The B-Team

"No, he didn't."

"One actor, the guy who appeared on 'Rat Patrol,' the TV show? That guy was angry," says Zucker. "He hated us."

"Probably dead by now."

"So now we could get him."

"Dying for work."

They did, however, get leading men like Bridges (as a glue-sniffing air traffic controller) and Graves, who plays a gravel-voiced pilot and invites young Joey up to the cockpit and delivers that immortal line: "Do you like gladiator movies?"

Their casting director said: Leslie Nielsen? Are you crazy? "Leslie is the guy you go to the night before," Weiss says. "When you're desperate. He was the most obscure character actor."

"But we knew him, from these half-assed B-movie swamp odysseys," says Weiss.

"Nobody knew there was this guy inside him," Zucker says. "He's smart. He knows not to crush the scene. The advice I give is let the lines do the work. Don't put any spin on it."

"There are two kinds of actors you want," Weiss says. "The smart ones who know not to help. And the ones who don't know what's going on, and they're okay too."

How does one persuade, for example, Phillip C. McGraw, aka Dr. Phil, to appear in one of their movies, with a pitch that goes something like this: You're going to be in a disgusting bathroom from Hell with Shaquille O'Neal and we're going to have you saw your foot off.

"This call was made by Bob Weinstein," says Weiss of the Weinstein formerly of Miramax, who also runs Dimension Films, which is releasing "SM4." "I don't think he encountered any opposition."