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July 25, 2005
New Cake Boy Site and Reviews!
Click the icon above to be taken to the new site for Scott & BJ's just-released-to-DVD appearance in Cake Boy!
From a new online review by campuscircle.net...
"...Scott Auckerman from "Mr. Show" plays the band’s manager as a fast-talking sleaze ball, stealing every scene in which he appears... This movie is very funny right to the end and well acted by all. Patton Oswalt ("King of Queens"), Kyle Gass (Tenacious D), Bob Odenkirk ("Mr. Show") and Brian Posehn ("Just Shoot Me") all add to the fun with cameo appearances..."
From punknews.org...
"The band’s manager Mickey, played by Scott Auckerman, supplies some of the movie’s more memorable moments with a handful of zingers... Aside from some one-liners by Mickey, NUFAN’s mischievous attitudes and live footage, a cameo from comedian Patton Oswalt, and Fat Mike’s small role, the film fails on several accounts..."
Posted by funbunch at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)
July 22, 2005
Recent Fun Bunch Radio Appearances
Not necessarily something to watch, but something to listen to! In case you missed either of these recent appearances by Scott & BJ to promote CDR's move to UCB and the Fun Bunch 10th Anniversary Show, they've been archived and are available for your listening pleasure!
Click below for Scott & Matt Besser's appearance on "Barely Legal Radio." When you are taken to the page, click on the 7/08/05 show...
And here is where you can listen to Scott & BJ on The Sound of Young America, courtesy of splangy.com! It may take a while to load (it's about 28MB), but it's worth it! The second half of the program features an interview with CDR favorite Greg Behrendt!
Posted by funbunch at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)
New CDR Writeup in LA Weekly
From this week's LA Weekly...
"Comedy Death Ray has moved to an area with even worse parking than M Bar. Thanks a lot. Or thanks for no lot. (The valet’s a reasonable $3.50, though.) And there’s no booze at the new venue. Still, the comedy offered by the Fun Bunch — Scott Aukerman and B.J. Porter — is consistently outstanding, bringing such names as Zach Galifianakis, Sarah Silverman, Andy Kindler, Bob Odenkirk and loads more. So have a few belts elsewhere and take a cab. Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, 5919 Franklin Blvd., Hollywood; every Tues., 8:30 p.m.; $5. (323) 908-8702."
Posted by funbunch at 09:46 AM | Comments (0)
July 21, 2005
Comics Who Have Performed at See You Next Tuesday!
Are you a comic who we've left off this list? Have a link that you want added or updated? Just drop us a note in the "comments" section!
Nick Adams
James Adomian
Scott Aukerman
Steve Benaquist
Doug Benson
Michelle Biloon
Susan Burke
Michael Busch
Blair Butler
Neil Campbell
Pete Carboni
Troy Conrad
Spencer Dobson
Josh Fadem
Jenn Fee
Jenna Fischer
Chad Fogland
Brent Forrester
Paul Goebel
Jarrett Grode
Adam Gropman
Stephen Hale
Boris Hamilton
Chris Hardwick
Anthony Jeselnik
Dave Johnson
Mindy Kaling
Sari Karplus
Moshe Kasher
Martha Kelly
Jason Kessler
Kyle Kinane
Andy Kindler
Jen Kirkman
John Krasinski
Howard Kremer
Aaron Lee
Paul Lieberstein
Machu Picchu
Matt Manser
Dan Mintz
Eric Moneypenny
Jordan Morris
Morgan Murphy
Eric Charles Neilsen
Andrew Norelli
B.J. Novak
Zach Paez
Johnny Pemberton
Eddie Pepitone
Mike Phirman
BJ Porter
Prank the Dean
Chip Pope
Jonah Ray
Darrick Richardson
Moses Robinsin
Ron & Ryan
Paul Rust
Vance Sanders
Andrea Savage
Kevin Seccia
Ari Shaffir
Paul Scheer
Michael Schur
Mike Schmidt
Tom Sharpe
Sketch Armstrong
Andrew Solmssen
Brody Stevens
Gene Stupinsky
David Taylor
Leslie Tsina
Joe Wagner
Reggie Watts
Brent Weinbach
Larry Wilmore
Rainn Wilson
Christopher Wood
Charlyne Yi
Posted by funbunch at 08:15 AM | Comments (0)
See You Next Tuesday Lineups 2005
Here's where you can find complete lineups for CDR's "spin-off," the See You Next Tuesday show!
Click on the date for links to reviews, comments and more -- courtesy of aspecialthing.com!
July 19
Special Kick-off Show
Chip Pope - host (as "Connor Oberst")
Zach Paez
Sari Karplus
Mike Phirman
Jarrett Grode
Brody Stevens
Howard Kremer - child voice-over king
July 26
Aaron Lee featuring Jen Kirkman - host
Nick Adams
Prank the Dean
Brent Weinbach
Sketch Armstrong
Chris Hardwick
Aug 9
Joe Wagner - host
Michael Busch featuring Josh Fadem & Dave Johnson
Darrick Richardson
Michelle Biloon
Paul Scheer
David Taylor
Eddie Pepitone
Aug 16
Chris Fairbanks - host
Jordan Morris
Charlyne Yi - Old Cockney Fortune Teller
Pete Carboni
Tom Sharpe
Jen Kirkman
Aug 23
Eric Moneypenny featuring Michael Busch, Stephen Hale, Machu Picchu, Neil Campbell, Jenn Fee, Josh Fadem, James Adomian, Dan Mintz & David Taylor- host
Leslie Tsina
Adam Gropman
Ari Shaffir
Moses Robinson
Brody Stevens
Aug 30
Boris Hamilton featuring Jarrett Grode, Kevin Seccia & Andy Kindler - host
Erik Charles Nielsen
Steve Benaquist
Martha Kelly & Tom Sharpe - Shortstack & Little Britches
Andy Kindler
Sept 6
The Fun Bunch - hosts
Matt Manser
Troy Conrad - Comedy Jesus
Susan Burke
Jarrett Grode
Andrea Savage
Sept 13
Morgan Murphy - host
Andy Kindler
Johnny Pemberton
Andrew Solmssen
Eric Moneypenny
Vance Sanders
Brody Stevens
Sept 20
James Adomian - host
Paul Rust
Christopher Wood
Spencer Dobson
Kevin Seccia
Mike Schmidt
Sept 27
"Office Party"
B.J. Novak - host
Jason Kessler
Michael Schur
Gene Stupnitsky
Paul Lieberstein
Mindy Kaling
B.J. Novak with Jenna Fischer & John Krasinski - "No, But"
Rainn Wilson
Larry Wilmore
Oct 4
Michelle Biloon - host
Chad Fogland
Kyle Kinane
Blair Butler
Brent Forrester
Reggie Watts
Oct 11
Sean Conroy - host
Andrew Norelli
Paul Goebel
Sari Karplus
Anthony Jeselnik
Howard Kremer
Posted by funbunch at 08:08 AM | Comments (0)
July 18, 2005
Scott Aukerman & Brendon Small to Appear at Garage Comedy Tonight!
Late notice, I know, but I will be appearing as Keith Brody, the All-American Asshole, tonight, with Brendon Small on guitar. Here's the show info:
"I'm With the Band"
july (7) eighteenth (18) two thousand and five (2005)
matt WALSH
scott AUKERMAN & brendon SMALL
andy DALY
AVANT TARDE
molly BRYANT
danforth FRANCE & josh FADEM
dave JOHNSON
karl RING
eddie PEPITONE & jessica LEVITH
a film adventure with RALPH THE ROADIE
and something from our resident roadie extraordinaire, REV. CORKY BAINES
your hosts VAL myers & KULAP vilaysack
come for the show, stay for the after party
GarageComedy.com THE SHOW
EVERY MONDAY EVERY MONDAY EVERY MONDAY
@ El Cid
4212 sunset in silverlake
Doors open @ 8
Show starts @ 8:30
no cover, $10 table minimum
Posted by funbunch at 04:58 PM | Comments (1)
July 13, 2005
The AST Interview: The Fun Bunch Part V
Our friends over at ASpecialThing.com have been kind enough to post an interview with BJ and I, on the occasion of our 10th anniversary. It's in five parts, and we'll be posting them as they go up!
For Part I, click here.
For Part II, click here.
For Part III, click here.
For Part IV, click here.
PART FIVE: THE FUTURE
isoS: So what precipitated the move [to the UCB Theatre]?
BJ: Well, mostly it was just the opportunity. They were opening this theater, and UCB’s great…
[my phone rings]
BJ: Uh-oh!
SA: Mrs. Squatch!
[I check the caller ID and turn phone off]
BJ: Whoa.
isoS: Sorry.
SA: You just told Mrs. Squatch, “Fuck you!”
isoS: No, it was my sister.
SA: Oh it was your sister! Even worse. Sissy Squatch. Sisquatch.
SA/BJ/isoS: [laugh]
SA: Yeah, why not do something cool if they’re gonna offer it to you? [That’s] one reason.
BJ: Yeah, UCB gives [L.A.] a real chance at having this new hub of comedy, like a new center where people can come just about any night of the week and see something that’s of really high quality. And I could say a bunch of things about other established theaters [laughs] that are in L.A. that maybe I don’t enjoy as much, but I think one of the great things --
SA: Do you mean the boycott?
SA/BJ/isoS: [laugh]
isoS: Oh Jesus…
BJ: I’m talking about L.A. Connections.
SA: Oh, okay.
BJ: And the fact that [UCB is] interested in having all different kinds of comedy. Standup…
SA: Standup, you know, like they say, they’re a comedy theater, not an improv theater, which I think is important.
