Updated at the bottom: Willard denies it. First posted at 11:50 a.m.

Funnyman Fred Willard, a Tonight Show With Jay Leno regular and actor in such frat-boy classics as Anchorman and Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle allegedly gave himself hours of material to work with last night after cops say they found him committing a lewd act inside an adult theater.

Not only any theater, however, but the darkest, dankest, funkiest adult theater still surviving in Los Angeles — the Tiki on 5462 Santa Monica Boulevard, where live dancers have been known to skirt that human boundary between man and woman and the torn up seats should probably be covered in plastic before you plop down with your bag of popcorn and a few tissues. Yeah …

… it's like that!

Actually it appears the Tiki no longer employs the three-legged dancers it once did and now sticks to pornographic film (because you can't see that stuff, like, on your iPhone, computer, iPad, anywhere, really).

LAPD's Rosario Herrera told us Willard was detained about 8:50 p.m. last night at a theater in the 5400 block of Santa Monica Boulevard after plain-clothes vice officers on a routine check of the place sneaked up on him and allegedly caught him in some sort of lewd act.


View Larger Map

(We're guessing his right shoulder was allegedly moving up and down furiously, but there are other lewd acts out there.)

Willard, 72, was taken to the Hollywood station, cited for suspicion of lewd conduct, and released, she said. His bail was set at $500, according to Herrera, and he was released about 5:35 a.m. today, according to sheriff's inmate data.

Willard is rumored to be working on a forthcoming movie called … The Yank. Really. No, he wasn't researching the role. It's about an Irish American who “goes to Ireland to find love, but finds the grass isn't always greener — even in Ireland.”

Now, back to the Tiki. Check out those glowing reviews on Yelp.

One reviewer had the temerity to punk Mr. Willard by posting as Fred W. today and giving the place 5 stars:

Credit: Yelp

Credit: Yelp

On lunch breaks during filming of my new series Trust Us With Your Life, I stop in for quick stroke and pop. They have such wonderful films like: Super Sluts 13, Naughty Naughty Nurses and Desperate Housewives XXX. You see, I don't own a computer or DVD player …

(Slaps knee.)

Another Yelp user, Bitten H., describes the dignified experience at the Tiki:

For a $10 admission, an elderly Korean man pushes a paper raffle ticket under a bulletproof glass screen that looks like it's been slathered in Vaseline. A sign next to it reads NO WEAPONS, NO DRUGS, NO SEX OF ANY KIND (that means you too, dog fuckers). You click through a well worn turnstile and try hard not to touch any surface as you make your way through heavy, black velvet curtains into 900 square ft room with 30 theater style folding chairs. A quarter of the audience is wearing hooded sweaters and smoking crack, another quarter is jerking off, the rest are jerking each other off, cruising for a jerk off or doing something so vile you probably wouldn't want to see it. Let's assume they're hiding murder weapons or making a list of items to add to their next rape kit.

Yep.

[Update at 4:05 p.m.]: Willard, through his lawyer, denies he was doing anything illegal.

Attorney Paul Takakjian told TMZ that they would fight the charge, saying “our belief is that Fred did nothing in any violation of any law.”

Maybe he was just taking in a rare big-screen glimpse of pornography while rotating his shoulder?

Several reports noted that today PBS said it would drop Willard as the narrator of Antiques Roadshow spin-off Market Warriors.

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.