SportsHollywood: Was Van Wilder always thought of as a modern-day "Animal House," or were the National Lampoon and Tim Matheson brought onboard later in the process?

PANAY: We always had Animal House meets Ferris Bueller in mind. only in our wildest dreams did we think we would get lumped into the Lampoon movies. Yes, Lampoon came on after we finished the film. They saw the movie and felt that it was the "Animal House" of the new Millennium and decided to support the film with their logo. We're honored they wanted to be involved.

SportsHollywood: How did you get involved with the film?

PANAY: "Van Wilder" was an idea that I had. I pitched it to Peter Abrams and Robert Levy, the owners of Tapestry Films and producers of Van. from the day I came to Tapestry, Peter and Robert have always encouraged me to come up with ideas and self start our movies as opposed to waiting around for the perfect script to come our way. I then met with Brent Goldberg and David Wagner, who we hired to expand on the idea and write the screenplay, of course they delivered!!!

BECKER: When I first read the script, it got sent to me by, like, five different people: My manager, business friends, producers... It was a script that everybody like that hadn't been produced yet. I read at pages and was like, "Oh-no, another college comedy," and put it down. I wasn't interested. Then somebody else sent me and said, "You have to read this!" And so I picked it up and finally finished it, and what I found -- and I think what sets it apart -- is that has a lot more heart. It has an emotional core to it that a lot of the other college films didn't. I saw a lot of It's a Wonderful Life -- I know it's a weird parallel to draw (laughs). It's one of my favorite movies -- and it's about this same character -- about this benevolent guy who does everything for everybody else, and he gets in trouble, and everybody he's helped along the way comes back and saves him! That was it for me. So I said if I could do a little rewrite on it, and I could cast Ryan Reynolds as the lead, then I'd do the movie.

SportsHollywood: Ryan Reynolds does a great job of bringing off both the charm of the character, and giving the dark side a lovable streak. Was he always the first choice?

PANAY: Ryan was it!! We knew he was Van Wilder. We saw clips of him in another film that he did with Walt Becker called "Buying The Cow." He was amazing and jumped off the screen. He is Van Wilder and we never looked back.

BECKER: I had just finished the first film I'd written and directed, called Buying the Cow, that Ryan was starring in. As I got to page 15, I was saying, "Oh my God, this is sooo Ryan!" He played kind of the same character in Buying the Cow -- this ladies' guy, but who everybody actually loves. It was a role that could have been very off-putting, and it's the same with Van Wilder. Because he's so brash and confidant and full of life, it's easy to turn off to him. Ryan is one of the few actors I've seen, especially at his age, that can pull off those kinds of roles without having people turn off to him. I draw the analogy to Matthew Broderick in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. That movie doesn't work without him.

There was a list of five actors -- the "hunks d'jour," you know, that the studio wanted. But for me, if it's a title character like Ferris Bueller, and you don't have the right guy, the movie's not going to work. I said, "There's one guy that can do it. If not, I don't know if we should do it." After they saw a clip of him, they said, okay, we'll use Ryan, but only if we get Tara Reid, who was number one on their list. Thank God, she liked the script and did it. I think she's great in the movie.