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February 17, 2010
Interview: Tim Conway
His best-known character is a diminutive, faux Scandinavian golf ‘expert’ and many of the characters he portrayed as an Emmy-winning comedic actor on ‘The Carol Burnett Show’ had him costumed in such a way as to make his face memorable if not immediately recognizable. You know him. You just might not know how you know him. He is that guy.
For 50 years the comedian has relished his regular role of second banana, entertaining TV and film audiences with his absurd shtick, never playing it straight but always keeping it clean.
We spoke with the affable native Midwesterner from his home in California last week in advance of his two-night stint at the Paramount Theatre this weekend.
The M.O.: How’re you?
Tim Conway: Not well. But, I guess you’ve got problems, so you don’t want to be listening in on mine.
Which one of us should lay down on the couch?
Yea, right.
Will this be your first time in Austin?
No, as a matter of fact, I spent quite a bit of time in Austin. We had a couple of pieces of property there for awhile, so we would run in and out. Beautiful city. And, obviously now, you guys are one of the top five cities to live in in this country.
Yea, it’s a fun place to be.
Yea, fortunately, we sold everything before it really became valuable. So, we got out of there, boy.
Before your career in entertainment … the U.S. Army doesn’t seem like the best place for a cut-up …
Ah, you noticed that? Yea, I spent a little extra time in the Army for cutting up. They had no sense of humor whatsoever.
How did you reconcile or use your humor in that case?
Well, I was on guard duty one night. And it didn’t make much sense to me, because it was in Seattle at Fort Lewis and I was guarding the service club - you know ping pong balls and stuff like that - during peace time. So, I happened to get in the back of a car and I feel asleep and then I noticed, ‘Oh, God, it’s time for the guy to come around, the lieutenant.’ So, you’re supposed to point your rifle at him and say, ‘Halt. Advance and be recognized,’ and everything. So I ran out to go to the place where I was supposed to meet these people, and I noticed that I had forgotten my rifle. And they’re kinda sticky about that. So, I went to a dumpster and pulled out one of those long neon light tubes, and when the guy came around the corner I said ‘Halt. Advance and be recognized,’ and he started giving me his name and rank and all that. Then he said, ‘Wait a minute. What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s a light bulb and if you come any closer I’m gonna turn it on.’ And then I got to paint rocks white and put them along the driveway for a long time.
When you started on the Steve Allen show, you had no formal training as an actor or comedian. Did that make you nervous or do you think that benefited you?
I think it benefited me because I wasn’t really that concerned about whether anyone ever liked me or not. I was working at a local station in Cleveland with a guy named Ernie Anderson, who became really popular in Cleveland … and I was actually directing the show at the time, and we were supposed to have a movie and a guest. And the show was so bad at the time we couldn’t get any guests. And I never did figure out how to back-time a movie so that it would end at 10 o’clock; so the first week we didn’t have any endings to the movies, and people would call and say, ‘Hey, what happened here?’ And I said, ‘It’s ‘Citizen Kane.’ It’s a sled. Get over it.’ So it kinda got to be an inside thing because the show was really a disaster. But it got to be funnier because nothing was working. And we couldn’t get the guests, so this guy would introduce me as a guest and come out as a bullfighter or a trumpet player and away we’d go doing these stupid little sketches.
After Steve’s show you ended up on the Carol Burnett Show. Did it ever feel like a risk being as absurd as you were on that show?
She’s probably the most generous star you can find. Most stars, if something funny happens on the show, they say ‘I’ll be doing that.’ But Carol said let’s just have fun and see how long we can go with this thing. And that’s what we did. And, Harvey (Korman), of course, being a very bad performer, laughing all the time - I don’t know how they ever hired him - was an easy target for me. I was a writer on the show, so I’d write one thing and say something else, and he never knew where we were going with the thing, so I’d kinda leave him in the dark. We just couldn’t wait to get there on Monday for the next week. It was really a lot of fun to do.
The entertainment you guys did on that show was very family-friendly. Were you ever cognizant of trying to play to the broadest audience?
You know, in those days, you didn’t even think to have a hint of anything off-color or nudity or violence. There were 17 variety shows on at the time. So, variety was the place to be. It was like vaudeville. I was offered a lot of things along the way, but I never wanted to do them … Don Knots ended up being a close friend of mine, and Don had the same approach to comedy as I did: You just do good, clean humor and funny stuff and you don’t have to apologize at the end of the show. So, what we’re doing now with these shows is pretty much the same thing, where you just do family-type comedy and you get an audience that you don’t have to apologize to. So that was really my goal in life … They send me stuff that’s unbelievable. How anyone can …. Not that I’m a prude — I should probably be in Levenworth, really, in my personal life - but, I don’t know how in the hell you can say, ‘Oh yea, this will be good. I can do this.’ I’m not gonna name any shows, we’re all aware of what they are. But I saw a show the other night - that if I was watching it with my family, in the days when we were watching Sid Caesar, they not only would cringe, they’d have a heart attack. So, it’s changed considerably.
And I think television has kind of shut off people that come from the era that we did, where it was really fun for fun and television was part of the family. You had to watch it with the whole family, cause there was no tape or anything; so if you wanted to talk about the show the next day, you had to watch it. And there was only usually one set in the house, so everybody would gather around. You can’t gather around with your kids now days because you never know what’s gonna jump out at you. Steve Allen asked me to be part of the Parent Television Council — and they’re not burning scripts or anything, they’re just trying to get all this crap to at least after 10 o’clock so that the kids aren’t sitting around the television set watching this. And, I said, ‘Steve, in my personal life … I shouldn’t be throwing rocks … I shouldn’t even be going toward the rock pile at all.’ And he said, ‘We’re not trying to restrict writers from writing whatever they want to write, but just put it in a time where the kids aren’t watching.’
You kinda strike me as an absurdist Garrison Keillor…
He’s one of my favorites, incidentally. Also, one of my favorite comedians was Richard Pryor. Richard obviously used the (foul) language in his act, but Richard was also adept to do characters that he had seen in life. The guy was brought up in a house of prostitution where you don’t say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ so much. So, his language, real was part of his life. I really thought that he was an exceptional talent. So, it’s not that I’m opposed to (blue humor), but put it in the right venue.
What’s the key to successful physical comedy?
The combination of words and body movement. You look at singers, and you know the ones that have rhythm. Tony Bennett, to me, is an example of a great, great singer but is kind of a little stiff. Sinatra was a guy who had it all together. He not only was the best singer ever, but his body moved with what he was singing and talking about. And you just don’t notice the movements when a guy is really flowing. And I think that’s the secret to comedy. Most comedians will say that it’s like leading an orchestra, as far as an audience. You look for crescendos and you look for low spots, and you know you’re building toward this big joke where there’s gonna be this big laugh. And that’s kinda how you take people along the way.
In talking about Bennett and Sinatra, it almost sounds like the difference between being a boxer and being a puncher.
Absolutely.
I doubt you ever imagined back in 1960 that you’d still be doing comedy 50 years later.
I didn’t imagine I’d ever be doing this. I started out to be a jockey; that was my goal. My dad was training horses in Cleveland — he’d come from Ireland as a whip, which is the guy who would keep hounds in line on Saturdays. And, as you know, if you look out in your backyard, not too many whips go by on Saturdays. So he ended up working with horses; so I would go to the track and he’d let me gallop these horses around the track. If I hadn’t fallen off as much as I did, and been totally frightened of these animals, I think I probably would have been a pretty good jockey. But, they were picking me up a lot out there.
Sounds kind of like your Dorf bit. Speaking of Ireland, I wonder if the pathos of the Irish has had any influence on your comedy or world view.
Just that I would have a drink immediately after the show. That, I think, was the only connection.
What: An Evening With Tim Conway
When: Friday, February 19 and Saturday, February 20 at 8 p.m.
Where: Paramount Theatre
Tickets: $45 - $110
More info.: www.austintheatre.org
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December 9, 2009
Interview: Don Rickles
Six decades into one of the most enduring comedy careers in history, Rickles still works up to 75 times a year, performing at venues across the country and appearing on TV and film. And, of course, there’s Las Vegas, where the man Johnny Carson dubbed “Mr. Warmth” has entertained and antagonized crowds with his acerbic wit for 51 consecutive years. Known for his ruthless and insensitive jabs at his audience, Rickles says his performances are simply his exaggerated take on the shared human experience — “our habits, our way of life and what we are.”
“I’m really an average guy to hang around with as friends,” Rickles said recently by phone from California, a few weeks ahead of his appearance at the Paramount Theatre today and Friday. “It’s all an image that you create. You gotta be a personality that’s a little different. I tell young people: To get successful, you’ve gotta be different and take chances.” One of the biggest chances Rickles took on stage early in his career came at a small Hollywood club in 1957. In a story that has become legend, Rickles, who by that time already had become known for his interactions with the crowds as much as for his joke telling, spotted Frank Sinatra in the audience and quipped, “Make yourself at home, Frank. Hit somebody.”
The line undoubtedly emboldened the brash comedian, who over the years became good friends with Sinatra. In the golden age of Vegas and Hollywood, when celebrities were treated like royalty, Rickles was never scared to take shots at those in the loftiest of perches. And in the spirit of the idea that every good gang needs one funny guy around to keep everyone loose and lighten the mood, Rickles became a bit of the court jester for The Rat Pack. But the jokes, despite their sting, always seemed to come from a place of love. “All those big stars, when I was in Las Vegas, they came to see me because they wanted me to kid with them,” Rickles said. “I was never mean-spirited, even to this day. And the majority of them enjoyed it when I mentioned them or talked about them and it became part of ‘Don Rickles.’ “
As legendary director-producer Carl Reiner said in the documentary “Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project”: “If you hadn’t been insulted by Rickles, you hadn’t made it.”
Rickles did not always envision a career for himself in comedy. Drawn to the screen and stage, he attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. But after a failed round of theatrical auditions, the former Navy man began to realize that his way into show business would be alone on a stage with a microphone.
“I would have loved to have been more involved (in movies) or on the Broadway stage, which is one thing I missed,” Rickles said. “But I got so involved doing comedy in those days, and jobs were coming to me and money was a factor. I was very pleased to hear that nightclub guys wanted me, and so it overpowered the idea of waiting around for a movie and so forth.
“I did a round (of auditions) on Broadway, and I wasn’t too lucky with that. But I picked up a few movies along the way, and, all in all, it turned out OK. I would’ve enjoyed doing more film work, but in my day, you can’t have the whole cake. So, I enjoyed my part of the comedic side, and I have no regrets.”
Nor should he. In a career that has spanned 60 years, the rapscallion whose acid tongue is mellowed by a wink and a smile has continued to find a way to relate to audiences of all ages. Rickles, who has always written his own material, says the key to staying relevant and resonating with his fans isn’t so much in coming up with the most clever jokes or shocking punch lines, but being likable.
“The basic thing is, people have to like you personally,” he said. “I can get up there and tell you the funniest jokes in the world, but if I’m not kind of a likable guy or have a way about me, then you don’t gotta chance … So it’s the personality that has to be the basis. If they like the personality and what you do, you’ve got a chance.”
Don Rickles in Austin
Where: Paramount Theatre, 713 Congress Ave.
When: Thursday and Friday. Doors at 7 p.m.; show at 8 p.m.
Cost: $45-$135
More information: (866) 977-6849, austintheatre.org
Worth noting: Those who bring new or gently used blankets or sleeping bags; winter accessories (hats, scarves, gloves); new socks; long johns; or Large-XXL adult jackets to the Paramount when purchasing tickets to see ‘Mr. Warmth’ will avoid all service charges, receive free parking and two free drinks. Donations benefit Front Steps.
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August 28, 2009
Interview: 'Extract' director, Mike Judge
Through his television and film work, Judge has cultivated a voice portraying sympathetic characters baffled and beleaguered by rubes and circumstances outside of their control, from Ron Livingston’s character in “Office Space” to Hank Hill in “King of the Hill,” Judge’s beloved and ambling animated TV hit that will see its 12-year run end in September.
Judge returns to the workplace in his new film, “Extract,” which opens Friday, but this time he shows his sympathies lie not just with the little guy. The film focuses on the owner of a vanilla extract company (Jason Bateman) and his attempts to manage his eccentric employees while haphazardly trying to revitalize his marriage.
I spoke with Judge last week at the Four Seasons Hotel after the Austin premiere of “Extract” to discuss his new film, dealing with Hollywood, living in Austin and what’s next.
Where did the idea for ‘Extract’ come from and when did it originate?
Mike Judge: I started writing shortly after ‘Office Space,’ and it was kind of two ideas that I combined. One was the guy hiring the gigolo and then the other one was the thing about Mila’s character - just a girl who’s kind of a really good looking sociopath. I didn’t really know where I was going with either of them; I just started writing and then combined them. And then put them it all in a factory that makes vanilla extract.
