JEZEBEL enjoyed a laugh with actor Paul Rudd while learning about his new film, Role Models, his first attempt at penning a screenplay.

JEZ: How goes your visit to Atlanta?

Paul Rudd: I have been here before. I got in last night and have to leave tonight, [but I did] watch the Atlanta Falcons game and listened to a little bit of Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, which is an Elton John record. So if I really think about it, I feel as if I had a fully emerged Atlanta experience. I [also] went to CNN, so all I need [now is] some Chick-fil-A.

JEZ: Too bad you’re not staying the night. Then you could go out on the town!

PR: I would love to. This is a very exciting [place]. It is a hot city, hence “Hotlanta.”

JEZ: A while back you appeared on Broadway in “The Last Night of Ballyhoo,” in which you played a guy from Atlanta.

PR: Yeah. It talked about Buckhead and all of these places because the writer of that show, Alfred Uhry, was from here.

JEZ: You helped write the script for your new film, Role Models. Have you always written?

PR: I have written bits of things here and there, but this is the first time I sat down with a whole script. When I first read it, the idea of guys having to do community service and then going into a mentoring program was funny. But there were parts that I felt didn’t quite land. [The producer and I talked] about it, and she asked me if I wanted to do a re-write. So that is how it happened. It was a lot of work and fulfilling. It was the first time that I actually wrote something. David Wain, who directed [the film], came on after the fact, and we also worked on some of it together.

JEZ: Is it strange to be on the other side of the process, when actors speak your lines differently than you heard in your head?

PR: Well, that is cool, too. People do their own thing, and we were always encouraging improvisation and stuff like that. There is nothing like when you write a line, and the kid says it exactly like you imagined.

JEZ: Tell me about the climate on set. Working on a project with Seann William Scott and Christopher Mintz-Plasse must have been one big comedy.

PR: It was! I had never worked with Seann or Chris.

JEZ: How do you identify with Danny, your character in the film? Did you write him to be like yourself?

PR: Yeah, very much. I am not quite as pessimistic as the character, but there are things in my life that I use. The idea of being able to [filter] aspects of my personality into the movie is really good and therapeutic.