Chris Buckley

By Joel Stein

Christopher Buckley just released a new novel, Little Green Men.

Q: Does your dad [William F. Buckley Jr.] stammer like that at home, or is it totally affected for TV?

A: The stammer, the gestures, he practices those in the greenroom before going on TV every time. A media adviser told him when he was very young that he needed more affectation. He's been very diligent.

Q: You're raising your kids Catholic? I thought you were lapsed.

A: I was raising them agnostic, then the Hale-Bopp thing happened, and I thought, "What if in their 20s, they decide they need some spiritual connection and they turn to some idiot like that cult leader?"

Q: You were a speech writer for President Bush. Did you know Fawn Hall?

A: Ever so slightly. Alas. She was hot. She was the right-wing Charlie's Angel.

Q: Didn't she hide stuff in her panties?

A: Yes. They were having a shredding party, and the shredding machine overheated and clogged. So she was smuggling top-secret documents out in her panties. I thought it would have made a very hot Vanity Fair photo spread.

Q: I thought it was kind of hot just when the shredding machine overheated.

A: That didn't do as much for me as the classified documents in the panties.

Q: One of your novels was optioned by Mel Gibson. Were you surprised to learn that Gibson reads?

A: I had visions that Mel and I would become intimate friends. To this day I have never spoken with him. Though I read an interview in which he talked about his conversations with me.

Q: That's so Hollywood cool.

A: It was way cool. Because that's the sort of thing I should be doing. I should be telling the newspapers, "Mel and I are very close. I can't really get into my relationship with Mel because it's very deep, on a whole other plane."

--By Joel Stein