Speaking of extract … was there any metaphoric meaning in that product … due to its essence or simplicity?
It definitely wasn’t a metaphor. When I used to see that Adams Extract factory by the side of the freeway (in Austin), I just thought I really liked the way that building looked. I like those classic American factory-type buildings. When I was a musician, I played with a guy who was sponsored by Miller Genuine Draft, and they would fly us up to Milwaukee and a couple of times gave us a tour of the bottling factory. And I just kinda liked watching all that machinery work; it’s just fun to look at. Also, I was driving with my Realtor once back in ‘94, and he just pointed to a nice house over in Pemberton and said, ‘That’s where the Adams Extract people live.’ I just kind of thought, ‘you know, it’s kind of this odd item that’s in the grocery store that you’ve seen all your life but you don’t think about how it’s made or who decided to start a factory.’ So it just seemed kind of interesting to me, actually. And then, when I would tell people, ‘this guy has a factory that makes vanilla extract,’ they’d start laughing; so, I figured I’m one step ahead if that’s already getting a laugh.
If you started writing this just after ‘Office Space,’ I guess you didn’t have Jason Bateman in mind when writing?
No. And I put the thing on the shelf and didn’t look at it again for a few years, I guess. But after I’d seen ‘Arrested Development,’ I thought, ‘Man, this guy’s perfect.’ He did ‘King of the Hill’ once. My producing partners, for years, they were ahead of the game … they were always into Jason Bateman. They always thought he ought to be given a chance to be a leading guy, going all the way back to the 80s.
There’s an everyman characteristic about Bateman’s character. The same could be said about the protagonists in much of your other work. They are these everyday guys who have to deal with the buffoons and antics surrounding them. Do you relate to that character in a personal way?
It’s probably something I relate to, myself, I guess. And particularly with this, I wanted to do something where a guy is trying to be a nice boss and gets taken advantage of and how that’s kind of a difficult task. I’d never had anybody work for me, I was always an employee, and I had, you know, 100 jobs. Then, when ‘Beavis and Butt-head’ happened, I suddenly had 50 people working for me, and I started to sympathize with bosses I’d had and realized, ‘This is not easy.’ I just thought there could be something funny there. But, yea, he’s kind of an everyman … who runs a factory.
It seems that in a lot of R-rated comedies of late, a lot of the characters seem to be too clever by half. You, on the other hand, have a natural tone. Can you speak to your writing style in that regard?
It used to bug me when you’re watching a movie and everyone’s a little too clever. You can just see there’s a comedy writer who spent forever coming up with this line for this person to say, and it starts to, I don’t know, make it less believable or something to me. I guess I tend to also not write jokes so much as just have the comedy come out of who the characters are and their situations, I guess.
Do you think your quick rise to fame and early success allowed you to do what you wanted to do on your terms, and the fact that you weren’t in Hollywood worrying about what tests well and how to write the perfect joke, gave you a different perspective?
I’m pretty lucky in that I started out making these films in my house by myself, not having to take any notes from anybody. And then ‘Beavis and Butt-head’ became a show and became a hit right away. So right away, Hollywood was looking to me for the answers instead of the other way around. I think if I had moved out there and tried to make it, I would have had a different deal. By the time I did ‘Office Space,’ ‘King of the Hill’ had been a hit and ‘Beavis and Butt-head’ and ‘Beavis and Butt-head’ the movie, and still it was hard to get a studio to get on board with dialogue that was a guy just going, [does impersonation of ‘Frank Lundberg’ from ‘Office Space’] “Hmm … yea … if I could just go ahead and get that from you …” I mean, they saw the dailies and they were just breathing down my neck, ‘What are you doing, man?! Where’s the punch line? Why aren’t you shaking the camera all over the place and getting wide-angle lenses in people’s faces?’ So, even with the success, there’s such pessimism. They were just like, ‘Well, it’s because he should only be doing animation. He doesn’t know what he’s doing with live action. This is horrible.’ And then when Office Space came out and didn’t do so well, they said, ‘Well, see, we were right … you should have had punch lines and this and that.’ And eventually it started making a lot of money and they wanted sequels and all this other stuff. (laughs) Hollywood is very afraid to completely insult someone usually because there’ve been so many comeback stories.
Speaking of Hollywood … you’ve been in Austin for about 15 years now. What is it that you like about living and working in Austin that keeps you away from Hollywood?
Austin to me has everything I’d want in a town, and, even though it’s gotten bigger, it still feels kind of small. I’m able to get more done here. I can write and work better here. Over the years, it’s also kind of helped make me unavailable, which can be a good thing.
After the troubles you had with 20th Century Fox, specifically on ‘Idiocracy,’ what was your experience like getting ‘Extract’ made the way you wanted?
‘Idiocracy’ was a script that was the last thing I owed them on a deal that went way back to (the late 90s). And I wasn’t even sure I wanted to make it, but everybody was encouraging me. This one I just wrote on spec. What a lot of people do, and what I have done, and what your agent always wants you to do, is get the money in advance to write it. So, with this one, I just wanted to write it. And my producing partners are kind of in the same boat. We all decided together that we were just going to start writing stuff on spec and own it and do business a different way. We actually got independent financing for most of the budget. Miramax came in for the rest of the budget and bought domestic distribution, so it wasn’t even a development deal or anything. We already had Jason on board and all this before Miramax came in.
How did you get Ben Affleck on board?
Ben actually had read the script, and I had never met him before, and I heard he wanted to do it. And I thought, ‘Wow, really?’ Because I remember after ‘Dazed and Confused’ came out, I asked Rick Linklater, ‘Who’s the guy with the paddle who gets the paint dumped on him? Cause he’s really good.’ And this is way back in ’93. And he was telling me, ‘Oh, it’s this guy Ben Affleck, and he’s really smart and a really good guy to work with.’ And then he became this huge star. But I actually like him when he’s a character actor, like in that movie, like in ‘Shakespeare in Love.’ So I met with him and he started telling me about this guy back in Boston that he’s friends with, who he went to high school with and as he was talking about it, I could just sort of see it. And we had a read-through of the script, and he just killed it. I just thought he was really funny. And luckily he agreed to kind of make himself look different. He just got it, ya know?
When I first saw his name, I thought it may come off as an over-the-top cameo, but he really owned it and you could tell he enjoyed doing the role.
Yea. We shot a bunch if his stuff toward the beginning, and then all the factory stuff was at the end, so he came back for one factory scene, and I could tell he was kind of happy to be back. I think he really had a lot of fun with it, and it was really fun watching those guys together.
I assume, since you had independent funding for ‘Extract,’ you probably didn’t have to wage the battles you did for casting on ‘Office Space.’
It was much easier There weren’t any discussions about it. You know, whoever I thought was best and was available I could put in without having to listen to why this person isn’t funny and that person isn’t funny by the people who hired me because I supposedly know what I was doing. So that was definitely a better experience.
Why did you choose to shoot in L.A. as opposed to Austin?
It was actually cheaper, I think, to shoot in L.A. and we could get the actors to do it more easily in L.A. We shot some exteriors here, actually, so there is a little bit of Austin in it.
Also, the timing … you know, we shot it in the summer. I had always planned to shoot ‘Idiocracy’ and ‘Office Space’ here in the winter, and each time it got delayed until it was the middle of summer.
The film, in a sense, is about sex and infidelity and the fears surrounding it. But there’s no sex or nudity in the film, so it feels like a fairly conservative look at sex. Was that a conscious decision?
I wouldn’t say it’s a conscious decision. But when I see a movie, I don’t need to be in a theater getting turned on. That can happen in private just fine. I can’t imagine trying to be on the set when there’s actually a nude scene … I don’t wanna do that. There’s enough drama with actors with no nudity, so I can’t even imagine … … (laughs)
Do you ever make it out to any of the comedy or improv clubs in Austin, or are those the places you know for certain you will be recognized?
I haven’t in awhile. I used to go to see stand-up at the Velveeta Room and stuff. There’ve been a couple people I’ve used who I met there. And when I was casting ‘Idiocracy,’ I’d see people who were kind of a part of that scene. There’s a lot of good people here. Even though we shot this in L.A., I ended up using a little bit of local casting. You know, there’s a certain type of person that decides to up and move to L.A. and become and actor. For women, especially there are some interesting actors here. In L.A. you either have the huge fat woman who’s in the pizza commercials or the skinny, anorexic hot blonde ones … it’s harder to find those kind of in between ones.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
There’s a thing that my partners, Dave Krinsky and John Altschuler, wrote called “Brigadier Gerad,” that we’ll probably do next. I don’t think I’ll direct it, I’ll probably produce it. It’s set during the Napoleonic Wars, and it’s a comedy based on these stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that are actually really funny. I read them, and it’s rare that you see something over 100 years old that makes you laugh. Maybe it’s not that rare. Anyway, these guys wrote this great script and we’re hanging on to it and we’re probably going to make that.
Independently?
Yea. I think it will probably get distributed by a studio. We have the money in place, we’re just kind of figuring out who’s going to be in it and that sort of thing.
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June 25, 2009
Interview: Robert Kenner, director of 'Food, Inc.'
During the better part of the past 40 years, according to Robert Kenner’s new documentary “Food, Inc.,” we have seen a massive industrialization of the food we consume, leading to an increasingly unhealthy population and an environment in peril.
A handful of gigantic corporations engineering meat and produce in an effort to make cheaper food in larger quantities has led to a growing public health crisis, the new film contends.
Most disturbingly, Kenner says, most of the companies mentioned in his film do not want consumers to know what is in their food - or to ask.
I spoke with Kenner by phone recently to discuss how we got to where we are and what consumers can do to demand healthier choices from the people who put much of the food on America’s tables.
The M.O.: How are you?
Robert Kenner: I’m good. Yourself?
Well, after watching your movie, a little nervous to eat lunch, to be honest. But I do feel good that I am eating leftover pork tenderloin that we bought from a local farm. So I feel somewhat OK about it.
Well, listen, the answer is that you just have to keep going. And know that there’re good choices and you’ll start to make better choices, and you’re not gonna be perfect. I’m not perfect. For me, traveling is a pain. How do you eat? You have fewer choices. Eating at home, you’re gonna have better choices, but that’s hard for most of us.
If fast food hadn’t come around, do you think we’d be in the predicament we are with regard to the food industrial complex or do you think it simply hastened the inevitable?
It certainly sped up the process, because when McDonald’s wanted all their hamburgers to taste the same, they went from 50 meat producers to a very limited number so that they could have a consistency in the hamburger. So all of a sudden you had a few huge players. Then all of a sudden there was one French fry player, one potato player. What was astounding to me is they’re amongst the biggest buyers for apples, lettuce, tomatoes. So all of a sudden there were so few players. And you realized it spread to everything.
Soon, tobacco companies will have to publish the ingredients to cigarettes on their products. How have we reached a point where we are going to know what is in cigarettes but not know what is in our food?
For me the most shocking thing was when we went to the cloning hearing on whether to label cloned meat. I didn’t even know there was cloned meat. When that representative stood up and said, ‘I think it’s just not in the consumers’ interest to be given this information; it’s way to confusing,’ I thought, that just happens time and time again. These companies do whatever they can to stop you from knowing what’s in your food.
Was that the most shocking thing you discovered?
One was how they are able to keep from us the information about what we are eating. And they can even keep us from talking. I don’t think people went into this with evil intentions to sell us bad food, I think they went into it to figure out how to sell more food and get us to eat more calories and to make greater profits. But ultimately they have to start to figure out a different system but it is up to us as consumers to start to demand that and start to put pressure on them.
What’s been the impact of farm subsidizing on how and what we eat and how has that led to the explosion of corn?
Ultimately we started to subsidize corn because it was a way of producing calories cheaper and helped to keep food costs down because it doesn’t spoil and you can regulate. So we tried to solve a problem 40 years ago, and we were successful. Unfortunately, things got out of balance. I don’t really think there’s a conspiracy between food companies and pharmaceutical companies - which is a question I get asked all the time. But I do think they’re certainly benefiting each other. Certainly, food is benefiting pharmaceuticals because this food, on one hand, is certainly inexpensive, but there’s a real high cost to this low-priced food and it’s making us sick. The consequences of this food, they become shocking when you start to look at them, and surprising. That one-third of all Americans are going to get early-onset diabetes … it’s just staggering.
That’s unbelievable …
There’s a book by a former head of the FDA who was appointed by George (Herbert Walker) Bush who just talks about how these food companies are designing foods to deliver us salt, sugar and fat because you’re basically addicted to them. And it sounds like tobacco … they know you sort of can’t resist it. We have these built-in desires to eat this kind of food, but the amounts of sugars, salts and fats that are going into these foods now are astronomical. And it’s really not good for us.
