Hellraiser 4". I mean, what can I say? It was my first real movie job, so I got to set and the PA brought me over to my chair and I was like, "Wow! I get a chair with my name on it. That's insane. I've been dreaming about this since I was a little kid". And then he brings me over to this chair with a piece of duct tape on it with "Adam Craig" written on it. Welcome to Hollywood.

[on working with Martin Scorsese on The Aviator (2004)] I grew up idolizing him, as many people in show business do. I had pictures of him on my wall as a teenager and stuff. I was a pretentious teenager, so of course I had, you know, Raging Bull (1980) posters and all of that. "Raging Bull" is not a pretentious movie, but me having the poster was a pretentious action. I even grew a goatee and had a Knicks cap, because I thought I wanted to be like Spike Lee. What a douchebag. So getting that part, auditioning for him - it was kind of this rigorous audition process. It was crazy. For good reason too, because you're on his set, and it's really challenging. Like, I was in that scene that's me, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, and Jude Law, and we're all sitting around this table, and between takes - this is a scene with like, 400 extras in this room - and between takes, you can hear a pin drop. It's just silent. I'd never been on a set like that before, all this respect for this guy. He wants a quiet set, so it is dead quiet, and for good reason. We all had to focus, because we were all playing characters, we all had voices, different mannerisms. It was really kind of head-to-toe. Like, we were working hard. We had a five- or six-page scene that we took three days to shoot, which is a long time to work on something, so we were all just spent, but in the best way possible. I mean, I will never forget a second of that experience, of auditioning for it, getting it, going there for the summer and working on it. Every little interaction I had with Scorsese is forever tattooed on my brain. It's just a special experience, special moment in my life, let alone in my career.