But I do want to say, people have come up to me since we announced the move and they said, “Why would you ever do this? It’s smaller, there’s less seats? I don’t get it, you’re selling it out every week. Why would you do that?” And to me it’s because honestly it’ll give us more freedom to make the shows better. Because I got into a situation where I was just like, I found that we couldn’t sell the place out unless there were at least three headliners on the show. You’d have to put Zach [Galifianakis], Bob [Odenkirk] and Sarah Silverman on a show and then people would come see it. You know, they got so jaded after a while because they’re doing it so much, that you’d have to make it look like, “Oh my God, okay fine, I’ll go see three of them,” or “I’ll see four of them.” It got to the point where I was doing that so much that it started to become like chasing success, and you know all of a sudden the shows got worse, because those people don’t want to do it every month, ‘cause they don’t write enough material. And then you do a show you really like, like the one we did the day after Memorial Day, which was like newer people, and that was an awesome show and just as funny as any of the other shows, and yet the place is half-full. So to me, I would much rather be doing those newcomer shows, sprinkled in with people I really like, and if it’s half-full, it’s full here [at UCBTLA]. So for me it’s just better for comedy, ‘cause I don’t want to just keep doing something just ‘cause it’s successful and then watch it burn out five years in.
isoS: So Matt Besser came to you guys with the suggestion and you said “Great?”
SA: [pause, clears throat] Yes.
isoS: [laughing] Thank you.
BJ: [laughing] He’s like, “That’s all I wanted, what the fuck were you talking about for five minutes?”
SA: [laughing] Sorry.
BJ: We worked with Besser on the Offensive Show, we cast him as one of the hosts of the show, so we’ve known him for a couple of years now.
SA: And … I know he’s really excited Death Ray’s [coming here], ‘cause it adds legitimacy in a way to his theater, but for us it adds legitimacy to us, ‘cause it’s such a cool theater, and to be part of it is so good, so I think it’s just, um… as of this writing, it’ll be great.
SA/BJ/isoS: [laugh]
SA: And the Honeymooners will be number one.
isoS: [laughs] Well, it’s a good team-up of forces.
SA: Yeah it’s like a Marvel Team-Up issue, where you have the Thing -- No, that’s Marvel Two-in-One, sorry. Marvel Team-Up is Spider-Man … and you have Moon Knight, you know, it’s like two things together that are cool.
BJ: Oh shit, are we Moon Knight?
SA: Yeah, we’re Moon Knight.
BJ: Aw fuck.
SA: But Moon Knight’s cool, ‘cause he’s got three split personalities, and he’s a… knight, from the moon! ‘Cause Knight, also he only fights crime at night, so he’s like a knight at night.
isoS: Hmm.
SA: That’s pretty cool.
isoS: Alright, I’ve got a couple more questions. You’ve already touched on it a little, but how is the show going to be different in the new space?
SA: I think there will be -- It’s a little more intimate, so there will be way more opportunities to do sketches, because any time you do sketches at M Bar everyone would have to be carrying mikes, and it’s just so weird to see sketches where people are talking into mikes. So that’ll be really good, we can incorporate more of that.
BJ: I think there will be less eating of shitty dinners.
SA/BJ/ isoS: [laugh]
SA: Don’t say that, Joe’s gonna read this.
BJ: And I love Joe Reynolds!
SA: What he means is there will be less shitting, uh, in bathrooms with no locks.
BJ/isoS: [laugh]
SA: You know, there may or may not be drinking during the show, I’m going to turn a blind eye to it myself, so that might be different. The show, I think, will be maybe a little shorter. But the more exciting thing is I think there will be cooler shit that you haven’t heard of before. I don’t think anyone can argue with our taste in comedy, so I if we put it up, I think that you’re gonna like it. And there might be fewer shows like the second-to-last one we did, where every single person is a headlining comedian, but for me that’s better for comedy. And if you only want to come when there are those shows, we’ll have anniversary shows and stuff like that.
BJ: And on those nights, we’re gonna run the air conditioning before…
SA: That is our pledge to you: air conditioned rooms. Welcome to the Twentieth Century! Twenty-First, Twenty-First!
isoS: [laughs] Uh, I can fix that. I don’t have to write every single thing out.
BJ: You mean this entire interview, you can fix?
isoS: What do you guys think about --
SA: IO West?
isoS: [laughs] Yeah. Do you want --? If you want to talk about the boycott, talk about the boycott. [Scott recently called for fans and performers to boycott ImprovOlympic West because they wouldn’t refund his money after they re-sold tickets that he had purchased for a show.]
SA: That’s a joke. I just wanted that asshole to see it. That is a joke, I don’t care if anyone performs at IO West. I just think that guy is a total fuckin’ maroon. And I wanted him to Google his name and see that.
BJ: I didn’t know him, but Besser totally agreed with you about that guy.
SA: You shouldn’t say that. But he does. I asked around about him. Let’s say he’s not beloved.
isoS: We’re gonna already have to go through… I’ll just send you a transcript before I print this: “You want this on it, you want that on it? What do I cut?”
No, what do you think of the state of comedy. You already talked about locally, but the industry? What would make it better?
SA: You know for ten years we’ve been hoping that TV will take notice of the really good people and give them opportunities, and they constantly seem to not.
BJ: Yeah.
SA: It’s tough, because HBO does less comedy now than they used to, Comedy Central barely does any at all…
BJ: Talk shows book fewer comics.
SA: Mm-hm. And on the flip-side, there [are] so many more great comics, and I really have to think it’s because of just Standards & Practices, because the best comedy -- it’s one of the reasons we wanted to do the Offensive Show -- the best comedy that we are seeing currently doesn’t pay any attention to Standards & Practices. So we’ve always wanted to have something like The Shield of comedy, where it’s like, forget about worrying about language and stuff like that, let’s just see a good comedy show, and there isn’t really one on the air right now, which is all the more reason to go see them live. And you know, if you’re not in L.A. then go see them wherever you are, or see the tours. You know, that’s a good thing: more people are figuring out, “Hey, if we band together, we can tour.” Which is great. The Comedians of Comedy was borne out of that I think. So hopefully there will be more of those to go to smaller cities.
In terms of TV and movies, um…
BJ: [With] movies especially it’s really incredible, the fact that, you know, [comedies are] the least expensive movies to make, and if they hit --
SA: They hit huge.
BJ: They’re gonna make the biggest amount of profit.
SA: And if they sink, they’re called “Bewitched.”
BJ/isoS: [laugh]
BJ: And yet it just seems like they don’t make enough of them to make very many good ones. And the ones that they do greenlight, during the process of making the film they try to make it more of a family film as they’re making it.
SA: I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been told to tone down stuff to make it PG-13. While we were making Run Ronnie Run, one of the producers was saying, “Guys, can we cut out the ‘fucks’ in this one scene. I mean, come on, kids are gonna LOVE Ronnie!” That was his excuse: kids are gonna love Ronnie.
BJ: If you think Run Ronnie Run isn’t good now, can you imagine it without the word “fuck” in it?
SA/BJ/isoS: [laugh]
SA: So, I kind of have given up hope that mainstream America is going to take notice, but every once in a while something comes out of it. You know, we were hoping to get DVDs together because, like the Netflix guy was telling us, he had previously tried to get [comics] to band together and make DVDs, but for some reason comics [in] the alternative comedy scene, everybody wanted to do their own thing, you know?
And it’s sort of like, you’ve got Kathy Griffin doing her own thing, and then all of a sudden she’s on Suddenly Susan and never does comedy… I mean, she’s done comedy since then, you know… really great comedy, but not in that scene, you know? When you have this group of really great people together, you want great things to come out of it, and unfortunately show business doesn’t really work that way. Mr. Show is one of the only instances where a group of people got together -- and it was a small group, it was just ten or twelve people… I mean, there were more actors on it than that, but… It’s too bad, ‘cause it would be awesome if, like, everyone involved in Death Ray could be on a show, but show business isn’t like that. I mean, it’s gonna take people kinda doing something for free, and doing something out of love, and then to be popular, before anyone will let -- You know, and then everyone will try to copy it.
isoS: Are you at all encouraged by the live stuff that’s happening in L.A.?
SA: Live in L.A. is great, but --
isoS: You don’t think that will have any effect in the long-term, the way in ‘95 --?
SA: I think what’ll happen will be like what has always happened, which [is] the really great people will get work, and they’ll go do their things by themselves, and the things that are really funny that they think of when they’re with their friends, and all the Death Ray comedians, when they think up these great ideas, none of the networks will buy them. But everyone will be taken care of, everyone will kind of have careers and stuff like that. But you know, I really hope that some of these people will band together and try to do something --
BJ: -- that kind of reflects what we see, you know, weekly.
SA: Yeah, ‘cause there’s so much great stuff out there that you wish that the networks would take notice. And we’ve tried. We’ve tried to bring Death Ray to places and there’s not a lot of interest. So I don’t know if we should get this down about it, liking something, but it’s like, it’s too bad ‘cause I’d like to think that after two years and nine months of doing this really great show -- yeah, everyone knows what it is, they’ve all been there, all the Comedy Central people have been there and all that, but we just tried to pitch it as a show, literally a month ago, and the head of Comedy Central didn’t even bother to show up for the meeting. So they’re not interested.
I think it’s gonna take someone doing what Bob and David did with Mr. Show, where it’s like, come on, let’s really do this, and let’s sacrifice, and let’s not take any money to do this. Sort of [like] what we did with the Offensive Show, where we got paid $5,000 to do it for a year, you know, it was just like, “Let’s do this, let’s take our shot and swing for the fences.” And one of these times it’ll work, and then after that everyone will be lifted up in the whole scene, you know what I mean?
