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Question: How did you guys get involved in this film?

Mark: I came to it first by many years ago having this idea that I'd loved to make a movie with Charles Busch who stars in and wrote the film. Maybe six years after I sort of half-assed thought of it, it came back. I'm a theatre guy but I know Anthony Edwards and Dante Di Loreto, two of the producers of the film, and they had a connection to Charles on another project that they were working on and this came up and I came up and it took a couple of years after that but eventually, [with] persistence we got it made.

{Jason] came into it about a year and a half before we actually started filming, we started to think about actors to be in it and he was first on the list for the role of Tony Parker. We actually sent him the script and he liked it and agreed right away. So that was so easy. And actually was with us in the journey of trying to get it made for a year and a half and helping us by lending his name to the project.

Jason: Now here we sit before you all these years later.

Mark: Older, wiser. I taught him a few things about sexuality in the movie; he taught me a little about hockey.

Question: Are you both real fans of the older films that are being satirized?

Mark: I'm a big film buff from way back. That's one of the reasons I was first a fan of Charles' theatre work because it's so much about film genres. Almost all of his plays come from Hollywood movies and his performances are a study of these great actresses that he's sort of merged together and created his own performance out of. The original divas - great Hollywood screen goddesses, really strong, powerful women in film. Nowadays it's just not the same game because it's a teen boy market, but then a woman could really drive a film, a whole career.

[We looked at all the] Ross Hunter films; a great movie with Doris Day called Midnight Lace, weird things like The Graduate was a big inspiration to us. The Parent Trap, the look of that has always been something from my childhood I really, really loved so that kind of came into it too. What's also cool is that you don't have to be a big specific fan of these movies of this genre to enjoy the movie. I hoped and I discovered, particularly through the younger people that were involved in the film, Natasha and Stark, they don't know these movies, they don't even know What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, which I think is criminal. Still, they read the script and they're like, "I love this; I've got to be in it." So there's something there - you don't want it to be an exact copy or a parody of something that exists, you want to create your own entity so that it doesn't require being able to go - there's Joan Crawford, there's Bette Davis. It's Charles' performance. There's a lot of Susan Haywood in there, too.

Question: Had either of you seen the stage play that this was based on?

Mark: I saw it. When [Charles] talked to Anthony and Dante, he was also making Psycho Beach Party, which is another film based on his play. He had a small part in that, so while he was hanging out in L.A. he decided to perform "Die Mommie Die", never intending to take it anywhere else. And that's probably because in the back of his mind he always thought of it as was more of a screenplay than a play-play.

Jason: The play-play took place all in the living room.

Mark: It was all in one room and it's fairly different. There were added scenes for the movie and also taking scenes and moving them all around the house and to different locations. In the stage play, the LSD sequence was a long monolog with some flashing colored lights.

Jason: It was like a Star Trek acid trip.

Question: The cast for the film was quite amazing. Where they actors who had seen the play?

Mark: No, it was a blessed project that we got to make it and then all these great people read the script, they liked the script, and said let's do it. Because it's an ensemble piece, except for Charles, we were able to move things around so that this guy could do some racing in the middle of shooting - oh my god.

Jason: It was just testing - I was just testing tires.

Mark: Anyway, both Natasha Lyonne and Frances Conroy were doing other films. Natasha was doing a film called Party Monster and so she was going back and forth between the two sets and Frances was in a movie called Maid In Manhattan. So just by being able to maneuver things around schedules we were able to get these really talented people to come in and do the film. The same goes for a lot of the key production people - there were people working on a little film that made it look a lot more expensive than it was - and better.

Jason: It was amazing - we shot it in 18 days and it was really fast and kind of down and dirty, but it was really fun.

Mark: It's also a balance in trying to make, because it comes from a Hollywood genre, we decided to shoot it on film rather than video, so that told us where the priorities lie. We were very lucky to get this amazing, sort of strange home to shoot it in. We shot in Los Angeles, which is another benefit, people get to go home at night, which makes it easier than if you ask them to go to Montana for three and a half weeks and live in a motel. But these guys let us use their house for a lot less than what it would cost. People in L.A. are very savvy about location shooting - I want $8000 a day, and when we finished I thought, "Now I know why." As hard as you try not to, things happen.

Question: Stark Sands is from Dallas - how did he get involved in this?

Mark: Stark is a real good Texas boy. He'd never quite been involved in anything like this. He told me that one of his brothers would just shake his head - would not understand.

He was on two episodes of "Six Feet Under" right after graduating from USC; he just got a break and got on that show. That's actually the only role that we read actors for, we wanted to see some young actors and my friend in New York said, "What about that kid that was on 'Six Feet Under' last night?" I got hold of a tape, looked at it, and brought him in - he was great. He's done so well, he's made three or four other movies right after this one.

Question: Did you have some room for improv at all?

