blart

Villarreal: I need Gaitok to watch “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” to hype himself up in this role.

The clerk—a Segway expert who had a very specific complaint about an inaccuracy in Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2—gave me a short lesson, put a helmet on me, and sent me out to Ginger around the National Mall.

Nick Bakay, who co-wrote Paul Blart with its star, Kevin James, said that as soon as they saw a mall cop riding a Segway, they basically knew they had a movie.

But no one looked more like a dork riding a Segway than Paul Blart, the hero of Paul Blart: Mall Cop, a movie that made $146 million at the box office and cemented, more than any other pop culture product, the gooniness of the Segway.

But by 2009, when Paul Blart came out, Kamen was almost ready to leave the Segway behind.