That’s a way longer answer than what you were expecting to hear.
isoS: But just to be clear, you guys aren’t giving up on that, you’re gonna…
SA: No, we gave up. No, that’s it. Comedy Central says no, that’s it, there’s no other place to do anything.
isoS: But you’re still -- Actually, I meant to ask you before, do you work on stuff on your own other than when you get a job to work for DreamWorks or whatever, like do you write your own spec scripts still?
SA: You mean separate of each other, or --?
isoS: No, I mean as a team, do you have original spec script that you write?
SA: We don’t really do specs anymore…
BJ: We pitch ideas.
SA: Yeah, you know, our time has been taken up by writing pilots that never get on the air or writing movies that never get made, so [laughing]… yeah. But getting paid for them.
But no, I don’t think we’ll give up. You know, I would like to see a comedy show that does what Death Ray does on the air. I would like to see it. I’d like to see it on HBO, I’d like to see it on Comedy Central. But every network has their own agenda, and Comedy Central right now is all about finding a famous person to fill the void that Dave Chappelle left. So they hired David Spade and they hired Norm MacDonald, you know, great talents, but Comedy Central is not interested in comedy. They’re interested in making money, and they don’t think that there’s money to be made from these comedians that no one knows who they are other than L.A. people. There’s great comics in New York that aren’t getting shows.
It’s weird, because Comedy Central is like, when you really want to get a show on the air, you’re not famous enough, and when you’re famous enough, why work at Comedy Central? So they’re in a really weird bind of like picking people who have had their shots in show business already, and now need another break -- I think Dave Chappelle was one of those people. Norm MacDonald and David Spade are certainly those people. So, it’s almost like they’re not really interested in comedy anymore, they’re just interested in these formerly famous people.
BJ: Or Blue Collar.
SA: Yeah, and Blue Collar is a huge hit for them.
BJ: They say no matter when they put it on, even if it’s not announced, it’s the biggest ratings they get on the channel. So that doesn’t bode well for [their] direction.
SA: Yeah, but I really hope … That’s what we were talking to Netflix about doing with the DVDs, was branding it as like, “There’s a movement going on here, there’s something…” Like in Dogtown and Z-Boys, what that skate magazine was doing [by] showing people that there’s something happening here, there’s a scene, you know, that you need to pay attention to. So we’re hoping something can be done with it, either DVDs or a show or something. So I hope it happens. For ten years, it hasn’t really. Other than Mr. Show. You know?
isoS: [bummed out] Right.
SA: Yeah.
isoS: [laughs]
SA: That’s a really pessimistic answer.
BJ: But all the more reason to come to the theater and see the live show that you may never --
SA: That you’ll never see again, because really, there will be stuff here that no one will ever think to do ever again.
isoS: Right.
What advice do you give aspiring writers and performers who want to be the next Fun Bunch?
BJ: My advice is to go to Dave Anthony’s website and read his advice, because it is perfect.
SA: I haven’t seen it.
BJ: To sum it up: don’t go into it. [laughing] Don’t do it. But do it if you -- Only do it if you absolutely have to. If you feel that every day not doing it, or working in an office, or working some regular person job is a day of your life that you’ve wasted, and that’s all you feel about it, then go into it. But if you can do something else, you probably should do something else.
SA: Yeah, like go on American Idol.
BJ: [laughs]
SA: Because all those people are really good, and they feel the same way…
BJ: Right.
SA: I think there need to be less people coming to L.A. trying to be writers. There’s too many shitty ones. Save the jobs for us! We’re good at it.
SA/BJ/isoS: [laugh]
SA: Go away, young people! I think Jarrett Grode, like, doesn’t like any comedian who started after him. That’s the way to do it, you know? It’s like, comedy ended with you. Go away!
I think, advice for people that want to write is: always write. And you see that -- People are like, “Yeah, write every day, no matter what!” That’s not really helpful, ‘cause I would see that and go, “Oh yeah, Writer, what am I supposed to write?”
BJ: Then you just open Moby Dick…
SA: Yeah, you transcribe it.
No, but if you want to be a sketch writer, write sketches and put them up. Period, that’s the end. I mean, if you want to be a comedy writer, write whatever it is you do and put it up. You can’t just write it at home and chuckle and go, “Oh, how droll!” Put it up somewhere.
If you want to be a performer, always perform. We’ve had big breaks come out of the shittiest shows that you think no one is at. People are always there. And just band together and constantly do it. If you’re not doing it, then how’s anyone ever going to discover you?
isoS: Right.
SA: Is the advice I would give.
isoS: Alright, I think that --
SA: If it’s advice about how to get on the Death Ray show: stop. Please stop coming up and asking to be on the show. Especially that one guy from Chicago who insists he headlines in Chicago…
BJ: [joking] Jimmy Dore?
SA: [laughs] Yeah, Jimmy Dore: stop! Stop asking for spots. You’re fine in Todd Glass’s bits, but come on. When’s the dream gonna die?
SA/BJ/isoS: [laugh]
SA: Uh, yeah, you’re not welcome. None of you. None of you. Go away.
isoS: Hollywood thanks you.
SA: [laughs]
BJ: Recommendations only.
isoS: Is there anything else you guys want to say, or tell the Internet?
BJ: This interview’s over. [turns off tape recorder]
Posted by funbunch at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)
July 11, 2005
The AST Interview: The Fun Bunch Part IV
Our friends over at ASpecialThing.com have been kind enough to post an interview with BJ and I, on the occasion of our 10th anniversary. It's in five parts, and we'll be posting them as they go up!
For Part I, click here.
For Part II, click here.
For Part III, click here.
PART FOUR: UNLEASHING THE DEATH RAY
isoS: But [Jimmy Pardo’s Dance Party] kind of led to Comedy Death Ray, right?
BJ: It did. You know, we put in a lot of hours on that and we wrote all during the day, and at night we put on this live show.
SA: And it was so much fun.
BJ: Yeah, it was so much fun, and working with Jimmy, and other comics, it just felt like, you know, what are we gonna do with that time? [laughs]
SA: We really missed it, because like I think I said, in the years from like ’98 to 2001 or what have you, all there was was Largo in town. Maybe the UnCabaret was…? But I think at the time they were even going out of business because that place they were at [Luna Park] was –
isoS: Yeah, they moved.
SA: So that was up in the air, so really there was only Largo, and if you weren’t booked there regularly at Largo there was no place to perform, so it was like we just hadn’t been performing for those three years, and we really missed it I think.
isoS: What’s the story of the room, M Bar? You knew Joe [Reynolds, M Bar owner]?
BJ: I guess I had met Joe years before but I hadn’t …
SA: Had sex with him yet.
BJ: Yeah. But he was pretty good friends with a couple of my friends, so right after he opened it, every time I would get a drink with these friends they’d say, “Oh we gotta go to Joe’s place, he just opened this place,” and every time I went there: completely empty. Totally empty. Thursday night: totally empty. Thursday night is a good bar night in L.A., the place should be pretty close to full –
SA: But he had just opened it.
BJ: Yeah, but –
isoS: It’s no excuse.
BJ: [laughs]
SA: I’m sorry. You’re right, you’re right!
BJ: But no, I had gone there every once in a while over the course of two or three months, and I had never seen more than two people in the place. So I was like, “This guy’s gonna go out of business, and it’s too bad ‘cause this is kind of a cool room to do a show.”
SA: What BJ likes to do is he likes to save people’s businesses.
BJ/isoS: [laugh]
SA: He has a whole nonprofit organization devoted to that.
BJ: That’s right. But knowing that I wanted to do a show, or at least fill the hours that I had previously worked on Jimmy Pardo’s Dance Party, I asked him if he wanted me to start producing a comedy show there, [and] he emphatically said, “No.”
SA: ‘Cause he hated comedy.
BJ: He hated comedy. And I found out later he had tried to do comedy at some point seven years before and all the comedians were total dicks to him, so he decided he just hated the comedy scene and comedians were terrible people.
So I let him sit on his “no” for a little while –
SA: And he sat on your face for a little bit after that.
BJ/SA/isoS: [laugh]
BJ: [still laughing] I went back a couple of weeks…
SA: Gay jokes!
BJ: Uh, I would just like to say I am not gay.
isoS: You can write more gay jokes in after [the interview].
SA: Okay good, yeah, I’d like to take a gay pass…
isoS: [laughing] If you think of more --
SA: -- which I did with George Michael once!
BJ: Have you ever taken any other kind of pass?
So two weeks later, still the place is completely empty. Now this has gone on almost three months, and I just asked him again: “Look, let me do a comedy show.”
SA: Yeah, you said you could fill it one night.
BJ: Yeah, I’ll fill it. And he was like, “Well, do you want to do Tuesday?” – really mad at me for keeping on him about this.
SA: We were trying to get Wednesday, I remember.
BJ: Yeah, so but I took Tuesday. I figured anything but Monday, because of Largo. So I said yes to that.
SA: ‘Cause we didn’t wanna -- Remember, we talked about this, and just for the record: we didn’t want Tuesday because the Westwood Brew Co. show was so good.
BJ: Right, that’s right.
SA: And we didn’t want to step on their toes, you know, ‘cause it’s such a good show.
BJ: [joking] But ultimately we didn’t give a fuck.
SA: Yeah.
BJ: And fuck those people.
SA: And fuck their toes!
SA/BJ/isoS: [laugh]
BJ: So I show up the first week to do the show, and [Joe] has booked a band [for] the same show – called “Oregone.”
SA: Yeah!