Jason: Nope, we really didn't need to with this.

Mark: It's a tight good script and everybody responded to it so there wasn't so much that, maybe the littlest around the edges. But one of the things that's so delicious about it is the dialog, so you want to get it right.

Question: It's not just the dialog; it's the way the lines are delivered - that's not the way you talk in movies today. Was it written in the script how you would deliver the lines or worked out in rehearsal?

Mark: No. The comedy of the lines was sometimes required timing, but the overall approach to it was something they found.

Jason: All of the actors came with their own take on the movies of that time, then within the ensemble we all just kind of found our place and found the level at which it worked to perform it and we just went from there.

Question: Did you ever say to yourself when you were making this, "Am I going too far, is this too over-the-top?"

Jason: Oh yeah.

Mark: We actually discussed it in the beginning; the really simple ground rules were to not go so far over the top that you were winking at the audience - that whatever way you'd do it, it's got to have a kind of commitment that has a reality that exists for you. You understand where the humor lies, but not hit it so hard. One thing I didn't want to do was become like a sketch comedy that wears out its welcome in about ten minutes. The performances weren't so arch that you become irritated by it, but at the same time, you want to embrace what it is, which is has a little bit of style to it, it has a little bit comic. There's an interesting little dance. I feel like we did what I wanted to do with it and that's to sort of walk the line.

Question: Did Charles turn into a real diva during the filming?

Mark: The thing about him is he's the nicest guy in the world, but also what was kind of great was the screenwriter didn't turn into the mad screenwriter because the screenwriter was busy putting on another dress and changing and getting into make-up and shaving twice a day. So he was busy working on performance. He had to, but also he was really impressed by the rest of the cast. I don't think he's been surrounded by such good actors ever on stage, so there was just a level of confidence that he didn't seem to have to worry.

Question: Jason, you've made a lot of interesting, smaller films. How do you make your choices of films like Love and Death on Long Island and this film?

Jason: Certainly with Love and Death on Long Island there was an element to it. We shot that movie in '96 so it was really kind of the height of that "90210" frenzy that was going on. I thought it was really funny to send up that teen idol image that I'd had bestowed upon me by the publicity machine. Then with this movie, Tony's just one of those characters that you just kind of have to play as an actor because how often do characters like this come along. Also, a great opportunity for me to sort of send up not only my professional baggage that I carry, but also some of the things in my personal life that have become part of my baggage - it's just very funny to make fun of those things. Half the time it's nothing you've ever done; these labels have just been bestowed upon you.

Mark: It's so interesting - the "rumors" about Jason. There isn't a celebrity that doesn't have a "gay rumor" about them. If you didn't have a gay rumor...

Jason: You haven't made it. You know you've arrived when you get the gay rumor.

Mark: The thing that I saw not only in Love and Death on Long Island but in some of the other more wild characters that he's played in Tombstone and Eye of the Beholder - it's a crazy part in that. You saw this guy is willing to take some chances and also, I think people are beginning to discover, he's really, really funny. Not only in person, I've seen him in all these interviews, he's hysterical, but in the movie I think he's really, really funny and it's kind of a revelation for some that he's like this very comic actor.

Question: Did you use indie film as a way to break away from your Brandon persona?

Jason: Yes. I think as an actor what you want to do is play a lot of different parts in a lot of different genres and being 21 years old and being on a wildly successful television show, it's easy to get stopped doing that one thing forever. So I've really worked hard to expand my horizons and push myself as an actor and make myself do things that were scary and things that were risky and things that were going to be very difficult because that's what you do. And it seems to have worked, so far I'm happy.

Question: Do either of you have your next project lined up?

Jason: I do, I'm doing the new Vivica Fox movie, Beauty Shop, in Baltimore. I leave for that in a week.

Mark: I have a couple of theatre things lined up and then more mysteriously, a couple of film things - I'm learning a little bit about the business. It's a crazy thing, so I don't know what's real and not real yet. I guess when the cameras get turned on it will be real. It's exciting and kind of scary.

I direct theatre, so next March, I'm doing a big production of "Cyrano" in California that we've been working on for about a year.

Question: The film director in the movie says, "Make it big, make it classy, and leave them with a message" - what would you say the message is for Die Mommie Die?

Mark: Well, make it big, gave it class, don't worry about the message. There's no message. There's hidden messages.

Jason: No there's not - please.

Mark: It is meant to be something that is hopefully funny, strangely involving and just entertaining.

Question: And Jason, you get to be known as the guy who has a "really big part" in this movie?

Jason: Yeah, I do. That's very clever.

Question: Actually I bet somebody that I wouldn't say that to you.

Mark: It's taken this movie to bring that conversation in almost every day of his life now.

Jason: Which is fine with me. That's good. Those are the kind of rumors you hope for. You call up the tabloids with that one - this is an anonymous caller...