Why have we skewed our food production towards these cheap foods instead of towards what is good for us?
I think it happened gradually. I don’t think it was intended. Well, on one hand I don’t think it was intended, but on the other hand, I do think these corporations will do everything possible to sell you this food. They’ll advertise and do research on how to get you to buy it, and basically, again, that involves sugar, salt and fat. As we start to see and understand how dangerous this food is for us, I think we’ll actually start to change things.
The tone of the film isn’t gloom and doomy, with the exception of a few Kubrick-esque tracking shots in the grocery store and some of the music. How did you settle on your tone?
I thought tone was really important because I wanted the film to be empowering. You want people to know that this is a system that we can change and we are going to change. I wanted to connect the dots to a system that is failing us. And ultimately, even though we are up against incredibly powerful forces that are well connected to government, it’s not different than tobacco in that once we start to see and understand what is wrong with the system, I really believe consumers are going to be able to start to transform it and change it.
I wonder if there’s any chance, with Congress talking about health care this summer, there will be any ancillary effect on people thinking about the causes in addition to how we take care of all these sick people.
I think that you can’t have health care reform in this country without having food reform. What I think will change right away is food safety … with the FDA now looking to have the power to recall products that are making us sick in the immediate sense, such as E. coli 0157. The idea that this E. coli that didn’t exist 30 years ago is now not only in meat, not only in spinach, but in chocolate chip cookie dough … it’s pretty amazing that we’ve created these sort of bugs because of this industrial system that is sort of spreading and getting out and moving into all these other arenas.
I was surprised at how subversive this world was, how litigious it was and how things are connected that you don’t think are connected. When I was talking to Barb Kowalcyk (documentary subject and mother of a child who died from E. coli) and she told me she couldn’t tell me what she eats … one, I realized I was entering a different domain than I thought I was in. And then when she mentioned Oprah … what was interesting to me was I had remembered Oprah but I had forgotten the connection to food somehow … all of a sudden I went, ‘Oh my God, it’s more insidious than I thought.’
What we had hoped to do in this film is really promote a conversation. Obviously I am disappointed by so much of the reaction from large industry.
None of them would really talk to you when doing the film …
Well, almost none. The man from the National Chicken Council did, and I thought we presented his best points. Wal-Mart did and Eldon Roth from BPI (Beef Products Inc.) did. Eldon is like the Ray Krocs of the world, in that he is like one of these American entrepreneurs and he is solving a problem. And he was proud of what he is doing and he let me in. And I have to say I admire a lot of what he’s doing - I might question some of it, but the fact is he’s not hiding behind a curtain. And he’s proud of what he does, and I feel like I haven’t gotten to say that enough. It’s the people who don’t want to talk and then want to have a controlled message afterward I find sort of scary.
It seems kind of perverse that we are given this idea of farmers as this agrarian, Rockwellian ideal when in fact it seems from watching your film that many farmers are becoming indentured servants for these industries. Talk about how these companies are keeping farmers under their thumbs.
With the chicken farmers the problem is that they’re so in debt. And there’re fewer and fewer farmers in the United States now. I don’t know what the exact number of farmers is but I’m sure it’s at least half of what it used to be 40 or 50 years ago. Monsanto has come out and said we demonize farmers in this film. And there are people who have not seen the film saying not to see it because it demonizes farmers, and it’s just not a health way of having a conversation. Though Cargill (an international producer and marketer of food, agricultural, financial and industrial products and service) just came out and said, ‘Listen, we realize ‘Food, Inc.’ is having a tremendous success and ultimately we welcome this conversation.’
Can you talk about Monsanto and their seed investigators?
Monsanto didn’t want to talk to us in the film on camera, and then they came out with Web sites afterward dedicated to our film and they try and follow me on the radio whenever possible. They said on the radio that they didn’t ever decline to be on the film, but what happened was we had four to five months of phone calls back and forth, we didn’t do much email but we did have 10 exchanges back and forth. We basically told them who was in our film and what we were talking about - with our characters’ permission - we then even gave them the name and phone numbers of some of these people so they could talk. It was numerous conversations, at which point they were never responding about not being in the film. Then we sent a letter saying, ‘At this point a lack of response will be taken as a no because we have to conclude the film.’ And they never responded to that. And then they go on the air and say, ‘We never declined to be in the film.’
They have armies of lawyers. But I don’t understand … you think they could defend their position about how their seeds work and why they think they’re good. But they go out and, I think, create misinformation.
Were you worried about facing litigation as a result of the movie?
You don’t want to say things that aren’t correct. But obviously this (the food industry) is a much more litigious world than you want to ever imagine. Who thought food could be so dangerous? You’re entering scary territory when you talk about food. There are laws designed to make it so they can sue you more easily.
What are the ‘veggie libel laws’ and their consequences?
The fact is you can be sued for disparaging a food product. And you can be sued for corporations losing income. Oprah was sued during the mad cow disease scare for saying she didn’t want to eat hamburgers. She was sued. She won the case eventually, but, you know, it took millions of dollars and six years of her time. That’s something that sort of slows one down. I’ve spent more money on legal fees for this film than on my past 15 films altogether.
One of the interesting things about the film is seeing how connected some of the people at the food industries are related to government. Can you talk about the relationship between major government figures and their work with or for these food companies?
One thing that we say in the film, and I just want to reiterate, it’s not bad to have people from industry go work in government and be part of it. I think that’s happened before and it hasn’t been terrible. What’s a problem is when people are ruling on things that they worked for or on in industry and then they go back to the same industries and get rewards. You know, there feels like a conflict of interest, and that’s where it’s crossing the line. I don’t think we should rule out the fact that just because people have worked in industry it should be considered a problem. I think it’s when they go back and forth and keep getting rewarded for what they do when they’re in government that it becomes a problem.
What do you say to people who complain about the prohibitive costs of organic foods?
The problem is we have an uneven playing field. We’re subsidizing food that’s making us sick. We don’t see the actual costs when we go to buy it. Those costs are going to bankrupt us. We show this family in our film, and ultimately this family is spending $500 a month for medicine for the father to buy diabetes medicine … which is going to be the case for one of every three Americans who’s born after the year 2000, so this is going to be an amazing expense for Americans. Even if you’re eating out of the garden you’re going to be paying for this food. In making this film, there were times when I was in field and I saw people in space suits spraying our food, and I’m thinking,’You know, I don’t know if I want to eat food where people have to wear space suits to grow the food. Something seems wrong.’
I think there are many solutions, and I even respect Cargill saying, ‘Don’t rule out the industrial system, it can be part of a solution.’ I’m ready to have that conversation. We’re not proposing you only eat a certain kind of food, but I am saying this system we have now - it’s a brand new system, it’s only about 40 years - is failing, and we need to have a conversation about how we’re going to feed ourselves.
Do you think we’re turning the corner?
I think there’s beginning to be a consciousness. It’s mothers who have to feed their children who are going to make it all change. They are the ones who change things much faster than government.
How do you empower people to make healthier choices and put pressure on these food companies and the government?
As we say, there are two ways of going about it. You vote three times a day … so becoming more conscious … when you buy locally, all of a sudden you are making a conscious decision that is helping a local farmer, making you eat a better meal, helping the environment, helping workers … it spirals. Hopefully we can start to change little things. If we can change one of our meals, we’re going to have a great change. But we also have to vote with our votes. Look at takepart.com or my site, robertkennerfilms.com, we list organizations that you may want to become partners with who are involved in political legislation.
I saw an article from the Guardian over the weekend that said that 98% of personal products labeled as ‘green’ are not actually as eco-friendly as they may purport, so people are being ‘greenwashed’ into believing they are making a more eco-conscious purchase.
These companies are very smart and know how to operate. There are companies now selling processed food and calling it local. So, we’re up against large, sophisticated businesses. I think the problem with organic is that the standard of certification are too low. You can have organic milk, but the animals are still in CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations), which are operations where you may find 30,000 chickens in a dark room where they don’t see daylight for their entire lives. Or it’s pigs or dairy cows that don’t get to move, but they can still be called organic. So the standards are too low. Michael Pollan was saying he thinks people generally live up to those (organic) standards; the problem is we need to raise those standards.
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June 10, 2009
A legacy of leaps
Many young men spend much of their lives trying to extricate themselves from their fathers’ shadows, hoping to form identities and legacies separate from those of the old men.
But when your father is a generational icon, a flesh-and-blood superhero, the pursuit might seem futile.
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
As 11-year-old Robbie Knievel sat on his motorcycle alongside father Evel Knievel, 50,000 screaming fans made clear to young Robbie that his destiny would run parallel to that of his father. Living the life of a high-flying entertainer was his birthright and one he could not and did not want to ignore. He knew then he wanted to be a daredevil. Had to be a daredevil.
‘I don’t get off on adrenaline, I was born with adrenaline, and that’s why I keep doing what I do,’ Knievel said by phone on Monday, already in town for this weekend’s Republic of Texas Biker Rally. ‘And people can say he (Evel) was crazy and he shouldn’t have done what he done, but my dad always said, “Remember, we kept out word.” ‘
That sense of pride and honor is likely what led Evel Knievel, when asked why he attempted to jump the Snake River Canyon, a 50-50 life-or-death proposition, to answer, ‘Do you know who the hell I am?’
‘We have charisma and we speak from our heart. We do what we do and we keep our word and that’s what makes us who we are, and that’s why people come to see us,’ Robbie Knievel said. ‘There’s only a handful of us out there who can do what we do, but there’s only two guys that made it famous - me and my dad.’
Kaptain Robbie Knievel brings that grandiose air with him to Austin this weekend, when he will jump almost 200 feet of Budweiser trucks in front of the Capitol.
The jump will be one in a line of more than 250 performed by the 47 year-old Knievel over the past 38 years. And, although he might use a different motorcycle than that heavy Harley-Davidson his father rode, he rides with the same swagger and a perverse levity.
Despite the dangers that inherently come with each jump, Knievel confesses that outside the occasional butterflies, making the death-defying jumps is standard operating procedure.
If a man can look into the face of death, or at least severe injury week in and week out for almost four decades, one must wonder whether there is anything that intimidates the guy. For an answer, one must look beyond the simple, worldly fears of broken bones or slithering reptiles.
The devil, Knievel says, is the only thing that scares him.
‘But I believe in Christ, so I’m not worried about the devil. I’ve got a belief and faith and trust,’ Knievel said. ‘And my dad did before he died, and we had a lot of good talks before he died. I’m looking forward to eternity, but we all got a path lined out for us. People that are living for the world are livin’ for nothing. We’re all gonna die. You gotta look at what’s ahead, be spiritual and loving to your neighbor.’
In this world of extreme sports and user-generated videos inhabiting every corner of the Web, displaying the dangerous exploits of thousands of amateur stuntmen, Knievel has a little more difficulty standing out than his father did in the ’70s.
At that time, before the explosion of cable television and before the Internet had anesthetized our sense of wonder and ability to be inspired, Evel Knievel was a dynamic hero of the highest order. Swathed in a garish red, white and blue jumpsuit astride a motorcycle, he was Elvis, Captain America and James Dean wrapped into one.
The idea of a comic book daredevil hero, inspiring kids with jaw-dropping feats of motorized airborne acrobatics might seem anachronistic today. But the son of Evel Knievel unabashedly carries on his father’s legacy and insists that what he does is about more than just jumping motorcycles over inanimate objects. It’s about a code, a way of the daredevil warrior, put on the planet to entertain and inspire people.
‘I do stuff by the seat of my pants like my dad did, and I have good things to say to the kids and the public, and that’s what I’m about. I do a lot of charities and stuff, and it’s all about what comes from your heart,’ Knievel said. ‘God only knows your heart. I don’t do it for the money. I do it because I’m the son of Evel Knievel, and there’s nobody left.’
And while he professes to be dutifully carrying on the legacy of his iconic father, with two jumps in the works for Wembley Stadium and the Snake River Canyon, attempts at which his father came up short, one has to wonder if maybe Robbie Knievel has his eye set on creating his own legend after all.
The Jump at the Capitol
Kaptain Robbie Knievel will jump almost 200 feet of Budweiser trucks lined on 11th Street in front of the State Capitol. The gates will open at 8 p.m. Friday (this should coincide with the arrival of the ROT motorcycle parade down Congress Avenue). The jump is scheduled to happen at 11 p.m.
ROT Rally wristband holders can pay $20 for a spot between 10th and 11th streets on Congress Avenue. Anyone can pay $20 for a spot between Ninth and 10th streets on Congress Avenue. And blocks south of Ninth Street on Congress Avenue will be free and open to the public.
To buy tickets and more information: www.rotrally.com.
Images from Knievel Cycles.
Click the link below for videos of Robbie Knievel’s jumps.
