Inside the World of Samberg & Co.

If you enjoyed watching Natalie Portman spout a foul-mouthed, gender-bending rap and seeing Justin Timberlake bequeath a lady with his genitalia, you’re already familiar with Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone. The trio have brought their demented brand of smart-but-silly comedy to the otherwise vanilla airwaves of “Saturday Night Live,” where the latter two write sketches and Samberg, a heartthrob who happens to be hilarious, has made a splash as the show’s newest star.

“There’s very little that separates us from a million guys and their friends who are making short films on the Internet right now,” Taccone said last week, chatting with The Crimson at Pre:Post, a club in Manhattan.

It’s been only a few years since the group, who met as middle-schoolers in the hippie-academic community of Berkeley, Calif., started posting videos online as “The Lonely Island,” a sketch troupe specializing in “The O.C.” spoofs and parody raps. But with this summer’s release of “Hot Rod,” a big-budget comedy starring Samberg and directed by Schaffer, the group will attempt to translate their low-fi style to a larger audience and a wider screen.

MAKING SHORTS A BIT LONGER

The film, written by “South Park” veteran Pam Brady and executive produced by “SNL” creator Lorne Michaels, follows the misadventures of Rod Kimble (Samberg), a would-be stuntman suffering from an acute case of suspended adolescence. Rod hangs with his loser friends and dreams about beating up his sadistic stepfather (Ian McShane of “Deadwood”). He eventually plans an elaborate stunt to pay for dad’s heart transplant and win the heart of hottie-next-door Isla Fisher.

The “SNL” stamp is present throughout, from the cameos by Chris Parnell and Bill Hader to the stitched-together structure, which boils down to a series of sketches.

“I often say that my sense of humor stopped at around 13 years old,” Samberg said. “There’s definitely something about acting immature and goofy that I’m into, and sort of the older I get, the better that works.”

At a post-screening reception, Samberg sported tortoise-shell frame glasses, five-o’clock shadow, and Adidas sneakers—the basic uniform for pretty much everyone involved in this film.

Though all three actors confess a weakness for the low-brow—“I still find shitting in your pants hilarious,” Samberg said with a grin— they are very aware of the more subtle ironies that set Lonely Island videos apart from the online flotsam.

“A lot of what we do is paying homage to stuff we love by sort of deconstructing it and messing around with it,” Samberg said.

And Taccone, sipping a Sam Adams, noted that the group’s humor “is about undercutting a moment while also giving you that moment.”

In a post-screening Q&A, Schaffer noted that with online videos, “I can make it as short as it’s funny.” He didn’t have that luxury with “Hot Rod,” which clocks in around 90 minutes.

“I didn’t want it to look like a real movie,” Schaffer said over drinks at Pre:Post. “The idea was to make it all feel homemade,”

“The cameraman would automatically set up for very traditional comedy movie shots, and I would have to rearrange everything to be like, put it on your shoulder, don’t frame it so nice, get further away,” he continued.

HATING ON THE CRIMSON

Befitting a group with a knack for the short, silly, and scatological, Lonely Island seems to have already taken sides in the perennial battle of Plympton Street.

“You’re from The Crimson?” Taccone scoffed when introduced to a mildly embarrassed reporter. He raised a disapproving fist: “Yaarrrrghh!”

Even Samberg’s toothy smile turned sour at the mention of Cambridge’s only breakfast-table daily. Turns out Lonely Island’s loyalties lie with a certain semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine.

The trio took a tour of the Castle during one of the Lampoon’s recent “SNL” cast parties, and Samberg was inducted as an honorary member.

“It was fucking fantastic,” Samberg told The Crimson, namedropping a few ‘Poonster alums with whom he works with on the “SNL” writing staff. “Undoubtedly one of the biggest influences in my comedy comes from the Lampoon. Go down the list of people who are heroes of mine and a bunch were on the Lampoon.” And Taccone added that “some of the people I respect most in the comedy world were past [Lampoon] presidents.”

—Staff writer Michael M. Grynbaum can be reached at grynbaum@fas.harvard.edu.