Everyone knows that sex sells in America, with entire careers in mainstream entertainment being built around sex tapes, Playboy spreads, and cleavage. So when it comes to satire, there's no better a medium than pornography, a topic that intrigues as much as it polarizes. In The Amateurs, a group of small town friends begin a journey to make a stag-film, and Joe Pantoliano (The Matrix, The Sopranos, Memento) is Some Idiot, the autistic auteur who takes on the project. Starpulse spoke with Joey Pants about The Amateurs and the various issues it explores, including stereotypes, relationships, and fame.

How did you prepare for this role?
I really liked the script, so I read it many times. What I dug about all the guys is that they're all vying for each other's respect and attention. Andy was the leader of this kind of sad sack group and everybody had this destiny that they were trying to go after in the most ridiculous way, like trying to make a porno. But this movie is not about making a porno; it's about discovering unconditional love and happiness.

The character of Helen, for example, has got love right there in front of her, but she doesn't believe in herself enough so she surrounds herself with married guys. How many women do you know that do that? How many do I know that have done that? There's a perceived sense of safety that is involved with being in unobtainable relationships and I think that Michael Traeger, the writer and director, touched on a lot of really interesting things just like that in the movie, and it's funny. I personally think that this movie is ridiculously funny.

How does the whole thing get started?
In the beginning there is a meeting of the minds. "We need a guy giving it to a girl in the butt scene. We need three black guys." They see all of these porno movies and they take scenes from all of these different movies that seem popular. And once they get all of these scenes they make a porno. My character, Some idiot, says "I want to be the writer/director" because that's his destiny. And then he writes a 300-page script with a lot of action. It's ridiculous. And they can't get any women to be in the scenes and then they can't be with any women. And then Otis decides the gal at the bed store loves to scrump. But how would he go about and ask them to do a two girls, lesbo scene? And it turns out that she asks Sandy, because the woman who owns the bed store is her lover. And that's just ridiculous.

The happy ending has the movie not being a porno. It's something else. This kid has been recording on his digital camera, so it becomes a real movie. A documentary dramadey and that becomes this spectacle.

In porn, the premise and dialogue is completely superfluous, but, ironically, all the dialogue and story that they capture ends up saving their whole movie. I like it!
That's right. And then they all wind up winning awards because they become the actors in the piece. And then Some Idiot who winds up losing an arm over this. So the symbol is you have to lose something to win something and create art. So this kid gets the credit for making the movie, but he didn't make the movie, so he becomes the next Alan Smithie. And then he goes off to Hollywood where he's on the cover of every magazine as the flavor of the month one-armed director.

Why'd it take for the actual movie to take so long to make?
It got tied up with all these legal ramifications because the guys who bought it didn't have the money to release it and the director and producer had to fight to get it unencumbered so they could get First Look to distribute it. A real case of life-imitating art.

Interview by Ben Kharakh
Starpulse.com contributing writer