BJ: Anyway, the band is standing outside waiting for me to talk to me, and they tell me that the way the show’s gonna go is that there’s gonna be twenty minutes of comedy and then they were gonna play for twenty minutes, and [then] there’d be twenty more minutes of comedy, and then they’d play for another twenty minutes. And I said, “Did the owner say this was alright?” And they’re like, very kind of noncommittal, but they were going, “Yeah, he’s cool with it, whatever.” So I went up to Joe and I just said, “Look, people are coming for this show. I don’t know who’s coming for the band, but people are coming for this comedy show, so here’s the way we’re gonna do it.” And I basically told him, “The band can play before for a little bit, and then they can have the rest of the night,” and if people stayed, great, but, you know, you couldn’t subject people to watching this band if they’re there for a comedy show and there’s a thing in comedy called ‘momentum’ that you kind of need.
SA: Also in other fields. Basketball.
BJ/isoS: [laugh]
BJ: Yeah. Right. So I badgered the band into playing –
SA: Physics. Just thought of it.
BJ: [laughs] I badgered the band into sticking around, and they stuck around for like three or four weeks, they were part of the show for like three or four weeks –
SA: Yeah, you had flyers printed up saying, “Featuring these comics and the music of Oregone!”
BJ: Had to. Had to do it. And they would sit in the -- First of all, no one ever came for them, ever, not a single person. And they would sit –
SA: I love how Oregone is gonna Google themselves and this is gonna come up.
isoS: I’ll spell it wrong.
SA: Okay good.
BJ: They would just sit and stare at the show bitterly, and get mad after the show when the audience would leave before they went up, because in their [minds] the audience was just leaving because they’d been there for so long. And if they could just get up there and split up the show, the audience would be completely…
SA: Happy. Yay! Also, that first time, the lights weren’t pointed at the stage, that was another great one. So people had to perform on the dance floor.
BJ: Mm-hm. Well that was the weird thing, it was like the dance floor was left bare of chairs and tables, so there was this huge gulf –
SA: The great divide.
BJ: So it just felt like you were playing into a void, so if you tried to approach and play to the audience, you were out of the light, but if you sat back it just seemed like there was this separation between the audience and the show. Eh, the first show wasn’t completely successful.
SA: And then wasn’t the second show cancelled, too, you were telling me?
BJ: Yeah, the second show was cancelled.
SA: ‘Cause the first show was October 1st, we figured out later, then I think October 8th was cancelled, and then the 15th was a pretty good show, I think. And then the 22nd Bob did it and it was on bobanddavid.com and the place was jam-packed.
BJ: Right. And we played to pretty consistently full houses after that … fourth week.
isoS: Right…
BJ: I’d just like to say that the first show was really shitty, but because Jimmy Pardo was on that show and the owner Joe and staff loved him so much that they let us keep doing the show. Really, Jimmy Pardo’s a big reason why that show continued.
SA: It was fitting he did the last one.
BJ: Yeah.
isoS: So was it more your show at first, BJ?
BJ: Well at first it was just something to do. It was kind of a lark, and I asked Tom to help me –
SA: Tom Hensley.
BJ: Yeah, Tom Hensley.
SA: Who has some show I’ve never heard about!
BJ: Yeah!
SA: I wonder if there’s a way to figure out if he has a show coming up? There’s gotta be some way.
BJ: There’s probably not.
SA: Oh well, let’s give up.
isoS: You could call him maybe, but…
BJ: But, like, second show, or third show, Scott started really participating in it, and –
SA: At the time I was concentrating on standup, and doing the Westwood Brew Co., and doing a lot of stuff with Chris Hardwick.
BJ: So in a lot of ways, Scott -- And he was telling me about the experiences –
SA: Great people I’d seen –
BJ: Great people, but how there’s not really any great place, so that was a big [reason] why I thought of starting that show. But yeah, it [was] just a matter of a few weeks [before] Scott came in really quickly.
isoS: And so, finally bringing it back to me –
SA/BJ: Oh! [clapping]
isoS: How did you stumble upon aspecialthing.com?
BJ: [to Scott] You Google yourself six times a day.
SA: Yeah.
isoS: I think you were one of the first celebrity –
SA: [laughing] “Celebrity!”
isoS: Well, for the people –
SA: You are using that word in a way I’ve never heard –
BJ: [laughing] Inaccurately.
SA: Yeah, so pinpoint inaccurately.
You know, it’s funny, I remember that site from back in my old apartment, so it must’ve been back in the late ‘90s.
BJ: [to isoS] When did you start it?
isoS: 2001.
SA: No, I’m talking about 1993, when you… [trails off]
BJ/isoS: [laugh]
SA: No, no, okay, well okay, I was still there in 2001. So, I just remember that site, and there was another site devoted to Mr. Show…
isoS: Maybe you’re thinking of fugitiveALiEN?
SA: There was fugitiveALiEN, yeah, but there was another really horrible site, but you know, sometimes I would go on, [and] I would see your site, and it was mainly Tenacious D I remember, but there was a section for other comedy – was it always called “Mr. Show and Other Comedy?”
isoS: Yeah.
SA: So, I remember no one went on it –
SA/BJ/isoS: [laugh]
SA: It was like, someone would post something and there would be like 19 views.
isoS: [laughing] Right.
SA: And that would be it, you know? So it was… I forget why I ever posted the first thing. I can’t remember – was it about the Tenacious D movie?
isoS: No, I think it was about –
SA: Was it about Death Ray?
isoS: Yeah.
SA: Okay, but I had been on it before then. I had told a lot of people about it, I told Brian [Posehn]… Oh I remember: I think Mark/Itslikeimsayin … reviewed a Largo show we did and, like, really slammed me, and –
isoS: [laughs]
SA: And so I was bummed about it for a while. But I would tell Brian, ‘cause you guys would every once in a while review a show, and Brian was like, “What is it called?” I was like, “A special thing dot com – you gotta remember the ‘A’, a special thing.” So I would kind of tell people about it, so people were looking at it, but not ever posting.
isoS: Yeah. Right.
SA: ‘Cause that’s uncool.
isoS: Obviously.
SA: And then, yeah, I think I was one of the first people to actually try to promote a show, ‘cause I was like, “Well, you know, why not try this site out?” I mean, more people look at it than you would think. And then it just exploded into -- I think because of you writing reviews, everyone wants to read about themselves, of course, and they did, I mean it’s like a natural instinct to wonder how you did in the show before, so like once you started writing reviews, then it became the place everyone had to go to see how they did. And you know … I think one of the reasons Death Ray really succeeded was because of the Internet explosion. Like we [said], that first time Bob appeared was packed because he put it on bobanddavid.com, which at the time was very nascent… So, at the time, people were going on that going, “What’s going on with Bob and David?” and “What, he’s appearing somewhere?” So it really helped the show out, because it became a thing like, “Well, you can read about it on the Internet. We should go to it.”
BJ: Bob was totally generous for letting us … always promote the show --
SA: Yeah, even when he wasn’t on it he was like, “Yeah just put up a thing.”
isoS: So, do you guys have favorite memories from the first three years of Death Ray?
BJ: Yeah. A lot of the times that we did the special shows, the Joke Machines, or Doug Benson’s Interruption, or Jimmy Pardo’s talk show, or one of the big –
SA: The Christmas shows.
BJ: Yeah. The Christmas shows. I mean, probably above and beyond –
SA: The Christmas show of 2002, I remember David was on and he was playing around with balloons that were all on the stage –
BJ: It was his first time on the show, too.
SA: Yeah it was his first time on the show, and the place was like jam, jam-packed. And Brian Posehn, who had been on, turns to me and goes, “Where do you go from here? It’s all kind of downhill.”
SA/BJ: [laugh]
SA: “You can’t top this!” And I was like, “Yeah, you can’t. I don’t know, should we keep doing it?” But for some reason, for another two-and-a-half years, it kept being pretty packed and pretty fun, other than the Army Show Reunion Show.
BJ: [laughs]
isoS: I skipped that one.
SA: Good for you!
isoS: Because I never saw the Army Show, I was like, “I’m not gonna know what they’re talking about.”
SA: That was supposed to be part of the joke.
isoS: [laughs]
SA: Yeah, but what’s great about it… We would talk about how, like, people would get to see something that’ll never happen again, you know, and it’s more than just like going to the Improv and seeing people do their ten minutes that they’ve worked out. I mean, it’s not improv necessarily, but there is sort of an improv element to people going up and just … We were always trying to remove the barrier between the audience and the crowd -- [realizing mistake] “The audience and the crowd,” we were trying to remove that barrier –
BJ: [laughs]
SA: Because really, you need an audience and a crowd to get together, otherwise you can’t fill the room.
isoS: Sure.
SA: But the performer and the audience, we were always trying to break that down.
[The tape reaches the end of side one and stops. I flip it over and start recording.]
SA: The tape recorder knew I was boring myself, so it stopped. But, yeah, the stuff we got to see that no one will ever see again is – you know, other than BJ, ‘cause he has all the tapes of every show –
BJ: Right.
isoS: [laughs]
SA: -- that’s what … really I think were the most fun times to me.
BJ: The eight-hour show, our anniversary show – two-year anniversary show – was one of the greatest, most fun shows we ever did. It’s one of those things that’s so ridiculous to try to do anything like that –
SA: When we came up with that idea, I think it was Neil Mahoney and Dave Rath and me came up with the idea to do it at a barbecue, and we went around telling – I remember, you [BJ] were there, and I was like, “Hey BJ, how ‘bout doing an eight-hour show ‘til six in the morning?” and you went, “Pff, alright.”