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May 8, 2009
Interview: Nick Prueher, co-curator of the Found Footage Festival
He took his discovery home to share with his good friend Joe Pickett, who immediately shared Prueher’s enthusiasm. Unable to keep their newfound joy to themselves, the guys began inviting friends to share in the pleasure of watching comedy that had to be seen to be believed.
With their first piece of comedy gold in hand, the two began a quest to find hilarious old VHS tapes to add to their collection. Over the next 15 years, the two amassed a booty of absurdist tapes — instructional videos, sexual harassment awareness videos and all manner of embarrassing antics of high-status boobs — that they shared with friends. By 2004, the secret became too great to keep to themselves, so Prueher and Pickett booked a theater in Manhattan for a public screening.
After the success of their initial screening, a small tour followed. Four years after their first visit to the original Alamo Drafthouse, the guys return to Austin today with their Found Footage Festival.
Prueher discussed his passion and singing dummies by phone last week.
Austin American-Statesman: The footage you use seems like a perfect marriage of the universality of bad ideas and nostalgia for ’80s aesthetic.
Nick Prueher: Yea. One thing we’ve found that a lot of our videos have in common - it’s not something we look for specifically - but a lot of the ones that make the cut involve people with a lot of ambition and very little talent. So as long as those people have access to video equipment, we’re in no danger of running out of material. I think another reason the show works - and we never anticipated this - is that when you taking these videos that were never meant to be seen in public - training videos, sexual harassment awareness videos, exercise videos - you know stuff that was meant to be watched in a break room or by yourself in a living room, and then you put it in a theater on a big screen with 300 like-minded people and you sort of give people the permission to laugh at this stuff, there is something cathartic that happens. Something magical happens when you’re in a room watching it up on a big screen.
I don’t have kids, so maybe I don’t have much on which to base my opinion, but are children’s videos as tripped out now as they used to be?
Nick Prueher: I think so. I think the production values are a little bit better on kids’ videos nowadays, but it’s still just as creepy as before. One thing we’ve actually found is that the technology changes and it gets cheaper to produce professional looking videos, but bad ideas never really change. As long as people have bad ideas or a misguided idea of how they want to educate children, there are going to be some pretty (expletive) children’s videos.
What is creepier than a singing dummy proselytizing Christianity?
Nick Prueher: That pretty much does it. I think that might be the pinnacle of creepiness right there: Freddie For Jesus comes out of his little box and is doing lame vaudeville comedy routines but under the guise of talking about Christ. … There’s a lot of things in the show that you can’t unsee.
You and Joe both have day jobs, so what makes you want to go across the country showing your videos.
Nick Prueher: This is our passion. It’s something we love doing. I guess we’re sort of masochists in a way because we torture ourselves and watch so much bad video. But we’re willing to suffer for other people’s entertainment, because when you do find those videos that are so-bad-they’re-good and just wonderfully awful in just the right way, you have a desire to go and show people. What’s better than showing off your video collection and telling the stories of how you found it. … There are a couple of clips from Austin Public Access in the show. One of them is a show from the 90s called Citizens Live, and they’re taking calls, which is always a bad idea. Because who is going to seriously call in with a serious question at two in the morning … so it’s almost all prank calls, people swearing and hanging up.
Bleach blonde hair with a dark beard: Great 80s style or greatest 80s style?
Nick Prueher: That is the greatest 80s style in the world. I would say it’s the most fabulous.
Found Footage Festival
Sunday, May 10
Alamo South Lamar
7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $9 [link]
Here is a trailer for a previous Found Footage Fest.
Image of Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett at a Found Footage Festival show in New York by Josh Hertz
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May 4, 2009
Interview: Comedian Eugene Mirman on affable Conchords and chunky youth
Eugene Mirman has become one of those rare things in the indie entertainment world — both ubiquitous and fairly anonymous. He’s shared the stage with indie rockers such as Modest Mouse and Yo La Tengo, has a slew of videos populating the Web, been seen up and down the TV dial, and has even penned a satirical self-help book, ‘The Will to Whatevs.’
But Mirman’s most mainstream visibility has come courtesy of his work on HBO’s musical comedy ‘Flight of the Conchords.’ He is currently opening for the show’s eponymous stars Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement. We caught up with Mirman by phone to discuss his comedy influences and fat kids.
The M.O.: There seems more than ever to be a clan of comedians working together on all sorts of projects, from TV to stand-up to Web content. Can you talk about having that rich peer group with which to work and is there any sense of competition among you?
Mirman: I would say that it actually isn’t really that competitive. I’m only really speaking from my point of view, in the sense that it’s not like I’m going to get the same role as Kristin Schaal would get, or Aziz (Ansari) or somebody. In terms of collaborating in the different shows and things, it’s fun. I have nothing to compare it to. It’s hard to say, ‘it’s amazing, unlike this other thing.’ For me, that has been my career … it’s been collaborating with and knowing these people. But I think it’s amazing. I think I happen to be in place with tons of incredibly funny people making very, very interesting stuff.
To what do you trace your absurdist sensibility and humor?
I think just a lot of the things I liked as a kid. I guess I don’t know. I wanna say the Velvet Underground, but they’re not particularly absurd (laughs).
What was the idea behind your book “The Will to Whatevs” and who were you trying to help, Eugene?
Fat kids.
What do fat kids need help with?
I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure this book will help them.
What has the experience like working with Bret and Jemaine?
Working on the show was super fun. They’re just genuinely extremely sweet guys and very, very funny. But touring with them is unbearable because they’re just so polite. Like, come on, stop being so nice to those around you, it’s exhausting. I get it, you’re a really great person.
You’ve been to Austin a thousand times. Is there anything you look forward to doing when you get the chance to come to town.
I actually do love Austin. When I think of places I would potentially live, Austin is definitely one of them. There’s a place that used to be called Ben’s Barbecue that’s my favorite. Even though it changed its name (J. Kelly’s Barbecue), the recipes are all the same. So I go there and I try to go to Waterloo Records, and sort of just in general, to cute little shops and weird places.
Flight of the Conchords with Eugene Mirman [info.]
Thursday, 8 p.m.
Bass Concert Hall
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March 6, 2009
'Twilight' director Catherine Hardwicke talks about making it in male-dominated Hollywood
Catherine Hardwicke: I’d done this crazy [senior] project … just very hilarious, theatrical and elaborate. … At the end of my presentation, none of the teachers or faculty said anything. Their jaws just dropped, and they just moved on to the next person. About a week later, one of the visiting critics came up and said, “You know what? I’ve been thinking about you, and you shouldn’t be in architecture. Architecture is not going to encourage your kind of creativity. You should find something else.” [Laughs]
When did you know that you wanted to move from production design to telling your own stories and making your own films?
After I had production-designed seven movies, I started thinking, “I wanna do my own stuff.” So, if I had a weekend off, I’d take a screenwriting seminar or an acting class or a directing workshop, and then I would write other screenplays. After working on “The Newton Boys,” Richard (Linklater) gave me the best advice. He said, “If you wanna direct, then direct.” And that was really helpful because that’s what he did for zero money with “Slacker.” He and David O. Russell (“Three Kings”) both encouraged by doing and saying, “You got to do it. If you wanna break through, you just have to do it.” And, in a way, I thought that was good because you earn it that way, through blood, sweat and tears, with nobody helping you.
‘Thirteen’ and ‘Twilight’ deal with young girls coming of age and the perils and enticements therein. What it is about that time of life that intrigues you as a storyteller?
I didn’t start out thinking that I would make a teenage movie and get on a teenage career path. But after “Thirteen,” I realized I do love this age because every possibility is happening for you at that age — you suddenly have breasts, you can kiss a boy, you can smoke, you can drive a car, you can make your own choices.
What is the story behind your decision not to direct ‘New Moon’ (the follow-up to ‘Twilight’)?
If I felt like it was right, if the schedule worked right and the way the studio wanted to do the next one felt right for me, then I wanted to do it. And, if not, I didn’t want to. I’d have had like 10? weeks to prepare the movie. I didn’t think the script was there, and it wasn’t ready. I wanted the second one to be better than the first one. I wanted more time to at least think about it and dream about how to step it up to the next level.
Why do you think female directors have such a hard time getting jobs or keeping momentum? I know that summer movies have been mostly R-rated comedies, action thrillers and superhero movies, but isn’t it shortsighted or sexist for studios to think only men can or want to direct these movies?
I had never thought there was a gender bias so much, but now I know there is. For example, I’ve had really great success lately, why don’t I have my next movie? It’s a more complicated answer than that. … But how do you make lightning strike? How do you have the magic that makes a studio say yes? They have to believe that they’re going to make a profit.
But I have found a bias. Sometimes people have even said it to my face, “Oh, you don’t know how to do action or visual effects.” To me, that’s a pretty sexist thing to say. I’ve actually done stunts in movie and done a lot of active things [in shooting]. The action that you see in “Twilight,” the treetop sequence, the fight sequence at the end of the movie, they’re not in the book …
What are your thoughts on coming down to your home state to receive the Ann Richards Award?
My dad was a cotton farmer and my mom a schoolteacher. This honor and my whole career are way beyond dreams I ever had growing up. It’s beautiful and unbelievable on so many levels. … I get a lot of cool letters from kids and people in small towns in Texas and the Valley, and they say, “You’ve inspired me to be a director.” And that’s really cool.
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November 7, 2008
Interview: Being Charlie Kaufman
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October 21, 2008
Misprint Magazine interview: The men behind the masks
For the past four years, Harvey Merrybottom, aka Anthony Moschella, and Chadwick Pennyrich III, aka Bryan Keplesky, have entertained thousands of Austinites by pointing out that the emperors (and serfs) of Austin’s hipsterocracy are wearing no clothes.
But coffee is for early birds and closers. Bourbon is the official drink of choice for these two scathing and sarcastic, yet eminently likable, chaps who have been self-publishing the small zine since 2005.
Fueled by a love/hate relationship with the Austin music scene and a desire to take just about everyone on the Austin hipster scene down a peg, these two kindred spirits decided to start poking holes in the mythos of the city’s tastemakers and musical heroes.
In 2005 the ubiquity of blogs threatened to overload our servers and minds while throwing the traditional media world into a frenzy, so Virginia native Keplesky and New Jersey native Moschella decided to go against the prevalent thinking of the day. Everyone and their mom had a blog and fancied themselves an expert on something, but these two wanted to kick it old-school.
“You would just see that so much value was placed on these music bloggers. Some guy from Pitchfork with an English degree is writing this stuff that doesn’t make any sense. And people take it as gospel, and we couldn’t let it slide,” Moschella said.
“What were we gonna do about it? Were we gonna make another blog that said your blog sucks? Also part of it was to create something tangible. Even though it was completely ironic and meaningless. And it seemed like sort of a ridiculous idea to do something in print, on paper, because it was so irrelevant.”
Since its first issue, Misprint has been skewering the overinflated egos of musicians and mocking those who find social currency in the bars they frequent, the skinny jeans they wear, the fixed-gear bikes they ride and the bands they follow.
“People take themselves entirely too seriously. Look, you’re in a band, so’s everybody,” Moschella says.
But Moschella and Keplesky, who have kept relatively low public profiles writing under pseudonyms, have made it clear since their first issue that they “don’t love to hate, but hate what they love.” In an age of irony, these two are the jesters of Austin’s royal hipster court. And for those who would deride the duo as being sarcastic whiners with an ax to grind born out of jealousy or insecurity, they’ve already beaten them to the punch.
“It’s because we were too crappy to be in a band. That’s what it comes down to,” Keplesky says of the zine’s genesis.
“When people get to meet us, we’re just nerdy guys. I’m a software engineer. I’m not like this cool guy in a band. I just sort of notice what’s going on,” Moschella says.
That perception has led to 14 issues, many of which have ended up serving as something of an archive of Austin’s changing social landscape. Moschella and Keplesky take the temperature of Austin and filter the city’s shifting dynamics through their writing.
“I think it’s a pretty accurate capturing of what people who are about our age who do roughly the same thing that we do are experiencing,” Moschella says.
From fretting over the smoking ban to mocking the arrival of condo-mania and gentrification, the two have found a way to stay topical on broad Austin cultural issues. But the main focus of their humor almost always finds its way back to the music scene. In discussing their most recent issue, “The Grown Up Issue,” the two made an analogous comparison of a maturing and softening of Austin to Misprint’s primary readership.
“The city as a whole is sort of growing up. Austin’s lifestyle is changing. It used to be a place people would come to play in a band. People still do that, but now it’s also a place people come to buy a condo,” Moschella says.
