MONDO EXTRAS

C: Not in Enron, though, right?

SL: Exactly.

C: Because I'm worried about you, Scott.

SL: Many are. I'm okay, everybody.

C: Whew.

SL: God, there was such a good point to be made there. And it flew out the window. It might come back.

C: Well, you know, we could take a moment.

SL: Let me see, what was I going to say?

C: Well, I could move on to...I actually had questions. Well, sort of.

SL: Let's see what you've got.

C: Okay, and um, there's actually going to be a point to this, but I've got to go into another tangent, so like...

SL: Okay. [Fakes snoring.]

C: Exactly. Last January or February, Hal and Michelle and Thea, is it "Tee-ah" or "Thay-ah"?

SL: "Tay-ah."

C: -- Showed up in Washington D.C. at, uh --

SL: American University.

C: Yes, American Unviersity. I went to that. And there was a fairly large group of people there. And Hal is all used to this. And he kind of took over in answering questions and all that. And Michelle and Thea were looking around, like, wow. So, I mean, really, how jazzed are you? Is this cool, or what?

SL: I'm more jazzed than Ella Fitzgerald on a good night. When she was still with us.

C: God rest her soul.

SL: So, yeah, often. We're kind of in a bubble up here when we're shooting, as you can well imagine. You know, when you're shooting until eight in the morning, at times, you really kind of lose touch with what's going on out there. And especially last year, we really had no idea what this was all going to be about. So, after we wrapped, while they were in Washington, Peter and I were in New Orleans at the time.

C: Lucky!

SL: Yeah, it was nice. The Big Easy. It was great. But, yeah, our first stop was in New York, at the Gay Expo [laughs] at the Javitts Center, and we were supposed to take part in a panel discussion about the marketing of the show.

C: Was it actually called "The Gay Expo"?

SL: Yeah, I called it "The Big Gay Expo."

C: "The Big! Gay! Expo!'

SL: Just call it that.

C: Okay!

SL: [Laughs] Everyone will know what it is. "Oh, yeah, The Big Gay Expo." And, we went to this panel discussion, and they were selling tickets to it, and it was sponsored by The New York Times. And we walked in, and there were about five hundred people crammed into this tiny room, and they stood and cheered and clapped for about five minutes. And we just stood there. And it was really one of those moments that was just...wow. Just complete disbelief that we'd already had this kind of impact -- that people felt this strongly about the show so soon and so quickly. And, um, and even when we were going out, we went out to sign some articles of clothing or whatever out in the Expo. And we had to be kind of hustled out through the crowd, like the Backstreet Boys, and people were kind of reaching and grabbing us -- we called ourselves "The Back Door Boys" --