BJ: [laughs]
SA: Like, “That’s gonna suck, but let’s do it,” which is pretty much what everyone was saying … “that’s gonna suck, but let’s do it.” Chris Hardwick was there, and [he] was like, “Yeeeaah, that…” But that’s the whole great attitude of comedy is “That’s gonna suck, but we should just do it.”
BJ: When you told him, [he said], “Who’s gonna do the 5:15 slot?” [laughing]
SA: Yeah, and it turned out to be… Well, Hard ‘n Phirm did 5:45. Yeah that was a great, great, great night… We still talk about what would we do for a three-year anniversary, because you really can’t top that… Or can you? I have no idea. I’d like to hear some reader suggestions [on] how we should top it. And you can email them to isos at …
BJ/isoS: [laugh]
isoS: Yeah, go for it. I’ll just throw them away, but…
SA: Plus, you know what the other thing I want to talk about [with] Death Ray is I’m really glad – not only did we introduce a lot of really great comedians, I think, and get them performing at a place they deserved to perform at --
BJ: With a big audience, a smart audience that really gets it…
isoS: Right.
SA: People that wouldn’t have been able, really, to do Largo for -- You know, some of those people are just starting to do Largo now. But also, [I think we] reintroduced people to comics that really inspired us that they’d never heard of. Like Andy Kindler – I was reading one of your reviews of the first time you saw Andy Kindler, and I don’t think you had any idea who he was, and [you] were sort of like, “Ah, he’s this kind of Borscht belt-y kinda guy, I don’t know, but he seems okay.” You know, and he’s like so great that it’s great that he sort of has -- I’m just really happy that people have embraced him the way they’ve embraced him, I mean terror and JuiceBox love him so much that it’s like…
BJ: [laughs]
isoS: It’s a little scary.
SA: But it’s awesome! I just love that – You know, Todd Glass is another one that couldn’t… He wasn’t allowed to be booked in other cool clubs, and now, you know, people really know and love him. So, you know, [I think that’s] really nice.
isoS: That’s another --
SA: [laughing] “Nice.” Period.
isoS: So what do you guys think the impact -- I mean, I don’t know if you set out to bring back that mid-‘90s feeling that you guys started out in –
SA: We say we did, but no.
BJ/isoS: [laugh]
isoS: But do you think you changed L.A. comedy?
BJ: Well, I don’t know if we changed it, we made it a lot better… [pause]
SA/isoS/BJ: [laugh hard]
SA: Yeah!
isoS: It sucked and now it rules, I don’t know, is that “changing?”
SA/isoS/BJ: [laugh]
SA: It’s tough ‘cause all we really are are people… You know, we’re not really even the performers that much anymore, we’re just people saying, “Okay, come do this and do that.” So it’s hard to say. The people who are in the shows are what change comedy. I mean, I think there was a big, huge influx of people back in 2002 that were really great. But you know, in another sense it’s interesting ‘cause I think I was telling you about how I’ve been seeing Ron Lynch perform a lot lately and how I asked him, “Geez, you’re putting up so much new stuff, what’s going on?” and he [said], “Well, it’s all ‘cause of Kulap’s [Garage Comedy] show,” like he’s so inspired to have a place to do it. So I think it goes hand-in-hand… I think if you look at Chris Hardwick: we always really embraced him early on, because he had just gotten to town from New York and I’d been seeing him do a lot of open mikes and stuff at the time and I thought he had just grown so much and [was] really great, and I wonder if Death Ray hadn’t been around, would he have done as much with Hard ‘n Phirm? Would he have performed as much? So you can’t ever say we’re responsible for changing comedy, but I do think that we provided a place where people could do it and hopefully they were excited enough to work on their acts.
BJ: Yeah, we were in a unique position to put on a good show. I think that’s all we can really say about it. We knew a lot of great people who would come down and do the show –
SA: Because we asked them to and they would do it as favors.
BJ: And we always felt like it’s too bad good young people don’t get to perform enough in front of bigger audiences, so we knew we could use the cachet of the people we would book to give those young performers a place to get up in front of bigger crowds. And since we were a little too busy to perform constantly it wasn’t going to be one of those shows that [was] just for the ego.
SA: Reciprocation. So many people would come up to me when the show was just starting going, “Hey I’ll trade you stage time. You come do this and I’ll do your show.” And it was kind of jarring to them when I was like, “No I’m not really interested.” You know, I think the show was better for the fact that we were too busy to perform. [laughs]
BJ: [laughs]
SA: You know what I mean?
isoS: [joking] I’ll say!
SA/BJ: [laugh]
SA: So it just really became about, “What do we like?” and “What do we want to put up?” instead of like us having to put up –
BJ: Our classic bits … every week.
SA: Yeah or having to put up some shitty comic that we don’t really like because we did his show. We’ve only done that a couple of times. Can you name them?
isoS: I’ll have to check my reviews.
SA: There’s a new Lexus to someone who can!
PART FIVE: UNLEASHING THE DEATH RAY
Posted by funbunch at 06:24 PM | Comments (0)
July 09, 2005
The AST Interview: The Fun Bunch Part III
Our friends over at ASpecialThing.com have been kind enough to post an interview with BJ and I, on the occasion of our 10th anniversary. It's in five parts, and we'll be posting them as they go up!
For Part I, click here.
For Part II, click here.
PART THREE: WORKING WRITERS
isoS: So what kind of [lessons did] you take from [Mr. Show] into writing features and episodic television?
SA: Honestly, sometimes I wish we took more from it in writing features, ‘cause sometimes we’ll sit there and labor over the features… I’ve been thinking about that recently, it’s like, it would be better to just toss it off… You always have to trust your first instinct jokes, you know? ‘Cause jokes that you craft are usually shitty, and it’s like whatever comes off the top of your head, if you’re a funny person, is usually the best.
BJ: I would say sometimes the energy that you inject into a sequence or a scene, I take [that] from [sketch-writing]. Introducing an idea that works in the larger picture but has that kind of energy and force of a sketch is what you occasionally try to put in it.
SA: They’re so different, though, the mediums are so different that it’s tough. I mean, we were lucky enough to have been interested in writing movies before Mr. Show and had a spec already, so it was like we could launch… We got our first movie-writing job the week after we ended Mr. Show, ‘cause we already had a good spec. So we were lucky in that regard. But it’s really different, and I really do miss just how much fun sketch-writing is, ‘cause you don’t have any rules of like, you know, having to tell a story or anything, other than just this one stupid idea you have.
BJ: Yeah, the story that best serves the joke of the scene.
SA: Yeah, it’s like, what if you were a great songwriter, but [with] every album you had to tell a story in your album? No, I mean songwriters get to put out albums of just like, “Here’s a three-minute idea, here’s a five minute idea,” you know? Every album is a concept album, from now on -- that’s what movies are.
isoS: So what was that first feature [job]?
SA: Oh, it was shitty. It was something called “Dog Show,” which was, they had seen the Westminster Dog Show, which was new at the time, like they had just started getting popular, and they’re like, “Maybe this could be a movie.” And we started writing it, and then at the very end of the writing process when we were about [to finish], we kept getting calls from the producers like, “When are you gonna be done? When are you gonna be done?” And later on we figured out it was because Chris Guest had just announced he was doing “Best in Show” as his next movie, which immediately killed ours -- aside from the shitty script we turned in, which double-killed it.
BJ: Right.
isoS: So that’s a good segue into the post-Mr. Show segment of the questions.
SA: That’s what you’re best at, I’ve found. Just in the brief time we’ve been interviewed: great segues.
isoS: Thanks. So, did you work on the Tenacious D show?
SA: No, not really. You know, they were working on it while we were doing --
BJ: Season four.
SA: Season four was it, and not the movie? Yeah, they were working on it during that, so we would go to read-throughs and give our opinions, but… We were going to work on the, I guess you would call it the “third season” of Tenacious D, ‘cause the first season was the first two and then they did four more. So we were gonna do the ten half-hour episodes that they were planning on doing in 2000.
BJ: We were Bob’s choice to executive produce it.
SA: Yeah.
BJ: Yeah. They pulled out at the last possible minute.
SA: Yeah.
BJ: That was disappointing. But it was okay, ‘cause we quickly got the job to write the movie --
SA: -- the Tenacious D movie that will be coming out soon.
SA/BJ: [laugh]
isoS: That you also didn’t do.
SA/BJ: [laughing] Yeah.
isoS: Do you remember at the time what the deal was with them not wanting to do the half-hour show?
SA: Yes.
isoS: Not allowed to talk about it?
SA: I don’t think we should talk about it, the real reason…
BJ: Yeah. We can’t.
isoS: Alright. Should we skip the whole --
SA: Yeah, just because it’s a Tenacious D website doesn’t mean we have to talk about it.
BJ/isoS: [laugh]
isoS: Thanks to guys like you it’s less and less every day a Tenacious D site.
SA/BJ: [chuckle]
isoS: So I just want to get quick comments on some of the other [projects], like Run Ronnie Run…
SA: We started that, um… I think we ended Mr. Show in December of ’98 and then we started Run Ronnie Run in February, I think, of ’99, and it was billed as: “Look, this will just be really fun, it’s like six weeks of work, it’ll be really awesome and we’ll just have fun, I mean we’ve been working so hard on Mr. Show, why don’t we just have fun and write a stupid movie?”
isoS: Yeah.
SA: February we started and it turned into… I think we ended the following year, maybe?
BJ: Yep.
SA: The writing part of it --
BJ: Over a year.