“It’s playing out on Red River (Street); it’s playing out downtown; it’s playing out in the bands that are getting popular. A perfect example … look at the bands that have emerged from Austin the last couple years, the ones people have really latched onto … totally dad-friendly, safe-rock: Okkervil River, Shearwater, Spoon, What Made Milwaukee Famous. And they’re great bands, and I like them, too, but you can’t call Spoon an edgy band; you can’t call What Made Milwaukee Famous an edgy band. My mom could like those bands; my mom does like those bands.”
If those sound like fighting words, you haven’t read Misprint. Their brutal honesty in criticizing the things that they love has led to an uncomfortable run-in or two with ice throwing and car vandalizing musicians, but more often than not, the targets of their snark generally love being in the spotlight. As it turns out, the Misprint guys aren’t the only ones who appreciate irony.
“I find that more bands actually want us to make fun of them,” Keplesky says.
And it’s not just musicians who can laugh at themselves and appreciate a little bit of publicity.
“Our first advertisers were the ones we called out by name,” Moschella says.
“That’s pretty much our business model,” adds Keplseky.
As for the state of their business, Misprint is pretty much a labor of love for these two, despite their ongoing joke about their unbelievable wealth.
In truth, the guys say they make just enough money to where they’re “not totally discouraged from doing it anymore.”
“Do we have to pick red or black? Is there another color? We’re in the pink,” Keplesky says of their finances.
While some people might consider the two cynics and pessimists (charges that roll off their backs), it is apparent that these affable and unassuming guys are wholly in love with the city they mock.
“I like the people. I love the energy. I like the pace of life. I like everything about the place. I think this town is on the cusp of great things,” Moschella says.
And Misprint will be around to make fun of those things as well.
Misprint Magazine party
Saturday, October 25
9:30 pm
Club Deville
$3
Music from Queen cover band Magnifico!, DJ set by Weston from White Ghost Shivers, and free Misprint coozies
Check out these photos from previous Misprint parties:
Misprint Mustache and Beard party at Club DeVille | Misprint party at Flamingo Cantina | Misprint party at Scoot Inn
Outtakes from the interview
Odam: “If you could have anyone in the scene beat you up, who would it be?”
Moschella: “Will Sheff [from Okkervil River]. I’d fight that cat and his tiny little blazer. With his blazer on, I’d almost definitely win. With his blazer off, I’d give him about even odds. I’m scrappy.”
Keplesky on the two-man operation and poseurs: “I met someone who apparently wrote an article for us that didn’t. That was kind of awkward.”
Keplesky on typography: “That was like the first thing in my life that I really noticed and would annoy me, when I’d see like bad typography. Everybody has things that they obsess about, for me type was always one of them. But even then it’s like a heightened thing. Or maybe I’m just mellowing out.”
Moschella on the plethora of live music in town: “Bryan wants Austin to be the live background music capital. You wanna be in a place where a cool band is playing, you just don’t wanna watch them or hear them that loudly.”
Keplesky on the relative positive aspects of Austin being the Live Music Capital: “It’s better than like visual art. You gotta put it in perspective. It could be a lot worse … like digital art.”
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July 11, 2008
Interview: The late-blooming Nels Cline
Cline visits Austin Sunday night to play inside at Stubb’s with his avant-jazz trio, The Nels Cline Singers. I caught up with the thoughtful and modest Cline on Friday to talk about his musical influences, his love of sound and being a late bloomer.
M.O.: I know you grew up in California and were probably entering junior high during the Summer of Love. How did the music out there in California in the late sixties affect you as a child, as a listener and in the nascent stages of your guitar playing?
Nels Cline: Wow. What a great question. At the risk of overstating it, I would have to say that I am permanently damaged by the incredible creativity and by the colorful nature of popular music of that time.
That’s pretty good damage to have…
Yea, I think so. I think that at that age when one is — at this point my twin brother Alex and I were becoming completely obsessed with rock ‘n roll — and at that age, when you have that sort of voraciousness and that openness, to have the sort of operating rule of the day being ‘be mind-blowing’ or ‘be creative’ or ‘be eloquent’ or ‘protest,’ of all these different things, with wide-open non-formated radio, the beginnings of underground radio coming in right after this — for us it was KDPC, one of the great underground radio stations. It’s basically the thing that I draw from to this day: psychedelic music, folk rock, later on acid rock, and inevitably, what I think led me and my twin brother to a love of sound, and as such, to instrumental music and later jazz and jazz rock.
Speaking of growing up in that heady period for music, people think that with MySpace and the ubiquity of online music, that the options are more wide open for kids to find music. But it seems that things are becoming more niche. Do you think as a kid growing up today it would be harder for you to find music that inspired you?
I don’t know because I’m a little behind because I don’t spend a lot of time online searching for music. Not because I’m no longer curious, but it is daunting because there’s so much more out there than when I was growing up. You know, one did not realize necessarily what all the options were back then. But I think when you went to a decent record store you were pretty much looking at a lot of them. Whereas now, just the amount of online information to download, let alone walking into a place like Amoeba Music, there’s so many artists, so many releases, and even genres that I haven’t heard of. That said, I think that at a certain age, with the kind of curiosity I was describing earlier, that people do find things, and that’s there milieu. They understand it, so they’re able to find all kinds of stuff.
I’d say slow wins the race.”
I was actually a buyer at a record store in Los Angeles for many years, and at one point I was the independent rock and import buyer, and at that time, which was the early eighties, one could listen to pretty much everything that was ordered. You couldn’t do that now. That said, at least it’s nice that people are being creative. (Laughs) There’s just a lot out there. But truly, what you said about niches has just become increasingly true and I think the reasons for that can be traced back to the eighties in the Reagan years when everything became extremely formatted on FM radio, and really segregated. And I think that had to do with advertising, with targeting an audience with some kind of marketing. And it was also easy to do then because, not to say anything against eighties music, because there’s plenty of eighties music that I like, a lot of the bands at that time that were very popular did whole albums of the same song.
So it was really easy for a promotions department of a record label or a programmer at a radio station to get behind these records, because it didn’t really take a lot of attention to listen to the whole record as opposed to a Jimi Hendrix record or a Jefferson Airplane record, where you’re listening to all different kinds of material on one album.
Or your new record, “Draw Breath,” there’s some very disparate styles on it.
I think ultimately what you’re hearing there is kind of the same mixture and the same compositional improvisational parameters, if you will, that I was attempting to work on with my twin brother in high school. Those things haven’t changed all that much for me. I think that stylistic diversity, where it was once daunting and perhaps anxiety-producing, because people like reviewers, or even me, were saying, “Where’s this going?” I think that now it’s not so odd. I think because of world communication, because of a lot of interest in new things, and because generations come up that have absorbed a lot of different information, this kind of diversity is perhaps less suspect. And in my case, I think I’m just lucky that I’ve lived long enough and continued playing long enough to have it not be nonsensical.
Yea, imagine Coltrane living in this post-modern world. Speaking of Coltrane, you grew up listening to a lot of rock, obviously, at what point were you introduced to jazz and to Coltrane and what did that do to the way you thought about music.
One thing I’ll say about Coltrane related to what we were talking about before is I think, in terms of a post-modern world, he was already going there. In his later life, his interest in Indian music and in the harp and African percussion and all these different things was, I think, leading him to a palette definitely beyond the so-called traditional jazz. But, anyway, what happened with the jazz exposure was that because my twin brother Alex was such a Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart obsessive, a friend of ours who also played guitar lent us a John Coltrane record that was his dad’s and thought my brother might like it because he liked all that instrumental Frank Zappa stuff. (Laughs) So we put on the record and “Africa” was the first piece, and it was definitely like an entire world that we had never been aware of was revealed. Pretty much from that moment on, we set out to investigate where this music had come from, because we had no clue, living in West Los Angeles and a quasi-suburban life, that this music had been developing. When I found out that Coltrane had already passed away, I felt so gypped. I thought, “Wait a minute. No one told us about this.”
And around the same time, on underground rock station KDPC, my brother heard the opening track from the Tony Williams’ “Lifetime: Turn it Over” record called “To Whom It May Concern (Them),” and that completely blew his mind, and he ran out and found that record. And that’s how we traced Tony Williams to Miles Davis, and John McLaughlin back to Miles Davis, and pretty much connected the dots from there. Then my brother got really into Eric Dolphy and the Art Ensemble of Chicago in high school. At the same time we were listening to progressive rock, which was flourishing in the early to mid-seventies, all those aesthetic young British lads. So, again, as was the case in a lot of that sixties pop and rock, sound was the order of the day and instrumental texture and creative expression that was wide open — you know, early Weather Report, Herbie Hancock’s septet, you know what I mean?
I heard (Carlos) Santana say one time, and it seemed really pretentious at that time, how guitarists are just born with their talents and it’s kinda something that’s just either in your DNA or not. You didn’t receive much formal training … what do you think about that statement?
I think that in my case, all I was born with was a love of sound, and I don’t think I evinced any high degree of talent early on at all. As opposed to my brother Alex who was really always good, and he’s one of those guys who can pretty much pick up any instrument and get his way around on it rather quickly, and I never had that ability either. I think that if I believed in “the race” or if I believed in “winning,” I’d say slow wins the race. My life has been a very late-blooming, slow and circuitous path. I think I just gradually improved because of my desire to play the guitar, and I don’t think I was born with any flash of brilliance that then led me to be who I am now. I think it’s rather the opposite for me.
There’s something beautiful about that in the sense that it’s a testament to faith and persistence and there’s kind of fearlessness in that, and I wonder how you deal with fear and what inhibits you most.
Oh my god, you’re asking really good questions. They’re really kinda deep, and that would be a hard one to get in to adequately, but I can say that what speaks to this is that I just finished a recording of me doing overdubs that I’d been thinking about for over 20 years, the material of which is completely not from 20 years ago except for this one piece, but just the idea of it is old, and it’s called “Coward.” And the whole idea that you asked about, the whole question, is part of the name of the record. And I think, as opposed possibly to Carlos, who maybe had some kind of warrior-like fearlessness that catapulted him into the scene in San Francisco and made him rise so quickly, I on the other hand was always unsure of myself and rather a neurotic kind of self-doubting person. The one thing that I never really doubted was my desire to play and my desire to play some kind of original music. So, I’m not really an agonizer aesthetically, as much as I’m an agonizer sort of personally.
of original music.”
Although I played with a lot of my musical heroes, even in my twenties, I’m not sure how I did that because my abilities are certainly not that of some of the greats. I definitely never hustled to get gigs. I never tried to get gigs; I don’t have any business sense at all. Seriously, the one thing that I’m not afraid of is sound. So the one thing that I’ve maintained is my desire to make sound and to create mostly spontaneously, if not partially spontaneously, with like-minded individuals, which I think is a good thing.
Music is not, like some artistic endeavors, a solitary act, I guess unless you’re a composer. So I think that by playing with people better than me, by playing with people who are sympathetic or inspiring, I’ve been able to just keep going and always be happy in the moment, when the music is happening. So that’s the thing that keeps me going, where I’m not afraid. When the music is happening, life makes much more sense to me.
Can you talk about the difference with the song writing process with the Nels Cline Singers versus with Wilco? To what extent does Jeff (Tweedy) allow you to contribute to the writing process, and when you do step away from Wilco to play with your trio, do you find it hard to stretch back out from the confines of Wilco and back into a more improvisational style?
I think that, for me, any amount of soloing or finger wiggling isn’t really a requirement for enjoyment. Playing with Wilco, just like any other thing, even if it’s me improvising in a duet with someone, is about being part of the orchestra or being in the moment. And I think I have a lot of latitude in Wilco. And I don’t feel reined in; a lot of people think I probably do, but if anyone reins me in, it’s me. And I do that by choice because I’m trying to serve the song and trying to serve the music. And, currently, in Wilco at this moment, Jeff’s writing a lot of songs, so what we’re doing right now is learning Jeff’s songs and coming up with some at-least-temporary arrangements that everyone can enjoy listening to played back on tape. How they end up sounding when we go to record them after sifting through them … it may change. I ask a lot of questions. Sometimes I’m not sure exactly what to contribute, so I might lay back for awhile before I decide what’s gonna possibly work in any given situation. That is all fine for me, and it’s not inhibiting. It’s all part of music making. And as long as I enjoy the music and the people with whom I’m playing music, I’m happy to play three notes if that is what’s required.
makes much more sense to me.”
In fact, I don’t really enjoy listening to myself solo all that much, and I got some constructive criticism from a record producer one time who said that my records of my own music don’t have enough of my soloing on them. And I had to tell him, “Well, I don’t really like listening to that as much as I do to a piece, say, on ‘The Giant Pin,” “The Ballad of Devon Hoff,” which doesn’t have any guitar solos but is a satisfying piece of music to listen to, with the open-tuned guitar.
I wonder if there’s a connection there, between growing up a “mirror twin” and the way you feel about being in a band, in that you learned and felt comfortable early on in life as being part of a unit and being supportive and not being self-serving.
