One of the first things that jumped out at me seeing Kevin James in person was how different he looked from the film. Not content to go the "stock fat guy" route, Kevin packed on a surprising number of pounds for the role; something that not only helped him make the character funnier to look at, but something that gave him some cushioning for the surprisingly action-intense film.

Conceived of and written by James, "Blart" tells the story of a down-on-his-luck mall cop who finally gets a chance to be the hero when criminals take the mall hostage. With lots of intention references, it's "Die Hard" in a mall with James in the John McClane role.

I asked James about how the film came together and what kind of mall-cop training he had to go through to bring Blart to life. I also asked him about the age old question of dueling plotlines. Like the summers of "Armageddon" versus "Deep Impact" and "Antz" versus "A Bug's Life", 2009 brings us the first-ever conflicting mall cop movies, pitting "Paul Blart" up against Seth Rogen's "Observe and Report". Check out the first word on who would win in an all-out mall cop fight below: