RUSELL: What I also like is that people are deciding who to present themselves to be in love affairs as well, so it isn’t just about commerce. Christian’s and Amy’s characters are very much in love, but Christian is dealing with a complicated relationship with Jennifer, and then Bradley Cooper starts to fall for Amy’s character. So it starts to get complicated. It’s a sexy time.

C.K.: Christian’s character and Amy’s character, Sydney, are supposed to be in love. But are they actually in love? Or are they people who are trying to become in love?

RUSELL: That is an interesting question. That is probably the most interesting question that anybody can ask at any time. I think that most relationships have both of those things going on. There’s the you that you want to be or can be with the other person, and there’s the you that you just are all the time.

C.K.: You almost want to say to the person you’re in a relationship with, “The person who I’m pretending to be loves the person you’re pretending to be.”

RUSELL: It’s a moving target because it keeps changing.

C.K.: And then Bradley’s character, Richie DiMaso, forces them to hustle into a whole other league of pretending.

RUSELL: Speaking of going to another level, I thought you fit in nicely with all these people as this sort of Midwestern ice-fishing boss of Richie.

C.K.: Well, when you and I first talked about this, you told me the sort of world of it and who I was playing and how he fit in, and my feeling was that this guy was the only person who was not having these problems that the other characters were having. My guy doesn’t have layers. He doesn’t have to figure out how much of himself to use or how to call another person out. He just does what he’s supposed to do. It’s interesting because I was watching the movie while my kids were doing their homework, and when it was over, I said, “I’m so relieved that I don’t break laws. I’m grateful that I don’t have to worry about the shit that these people in the movie are wrestling with.” That’s probably why I had a good time playing that guy—I think he felt that way, too. It’s like, “You people are nuts. You’re not supposed to be doing any of these things that you’re doing. None of this is okay. You’re supposed to be yourself, be honest, follow the law, and take less out of life.”

RUSELL: Take less out of life?

C.K.: Yeah. You’re not supposed to become something else so you can get more. You’re supposed to stay you and get through as yourself, because at least then you can count on that, and you don’t have to ask yourself who you are half the time. So my guy was a lot simpler to play. It was good playing with Bradley because he is so unhinged and laser-like and passionate, and it’s really fun to be somebody’s roadblock. He’s burning in every scene, and I’m simply saying, “No, you can’t do this”—it’s making him crazy. It was fun to be the tool that drove him to distraction that way. Because I’m a comedian who sometimes tries to act—that’s what it would say on my business card—the thing that’s interesting about doing movies like this one is that these are real actors, so it’s like getting to watch a movie up close. You feel like you’re really in the scenes. I would forget that this was Bradley Cooper or Christian Bale. I was completely in the scenes with these people because they’re just so good. I’ve never done this before, but I did steal one thing. In the scene where Bradley and I are yelling at each other, and he says, “I’m going to call your brother,” and I go, “He’s dead,” I definitely stole that from Robert De Niro in that movie about the blacklist.