Well, I think I can say with some confidence that my brother and I are both kind of like these caring-nurturing types of players in different situations. And sort of enablers, if not catalysts, for chemistry. So I think maybe you’re on to something there that I hadn’t really wanted to ponder too much. But to answer your earlier question about composition in The (Nels Cline) Singers, yea, they’re my tunes, and I usually boil them down in to two categories: one being the obsessive, fascistic, didactic category where I have some very specific ideas and they tend to be something maybe related to the idea of resonance, emotion, maybe a sense of drama that I think both my brother Alex and I seem to be drawn to. I think a piece like “The Ballad of Devin Hoff” is a good example of that. I think pieces like “The Angel of Angels” on “Draw Breath,” they’re not so jamming or solo-driven. They’re really about expressing a mood or a feeling or some sort of sound that I like to live in.
And then there are the pieces that are much more about blowing and three-way interplay where Scott (Amendola, drummer) and Devin contribute equally, sometimes to the destruction of my structure as much as to the construction, and I get out of my own way as the didactic fascist and we just blow. That’s where the free jazz comes in because although stylistically we may sometimes start playing dark metal, it’s not always structured. It’s arrived at spontaneously. I try to do both because truly my desire in having my own band is to play things that are enjoyable to listen to and fun to play with people that I like to play with. So there’s sort of that mixture. The electric guitar, also, I think is quite serviceable in this manner. It’s able to go to a lot of different areas.
Yea, if it doesn’t give you an anxiety attack thinking about all the different places you can go with it.
It’s funny that you say that because many, many years ago, one of my favorite guitar players in the world, John Abercrombie, was interviewed and he was describing what he called “option anxiety,” which is just thinking about how many different ways one can change the sound of the electric guitar. Even just changing, like he has done, from pick to finger. Or changing the string gauge or changing the amplifier or the pick up. Let alone the introduction of reverb, delay, effects pedals, distortion. It’s an interesting thing. To me, that’s the beauty of it.
There is a beauty about instrumental jazz, in that, unlike novelists or songwriters whose ideas and words may get stale or boring, there seems to be infinite possibilities to create.
And then in my case, as the sort of poster boy for the late bloomer, literally I look at ever year that I live as better than the previous year. And I think that right now I have so many marvelous opportunities, and really more work than I can actually do, I feel like I’ve just begun. I’ve got a lot yet to accomplish.
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May 7, 2008
Interview: Ralphie May
Southern-fried stand-up comic and equal-opportunity offender Ralphie May brings his scathing social critique to the Paramount Theatre on Saturday night to tape a two-hour special for Comedy Central. The other day, I sat down with the comic who came to fame on ‘Last Comic Standing’ to talk about his humble beginnings, Sam Kinison, Finland and more.
On his speaking style and jargon …
On meeting Sam Kinison for the first time …
On his early comedy career …
On his experience on ‘Last Comic Standing’ …
On what fans can expect at his upcoming show and a pitch of his buddy-movie concept co-starring Dave Chappelle …
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April 10, 2008
Interview: Tommy Chong
Tommy Chong, in town for a run of shows at Cap City Comedy Club, arrived at the Statesman Thursday afternoon, lovely wife Shelby in tow, just two minutes behind schedule. No, he wasn’t stoned or terribly lost. Turns out his GPS was giving him fits, insisting he was ‘here,’ when he was in fact not ‘here.’ Some things just aren’t meant to go together, like cottage cheese and coffee, pizza and pickles, or Tommy Chong and a GPS.
Looking amazingly spry and bright-eyed, especially for a man set to celebrate his 70th birthday this year, Chong’s private persona runs somewhat contrary to the public stoner image he has cultivated over the years. He comes across more retired professor than drug culture icon. A conversation with Chong reveals a bit of a cultural anthropologist and activist, a man steeped in American musical history (especially considering his Canadian roots), and one whose criticisms of the American political machine hinge on more than the tired, “Keep your hands off my weed” protestation.
The following is part of our conversation. Discussed: Motown, Vancouver, prison, performing with his wife, and not caring about what anyone thinks.
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December 20, 2007
Interview: John C. Reilly, aka Dewey Cox
Friday, that will change. The character-actor part, not the respect.
In “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” Reilly steps boldly into the spotlight as the title character in the mock musical biography directed and co-written by Jake Kasdan, a frequent collaborator of the King Midas of R-rated comedies, Judd Apatow (“The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up”). The movie, which follows Cox across America’s musical landscape, takes a good-natured poke at, and more than a few stylistic cues from, famous musical biographical films and their clichéd archetypes.
Reilly was in town two weeks ago for a performance as Dewey Cox at Stubb’s. We talked with the Oscar-nominated actor about making the movie, the life of an imagined rock star and a career that has taken him from supporting dramatic roles to center stage in the season’s crowning comedy.
M.O.: How did Jake and Judd come to you about the project originally, and what did you think of the concept?
John C. Reilly: Judd just called me up and said, “Oh, I got this call from Jake Kasdan, and he’s got this really funny idea to do a comedy version of a musical biopic. And we were talking about you, and it was makin’ us laugh really hard; would you be interested in something like that?” And I said, “Yea, of course.” Judd and I had just done “Talladega Nights” together. He said they hadn’t even written the script yet and they wanted to hear my ideas, and any time someone says that, that’s a great thing. It’s pretty rare when someone says, “I want to write a movie for you. Are you interested?” Then they wrote a first draft of the script, and as soon as I read it, I thought, man, this is so funny. ’Cause I’ve seen as many biopics as anybody, and seen a lot of the trademark scenes that are in almost all of them.
It was a really funny and kinda smart take on a comedy. And the movie has a lot of bang for the buck, in terms of production value and the costumes and the sets and how attentive to the period detail we were. It’s a lot more detailed and more nuanced than most comedies are, for sure. Then the whole musical aspect: We recorded like 40 original songs over six months in a recording studio before we had shot any of the film. It’s just way more entertainment than you normally get in a broad comedy.
Everybody says that actors want to be musicians and musicians want to be actors and athletes want to be musicians. … Everybody kind of has this fantasy of being some other kind of performer.
Right. The grass is always greener on the other side.
So was the film sort of a wish fulfillment for you? I know you did some singing growing up and have sung limitedly in other movies, but how was it being in a studio and belting out these songs?
It was great. Like you said, I’ve sang in movies before, and I grew up doing musicals, and I’ve had bands over the years, so music has always been a part of my life. But to be able to be part of the creative process of writing a song, that was something that was different for me. And then to be in a recording studio, to be able to throw it back and forth with musicians, and really craft every song as it went along, was not only a rock ’n’ roll fantasy come true but was also a great way to discover the character and work on who this guy was gonna be as we were writing the script.
So the songs helped inform the character?
Sure. Absolutely. ’Cause every time you chose what a lyric was gonna be in a song, you’re putting words in Dewey Cox’s mouth, cause he’s the songwriter for all these things in our world. Also, what I would sound like in the different time periods and how I would react to the different musical stages of the movie, that was also superinformative in terms of the character and the movie itself.
You have a reputation of being a modest person, so inhabiting this rock ’n’ roll persona and walking around in his skin was probably quite a departure for you.
It was really liberating to do it for that reason. I’m a pretty down-to-earth guy. I’m from Chicago; I don’t live anything like a rock-star lifestyle or even a movie-star lifestyle. I’m pretty much a family guy when I’m not working; so it was crazy fun to just be able to flirt with every woman you come in contact with and just assume that the entire world worships you. They can’t get enough Cox, that’s his point of view.
Did the role offer you insight into the way in which that kind of ego trip could cause musicians to devolve into a self-destructive and self-absorbed lifestyle?
You can see it just by living a life as an actor if you’re not careful. People just want to be giving you things and doing things for you. And that sounds really fun, and most of the time it is — to be loved and taken care of — but it can also be corrupting. You gotta be careful what you ask for or what you accept into your life and how much you start to believe the hype that surrounds the life of a performer, whether it’s an actor or musician or whatever.
The old problem of buying into your own hype…
Yea, never read your own press, good or bad.
You’ve been doing more comedy of late. Is that a conscious choice, or is it just a matter of continuing to work and take good roles, and recently they just so happen to be comedies?
It’s pretty much both. The truth is there are a lot of comedies being made right now because the studios have figured out that they’re not that expensive (to make), people love them and they make a lot of money. Also, I think, just generally, the whole country is in a little bit of a denial phase right now in terms of the war and everything, and the world is a really heavy place to deal with right now, so we’re still in a place of wanting to escape from the reality of the world. So I think that’s one of the reasons so many comedies are getting made.
“Talladega Nights” was really the first thing that kicked off this run of comedy roles, and that I did because I am friends with Will Ferrell and Adam McKay (writer-director), and I just knew those guys are some of the best guys in movies, period, comedy or otherwise. They’re just supertalented, superfunny, collaborative guys that will let you do whatever you want, so you want to work with people like that no matter what.
Was (a graphic and hilarious scene in “Dewey Cox”) your first male, full-frontal nudity scene to be a part of, and how do you keep from cracking in those situations?
Looking into another man’s genitals didn’t really make me want to laugh, for a couple of reasons. One, you don’t wanna make the guy feel bad that you’re laughing at his package; the other is that it makes you more uncomfortable than anything. But the whole joke of the scene is that I’d become so instantly debauched from life on the road, that I’m just surrounded by nude people in the middle of a post-orgy scene and it doesn’t phase me at all, I just think, “This is normal now: women and men just walking around in the nude; this is how it is.” So, in order for the joke to work, I had to keep a straight face if I could. The movie’s all about Cox. It’s all about Dewey Cox, from his early days to his old age, so if you’re afraid of Cox, you probably shouldn’t see this movie. Or, if you’re not interested in Cox, this is not the movie for you.
Photo of John C. Reilly by Matthew Odam
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Interview: Jake Kasdan, director of 'Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story'
Jake Kasdan: This movie was a very simple idea that I had one night, and it seemed like it would be fun to do a fake music biopic about a fictional musical legend. I made a few notes to myself about what that might be: an impossible, hyperbolic rock star life as told through the language of Hollywood biopics that we’ve seen a lot of in the last several years and that it would be called “Walk Hard.” And that’s pretty much all I thought of. Then the last thing I wrote down was that I’ll probably never do this because I don’t have the energy to write this kind of movie. I don’t have the attention span for this particular kind of comedy. This probably won’t happen. This is not my strong suit.
Because of the attention to detail?
Because of the jokes style. Because of how broad it is and how you have to be funny all the time. It’s not the kind of comedy I’ve written in the past. It’s not really like what my other movies are like. But I did sort of think it was a fun idea, and a funny idea. A couple days later, I mentioned it to Judd (Apatow), who’s a good friend of mine and we’ve worked together a lot (“Freak and Geeks” and “Undeclared”). I mentioned this idea to him and he sparked to it right away. He instantly had a ton of ideas about what the movie could be. We talked about how cool it could be to do a big broad comedy that’s driven by a soundtrack and really do something with music because we’re both big rock fans. Suddenly, when it was both of us talking, it seemed like, “How can we not do this?” It was that mutual enthusiasm that made it go.
Obviously late ’70s, early ’80s rock was asking for some satirizing, and “This is Spinal Tap” fit that bill. Was there any way in which you were worried about satirizing iconic musicians like Ray Charles and Johnny Cash or the biopics that were made about them?
We love those artists so much, so it wasn’t like we were gonna do anything to make fun of them. And in truth, I think it’s very loving about the movies. You would just never do this if you didn’t have real affection for your subjects. We saw it as an opportunity to make a big music comedy, and it was just making us laugh. So we trusted our own internal compass on that. And that said, I’m sure that plenty of people will be mad at us about something. If it doesn’t make somebody mad we haven’t done our job.
How did the music and the development of the character work together?
We wrote the script first, but then we started developing the music with the songwriters and Mike Andrews, who’s the producer of all the music, and Manish Raval and Tom Wolfe, my music supervisors. We all started thinking about how that (music production) was gonna work and recruiting people to write the songs. John (C. Reilly) was already involved in the movie at that point and was kind of directing that process with me. So there was definitely a great thing that happened in that by the time we started shooting, he and I had been working on it for eight months, recording all these songs. And John tracked 40 original songs for this movie. It’s incredible what he did vocally; it’s an amazing musical achievement for a singer.
(The music) did end up being kind of how we started talking about what the movie was going to be like and what the character would be like. By the time we started actually doing it, it was sort of like we’d been working on it a long time. Part of the process was figuring out, as we started getting demos and starting recording songs with John singing, “Does this feel right coming out of his mouth? Does this feel right for the character?” And the reciprocal thing was the music started to influence the movie.
How did you come up with the idea of having John play Dewey Cox?