SA: Over a year is what it took to write it, because as you can imagine five people in a room writing a movie [Bob, David, Scott, BJ and Brian -ed.] is really tough. And then after we wrote it, then it was the production in 2000 -- we went to Atlanta to film it. And then it was finally done in 2001 and we saw the rough cut, and the rest was… “herstory,” I call it.
SA/BJ/ isoS: [laugh]
isoS: Yeah, it’s sort of been gone over so many times…
BJ: Yeah.
SA: One of these days, I think that down the road there will be call to do some kind of commentary on it or something like that. Bob and David -- really David -- wanted to put out a CD commentary that you could play over the movie, and just tell the real story. It’s interesting, Lance Bangs shot so much footage during it -- I wish he would put together a documentary of how a movie can fail.
BJ: [laughs]
isoS: I forgot about that, yeah, there was talk about them doing something like that.
SA: There’s so much… Yeah, it was really disappointing, and it really put a sour aftertaste on the whole Mr. Show experience, not only because of how long it took and how little -- I shouldn’t say “little we were paid” in terms of like… we were paid great for a six-week job, but you know…
isoS: When it goes two years…
SA: Yeah, it went so long, it was like, that was really rough. Luckily we were doing other stuff to keep us afloat at the time. But just, it’s just too bad that’s the final statement that Mr. Show will kinda make.
isoS: Do you think that’s true, you don’t think there’s going to be another --? ‘Cause I know that Bob and David and Brian were writing something…
SA: I would really hope that there could be something in the future, but I don’t have high hopes for it… Time passes, you know, and the moment in time where all these people are working together, it’s just like… It’s just too hard to get these people in a room. We’re not all retired like Monty Python or whatever… [laughs] We actually have stuff we’re doing.
isoS: So, interject any other projects that you remember, but there was The Offensive Show…
SA: We did Next before the Offensive Show… Next was…
BJ: It was a great experience.
SA: It was really fun. What was interesting about Next was we had just been fired by Bob from something else. [laughs] Should we talk about that?
BJ: Yeah, we should.
SA: We had been writing three movies with Bob before that, and we had one at Warner Brothers that he fired us from literally like a few weeks before he got the deal to do Next, and it was like… It was one of those, as my friend used to call it, a “friend-check,” where you call up a friend you’ve had a fight with, and you go, “Hey, how’s it goin’?” and that’s like a friend-check to [see if] the friend’s gonna go, [pissy voice] “Fine” and be really cold. It was a lot like that, like, “Hey, do you wanna work on this TV show I got?” And so it was really great, because we got to work again on --
BJ: All our representatives wanted us to pass on it because of the weird situation we’d just had with Bob.
SA: But it was really awesome.
BJ: Yeah we had a feeling it would go really well with Bob --
SA: Yeah, it was great, because we got to reconnect our friendship with him, and on a project that was also really, really fun. [It’s] where we met Fred [Armisen], obviously. It was really cool, I mean, it was that kind of Mr. Show feeling again, with less people. With just us and Bob and Dave Anthony.
BJ: And we were really prolific in a few weeks, just working with that many people. You know, we were paid to do a pilot -- not only did we shoot enough footage for two-and-a-half episodes, but then we had a whole catalog of sketches that we never shot.
SA: Yeah.
BJ: It was really great.
SA: Yeah, it was a lot of fun. We were super-bummed when the great Cedric the Entertainer -- [Cedric did a sketch show pilot that got picked up by Fox instead of Next. -ed.] I mean, we were happy that finally he got to be more famous, which has led us to where we are now with “The Honeymooners” being the number one movie in America --
isoS: [laughs]
SA: -- as of this writing. This is being taped in the past -- I’m just assuming when this comes out, it’ll be number one.
isoS: Safe assumption. It’s tracking really well.
SA: Okay good. Well, I have nothing to worry about then.
isoS: Actually, is it out? It might be out already, I have no idea.
SA: It is.
BJ: Six million dollars [last] weekend.
isoS: But you guys don’t hold onto that stuff or anything.
SA/BJ: [chuckle]
SA: And then [there] was the Offensive Show, which was us trying to kind of have another Mr. Show type fun experience, which was again, really super-fun and great. What was great about it at the time was we had started doing Death Ray maybe three months earlier?
BJ: Three or four months.
SA: And part of the reason we started it was because there were so many great people [who] had started doing comedy that needed a place to perform. So our staff was made up of a lot of those great people -- it was Morgan Murphy and Dan Mintz and BJ Novak and Jonah Ray and Neil Mahoney and Frangela [Francis Callier & Angela Shelton] and… Who else was on the staff? Dave Anthony. So it was a lot of really fun people and we wrote a ton of shit -- maybe a third of which we actually shot. And Showtime…? More like Blowtime --
SA/BJ/ isoS: [laugh]
SA: -- is my final statement on the matter. No, what happened with that was, while we were taping the pilot the executive came up to me and was like, “Oh my God this is so funny” -- this nice woman, I can’t remember her name -- “This is so funny, you guys are doing a really great job. I just wanted to tell you I resigned.” [laughs] And a new head of Showtime came in the week after we finished and, um, hated it.
isoS: [sighs] Ugh. Well, we can talk about Shark Tale, the major motion picture.
SA: I was wondering when you would get to it. It’s such a huge part of our career. Shark Tale, we were hired to do the sequel -- we had nothing to do with the first one, until they liked our jokes, so --
isoS: You just wrote a few jokes for it.
SA: Yeah yeah, I think I said to someone before I wrote that one joke where Oscar goes, “What in the halibut?!” That was totally me.
isoS: I thought there was also something about “old school?”
SA: [sing-songy] Old school! Wikky-wikky-wikky! Yeah. I can’t talk about that.
BJ: [laughs]
SA: It was cool, we just… We had been doing punch-up on other movies, like Olsen Twins, “Scary Movie 3,” and then the Space Jam 2, what was that called, the Bugs Bunny…?
BJ: Oh…
isoS: “Back in Action?”
BJ: “Back in Action.”
SA: Yeah yeah, “Loony Tunes: Back in Action.” So we had done some punch-up and stuff like that, so I don’t know if that helped us get the job animation-wise or just our friend, the guy also writing it, Rob Letterman, really liked the Tenacious D movie [script]. It’s really weird how many people we found working on children’s stuff will hire you from… They hired us from the Tenacious D movie script. It’s really weird. And there’s never a question of like, “Hey, we really love the Tenacious D script, obviously we’ll have to tone it -- Can you work in a --?” No, they never bring that up, they just go, “We really loved it. Write this kids movie for us.”
BJ: Yeah, yeah.
isoS: Well it was… I happened to read it, and it really was -- It felt like it translated their stuff into sort of a --
SA: Mainstream plot.
isoS: Yeah, it felt like, it had that same sweetness… It could’ve been for all ages, you could take it either way.
BJ: Yeah.
SA: Well that was, I mean we were trying to make it a plot that would help it get made, but I guess they didn’t need that or whatever.
SA/BJ/ isoS: [laugh]
SA: ‘Cause it’s getting made…
isoS: Well I’m glad that Tenacious D script was of some good use…
SA: It gets us so much work, honestly.
BJ: Yeah.
isoS: I was worried that the only thing it did was give my wife [Simmeon] a screen-name on aspecialthing.
[“Simmeon” was the name of the female lead in Scott and BJ’s Tenacious D script. -ed.]
SA: Yeah, she got it from that, huh?
isoS: Yeah, I was like, “Use this, it’s gonna be so awesome when the movie comes out!”
SA/BJ: [laughing] Oh, no!
BJ: Well, she can change it when the new movie comes out.
isoS: Yeah.
SA: Can we still pass that [script] out after the real movie comes out?
BJ: Oh yeah…
SA: Kinda weird…
BJ: I hope so.
SA: We’ve never topped it. [laughs]
BJ: Oh, wait: Tenacious D 2! Back in Action.
SA: Oh, right!
SA/BJ/ isoS: [laugh]
isoS: So, then there was Jimmy Pardo’s Dance Party.
SA: Oh yeah-yeah-yeah. That was another great one. We sold it to Comedy Central, we had a deal, a verbal deal, which they have to go through with, and Debbie Liebling left the company --
BJ: She was the west coast head of Comedy Central.
SA: -- the very next day.
BJ: Yeah, right.
isoS: That’s what I was going to ask, ‘cause I actually went to that [taping] too, and I always wondered how close it was to ever getting on the air.
SA: We could’ve gone ahead with the deal at Comedy Central, because they have to go through with it, but we thought -- They also let it be known, “Well, we’re not gonna make it. You can have the money, but we’re not gonna make it.”
BJ: Debbie was our fan there, and she was the reason it was going forward.
SA: So then we did it again and it wasn’t close at all, like, to getting made, we just kinda did it because we wanted to do it.
PART FOUR: UNLEASHING THE DEATH RAY
Posted by funbunch at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)
July 08, 2005
The AST Interview: The Fun Bunch - Part II
Our friends over at ASpecialThing.com have been kind enough to post an interview with BJ and I, on the occasion of our 10th anniversary. It's in five parts, and we'll be posting them as they go up!
For Part I, click here.
PART TWO: MR. SHOW
isoS: So then, Mr. Show…
SA: There’s a huge gap in between what you just said and Mr. Show! There’s like a three-year gap of like … Bob saying, “Hey I want you to be on my show,” and then us not being on his show for years.
isoS: But you were going to the tapings from the beginning, right?
SA: Yeah.
BJ: We would go to the tapings, and when they would do their remotes, when he could he would have us be a part of it.
SA: That was a huge thrill, like the second season we did the “Jeepers Creepers” thing and we spent 13 hours in the hot desert dancing around like fools, but it was like this huge thrill ‘cause we’re finally on the show.
