The boundaries of good taste have never represented much of an obstacle to Rob Schneider - and the American comedian once again hurdles them with ease in his latest offering, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. 'The idea this time was to not censor ourselves,' Schneider says. 'Because, let's face it, today's audiences have seen everything. There's nothing that can shock them. So we thought, 'Let's do something that shocks them'. Everything we did we genuinely thought was funny, but I have to admit that, for the first time, we would sit in a room for whole days with the sole aim of coming up with shocking ideas.' The results of these brainstorming sessions pretty much speak for themselves: a woman whose nose is a penis; a pimp who eats french fries floating in a toilet bowl; a woman with a laryngectomy who sprays wine through the hole in her neck; and an endless stream of puerile, gross-out gags that would make the Farrelly brothers blush. Schneider's follow-up to his 1999 hit Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo has come in for plenty of flak, with some critics finding it well beyond the pale. Hong Kong audiences were going to see it for themselves on the big screen - but the promotional posters soon disappeared and now it's available only on DVD. 'Racist', 'misogynist' and 'spurious' are some of the brick-bats that have been hurled at the film. Roger Ebert dismissed it as 'aggressively bad', before handing it a rare zero-star rating. Schneider is unapologetic, and says the humour isn't malicious. 'I wouldn't do anything that's mean-spirited,' he says. 'There are some things that I just think are funny, but are in bad taste - it's not politically correct. But I make fun of myself. And the French and the Brits and the Greeks and the Italians - everyone.' Schneider decided to write his sequel after being urged to do so by fans of Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, a surprising box-office and DVD sales success. 'I didn't have an idea for a sequel, but I kept hearing it wherever I went - 'Are you going to do another Deuce Bigalow?' And I'd always say, 'Well, I've never thought about it but ...' And then finally I was in Yugoslavia, a few years back, entertaining the peacekeeping troops over there. And some guys said to me, 'Come on, you've gotta make a sequel'. So I started writing it there and then.' For the uninitiated, Schneider plays the hapless Deuce Bigalow in both movies, a bumbling fish-tank cleaner who stumbles into the world of male prostitution. In the sequel, shot entirely on location in Amsterdam, Deuce is lured out of retirement to help clear his former pimp T.J. (Eddie Griffin) of involvement in the murders of Europe's most famous gigolos. Schneider created the character of Deuce after being nagged by his best friend, Adam Sandler, to come up with a script. Inspiration came while he was watching the 1980 Richard Gere film American Gigolo. 'Adam had said to me, 'C'mon, you gotta write your own movie'. And I was trying to come up with an idea, flipping TV channels. And I saw American Gigolo, and I thought, 'This movie is just ridiculous'. It doesn't hold up at all. It's like a clothing commercial for Armani. 'The whole idea that a supermodel, Lauren Hutton, needs to hire Richard Gere when she can go to any bar she wants and pick up any guy she wants was ridiculous to me. And it got me thinking, 'Well, who are the women who would really need a gigolo?' Maybe a woman with enormous feet, or a woman who's 21/2 metres tall. So I just started writing it with a friend of mine and it just kept getting funnier and funnier to me.' The first Deuce Bigalow went on to take more than US$100 million worldwide - respectable money for a relatively inexpensive project - but Schneider's career took a downward turn after his next big project, The Hot Chick, flopped. Disney passed up the opportunity to bankroll European Gigolo as a result - which Schneider now says was a blessing. 'My career was in the toilet after The Hot Chick,' he says. 'Disney dumped me. But you know what, it was the best thing that could have happened. Those morons at Disney would never have made a dirty movie. So we could really cut loose with the sequel.' With three more movies due for release over the next 12 months, Schneider says his principal motivation is giving the average movie-goer a memorable experience. 'I just don't want to disappoint,' he says. 'Every once in a while, people will come up and say, 'My wife and I saw your movie and we had a ball. It was our first date'. And that's so nice. Because for most people in the United States it's a hard life. 'The economy is good for about 2 per cent of the population, but everyone else is hurting. So a couple gets Friday night off - they have to pay for a babysitter, they're tired, they've been working all week, they have to pay for parking at the movie theatre, then they get in line with everybody else and they have to buy crappy popcorn, and the seats aren't that good. 'So, when the lights come down you just want to give them a good ride.'