John was the only person we ever talked to about it or thought of for it, actually. We knew we wanted a really great actor, not just a big comedy star but somebody who could really play these scenes with full Oscar-level commitment despite the fact that the scenes are completely absurd. That was like a big part of the original joke to Judd and I: having a great actor play this part and someone who could really sing and make the music authentically in their voice. I just knew it would be a way better movie if it was actually the (actor’s) voice, and there’s no one who can do both of those things other than John, practically. It’s such an incredibly unique set of gifts. And I just love his work. I’m a huge fan of his for years. I defy anyone to find a less-than-fantastic John C. Reilly performance; it doesn’t exist. He’s great in everything.
What do you think is behind the re-emergence of the R-rated comedy, and why are studios so willing to do them?
The simplest answer is that as soon as there’s a good one and it works, and the studios think it can be a success, then they’re willing to do it.
Is it generational at all, do you think?
It may be a little bit generational, or it might just be that we’re living in a moment where people want to laugh in their movies and they want their movies to be outrageous and surprise them. And there’s something exciting about R-rated movies because you feel like you don’t know what’s gonna happen. …
Yea, you could get a full-frontal male nudity shot (as in “Walk Hard”). …
That’s exactly the kind of excitement. … You could be watching an R-rated comedy and out of the blue, a penis will drift into frame. That is possible. Thank goodness.
Photo of Jake Kasdan from The Associated Press
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November 15, 2007
Laughing through the pain
Being an angst-riddled teen can be difficult, but “Mortified” proves that is an experience we all share, whether we know it or not. Prompted by a note discovered from his childhood, “Mortified” founder and executive producer Dave Nadelberg launched the performance piece five years ago in Los Angeles. Since then, it has become a national sensation, with shows (as of this weekend) currently running in eight different cities around the country and a “Mortified Sweden” show in the works.
Nadelberg, a self-proclaimed angstologist, envisioned the show as comic excavation of our collective growing pains, as seen through the adolescent writings of the performers’ diaries, lyrics and notes. The results are both poignant and hilarious. “Mortified” premieres in Austin tonight at ColdTowne Theater. I spoke with executive producer Neil Katcher yesterday to discuss the genesis of Mortified and art as catharsis.
M.O.: When did the show start and where did the idea come from originally?
Neil Katcher:It was started about five years ago, and the idea itself started probably a year before that. Dave Neidelberg created the show because he found a love letter that he never sent to this girl in high school. It was really horribly written, trying to be way too clever for its own good. Luckily, he never gave it to this girl. He just started sharing with his friends because he thought it was funny, and everyone was like, “This is great; you have to do something with this.” And as he started talking to people, he started realizing that many of his friends had diaries or their own love letters or poetry they were embarrassed by that they had written when they were kids.
With blogs and YouTube and Found Magazine, there’s such a move towards user-generated material these days. What do you think of that form of art and its prevalence?
I think that (phenomenon) is connected to a few things. We are definitely user-generated theater. I don’t know if it got started because of reality TV, but I think that people have a real hunger out there for something that reality TV only pretends to capture. In addition, television kind of talks at you, and I think the thing that the Internet has done, it’s sort of created this ability for people to have their own voice and get into conversations. The forms of entertainment that seem to be sparking more than others are types where people can actually participate, and I think our show has definitely been that.
The other thing that we do that something like reality television doesn’t do is, we’re really not shy. We’re not going to shy away from stuff that is real just for the sake of worrying that our audiences can’t handle it.
It seems like often, reality TV is accidental embarrassment — people don’t realize they’re being embarrassed — whereas this is celebrating it and becomes like catharsis through mild humiliation.
Obviously, in television, it’s a producer putting people in these confined situations purposely for the effect of having them do something stupid, whereas we’re more about the ownership of our own experiences. A lot of people in our show are doing it specifically for the catharsis. In a lot of cases, people actually tell us that they are doing it because they don’t want to feel so connected to the things they went through as kids. So there’s a level of empowerment. There’s this level of celebration (at the shows) almost like group therapy that is not prevalent in any other sort of comedy shows that I’m aware of. There’s a real level of warmth and excitement in the room. Total strangers are suddenly showing love for this person they may have hated when they were in high school, and that’s one of the coolest aspects of it for me. At the end of every “Mortified,” it sort of feels like we were all in the same boat, and we just didn’t know it.
Empathy is a great byproduct of honesty.
Exactly. And I think that’s what I was trying to say about the reality television thing and what makes what we do so much more honest and real. People are owning their own experiences, and they’re willing to fess up to their own issues.
How do you cast the performers?
It’s an open call, so we’ll meet with anybody who has anything they wrote before the age of 21. The stuff you wrote as a kid — you never intended for it to be shown in public, and you certainly didn’t intend for it to be in a comedy show — and because of that, you don’t necessarily have the perspective to know what would be interesting or funny to a stranger. So when we meet with people, our goal is to look through their material with them and pick the most interesting, fascinating things and then have a long discussion — sort of a like a very unprofessional therapy — where we start noticing patterns and things in their life. Because we’re ultimately looking for a theme to organize all the material around.
The show started in L.A. When did you decide to take it to other cities and how did you choose to come to Austin?
The first city we went to after L.A. was New York, the most logical step. And the reason we went to New York is kind of the reason we went to all the other cities. Every city we’ve come to is because people have come to us and said they wanted to do it in their cities and asked what they needed to do. We work with people in all the different places to guide them through the process of putting their first show up, and we sort of let them go from there.
Are there time constraints on the performers?
All the pieces will run anywhere from six to 10 minutes. And the idea is that every piece gives a little autobiographical window into somebody’s life. Every piece has a little bit of a theme and a story line, and they all have their own little arch, so they definitely reveal something very specific about the person reading them.
How do you keep from getting too homogeneous and having too many similar topics?
There’s a lot of crush material that comes our way, but everybody has a different angle. No two love stories are the same, and it’s our job to dig into each person’s life and understand what was going on in their life. I think everybody is incredibly unique.
“Mortified” [official site]
“Mortified in Austin” [details]
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October 31, 2007
Interview: Padma Lakshmi
Padma Lakshmi:I’m not. If I was, I think my cookbook would have reflected that. I’ve just hunted and gathered these recipes where and when I could.
Were there some recipes you felt bad about having to leave out?
You always have to do a bit of pruning in a cookbook, and you have to see where it’s redundant. And you think, “OK, maybe I don’t need that many recipes with succotash, or whatever it is.” (Laughs) It’s kind of a process. I always keep recipes in the back of my head, and then I revisit them. There are a couple of recipes in this book that actually did not make it to the first book, and I’m pretty glad that they finally found their voice after all these years.
What would you tell a novice chef who is scared or overwhelmed by the prospect of trying to make simple, yet delicious meals at home?
I would say, start with a dish in the book that you’re familiar with, that maybe just has a couple of different ingredients and that you’re used to — like the crab cakes or the chicken soup or even the macaroni and cheese or fried chicken. These are all recipes that are really classic in the American repertoire, except they have one or two ingredients that make them new again and a little more ethnically different. So in a way you get those flavors, but you’re not shocking your audience of diners with something completely weird, like a rack of bison, that they’ve never had. (Laughs)
It seems your book, as much as it is you sharing recipes, is about sharing your love of food and promoting the idea that food can play a role in the narrative of our lives instead of simply providing nutrition.
You just said it so beautifully. It really is part of the narrative of our lives, and food is so emotional and it’s so much about coming together with your loved ones. This was a very personal book for me, so it’s by no means everyone’s idea of the “100 Greatest Hits,” you know? It certainly is my list of how I’m eating now and how the people around me are eating in most urban environments — be that New York or Los Angeles or Austin. If you think about the way you’ve eaten in the last week, you’ve probably had a variety of cultures on your plate, and that’s what I wanted to do. We all have those flavors that we’re attracted to when we go out. What I wanted to do was bring them into the home.
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September 6, 2007
Interview: Michael Davis, director of 'Shoot 'Em Up'
Tell me about your original animation concept and how the movie initially came to life.
It was very helpful for me to figure out the rhythms, when I needed to up the suspense, or have the clever moment. It’s literally shot for shot what was in the movie. And it became a great tool not only for me to sell the project to the studio, ‘cause they could see what they were getting, but then the actor could see, you know, Clive said, “Oh my god, this guy’s got it figured out.”
Was this the first time anyone had ever brought this type of treatment to the studio or actors?
I don’t think anybody else has ever done anything like this. I think that there’s 3-D animation programs, but the actual hand-drawn which I did myself, which is laborious, I don’t think they’ve ever seen before.
It seems like a long way from Parsons to “Shoot ‘Em Up,” but I guess the animation you used to sell the project is the intermediary of sorts.
I was actually doing animated cartoon when I was in sixth grade. My teacher gave me Super-8 camera and I was doing little animations through junior high and high school.
Now that you have “Shoot ‘Em Up” in the can and can show it to studios, I guess you won’t be needing to use animation again to sell movies to the studios, or is it something you’d want to stick with in order to get a vision for the film?
I think it helped me - forced me - to see the movie in more clarity. And also, I was able to test ideas out. There was a certain sort of Loony Tunes, sort of violent action quality to it, and I can see the rhythms better than if I just did drawn storyboards. You could see, “Oh you know what? It needs something more specific; it needs to be more energized.” It makes the editorial part of it snap. I think the animation helped me; I’m sort of somebody who believes in karma, and I don’t wanna cut corners, so I’m planning on the next movie doing the animation. But what I’m hoping to do is hire someone to help me. (laughs)
There are quite a few references to John Woo’s “Hard Boiled,” along with nods to Sergio Leone and James Bond. It’s kind of a movie for cinephiles in some ways, although almost any movie will have those kind of allusions, but how do you keep the winks to the cinephiles without losing the general moviegoer?
I think because the movie works if you don’t know the references at all. I mean, I’ll go see a Tarantino movie and hardly see one percent of the references. The movie needs to stand on its own, and in “Shoot ‘Em Up,” you’ve got this new kind of action hero who’s the ultimate underdog; he’s the homeless hero. But he has the moral certitude. Any injustice in life, whether it’s somebody driving a car badly, he corrects the situation. So I think he’s very identifiable. I think everybody in life, they go and they say, “Oh, I hate the guy who just took that handicap parking spot; I wish I could do something about it.” And it’s kind of a wish fulfillment. Here’s this guy when anybody out there is kind of a jerk, he punches them.
And if they have a gauche trucker mud-flap girl earring, he can shoot it off…
Yea, or bad toenails. Or whatever. And I think people all of a sudden, in a larger than life mythic hero, if they can find every day traits in him that they can seem themselves in him. Or a wish fulfillment - I wish I’d handled that situation that way. This angriest man in the world, meeting out justice, they like. So I think they don’t have to get any of the references in the movie because he’s an identifiable character. And then I’m giving them the eye candy - the fun action sequences. I don’t think they need to see any of the winks in the movie.
You mentioned Mr. Smith getting a second chance. If you go back to the films you were making before, this one kind of seems like a stark departure. Is there a way in which you see this movie as a second chance for you?
That’s so funny; I never really thought about Mr. Smith getting a second chance, and I getting a second chance at my career. I was about to drop out of the film business because I was making these low-budget indie teen romantic comedies and not paying the bills with what I was getting paid. And a lot of people on the internet would say, “Well, how is this guy who does these romantic comedies doing a big action movie? He’s not the guy.” And the thing that I’d like these people to understand is that it’s really, really hard to get a chance to make a movie, any kind of movie. Once you make a movie in one genre, that’s what people want to typecast you as. And it felt so hard to get any movie made. Well, if somebody wants me to make another romantic comedy, hey, I love making movies. I’ll just keep doing that. But I had written spec scripts with action heroes prior to that, but nobody’s going to give me, with no track record, a chance. So you take what you can get and you sort of go with the momentum of your career. Don’t fight the current.
But, as I said, back in sixth grade, I was writing and loving James Bond and you just need to find a way. I also feel like “Shoot ‘Em Up” is a better movie because I made these independent movies because they all were sort of quirky and a little bit off beat. I had some weird characters in there and everybody sees (names) and they go, “That’s a Michael Davis movie. I don’t know what it is, but the way you have those buddy characters talking or the way you have a little bit of a sexual frankness, there’s a specific voice” And as much as “Shoot ‘Em Up” conforms to the action genre — I’m giving you the big action set pieces, I’m giving you the mythic hero, but I’m twisting it. You’ve never seen an action hero eat a carrot. You’ve never seen an action hero who gets so angry at the way somebody is sipping their coffee.
