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Kevin Farley is the brother of Saturday Night Live comic Chris Farley. He achieved his breakthrough success on the MTV TV movie 2Gether, while in between scoring cameo roles on the films like The Waterboy and Dirty Work.

Now the 47 year’s latest role is as prison inmate Bubba McCartney in the comedy Cellmates, which stars Tom Sizemore and Héctor Jiménez as a Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon and a Mexican laborer respectively who end up in jail together. Farley talked about what was the most fun part of doing the film.

“I think the most fun I had was just working with good people,” Kevin says, “With talented good people, good writers, good directors, good actors, and it’s always fun when you have Stacy Keach, Tom Sizemore, Héctor Jiménez, and Olga [Segura] around you. So that to me was my most fun.”

Kevin comments on how quickly the shoot of Cellmates was.

“That was quick,” Farley notes, “We were moving fast. But see, you get it right the first time. You don’t have many chances at it, which is great. I like working like that, rather than doing it over and over and over again.”

Farley describes the atmosphere of where the prison scenes were shot.

“We were down in Inglewood, which is like in a really rough area,” Kevin remembers, “Where that was shot was like this warehouse in Inglewood, so we were there for hours upon a day. And yeah, we would go out in the sun and it would be bright.”

Kevin talks about the rare experience of shooting a film like this one in sequence.

“That was good because it keeps your head in the game, a little bit better for me anyway because I know where I’m at in the script,” Farley says, “And I know what’s coming up and that kind of thing, so it helps an actor to do that.”

Farley was asked about how he approached playing Bubba.

“Bubba McCarthy, when I sort of

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approached at it, he was this lovable racist, which I don’t know if you can say that, but I think he was a guy that was not really lovable,” he says, “He’s just a guy that grew up in the circumstances he grew up in and he didn’t really know any better, so I just kind of played him as a guy that was a normal guy that likes his potatoes and doesn’t really mind being in the prison too much.”

“He’s not kicking and screaming to get out of prison too much because he likes the potatoes,” Farley continues, “And so, I kind of approached it like that, just a guy that’s sort of resigned to his circumstance. I looked at it like that. He just sort of molds with whatever environment he’s in, so that’s the guy he was. He’s in prison, so might as well make the best of it. These potatoes ain’t bad, so that’s how I kind of looked at Bubba.”

Naturally, the next thing asked was whether or not potatoes were a regular food item served by craft service.

“There’s so much potatoes on set that you could go get whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted with potatoes, you could go get them,” Kevin notes, “A lot of times, I did!”

Kevin talks about how he prepared for the role.

“I looked at the script, talked to [director] Jesse [Baget], just sort of got the essence of who the guy was and went for it and rehearsed with Tom,” Farley recalls, “We got together a couple of times beforehand and sort of figured out the scenes beforehand and I just approached and looked at him as just this simple fellow. I know a lot of people like Bubba McCarthy.”

“I grew up with a lot of people like that, not racists, but people that are simple,” he continues, “I grew up in Wisconsin and there’s a lot of people that like to go to the

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Packers games, they like to barbecue outside, and they’re not a furnace of ambition, you know what I mean? I didn’t look at the racist part of that character at all. I looked at that part. The words of whatever he was saying, I let the audience make the decision of whatever they want, but the crux of the guy was he was a simple guy who liked potatoes.”

It was asked of Farley whether Bubba would be more mellow during the 1990’s versus the 1970’s that Cellmates is set in.

“I think so, too,” Kevin says, “I think you’re right, that the period of where it was, there was a lot of Bubba McCarthys around. So that’s what I looked at as well, this is in the seventies, so I was thinking about that, too, when I thought about it. It’s a time piece.”

Kevin talked about the where he believes the Ku Klux Klan tone comes from in the film.

“That’s Jesse,” Farley says, “I think if you look at the tone, it’s a lot like The Coen Brothers. He’s influenced by them. We’ve talked about that, but I think it’s got its own flair, its own style. Jesse’s just a creative guy. He took a very small film and made it look really big and great and that’s just a tribute to him. He’s a very talented director.”

