Jon Stewart seems exhausted, and with good reason. It is late Friday afternoon, the tail end of election week, traditionally the busiest five days of the year for his Comedy Central program The Daily Show. And that’s just the half of it. The big week for news collided with the marketing of Rosewater, the feature film that marks Stewart’s directorial debut — which meant his every spare moment was given to interviews and other bothersome aspects of promotion.

And yet, the 51-year-old comedy icon springs to life when I enter the hotel room, perhaps a Pavlovian reaction to the Mets cap I was wearing. “How could you wear the symbol of a team that has been so disappointing to me?” Stewart asks, only half kidding.

We commiserate about the sorry state of the hapless baseball team, which has missed the playoffs for eight straight years. As with most Mets fans, Stewart is both animated and depressed.

He fondly recalls the team’s last championship, which happened way back in 1986: “I wearing my suspenders and bowtie, covered in salsa, watching Lenny Dykstra hitting that homer in Houston and them going to the World Series.” Stewart, who grew up in New Jersey, had moved to New York City and was working as a waiter at a restaurant in Rockefeller Center. The aspiring stand-up comic was also hustling local comedy joints for a few minutes of stage time.

Now, of course, he owns countless Emmys — and the devotion of a young and liberal-minded generation. His reach, in fact, is now global, as he learned when journalist Maziar Bahari was arrested for being an alleged spy in his home country of Iran just days after appearing on The Daily Show. Bahari was imprisoned and tortured for 118 days before international pressure, some of which came from Stewart, forced the Iranian government to release him.

Stewart was moved by Bahari’s story, and ultimately sprung to adapt the reporter’s book, Then They Came For Me, for his directorial debut. The film — called Rosewater after Bahari’s nickname for his interrogator — stars Gael Garcia Bernal. It debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival, and hits theaters on Friday, November 13. After lamenting the Mets, Stewart spoke with Yahoo Movies about the film, politics, Star Wars, and of course, his beloved Mets.

What do you think the Mets will do in the coming off-season?

They’re going to do what they always do. They’ll make us believe that they’re two pieces away [from winning] and not sign someone like Nelson Cruz, who could hit 30 home runs, but sign Chris Young for $10 million, because 10 years ago he hit 20 homers in AAA. They’ll f—k it up.

Do you think the Wilpons [the penny-pinching, cash-strapped Mets owners who lost millions in the Bernie Madoff scam] should sell the team?

I would be delighted. That would be a wonderful step in the right direction.

Moving on to your movie. I thought the the prison guard accusing Bahari of doing seedy things in New Jersey was a joke that you added. But Maziar’s writing reveals that people in Iran really did think that New Jersey is a horrible, depraved place. As a Jersey native, how does that make you feel?

Well, the real America to them is New Jersey, because the only real experience that Iranians could have in America at this point, other than being ex-pats, is if you work for the diplomatic mission. The United States has a rule that you can only live within a 20-mile radius of that diplomatic mission, which I think is on Third Avenue [in Manhattan].

So you’re either going to live in Queens, Manhattan, or New Jersey. And Jersey is the most conveniently-located spot for them. So if they’re going to hear about America, and there is a fascination there about America, chances are that New Jersey is going to step in as the exemplar of America, for better or worse.

I was upset that you told the world about Fort Lee, our “great sex massage playground.”

I tried desperately to keep that a secret for many years, but at a certain point, you have to unburden yourself, you have to get it out.

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