I feel like my voice and my personality is coming through. I have an indie film voice that’s coming through in a big studio movie. And I think that makes it more fun and much fresher than the standard genre fare. The indie film experience informed “Shoot ‘Em Up.” But I’m really pleased how you talked about the second chance. I was this angry guy when I was thinking about getting out of the business. There was a time when I was at the mechanics, and I wasn’t getting any attention, and I had this tire iron, and I started yelling, and they immediately fixed my tire, and my wife said, “You’re not angry about this tire thing, you’re angry about this bigger thing in your life.” And I put that anger into the character of Clive Owen.
I understand that Clive worked a lot with you almost in a sense of being a writing partner to a degree. Clive gives such a nuanced a realistic performance in such an exuberant and over-the-top setting, it seems the movie would be hard to be pulled off as well as it was without him. How did you get him, and was he your first choice from the outset?
First off, Clive Owen, of any actor in the entire world, he was my first choice. I’d seen him in Croupier. Have you seen him in these BMW shorts? He looks so cool in those as the action hero. I knew I wanted him, and I felt the movie needed a fresh action star, someone who we hadn’t seen. And the world had wanted to see Clive as an action hero. You got a taste of it in “Sin City,” and everyone had wanted to see him be Bond. So he was my number one choice. and luckily he was the studio’s number one choice. So we sent him the script, we sent him the animation. They sent the Ain’t It Cool News article about the animation to him. Somewhere buried in there Harry said, “You know who’d be cool in this is Clive Owen.” So, I think maybe the public appeal of the desire to see him maybe helped him. Then the next thing was Clive’s biggest fear was he’s got all this action in there, and wondered “Could Michael pull this off?” And I had drinks with him, and I was all excited and showed him the animation and had all my answers. And he decided I knew what I was doing. Here’s a guy, everybody wanted him. He’s worked with Spike Lee, Alfonso Cuaron, and I’m nobody. How’s he gonna pick me at the point where he can pick anybody?
Do you ever stop and pinch yourself and think,”Wow, is this really happening?”
Right now. I’ll do it right now. (pinches self) I’m still doing it. I walk and see the posters and I can’t believe that it’s happening to me.
To view Davis’s original animation that helped him to pitch the movie to New Line and Owen, click here.
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May 11, 2007
The M.O. Interview: The Frank Mills
Discussed: Training, philosophy, Peter Sellers, “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” monkeys and Morocco.
(Note of disclosure: Last year I took an improv class taught by Madorsky, and May was a volunteer contributor to Austinist during my tenure as co-editor.)
When and how did The Frank Mills form?
Dave Buckman and Bob McNichol: We grew out of a group called Tight, which was Jen Cargill, Erin Plischke and Mac Antigua, who also performed with Massive in Houston, along with Rachel, Dave, Erika and Bob. Once Mac moved to Minnesota, and Jen and Erin back to Chicago, we decided to start fresh with a new name: the name of a chubby composer of an international No. 1 instrumental hit song.
You all have a wealth of training and experience; can you speak to your different backgrounds?
DB & BM: Rachel has a strong acting background, had performed at Second City Cleveland, and did improv for years before that here in Austin. Erika had done some acting and production here in Austin before moving to Chicago to study and perform at Second City, IO, Annoyance, and ComedySportz. Dave worked at The Second City in Chicago and Boom Chicago in Amsterdam as a director and teacher, and used to direct plays before that, in addition to performing and writing sketch and improv for years and years. Bob studied and performed in Chicago at IO, Annoyance, and Second City, and played a complex Alfalfa in a 1985 production of “A Little Rascals Christmas.”
What was the idea behind your union and the mission of the troupe? You guys have a unique style and I am curious if you knew how you were going to approach writing and performing from the beginning or if it was (catch phrase alert) more organic?
DB & BM: I think we just want to do stuff that would make us laugh, so usually things that are real/true, things that are absurd, some satire. If you come at it from an honest way, you can pretty much say anything you want. Off stage, we want to bring sketch and improv to an audience that might not think themselves fans of sketch or improv. With regards to writing and performing, I don’t think anything too calculated could not feel contrived. It’s really just four people thinking about what’s funny to them more than anything else.
I have seen you perform both sketch and improv and wonder how you feel about the different art forms. Do you prefer one? How do they inform one another?
DB: I love improv. I love it. There is nothing in the world like knowing you have the last line (the “out”) to the show and then you say it and then the lights go out right when you expected them to. There is no drug that gives you a better high than that.
Sketch is a harder beast for me. It’s a little presumptuous to try to assume you know what is funny and then present it as such. I admire stand-ups for being able to do that and shrug it off if it doesn’t go well. That being said, I can watch and admire “SNL,” “MAD,” “The State,” “Kids in The Hall” and “Mr. Show” for hours and hours.
Sketch and improv go hand in hand because they complement each other’s skills so well. Improv helps when you are writing and can’t get to the next beat. It teaches you to say “yes” to any path. A sketch background helps when you are improvising when you can’t get out of the scene with dignity. Sketch teaches you that everything has the potential to be funny as long as everyone is on board and is looking for the game in a scene. I am always surprised when I go back to doing a play how much both improv and sketch have developed me as a director or actor. They’ve taught me to always be present with my scene partners while maintaining a sense of what the audience is invested in.
BM: I like improv better — I love sketch, but improv is more lust-like. Improv informs sketch in that you can use improv to generate sketch ideas (in addition to just writing). We’ve gone back to past improv shows and honed some of those scenes down into written sketches for this show.
say anything you want.”
How do you approach writing a sketch show? Do you improvise scenes and let that lead to the development of a script or do you sit around a table going back and forth, seeing which jokes work?
DB: I think at first we had no idea how to write together. I had directed dozens of sketch shows, and had even put a MADtv packet together, but this year had been the first time I actually wrote anything for me to be in, with my own voice. So we went about the writing from every angle we could. We would meet once or twice a week and pitch ideas or come with fully written scenes, and then we would just sit around a table with some chips and salsa and cookies and shoot the bull for two hours. Sometimes great ideas would fly out of those based on news stories we’d heard or relating actual experiences from that day. For the most part we would assign someone to take the lead and fully realize the idea to paper and then we take turns editing the pieces. For example, Bob will come up with an idea and write half a page. Erika will take it and draw it out to a 3-page script. Rachel will punch it up. Et cetera.
We also take improvised scenes from our show and transcribe them and edit them down. Our Frontera Fest improvised show about Passover is in this show. Our Out of Bounds show from last year about a snuff film is in this show. There are some others being worked on for future shows. A world of thanks goes to the Hideout and Coldtowne for giving us a stage throughout April to improvise out these scenes once or twice in front of an audience.
BM: All of that. Some stuff from improv shows gets sketched out, and other times each of us will bring in anything from a quick idea to a fully fleshed out scene to work on as a group. We’ll talk it out for awhile, or one of us will try to knock parts of it out… it’s really different for each scene. In terms of the show itself, much of it we’d already tried out in front of an audience in one form or another, and then re-tooled.
“Winning Dirty: A Sketch Show About the Things People Will Do to Get Their Way.” A very intriguing name; how did you come up with the name and theme? Is there a narrative thread in the show or is that just a clever name?
DB: The “Classy (expletive) Show” we did in February, which the workshop for this show, was all about, “Let’s have some class.” When the show was finished and we were going through the scenes that did not get cut in March, we saw that the thesis was more about the exact opposite. It seemed a lot more enjoyable to come at this from the opposite point of view: winning shamelessly by any means necessary. It seemed funnier and easier to satirize. Bob and Erika went on vacation in Marfa for a weekend and while they were gone, I got the word “winners” stuck in my head. I forget the rest of the story.
BM: There’s no real narrative thread, as something a bit more thematic. A few characters and scenes run through the show, but we’d really just written some stuff that fit that general idea. We tossed around some names that would fit that common thread — Dave came up with “Winning Dirty” — and then we wrote more around that.
How long did it take you to write and perfect the show? How much rehearsal have you done for this show in particular?
DB: We started writing “Classy (expletive) Show” in January. I took some time in February and March to be in Yellow Tape Construction’s “I Am Not Tartuffe” and then we hit the ground running in late March and April. Although, some scenes have been with us for a while. Gay Marriage is from Bob and Erika’s Frontera Fest Show in Feb ‘06. and Dodge Landgrab is from Tight: (expletive) from summer ‘06.
BM: Some of the stuff goes back to a McNichol and May show from Frontera 2006, some of it was written this week, but mostly in the last few months. I don’t think it would ever be considered perfect — having a few weeks to perform this allows us to continue to tweak it throughout the run. We’ve rehearsed off and on since the end of last year, and ramped up into we-gotta-get-our-(expletive)-together mode in the last few weeks before the show.
I imagine all of you could be performing in bigger cities with a longer history of comedy and stage performance: LA, Chicago , NY…how did you decide on living and performing in Austin?
DB: Rachel and I were in Cleveland and were planning on going to L.A. until we realized that we were in our mid-thirties and we didn’t want to be fighting 20-year-olds for the privilege of being Ashton Kutcher’s personal assistant and wiping his (expletive) for him just to get our foot in a door we didn’t really know if we wanted to walk through. We just wanted to perform, but we also wanted sun, and an arts community. So it was either Miami, L.A. or Austin. Rachel had lived here before and I had visited in the late ’90s during the Big Stinkin’ Improv Festival. It was an easy choice. Once here, Shana Merlin, Shannon McCormick and Andy Crouch were very welcoming in getting us started.
BM: We knew a few people doing improv down here already, and Erika had lived here before and done some acting and production. Really, we’d just been in Chicago for a number of years — we love that place, but wanted to find a place that was little closer to our lifestyle, moneystyle, weatherstyle, quesostyle, etc. It was here or Morocco.
What are your thoughts about the Austin comedy scene in general, and where do you see it heading?
DB: The comedy scene is very strong right now. Matt Bearden and Dave Huntsberger and Kerri Lendo are really, really good stand-ups. Seth Cockfield and Lisa Delarios are awesome too. Sketch and comedic film pockets are popping up left and right. YellowTape Construction Company has a rogue’s gallery of some top notch comedic actors. Slam Poets have started coming to improv shows instead of, well, slamming us. The best part is that a lot of those different pockets are starting to intersect in variety shows and local films.
The improv scene exploded in the last two years partly because there are so many different styles being blended together. It’s really a unique improv scene in that there are short-formers, long-formers and narrative improvisers, veterans and students all sharing the same two stages. That is unheard of anywhere else in the country where cities and styles are usually segregated. I am hoping that Mike Judge and QT and Richard Linklater start to take notice in what is happening in local comedy. There is such a wealth of local talent.
BM: I wish I knew more stand-up. I’ve seen Lisa DeLarios, Seth Cockfield, and Kerri Lendo — they’re all great, and I know there’s a ton more I need to see from what I’ve heard and read. Improv and sketch seem to be really taking off in terms of audience somewhat, but definitely in terms of performers and students. It’s exciting.
what local sketch is and what it can be.”
Does Austin get respect outside of Texas as being a good town for comedy?
DB: Probably not as much as it should. But people are starting to take notice. From the improv world there was a bit of a black stain on Austin after the Big Stinkin’ Improv Festival folded without paying any of the teachers. But in the last year or so, the buzz is getting stronger and stronger. As more heavyweights come down for Out of Bounds or swing by town and perform for a night while they are on vacation or shooting something…the more they comment on how much fun the scene feels.
BM: It seems pretty well-known in terms of stand-ups, for both touring stand-ups to stop here as well as being a great home base. But for improv or sketch, generally, I don’t think it’s a lack of respect as much as a lack of awareness. Slowly, as groups visit festivals in other cities and other groups visit here, people are starting to notice that there’s a bit going on here.
What are your comedic influences, and beyond that, what do you just enjoy laughing at, whether it be a writer, a comic, movie, social stigma, etc?
DB: “Stripes,” SNL, and Howard Stern really informed my sense of humor as a teenager and they still make me laugh very, very hard. Other than that…there are three things that will always be funny to me: old people cursing, monkeys (doing anything) and Asian babies falling down and crying. Racist? Maybe. But watch “America’s Funniest Home Videos” with the sound turned off and tell me it’s not a little funnier than everything else.
BM: I’m as much a sucker for British satire as I am for a well-thought-out fart sound. Outside of the real influences of family, friends, etc., I’m influenced by any of the usual suspects: US/UK sketch shows/sitcoms/etc. — people like Peter Sellers, Armando Iannucci, Cantinflas, Phil Silvers, Peter Cook. I like older stuff as much as newer stuff.
Any last words on “Winning Dirty”? Why should people come see it?
DB: I think that the show is solid and dark and edgy and fun and can really change people’s notions of what local sketch is and what it can be.
BM: We need you to help us pay rent on this theater. In return, we promise a concerted attempt at humor in your direction.
“Winning Dirty: A Sketch Show About the Things People Will Do to Get Their Way”
Every Friday and Saturday in May at 8 pm Blue Theater [map]
Tickets: $15
For reservations, call 512.415.2896
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