Dispatches: Andy Sambergs Tour de Farce
Nearly every sport can point to a comedy taking aim at its flaws. Hockey has Slap Shot. Car racing has Talladega Nights. Skiing has Hot Dog. And dodgeball has, well, Dodgeball.\xa0Now cycling can claim its own: HBO\u2019s Tour de Pharmacy,\xa0featuring executive producer Andy Samberg and a laundry list of A-List celebrities. It\u2019s about damn time. Is any sport riper for parody? Besides the rampant doping, there\u2019s the leg shaving, the spandex, the team names, the whiteness, the stuffy British commentators, and, of course, the curiously misshapen bodies. The film sends up all that with a gonzo storyline that clocks in at a breezy 38 minutes and features\u2014spoiler alert\u2014no less than four shots of full frontal male nudity plus recurring commentary by Lance Armstrong. We caught up with Samberg to find out how the film came about, why he chose to pick on cycling, and his fetish for wiener gags.