BJ: Yeah.
SA: And he even gave us one of the Mr. Show bowling shirts at the cast party, like, “Hey, you’re a member of Mr. Show,” and it was like, wow.
BJ: Yeah, it was really unexpected.
SA: And so we would constantly do [other] stuff. For a while we were doing -- The only other time we ran a show was at Pedro’s, which is not there any more, on, um…
BJ: Vermont.
SA: Vermont, yeah. That was… What happened was Josh DiDonato started at the Onyx, which was across the street, a little tiny, tiny coffee shop, then he moved to Pedro’s, and that’s where it got really popular. And then he moved it to Largo. So we did the other night at Pedro’s, which made him really mad. [laughs] Sort of like the M Spot does… No, but M Spot doesn’t make us mad -- [laughs] -- for the record.
BJ: [joking] But Jason Nash does…
SA/BJ: [laugh]
SA: So we did that for maybe two months, and we had some amazing shows there. We did… The first time we did “The Day the Clown Cried” was there, and, like, in a two week period we did “The Day the Clown Cried,” a musical that we wrote that we only did one night called “Fun Bunch Meets Frankenstein and the Wolfman,” we did the Sci-Fi Fantasy Pageant, and we did another sold-out, packed stand-up show. And at the end of those two weeks the owner said, “You make too much mess! No more shows!” And that was it.
BJ: Right.
SA: And then, you know, after that we got Mr. Show and there wasn’t really a lot of call to do all that much comedy anymore, ‘cause really the only thing happening was Largo.
BJ: Especially at that time, I don’t know why… There certainly had been, you know it’s hard work still, but it was almost impossible to like run a show back in ’95 and ’96 and not step on toes. Remember Henriette Mantel called you a Nazi one night?
SA: Because I gave her the light.
BJ: Yeah.
SA: I gave someone the light because she was going on and fucking on, and I gave her the light and she called me a Nazi. … For some reason everyone was so… like if someone showed up and said, “Hey can I do time,” and you go, “Sorry, we’re full,” you’re all of a sudden a jerk. It was kind of a weird time.
isoS: Who was that again?
SA: Henriette Mantel? She was Alice in the Brady Bunch movies. So yeah… running the show at the time wasn’t really very fun and [it was] not something we really wanted to do.
[At this point in the interview a guy who had been quietly installing new locks on the doors suddenly started drilling metal or something and it was very loud, so we decided to move from the stage to the dressing room.]
isoS: So when you guys got on Mr. Show that was like your first real job in the industry right?
SA: Yeah, I mean, we like to say that --
BJ: The legitimate industry.
SA: Yeah. We worked for the Microsoft Network for… two-and-a-half months, ten weeks?
BJ: Yeah, doing topical jokes…
SA: Topical jokes at six in the morning.
BJ: Yeah, we’d wake up at that time and get to the office to write… And we worked with Bill Dwyer, who is hilarious. I’d just like to say it was great to work with him, and he’s been bashed on aspecialthing before [laughing], and I’d just like to say he’s one of the funniest guys I’ve ever worked with.
SA: Yeah, after that job I was like, “I don’t ever want to work at a job he doesn’t work on.”
BJ: Yeah.
SA: He was so much fun. [pause] Cut that part of the interview out, by the way. I don’t like him knowing that we like him.
SA/BJ/isoS: [laugh]
SA: Yeah, we got Mr. Show and it was our first big break, and those guys were awesome to hire us. And I know for a fact it was more Bob wanting us on because David admitted halfway through that he [laughing] didn’t want us on the show.
isoS: But [by] that point…
SA: At that point [he] was glad we were there. But yeah … It was, it really was the most fun job ever.
BJ: Yeah.
SA: It was the fourth season, and for some reason we had more money I think than the third, which I -- hanging around with Brian [Posehn] I always knew the third was really hard on everyone, ‘cause they were working every day without a break. You know, Sundays, everything. I remember being in Brian’s pool one day, and he’s like finally relaxing in his pool, when he gets a call, “You have to come in to the office!” So the year before was really hard on them, and for some reason our year either we had more money or we were prolific enough to where it was a really easy job. You’d get there at 11 or 11:30 in the morning, and leave by 5. You know, 7 at the latest, but most of the time like 3:35 it’d be like, “Alright that’s all we gotta do today.” And it was just so much fun, I mean… Dino [Stamatopoulos] got there a little late in the season, but once he was there, and you know Brian and Jay [Johnston]… And Bill [Odenkirk] was a lot of fun --
BJ: Yeah.
SA: I was totally surprised by how really funny Bill Odenkirk was, ‘cause I -- You know, you always assume when someone gets a job because they’re -- you think it’s because they’re the brother, but no, he was so funny. So it was really great. It was very intimidating.
isoS: That’s what I was going to ask, if you were scared to work with these guys who you had seen performing for those few years before?
SA: I remember the first day Bob wanted me to write this sketch with him that we had sort of come up with at Ruth’s Chris [Steak House], where we had a writer’s, you know, celebratory dinner and welcome to the show. And we came up with this idea there at the restaurant and he’s like, “Yeah yeah yeah, we gotta write that together, buddy!” And so the very first day he turns to me after the pitch session and goes, “Alright, let’s go write that scene!’ And I was just terrified, because I was -- Actually, I was hanging out with Andy Kindler the night before, and I was like, “Dude, I’m gonna be horrible in the room, I mean I’m not good in the room. I’m really good when I sit there and have time to think about my jokes, and craft them.” I always thought it was about crafting jokes or something, so I was like, “I’m just gonna be horrible, I’m not gonna talk or say anything.” And what I learned from that day was, as we were writing I kept thinking the sketch was horrible, and I was like, “God, this is the worst sketch,” but I’m just laughing, going, “Ha-ha-ha, yeah this is funny.” And it turned out to be the worst sketch on Mr. Show, the Clumsy Waiter sketch.
SA/BJ/isoS: [laugh]
SA: And I kinda learned that I should speak up more that day.
isoS: That was the one taping I was at.
SA/BJ: Oh really? [laughing] Yeesh.
isoS: We were like right in front of that stage [for that sketch].
SA: Well … other than that that was a good -- That was the thimble one…
isoS: It was great, yeah, The Story of Everest.
SA: I remember I was sitting there with Margaret Cho at the thimble one and she turns to me, obviously not a fan, and goes, “Well, the show has changed so much… since you guys got on it.” Which is like a slam. [laughing]
BJ: [laughs] Yeah, she’s nice.
I guess the first time I worked with either of them … in a room -- the pitching was very nerve-wracking, especially the first few weeks, but I was pulled in to write, with you guys, the Monk Academy fat kids --
SA: Yeah yeah, with David.
BJ: Yeah, you, me and David. The fact that Scott was in there the first time I was writing with David made it a lot easier for me to do.
isoS: Right, ‘cause they split you guys up, right? They didn’t want you --
SA/BJ: Yeah.
SA: Well they talked to us before we ever worked there, [to say], “By the way --“
BJ: “Two rules.”
SA: Yeah, “Two rules: number one --”
BJ: “Don’t try to get on camera too much. We’ll use you when we need you.”
SA: “And number two, we don’t want you to write together, we’re going to put you in separate offices.” So they tried to split us-- It was really good though, because you’d get split up into combinations that you never would’ve written [in] before, and great jokes come out of that.
I remember the Monk Academy thing, David was just really -- It was really great, because he would always go, “Oh yeah, you’re right,” you know, you’d go, “I think this should be a little more --” and he’d go, “Oh yeah, you’re right.” You expect someone that you look up to so much to be like --
BJ: “You don’t know!”
isoS: Right.
BJ: But David was always great to write with.
SA: Yeah, really funny.
isoS: That’s an interesting sketch… It always stands out to me, maybe ‘cause of the length, but it’s so like … it might be the most overtly a parody of a movie.
BJ: Yeah.
isoS: But I mean, I love it.
BJ: Well in a way it doesn’t parody anything, like nothing directly.
SA: It’s interesting because part of the problem with that show is everyone thought it was going to be longer than what it turned out to be, that sketch, so it’s the shortest show of Mr. Show -- it’s 22 minutes I believe. So it needs one more sketch about something, you know? Because it just feels like half of that show is devoted to that sketch about nothing. And I remember Bob really disliking that sketch…
BJ: But mostly disliking the length, ‘cause Bob pitched that transition. So ultimately he kind of came up with the idea of Monk Academy by pitching --
SA: Yeah, ‘cause originally it was just about, we had seen “Kundun” and thought it was funny that anyone could be the Dalai Lama, and so it was just that. It ended where the transition is.
BJ: Which is clearly not an episode-ending sketch.
SA: Yeah. So once it became that idea it became this whole thing, this whole huge production in and of itself. And I remember right before the taping we were discussing keeping a joke in -- I can’t remember what it was -- [and] Bob really wanted it to be cut because he wanted the length to be cut, and that’s where he had the great slam on me, which was, “This is just first year writer bullshit!”
SA/BJ/isoS: [laugh]
SA: Ah, yes. [pause] So yeah, that was not a real successful show. Although there are people who love that sketch above all else.
isoS: Well that’s what, yeah, I mean it --
SA: Bob always said that it was more like it was out of the [Ben] Stiller Show.
isoS: Yeah, that may be why it feels different, it’s like… I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing that it’s not about anything, it’s just fun wackiness, and people love any kind of ‘80s movie reference.
SA: Yeah, exactly.
isoS: I mean, having Ducky at the end…
SA: It was great, Jon Cryer. BJ was on a sitcom with him, and…
BJ: Right, and I wasn’t gonna talk to him, like I didn’t want to bother him, ‘cause I really wasn’t that familiar with his career anyway.
