RogerEbert.com spoke with Shannon over the phone last week to discuss the film, how he makes sense of the past week's election results, how being an actor is like being a student of life and more.

Thanks for talking, Michael. Happy Friday to you.

[Pause] Really? [Laughs] Not so much. It’s not one of my happier Fridays ... now that the Orange Man is running the world.

And Leonard Cohen just passed …

I think Leonard Cohen died rather conveniently after Trump was elected president. I think he killed him.

Can you make sense of any of that for me—how Trump was elected?

Yeah, I’ll tell you how to make sense of it: This country’s filled with ignorant jackasses. The big red dildo running through the middle of our country needs to be annexed to be its own country of moronic assholes. You can call it the United States of Moronic Fucking Assholes.

Do you think those assholes started off that way, or that people are inherently good and lost?

I don’t know how people got so goddamn stupid. But it’s really weird, because it’s like the last eight years, now it feels like a lie. Like, this has been festering underneath the whole time. Racists, sexists. And a lot of these people, they don’t know why the fuck they’re alive. They know it. They’re doing drugs, fucking killing themselves. Because they’re like, 'Why the fuck am I alive? I can’t get a job, I don’t know anything about anything, I have no curiosity for life or the world.' So this Trump thing is like getting a box of firecrackers, or something. It’s like, 'Well, this will be fun for a little while, this’ll kill some time.' Because, y’know, the jackass will be amusing on television, stay stupid shit. Make everybody clap. Hillary would have been too boring, I suppose. It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened. It’s the worst. This guy is going to destroy civilization as we know it, and the earth, and all because of these people who don’t have any idea why they’re alive.

Do you think this idea of purpose comes down to education, or finding a job that they like?

I don’t know! I mean, yeah, to a certain extent I agree with Trump. Yeah, NAFTA was fucked up and people need to have jobs. People need to have a way of supporting themselves, they need a way of having self-respect, pride and dignity. You take that away from them, this is what you get.

Earlier, I was successfully chasing some post-election blues by watching your segment on "Delocated" where you sit in a bush with comedian Jon Glaser.