KEY POINTS:
The first thing Chris Stapp does when we arrive is drive off.
We've arranged to photograph Stapp and Matt Heath for their first feature film, The Devil Dared Me To, in which their fictional stunt hero Randy Cambell attempts to cross Cook Strait in a rocket car.
Come to the studio in Henderson at 2pm, they said. It turns out to be the new set of Randy's old TV show, Back of the Y Masterpiece Television, which they've resurrected for TV3 and C4.
But boys aren't good at multi-tasking.
"Chris is just going to town," says a bemused Heath, who thought the interview was tomorrow. "He should be about 20 minutes."
Let's ring and get him back, then.
"Um, I've lost my phone. Can someone ring my phone? Can someone ring Chris?"
It's an hour before Stapp returns.
In the meantime Heath sits on the red velvet stage (which revolves a la Austin Powers) and chats about the international press tour for the film. Even as he laughs about the bomb scare at the premiere in Montreal, the Paris Hilton sighting in LA and the broken beer bottle that smashed up his hand in London - "I lost so much blood I almost died!" - he's scanning the room for his next fix of carnage.
He asks a crew member to go buy more Ados, a flammable solvent "so we can set Chris on fire when he gets back". The idea of these guys making a movie suddenly seems just as dangerous.
The New Zealand Film Commission-backed feature is not just a first for Heath and Stapp but for Headstrong Productions, headed by local film impresario Ant Timpson, a long-time fan of their work.
Stapp used to make "crazy shorts" when Timpson was running the Incredibly Strange Film Festival in the early 90s. Around that time, he showed them a doco about a stuntman called The Devil At Your Heels. And Randy Cambell was born.
Fifteen years, a TV show and a rock band later (Deja Voodoo started as the show's crappy house band but they've gone on to release two okay albums), Randy is on the big screen. It's an achievement that even trumps the time they made a version of their stunt show for MTV Europe and contributed to British hidden camera show, Balls of Steel. Both Heath and Stapp wrote and star in the film, and Stapp directs.
The Devil Dared Me To is much slicker than Back of the Y fans might expect, considering it was made with less than $1 million, or what Timpson calls "Whale Rider lunch money".
"I've always liked what they've done and thought they're very commercial," he says. "It was a laugh-out-loud script. It spits in the face of the glitz and glamour. They make constant jokes about the whole Hollywoodness of the action genre. They celebrate the fact they don't have the money to do it."
Whereas Back of the Y milked the idea that the stunt was about to go horribly wrong, The Devil Dared Me To is a road movie splatter-fest combining the best (and worst) of Bad Taste, Goodbye Pork Pie and Shaker Run. The result is a rude, crude, explosion-riddled celebration of small-town New Zealand (referred to in the film as "the arse end of the world") packed with self-deprecating humour.
Randy (Stapp) wants to live up to the legend of his late stuntman dad by executing the ultimate stunt. It's not just the deformed faces, severed limbs and dead family members threatening his path to greatness, nor Dominic Bowden as their sleazy PR, Sheldon Snake. Dick Johansonson (Heath) is a stunt show manager who treats Randy like the stuff he makes him clean off his Portaloo.
Off screen, there's a hint of a power struggle between the pair, if a little less sinister. When Stapp returns and learns of his mate's plan to set him alight, he rips off his shirt, wipes fire-retardant gel on his skin, pulls on a red racing suit, and with the look of a bored school kid, waits for the flames to shoot up his Ados-smothered arm. Heath, resplendent in the T-shirt and cap marked with his character's name, stands behind him, snarling at the camera.
"So, Chris," he mocks. "Did anyone get hurt in the making of the film?"
"Ha ha ha! Funny you should ask. One stuntman got completely munted and burned all the skin off his back!"
"Really?"
"They took skin grafts from his arse and replaced it under his arm!"
Injuries aside, coming from the rough-as-guts style of Back of the Y and leaping into the slick world of movie-making had its own challenges. Like telling a story over 81 minutes rather than half an hour, working with a crew of 65 rather than the handful they were used to, and realising their explosive script on screen. Most of the filming took place around Auckland; Manukau Heads stood in for the South Island.
"We've seen heaps of movies," says Heath. "All movies are pretty much the same. They go along for a while, then there'll be a love interest, and a big happy ending."
It almost works out that way for Randy. He spends the first half of the film trying to convince his miscreant mates and one-legged childhood sweetheart Tracy "Tragedy" Jones he can do the stunt, and the second half preparing for it. Forget that he'd probably kill himself just by starting the rocket car's engine - it was a great success on paper.
"The CGI designers were like, what the f*** is this supposed to be?" says Stapp. "The tiny little brackets wouldn't even hold on to the car. They've got jet engine intakes but rocket engine outputs and if you even stop to consider the difference between a jet engine and a rocket engine, this car has basically got both in one. Which makes no sense at all."
The prospect of acting didn't faze them, either.
"We don't really act," says Heath. "We just say our lines."
Stapp: "I don't really like acting very much. But I guess you have to do it when you're playing the main character and all that."
What it lacks in technical precision it makes up for in heart.
The pair say the jokes went down better than expected when it premiered at the South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, earlier this year, even if a few things got lost in translation. Like Te Puke, which the Americans thought was a joke.
"And they laughed when the camera panned across the Hollywood sign that spells out Auckland City in the harbour," says Heath.
"We were like, 'Why are you laughing at that? You don't know that there's no Auckland sign."'
After screening at 15 film festivals around the world, Devil has had interest from distributors in Europe, Australia and the US. Deals for widespread cinematic release are still being negotiated. In New Zealand, the slapstick violence and swearing earned it an R16 rating.
But despite Dick announcing, "I hope you boys like big tits and cocaine because we're taking this show to the North Island!", there's not a lot of nudity.
"I actually sat down with the actress and said, 'Will you get your tits out for the movie?' says Heath. "And she went, 'I'd rather not'. They said if you put heaps of tits in the movie you'll get more sales in Japan and stuff."
Stapp: "But we decided to keep it clean. There's just this weird innocence about the whole thing."
The pair are now working on their next projects which may or may not include a post-apocalyptic thriller, an 18th century fighting film and a sequel.
"Well that's difficult because it would be The Devil Dared Me To Two," says Heath.
"It would be weird. The Devil Dared Me, 2. The Devil Dared Me Also. The Devil Dared Me To Again. The Devil Dared Me To Squared ... "
