While talking to Steve Zahn about his role as a tortured P.O.W. in the harrowing "Rescue Dawn," the last thing we expected was a good laugh, but we couldn't help ourselves when the veteran supporting actor told us how he got his job on the comedy "Strange Wilderness," a movie he described as "fun and dumb and as wrong as 'Saving Silverman.'"
"I was in Vietnam [for 'Rescue Dawn'], and I went on this kayaking thing for 'Men's Journal.' I got back to Hanoi and got this message [asking if I would do the movie], and they wanted to know in a few hours if I could do it," Zahn reported, nearly giggling himself to death as he remembered the bizarre circumstances. "So I'm in Hanoi just out of a shower in my underwear reading this script, laughing my ass off, trying to figure out if it was funny because I was in Hanoi in my underwear or if it's really funny."
To hear Zahn tell it, it's really friggin' funny. "Oh my god, my wife and I laughed so hard watching it," Zahn said of the movie, which will be released next January.
"I inherit a wildlife show which is like on at 2am on some network. All our information is wrong. We're going to get canned by our boss, so if we want to save the show we have to come up with something big," Zahn said of the plot. "My dad's buddy tells us he's got pictures of Bigfoot. So we take our Winnebago and go to South America to look for Bigfoot."
Besides Zahn, the flick stars popular comedic stars like Jeff Garlin (who plays Zahn's boss), Justin Long, and Jonah Hill. But the biggest casting coup of all, laughed Zahn, is behind the camera as well as in front of it. "Ernest Borgnine is our cameraman," Zahn guffawed. "It's so funny."
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