Jay Mohr on Working with Clint Eastwood in 'Hereafter,' and Why You Shouldn't Show Pro-Footballers Strange Cell Phone Pictures

Imus welcomed his new friend Jay Mohr to the show this morning, but Jay was more interested in speaking to other people this morning.

“It’s a pleasure to be on with you, Charles,” he said, hurting Imus’s feelings in the process. He explained, “I’m all about the old cowboy, but Charles gets his feathers ruffled if people don’t give him at least a glancing blow here and there.”

Jay called in from Santa Monica, California this morning, where he lives with his wife and 8-year old son. In today’s New York Times appears a film review by A.O. Scott of the forthcoming movie Hereafter, in which Jay plays the entrepreneurial brother of Matt Damon’s character, a psychic. Jay was thrilled with Scott’s rave review, particularly the section focused on him.

“The best part, I thought, of the whole thing…was when he said, ‘Billy, played by Jay Mohr,’” he said. “That was incredible.”

Imus noted there was not much attention paid his guest’s performance in the movie, but he was wrong. “You’ve got to be able to read the subtext, Imus,” Jay explained. “He could have just said, ‘the brother,’ and put Jim Breuer, or Colin Quinn. But he put me."

Imus countered that Scott had done that because Jay actually plays the part, but Jay said, “Let’s not, you know, split atoms here.”

Legendary movie man Clint Eastwood directed Hereafter, though Jay’s contact with him was limited during the two weeks he was on set. “He never really said anything to me, and then my last night I had this scene where I walk down like four flights of stairs with Richard Kind, and put him in a car after his reading with Matt Damon,” Jay said. Not long after the scene ended, Eastwood for the first time approached Jay, and asked how he felt about it.

“I just turned around and I walked back up the stairs to do it again,” Jay said. “I knew he wasn’t talking to me because he thought it was great and he wanted a synopsis of my opinion on it.”

Also an accomplished author (his book No Wonder My Parents Drank came out earlier this year), Mohr thanked Imus with helping him get booked on other Fox News shows.

“Every single show on the Fox network is going like, ‘Well after he goes on O’Reilly can he do Hannity? And after he does Hannity can he do Huckabee? And after he does Huckabee, does he like to file?" Jay said.

A big sports fan, Jay roots hard for his hometown New York Jets, though he noted they all came off as “pampered jerks” in the HBO series "Hard Knocks." Unlike former Jets quarterback Brett Favre, Jay has not sent anybody a picture of his penis.

“I have done some rectal shots,” he said, adding that while Favre never should have sent the picture, the woman now accusing him of sexual harassment never should have kept it this long. “That lady walked around with Brett Favre’s ‘football’ in her phone for two years—that’s just something that you get rid of. Like if somebody sends you clown porn, you throw it out the second the DVD arrives."

The subject was admittedly touchy for Jay, who had his own bad experience with an explicit text message: sitting next to New York Giants football player Justin Tuck at a Knicks game recently, Jay had received on his phone a photograph of his companion, a comedian friend, urinating in the bathroom.

“Like a moron, I look at Justin Tuck and I go, ‘Look my friend just sent me a picture of this!’” Jay said. “Justin Tuck got up and switched seats. And my first response is, wow, he’s uptight.”

Jay’s wife, however, offered some perspective, telling him, “You can’t show other men pictures of strangers’ penises and expect them to keep their seat next to you at Madison Square Garden.”

Then Jay did a hilarious impression of Imus’s friend Joe Buck that would not be nearly as funny regurgitated into this essay as it was on the air. So if you really want to laugh, sign up for Inside Imus and listen to the audio yourself. And while you’re at it, go see Jay’s movie Hereafter. That would be really nice of you.

-Julie Kanfer

Comments

[Rita]

the woman in the favre scandal has not filed a sexual harassment complaint against favre or anyone. the league is looking into his conduct.