Two officers from the Reno Sheriff's Department discuss their new film, their life in Reno, and law-enforcement procedures. Their creators and alter egos, Tom Lennon and Ben Garant, discuss their show Reno 911! here.
The A.V. Club: At a recent post-screening Q&A, you repeatedly referenced "Hollywood shylocks" and Jews, and how you basically signed your lives over to them.
Lieutenant Jim Dangle: In fairness, I think one of the guys is actually a Greek, but he could pass either way—swarthy. What we meant was a blanket term for swarthy types, these swarthy studio heads who are perpetrating a web of lies about us.
Deputy Travis Junior: And they have an agenda—a cultural, political agenda, to make us red-staters look like, uh, asswipes.
AVC: So why are you doing press for the film?
JD: We're trying to get the record straight for the film. We're telling our side of the story. Because if you look at the movie with your eyes and your ears, at what's presented to you—
TJ: You'd think we're a bunch of horny, retarded idiots. But we ain't. There's another 40 percent of the day that we do our jobs. We file. We drive safely.
JD: We shut off fire hydrants that someone has opened without any permission. You never see that.
TJ: Never makes the picture. We leave a lot of very satisfied customers everywhere we go, just doing our job as civil servants. We don't get paid much. It would be nice if Hollywood didn't have to kick us in the teeth.
AVC: Lieutenant Dangle, in the film, you wear a pretty well-worn Morrissey shirt as part of your civvies. How long have you been a Morrissey fan?
JD: I've been a lifelong Morrissey enthusiast. I've written a lot of cards and letters to him. I haven't gotten any response back, and he's my number two of my top eight friends on MySpace. On the other side, I've looked at his MySpace, and I somehow have not made his top eight. So I don't know if this is kind of a one-way street we've got going here, but Mr. Morrissey, Steven—if I may call you that—if you are reading this interview, you could do me the solid of putting me in your top eight.
AVC: What laws do you have in Reno that you would like to see other cities adopt?
TJ: I'll tell ya one thing: If you really want to cut your crime rate, pick something that you're havin' a real major problem with, and legalize it.
JD: Make it legal. We call it "the Amsterdam effect."
TJ: Prostitution was a horrible scourge, until we just—
JD: Made it legal! Boom, boom. You can do it.
TJ: Now, five less stops we have to make a night—same with gambling. If they were to legalize crystal meth, we'd have a damn easy day.
JD: Oh my God, I don't know what we would do! But it's like Amsterdam, look: Their crime rates are incredibly low, because everyone's committing crimes that are not illegal. Once they take away the crimes, only criminals will commit… never mind.
AVC: Deputy, in the film, you said Reno is a little like Mayberry. What kind of action do you wish Reno had?
TJ: I wish we had a more sophisticated criminal element in Reno, 'cause we get a lot of, you know, bank robbery, and then you go in, and the guy was just pretendin' so that he could jack off and throw jizz at a cop. Ya get a lot of that.
JD: We get a lot of vicious pranks of the really truly sinister, chaotic, evil-type stuff. What we don't get is sorta like "Sherlock Holmes And The Case Of The Speckled Band." We never have anything like that, where we're in among nice people in white ties, and someone's tiara has been—
TJ: Stolen from the Econo-Lodge.
JD: "Oh no, they've nipped my tiara, and Lord Fauntleroy will not rest. No one is allowed to leave the dinner party until we have located The Star Of Nodjipor." We would love to have one night where we're out lookin' for a lost jewel or dealing with a commodore. Or even anyone with pants on would be nice.
TJ: Mostly, we find some rubber where somebody jacked off on their own crime scene, and then you got to go out and make other guys jack off into a cup—and that's a long night.
JD: And you got to supply them with, some, ya know, visual aids. That's a drag, man.
AVC: Speaking of sinister pranks, Lieutenant, you've had a recurring problem with your bike getting stolen.
JD: Yeah, I think this might be the year when I just switch over to Rollerblades. Because if they want to steal my Rollerblades, they're gonna have to chainsaw my frickin' feet off this time. I've fuckin' had it. I'm done with it. From now on, the wheels are going to be attached. But the fact is, having met some of the local residents, there are a couple of motherfuckers that would chainsaw my feet off. They might do it just for shoes, or they might do it for sport—to play the "most dangerous game."
AVC: On the show, your sheriff died this year. You've never had the equivalent of the exasperated police captain, the guy who's always pissed off.
JD: "You guys can't take law into your own hands! Stop playin' by your own rules! I'm gonna bust you down to beat cop in two seconds!"
TJ: "I want this one by the book, Dangle. By the book!"
JD: The fact is, there is no book for law enforcement. There's no guidebook that tells you protocols or procedures, or even what to enforce all the time.
TJ: No, we get one every quarter.
JD: Oh, really?
TJ: There is a book of law enforcement
JD: Oh, did I just say that? I'm sorry. I must have, uh, maybe I misspoke.
AVC: But Carson still allows the film to show you breaking protocol?
JD: They need the money.
TJ: They made us sign a waiver. I don't know how much money's involved, but—
JD: Somebody out there's making a king's ransom.
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