What did the stars of "Reno 911!: Miami" have to tell us when they sat down to chat (in character) about their upcoming movie? Read the whole outrageous interview, if you dare, for the fine officers’ thoughts on inter-office romance, restraining orders, how Hollywood has changed them, their Oscar picks, and more!
Nobody wears short shorts like Lieutenant Jim Dangle of the Reno Sheriff’s Department. Unfortunately, three minutes into our interview with him earlier this month in San Francisco, his shorts got the better of him, and painfully so. With that auspicious start, RT had a most stimulating talk with three of "Reno 911!"’s most recognizable faces — Lt. Dangle (Thomas Lennon), Deputy Trudy Wiegel (Kerri Kenney-Silver), and Deputy Travis Junior (Robert Ben Garant) — to let them set straight the salacious record of their police department, as "documented" in the Comedy Central series "Reno 911!" and this Friday’s big-screen release, "Reno 911!: Miami."
**The following interview contains mature language and content.
Click for more from the "Reno 911!: Miami" photo gallery
RT: What sort of misrepresentations are you worried about coming across in the movie?
Lt. Jim Dangle: A lot of our interactions with each other have been cast forward as if…
Deputy Travis Junior: We’re a bunch of horny retards.
Dangle: Yeah, as if we’re all constantly walking around with a boner, trying to get the other one into some sort of erotic tickle bath.
Deputy Trudy Wiegel: In other words, I think we’re afraid of accuracy.
Dangle: No, no, no…
Junior: Yes.
Dangle: Yes.
[At this point in the interview, Dangle gets himself tangled…in his signature short shorts. Laughter and concern ensue.]
Dangle gets in a tangle during our interview
RT: How relaxed are the admissions requirements to become a cop in Reno?
Dangle: Very relaxed. Crystal Methamphetamine is sweeping the region, and we need every warm body we can get to fight it. Our new requirements are three push ups (girl push ups are acceptable), one set of monkey bars, and a brief, multiple choice psychological profile. (Sample question: DO YOU FANTASIZE THAT YOU ARE THE ANGEL OF DEATH?) It’s pretty easy stuff. Our drug testing is also a lot looser. A history of shrooms, weed and whippets is no longer an automatic disqualification. So as long as you don’t think you’re the Angel of Death and can do monkey bars, you’re solid.
RT: Ok, so what’s up with you and Officer Jones?
Dangle: You know how sometimes two friends, one friend will…jump out of the showers nude, and will do like a "I’m a little Pokemon" dance for the other one? And one misinterprets it…that’s what I did, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I jumped out nude, I had a three-quarter erection — which was totally coincidental — and I was pretending to be a little Pokemon and I thought he would find this funny. Now it turns out, you can’t account for everybody’s sense of humor. Some people have different senses of humor.
Junior: So the three quarter was accidental, and yet you were the Pokeman.
Dangle: Now see, this is how they twist my words around, and it’s now coming off inappropriate. When the fact is it was very funny if you were there.
RT: Right.
Dangle and Junior find a familiar face in roller skates in Miami
Dangle: That’s our relationship, is he filed a…
Junior: Restraining order.
Dangle: Pfft. They call it that.
Junior: You have to stay 50 feet away when you’re off duty.
Dangle: They call it that.
Junior: There are so many restraining orders between different members of our department, that they’re gonna have to build like a 300 yard morning briefing room so we can all go in at once.
Dangle: [Looks across the room] Trudy’s violating one right now.
RT: Before the movie you were kind of reality TV stars, but now that you’ve gone Hollywood how have your lives changed?
Dangle: Certainly name recognition.
Junior: When you’re a law enforcement officer and you drive around, people tend to show their respect by shoutin’…
Dangle: "Hey, f****t!"
Junior: Yeah, or "F**k you, a**hole!"
Trudy: Sometimes they throw s**t at you.
Junior: And now it’s definitely changed…
All eight of Reno’s finest (Johnson’s in the rear)
Dangle: "Hey Dangle, you’re a f****t!" Which means they must know a little bit more about me than before.
Trudy: "Hey Trudy, you f***in’ retard!" Then I get hit.
Junior: So it’s name recognition, it’s getting out there —
Dangle: — name recognition, combined with hate speech.
Junior: Yeah.
Dangle: We used to get the hate speech before, but now, we know who they’re talking to. It feels…more specific.
RT: Your movie comes out around Oscar time, so what are each of your Oscar picks? Junior, last year were you a "Brokeback" guy or a "Crash" guy?
Junior: What’s that? I missed both of those.
Trudy: They’re films, feature films.
Dangle: I tried to get you to come to "Brokeback" with me, remember that’s the one —
Junior: –yeah, you kept saying it was a good cowboy movie…
Dangle: Best cowboy movie ever!
The Reno Sheriff’s Department on beach patrol
Junior: No, we got a video store, a two dollar video store, in Reno. We don’t get a lot of first-run movies. We usually get Oscars from four, five years ago. And I tend to miss those.
Trudy: Yeah, I just saw "Beaches," and it was incredible! It’s definitely gonna win an Oscar.
Dangle: "As Good As It Gets" — has this one just come out or has that one been out for a while? My goodness, it was a wonderful, splendid film.
We’ve got a two dollar movie theatre that’s mostly used by winos as a sort of "jack off" palace. I’ve been a couple times this year, and I tried to sit through "Finding Neverland" — it just came out here — but there was so much tugging going on around me that it was hard to concentrate. That Depp is a remarkable piece of work, though. I wouldn’t mind.
RT: Have you and Junior seen "Night At The Museum," and what did you think of it?
Dangle: I’m not really into "Art House" type movies like that.