“We never played it for laughs, not for this kind of a thing,” he adds, “The laughs are there already in the writing and in the situation and also in the tone of the film, so you don’t have to work too hard when you have that. That’s all there, just say the line.”

Farley was asked whether there was any improvisation done during the film’s scenes.

“You discover things that are working or not working,” he says, “Something might come out when it’s not working at all, so you change it and you improvise it and you work together quickly

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to get it done.”

“That happens a lot and you’ll be doing a scene and something might not work,” Kevin continues, “And the actors will come together and figure it out. It’s like a ‘solve the problem’, find the timing and the feeling of it all. That happens all the time. That happened with this film, too.”

Kevin notes the enthusiastic reception Cellmates has gotten when shown in film festivals.

“A lot of times, we go to the film festivals and people love it when they see it,” Farley says, “The response has been great. We’re very proud of that. Every time we’ve gone to a film festival, we’ve loved it.”

We asked Farley how he would best describe this film to people.

“It’s a tough one,” he says, “I don’t know. I mean, I would say it’s a film about really Tom’s character kind of learning and coming around to a feeling of his heart changing. He has a changing of his heart. As he gets into the jail cell, we see himself transform into someone that’s a changed man at the end.”

“And that doesn’t say much about it, but that’s really what it is,” Kevin adds, “It’s a romantic dark comedy, very dark, we don’t shy away from racist things. The themes we talk about are pretty controversial, but it’s dealt with greatly, I think. I don’t know how I would describe it. That’s not really that great, other than that.”

Kevin was also asked what he himself took away from Cellmates.

“I just think it was a really well-done movie with great acting,” Farley believes, “If people appreciate that, they’ll like this movie with great writing, great acting, but surprisingly, you tear up a little bit.”

“It’s a very moving film and so, that’s what I would say,” Farley continues, “To anyone, I think it moves people at the end of the film. You really feel for Tom at the end of the movie. So I would say it’s very

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enjoyable, if you like those kinds of movies.”

Farley talks about his reaction to scenes after seeing the final cut of the film.

“I was just blown away at the great job Jesse did,” Kevin says, “After I died and choked on my potato, I didn’t know how the rest of it would turn out. But I just thought it was well done. At the end, I was tearing up. It was very moving to me. I just think it was a very touching movie, along with being a comedy.”

“To me, my favorite comedy is Planes, Trains, And Automobiles,” he continues, “The reason I think I like that is because you had laughs, but you also had a lot of heart and I always liked movies like that. I think if people enjoy those kinds of movies when they are funny, but you can still cry, I guess, those to me are the most effective and great movies. And that’s what happened with this movie, you still laugh, but really are moved by his change of heart.”

Kevin revealed to us his next project he has in the works.

“The next project I’m working on is something with Jesse,” he says, “We’re going to do a project together soon. Hopefully, we get that going and get that off the ground. Also, I do a lot of stand-up. I open up for Dave Spade in Vegas on the weekends in Venetian.”

“I have small movies, one movie called A Love Like Ours, which stars Haylie Duff and myself,” Farley says, “And another movie called The Yank, which I’ll be shooting later in the year. They’re small, independent films and I’m the independent film darling.”

Farley talked about whether or not he feels the independent film industry is doing now that the economy has started to rebound a little.

“I think so,” Kevin answers, “I don’t think you’re seeing the $10 million budgets or whatever going, but the cameras and the equipment are more

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efficient. There are smaller budgets and I think the audience is OK with seeing things in video and that kind of thing now. And the budgets are smaller and they’re making a lot of the 100 to 200,000 to under $2 million, that market’s going good. But those middle budget thingies, those are probably like dinosaurs, the 15′s, then, of course, there are the big giant studio films. Those will always be made.”

“I think that independents, I think those are $2 million and lower, that’s growing, that’s going up, that’s turning up a lot, I think,” he adds, “That’s turning up along with the economy, but I think that goes up with the economy. I don’t think as the economy’s going slow, it’s at the same pace that the independent film market is probably at, I would say. There’s still everybody that wants to do business and as long as they still want to do it, they want to make movies, they’ll make them.”