What was the origin of that incredible “Lady and the Tramp” argument between Des and Josh?
I have small daughters, so I’ve seen the source material a lot. I’ve always had a bone to pick with that movie. When I was a kid, I guess I liked it, but then it started to really irritate me. I see it as a sort of template for all Hollywood movies, with the Tramp character and the Lady character. It’s a national archetype. And since I really identify with the Scottie dog, my nose is out of joint. Whenever people are talking about something like that, they’re really doing something else. In this case, Josh, who’s ordinarily very nonaggressive, is using that conversation to very aggressively attack Des and convince Alice of the value of his courtship. Some characters from your earlier two movies appear in “The Last Days of Disco,” but the one I really wanted to see, the archfiend Rich Von Sloneker, from “Metropolitan,” doesn’t. He’s dastardly! Actually, that actor, Will Kempe, showed up on our set, but he’s in a soap opera now and he had to leave before we could shoot him going into the
