Chief Magazine: Where’d you actually come up with the "suckfest" character [Glen, the Motel Desk Clerk, from Reno: 9-11 Miami!]?

Toby Huss: I don’t know.  I think I was just doing the voice because I did this Herzog film called Rescue Dawn.  He sounds like Werner Herzog’s cameraman a little bit. We shot that like a year before and one of his cameramen, his main camera guy, was just running around and talking.  We were doing voices like him—Pat Healy and I—we were doing his voice, goofing off.  Tom came in with the Reno 911 thing and he said "Don’t tell me what it is.  Don’t show me your character."  So I just went to the costume lady and kind of made it up on the spot.

Did she have that weird-ass 70’s clothing you wore?

I told them I wanted some slacks, some lime-green slacks and a lime-green shirt, and I wanted to have turquoise rubber gloves and a gentleman’s toupee.  And they went, "Okay."  And then I thought "Well, fuck, I should come up with a character."  And then I sort of did that voice, thinking “That’s a good voice for that dude.”  I can’t tell you exactly where "suckfest" came from, but it fit pretty well.

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It’s funny because there’s a little clip of it on Youtube—there are a couple of them—people who love your character and who just show your part from the movie.  I was actually sorry that your character didn’t get to come back.  I assume you did just one day there?

Yeah.

In the commentary Tom Lennon said they had no idea what you were going to do.  Is that something that—when you do Reno, do you just show up?

Usually when we do Reno I get together with Tom and Ben before we shoot and they ask about ideas.  I do a different character on the show, Big Mike, and they say "We’re thinking about these ideas for you."  It’s just a broad scenario.  If you have an idea, you tell them and it goes back and forth pretty quick.  You just show up that day and start making shit up in that broader scenario.  For the movie, Tom just said "We don’t want to know what you’re doing.  Just show up that day and do it."

And then some kid who worked in the sound department took my lines from it and made a song out of it, put it to this sort of trancey beat.  I think it’s called "Hey Assholes" or something like that. It’s pretty funny.