‘Farce’ reveals Saget’s dark side

As Bob Saget puts it: “Someone asked me, ‘Why are you using all your favors on this?’ “

Why, indeed. For his latest film project, “Farce of the Penguins,” Saget assembled an impressive list of actors, from Samuel L. Jackson (who narrates) to Christina Applegate, from Whoopi Goldberg to Harvey Fierstein.

These folks and many, many more name actors contributed their talents to a raunchy spoof of the Oscar-winning documentary “March of the Penguins.”

The voiceover-and-stock footage “Farce” has gone straight from Saget’s dirty mind to a DVD shelf near you.

“I was on Conan (O’Brien) and he asked, ‘Why, of all movies, would you choose to have footage of penguins having sex? Why is that your choice?’ ” Saget says.

“And I have no answer. I’m a very sick man.”

Saget made a squeaky-clean name for himself starring in the TV sitcom “Full House” (from 1987 to 1995), as well as hosting “America’s Funniest Home Videos” for eight years during the 1990s. But he’s spent the years since then sending up that image.

He shocked a lot of people with an unbelievably filthy cameo in the 2005 documentary film “The Aristocrats,” about a dirty joke with an underground reputation among stand-up comedians.

“Farce of the Penguins” takes Saget farther down that road.

One day he was watching “March of the Penguins,” about the annual journey of Empire penguins to their traditional breeding ground, when he started making snarky remarks about what was transpiring on screen.

The idea for a farce then came to him. He even met with the suits at National Geographic Films, distributors of the original documentary.

“We had two meetings, which means they wanted to hear about it again, which is amazing to me,” he says.

National Geographic didn’t stay interested for long, however – forcing Saget to go elsewhere for penguin footage.

The film was ultimately done on the cheap. Footage doesn’t match from shot to shot, quality is wildly inconsistent, the penguins’ mouths don’t move.

“You never know who’s talking. You just don’t care at a certain point,” says Saget.

“The joke is that it’s made. The movie’s made out of air. The first person we cast was Abe Vigoda.”

Judging from the number of people who contributed to “Farce of the Penguins” (the list also includes Jason Alexander, Jim Belushi, Lewis Black, Gilbert Gottfried, Alyson Hannigan, Carlos Mencia and Mo’Nique, among others), Saget has a lot of friends in show business. But several actors did say no to the project.

“The first offer was to Betty White, and she turned us down,” says Saget. “So did Rue McClanahan and Bea Arthur. And then we asked Phyllis Diller.”

Diller, says Saget, doesn’t want to be remembered as a dirty comedian, which he understands. He doesn’t want to be, either.

“People ask me to do cameos and be the dirty guy in the movie, and I’m like, ‘I’ve done seven cameos in the past five years. Haven’t we suffered enough?’ ” he says.

When the producers of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” first showed Saget clips of people getting hit in the crotch and animals running into walls, he laughed out loud and agreed to host a special – a one-time thing that would grow into a multiyear commitment.

“So the tree opened up, and people trashed me for that,” he says.

“It takes 10 years to get a job, and then 10 years to do the job if you’re the luckiest person on the earth, and then 10 years to tell people you’re not that person.”