Rob Almighty

You may remember Rob Schneider from such films as Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, The Waterboy and Big Daddy, the latter two of which saw the comic perform alongside his friend Adam Sandler, with whom he has acted in a number of other movies. The somewhat formulaic nature of Schneider's films have seen him targeted by South Park (the show featured spoof trailers for Schneider films; his response was, "They were too nice to me") and he has been involved in a notable number of Hollywood bust–ups.

From reading his bio, Schneider appears to use full–page ads in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter at least as much as email or any traditional communication method – he has utilised those magazines to have digs at LA Times critic Patrick Goldstein (which metamorphosed into a separate – though since resolved – spat with noted film reviewer Roger Ebert) and even the Hollywood community generally, for their reaction to Mel Gibson's DUI arrest.
However, away from the hurly–burly of Tinseltown, Schneider has of late been going back to his live performance roots, and shortly arrives on these shores for a date Vicar St. What format will the show take?
"I guess I tell stories and offer observations about things," offers the affable Schneider, speaking from Los Angeles. "Mostly it's the kind of stuff that's happening in America right now, but it's also happening in Europe. I don't how relatable everything's gonna be, but it'll be fun. I'll talk a little bit about my daughter, my Mom and the relationship I'm in now, as well the world economy a little bit. It's an interesting time to be back onstage."
What provided the impulse to start performing live again?
"I did a movie with Chris Rock last summer," recalls Schneider, "and we spent every morning alternating between arguing about different things in the news, media and politics, and waiting for Salma Hayek to emerge from her trailer. She looks good every morning by the way! One of the things that had been scaring me for years was going back onstage. Jay Leno had been telling me to go back and do it for a long time, as had Adam Sandler. So finally, I started doing five and ten minute slots, and now I'm doing about an hour."
What does Schneider make of one of the big issues of the moment – the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?
"It's a disaster of proportions we don't even understand," he replies. "It's hard to really understand the death of an ocean – that's what we're talking about here. It's 13 times worse than the Exxon Valdez spill. You have an ocean that's already polluted, and then they put in a million gallons of this chemical to break up the oil, which is not even allowed in Europe. Oil is our inheritance from the planet, and it's a beautiful thing – but I mean that in terms of making plastics out of it, or using it to service car parts. But the worst thing to do with oil is what we're doing with it – burning it.
"It's the fault of us in the northern hemisphere though. More so in the United States but, you know, Ireland too. We're addicted to oil. Everybody can't have their own car. President Obama had a nice speech last night, he was speaking about our addiction to fossil fuels. The main thrust of it was that it's going to a be painful thing to break free of it. But the pain of not doing it is going to be worse."
The reaction to the spill from certain conservative quarters in the US scrambled my brain into some kind of mind omelette. Right wing commentator Rush Limbaugh weighed in behind Republican Joe Barton, who described the BP escrow fund as "a shakedown", whilst another GOP politician – in an impressively Orwellian piece of logic twisting – came to the conclusion that environmentalists were to blame for the spill. The strange thing is that such individuals are to some degree taken seriously in the US, whereas over here they're just viewed as crackpots.
"You're right, but they're taken seriously by other crackpots," reckons Schneider. "There's just a more massive amount of crackpots now. What happens is that that perception gets fixed in people's minds. The average American just wants to make a living and it's getting tougher and tougher. But the idea that you can have no regulations for the banking or oil industries...even the food and drug sectors have very minor regulations. I mean, the food industry has been taken over by corporations as well. What else can they can take from us? They're fucking up the oceans, they're fouling the air, and now they're fucking up our food supply!"
How does Rob feel Obama has performed since taking office?
"I thought he made a gigantic mistake to battle the healthcare thing," opines Schneider. "I think he's a really well intentioned guy, but the idea that he was going to galvanise America and not have huge corporate outrage over his attempt to change the system... it was too much too soon. What we really needed was legislation to get people back to work, and to agree on aspects of energy policy that they're only getting around to now. Unfortunately they've already spent that stimulus package of $750bn – which should have just gone to creating new jobs – on pet projects for this Senator and that Congressman. It wasn't going where it needed to."
To conclude on a far less weighty matter, Rob mentions that on the evening of our interview, he's due to perform on The Tonight Show, now once again being hosted by Jay Leno following Conan O'Brien's messy departure earlier this year. In a storyline straight from The Larry Sanders Show, the heated controversy over Leno's reinstatement at NBC's flagship late night programme reopened hostilities between Leno and long–time rival David Letterman, with the two hosts making barbed gags about each other on a nightly basis (Leno got plenty of mileage out of last year's revelations about Letterman's affairs with Late Show staffers).
I was always more of a Letterman enthusiast, having first started watching his show in my early teens, when it was still being shown by Sky.
"Yeah, but Jay's nicer," asserts Rob. "I know both of them; David Letterman gave me my first break 23 years ago. I haven't been on his show in years, but he's a dick. He doesn't talk to you during the commercials – he's one of those kinds of guys."

Rob Schneider plays Vicar St on July 2