CJC: And that's not the first Rush reference in the show. You also had Geddy Lee in the "Spirit Journey Formation Anniversary" episode.

MM: We referenced Geddy in that show and we actually tried to get him to be in the show and he wanted to do it, but he was too busy on his solo album to break away, so that's actually me singing the birthday song. And then at the end we have the Geddy Lee bass plane. Yeah, we're huge Rush fans and we think it's just psychotic to get him on the show, so luckily we got Neil Peart in the movie.

CJC: Did your background in horror films influence your decision to cast Bruce Campbell in the movie?

The duo find that working apart keeps them fresh when they write together. Otherwise they run the risk of burning out on ATHF.

MM: Oh, definitely. I was a fan of his before anybody was. I grew up on horror films just sneaking out of my room when I was a kid to watch them, and there's something so fantastical about watching a horror movie and I always wanted to be like a make-up effects guy. Around '88 I went out to California to work on a Sam Raimi movie called Darkman -- actually got to meet Bruce very briefly -- and I was a set P.A. I was around all of the stuff I always wanted to do, cameras and special effects and making movies.

And, after Darkman I came back to the east coast and I would find out that they're shooting the sequel to Hellraiser and I'd run up there and I'd work on it, and I was just seeking out sequels to these movies that I just loved as a kid. It's been a huge influence in my life. I just love the escape factor of a horror movie.

DW: We'd always talked about trying to get Bruce Campbell to do the show and what would be a role worthy of him and I think we found something. He was great, he was really fun to work with. I'm kind of surprised he doesn't do more voice work. He's got a really great set of pipes. But it's clearly him, which is great, too, because it's great for the Army of Darkness fans. I think it's sort of cool that we were able to cast this cult hero in this role.

CJC: You can almost sort of see it as an homage to the Evil Dead films since that brand of comedic gore is one of your stocks in trade.

MM: To me, the more over-the-top the gore is, the funnier it is, just because it becomes campy and silly, so I brought that aspect to the show. And I think Dave digs it too, because it's just so retarded silly. We started pushing the envelope with the gore and just kept putting more and more into the show.

DW: Matt definitely came from a horror background and I was more of a comedy geek. We've been working together since '98. I think we both sort of gravitated towards that shocking humor. I mean, if you look at something like [Don Hertzfeldt's] Rejected, that's probably an example of something where our tastes definitely merge. We've always wanted to do more gore and now the Standards and Practices have finally kind of moved on that.

CJC: I was curious about the metal bands that you have on the soundtrack. Are they fans of the show? Are they bands that you're fans of?

MM: A lot of the people that we got were huge fans of the show, and one of us was a fan of that band. It was really a fun, creative soundtrack to work on, working with these guys and talking to them, because they'd all want to talk about the movie and they kind of wanted to write songs specific to the movie or the show. And talking to them and giving them information and then they'd come back with a cool song. And the soundtrack is sort of half metal and half pop and there's a little hip hop on there, and we have three hidden tracks that are kind of surprising. People like Mastodon and Nine Pound Hammer and Nashville Pussy and Unearth, Melody Maker. We have all kinds of cool people on the soundtrack.

Metal, pop and hip-hop music play important roles in the soundtrack for the feature. The team had a fun and creative time working with the bands, who often were fans of the show to begin with.

CJC: One thing I noticed was that the Andrew WK song, "Party Party Party," which was in the cancer episode, is also in the movie.

DW: Yes, it's in the movie, because we needed to fill out the soundtrack. (Laughs) Also, we wrote the song and he actually took our track and added all this other stuff to it and made it his own. We wrote it for him, but he made it his own and it's great and it only appears in the show for like eight seconds. Meanwhile, he did this really great version of it that runs that gamut, from this manic part to almost this melancholy harpsichord. I don't know what it is, but it's pretty amazing, so yeah, we threw it in there.

CJC: For a while, there was the feeling that you were making it up, that the movie was a hoax. The network would announce that you were writing it and then you would hear nothing for six months and think, "Well, obviously that was a joke."

MM: When we first started talking about it three or four years ago, it wasn't even in production and nobody had approved it. I guess we were just trying to convince ourselves. We were testing the waters. And then when people were into the idea it sort of became a reality. But yeah, it was supposed to come out about a year ago, but we just technically weren't ready for it.

DW: It was our idea to make it and the network just said, "Yeah, sure. If you can keep making shows and do it, yeah." I think it was just us saying, "We could totally do a movie with this. Let's go ahead and run with it." I think it's got its audience and those people will love it and we're just excited that it's getting such a wide release.

CJC: Is this your first experience with actual big studio kind of marketing or any kind of involvement in the show?

MM: Yeah, it is, actually. I worked on eight movies, but I was always on the set just doing production. This was the first time that I've dealt with the marketing department and talking to the distributor and it's kind of interesting because this is the first movie that Dave and I wrote, produced, edited, directed, all that kind of stuff. I think for everybody it's the first time for everything, even to the point of finding a distributor. Nobody really knew how to do that, so we just kind of winged it and ended up with a great distributor, First Look, and we're just kind of playing it by ear.