SA: Although you were a huge “Hiding Out” fan.
BJ: [laughs] If you say so. But when a friend of mine came to the taping -- a girl, who I had known for years --
SA: “Known.” … “Years.”
BJ: -- [she] insisted on meeting him, and I had not spoken to him [the whole week] of taping this episode, so I was like, “I’m not going to go up to Jon Cryer and introduce myself just so I can introduce you, that’s humiliating.” But my friend is very persuasive and very pushy, so she got me to do it. So it’s the end of the week, and he’s chatting up one of the girls who was on the episode, whom he later married, by the way.
SA: Oh really?
BJ: Yeah, mm-hm, and I interrupted his conversation with his future wife to say, “Hi, I was on the episode,” and he was like, “Yeah yeah, good job,” and I said, “Um, this is my friend who really wanted to meet you, we call her the Dick-Suckin’ Machine, I’ll leave you two alone,” and I walked away. [laughs]
SA/isoS: [laugh]
BJ: And both of them were just so shocked, and of course I immediately felt … so bad about it. But he thought it was really funny, so [later] he came up and talked to me, and I had just gotten hired on Mr. Show, and he was a huge fan, and he goes, “Mr. Show!” and he starts running down his five favorite sketches without another word. So I was like, “Well I’m gonna start this year, if you have any interest in being on it,” and he did, and hence that.
SA: What was great about him though was that he didn’t know what he was doing, and it was a long drive out to some park up near --
BJ: Malibu.
SA: -- and he gets out and they’re like, “Well, let’s show you the costume,” and he gets to his trailer and there’s the Ducky costume -- [laughs] -- in the trailer, and he’s like, “You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.” But he’s like, “Anything for Mr. Show.” … He wouldn’t have done it for anyone else, so it was very nice.
isoS: So, um… I didn’t mean to go that far into one sketch…
SA/BJ: Oh that’s alright.
SA: We have a million of ‘em!
isoS: So, I’m sure you learned a lot of stuff writing on Mr. Show. What kind of things do you carry with you now in terms of writing lessons?
SA: You know… a lot of what I’m doing in that [UCB sketch writing] course -- Should I call it a course? That sounds so official.
isoS: Class?
SA: Class? Yeah. Skitsies… class-sies.
BJ: Skit lab.
SA: A lot of that is about sort of what I learned there, which is how not to take sketch writing too seriously, how to kind of make it easier on yourself, because like I was saying, I always thought I would be horrible in the room, and I would sit there and ponder over sketches for hours, and a lot of it shouldn’t be about that, ‘cause sketch writing is supposed to be loose and free and fun, and how you prepare yourself going into writing so that the writing should take no more than an hour… That was really important to learn, and I got way better in the room from just talking and voicing my opinion, and it gave me a lot of confidence -- some would say too much so -- for future projects. But it really taught me the lesson that no one wants to hire someone who’s going to sit there and not ever talk. That’s the easiest way to get fired in show business is to just sit there and not say anything. And even if you have no opinion it’s always best to just start talking and you’ll come up with it. … Unfortunately, too many suits take that lesson as well, but on the creative end of it, if you’re hired on a show, people want you to get in there and do the dirty work.
BJ: What I learned was come up with a really broad character that has a lot of interesting tics, and then give him his own public access show.
SA: Yeah, you know, that’s the formula that we would use, you know. He has to have a lot of tics, though --
BJ: Right.
SA: Like verbal tics and physical tics, and if he can have some sort of pet… But you know the best thing about it is you need to have him interview celebrities.
BJ: Yeah.
SA: Celebrities of the day.
BJ: I find -- Or his own family, ‘cause they’re going to be pretty crazy, like if they’re from his same family?
SA: Right right, that’s pretty good too.
BJ: And then before you turn it in, you go, “Will this be funny twenty times?”
SA: That’s the “Twenty Time Rule.”
BJ: Exactly.
SA: Yeah, well, I mean … he learned twenty, I learned twenty-one. It’s interesting, like, the different… They split us up.
SA/BJ/isoS: [laugh]
Posted by funbunch at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)
July 07, 2005
Scott Aukerman & Matt Besser to Appear on Indie 103.1 Friday Morning
ITEM! This Friday morning (6/8), from 11am-12noon, Scott Aukerman & Matt Besser will appear on Barely Legal, a radio call-in show on popular LA station Indie 103.1!
They will be promoting the new UCB Theatre, Comedy Death-Ray's move, and the Fun Bunch 10th Anniversary show.
The format of the show is Loveline-style, except for advice for people in, or trying to get into, the entertainment industry. Here's a quote from their website:
Listen on the radio or listen on the web and call me at 1-877-900-1031 every Friday at 11 AM to Noon Pacific Standard Time so we can talk about your show biz legal questions, give you some professional advice, and make you a little more prepared for what's out there.
If you don't live in the LA area, click on the icon at the top to hear the webcast. And feel free to call in and harrass us!
Posted by funbunch at 08:15 AM | Comments (1)
The AST Interview: The Fun Bunch - Part I
Our friends over at ASpecialThing.com have been kind enough to post an interview with BJ and I, on the occasion of our 10th anniversary. It's in five parts, and we'll be posting them as they go up!
Scott Aukerman and BJ Porter, collectively known as The Fun Bunch, are celebrating their tenth anniversary as a comedy team with (what else?) a comedy show next Tuesday, July 12th, featuring some of the comics who helped them get where they are today. Where is that, exactly? Well, on Tuesday afternoon, it was at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood, the new home of the duo’s acclaimed three-year-old comedy extravaganza “Comedy Death Ray.”
The Fun Bunch 10th Anniversary show will be their first in this new venue, and there’s a sense of excitement surrounding the transition -- when I arrived, the guys were working out seating and reservation details and trying to figure out how many extra seats they could fit on the stage without blocking the video projector screen. We sat and talked for over an hour, covering everything from the origin of their name to their work on Mr. Show, their contributions to live comedy in Los Angeles and more.
PART ONE: THE BEGINNING
isoS: It’s the 10th anniversary of the Fun Bunch…
SA: Tell me something I don’t know, faggot!
BJ: I do not abide by that at all.
isoS: The “faggot” or the “ten years?”
BJ: Just the hostility. Ten years of hostility is what I don’t abide by.
isoS: Okay. So the obvious first question is when and where did you guys meet?
SA: [to BJ] Why don’t you tell him Meeting Boy?! That’s a joke I always use, I put Boy at the end of things that he did. Like, “Hey Blue Shirt Boy!” ‘cause he’s wearing a blue shirt.
BJ: Five years of that.
SA: We met in college in 1989. What college was it?
BJ: Orange Coast College, the Harvard of Southern California state schools.
SA: Yeah. We met doing a show called “Lutz Radio,” which was a ‘40s radio show … recreation where we all wrote the show -- everyone who was in the it had to write bits for it. So we had a read-through of everything everyone wrote, and he wrote a really hilarious Bob Hope bit.
BJ: And he wrote a really funny David Letterman style bit, which I thought was [laughing] interesting…
SA: Yeah, it wasn’t really the time period. Come on!
BJ: But it was funny, it was genuinely funny. So we started talking after that, and the first time we hung out we wrote a really mean, mean sketch together.
SA: What was that?
BJ: It was about people in that play that we didn’t like.
SA: Oh yeah. Aged 40 years.
BJ: Yeah.
SA: So we started writing sketches and stupid little tiny playlets and stuff and, yeah.
isoS: And then you guys sort of went separate ways for a while?
SA: Yeah, I went up to Central California and was in an acting conservatory where I was trying to do musical theater … Then I traveled around the country a little bit doing musical theater, and then figured out it was gay.
BJ: But at that point did not figure out that he was gay.
SA: No, that was still two years off. So, I moved back here, just fed up with it, and said “Alright let’s do what I really want to do, which is go to” --
BJ: Fail in Hollywood?
SA: -- Hollyweird? Is that what I called it at the time?
isoS: [to BJ] And you were here already?
BJ: Yeah I moved straight to L.A. and started taking acting classes and stuff, so I was here having a LOT of fun living in L.A. without knowing anybody.
isoS: So this was about ’93 or ’94?
BJ: Yeah, Scott moved back --
SA: I moved back in ’94, yeah and then moved to Azusa for some weird reason. My friend was renting a condo in Azusa and was like, “It’ll be really cheap!” And then after I moved there I figured out it was just as expensive as anywhere else, and yet --
BJ: Thirty-five minutes away.
SA: So I would live in Azusa and commute in to work at Chin Chin in the Valley.
BJ: In Studio City.
isoS: But you were writing together even when you weren’t [both in L.A.]?
SA: Yeah, by mail, actually, we were writing plays and stuff like that, and every once in a while, before [BJ] had left Orange Coast College they would, while I was gone, put on plays that we had written together, so I would come down for some of them if I had time to see them. So when I moved back … We didn’t really know what to do. There’s no roadmap of how to break in as anything, actor or writer, so for a while we wrote … we wrote a --
BJ: A spec script.
SA: A spec script, yeah. We wrote something that we just wanted to see which was -- At the time, “Beverly Hills 90210” was really big and “Melrose Place” and stuff like that, and we thought it would be fun to write, not a comedy version, but one that was a comedy. You know what I mean? Like an hour sit-com, basically, like in those structures.
BJ: A one-hour single camera comedy.
SA: Which actually is what “The OC” turned out kind of to be… But this was back in ’94, and --
BJ: The world was not ready for it yet.
SA: Yeah, you know no one really liked it. In fact there was this one dude… When I was waiting tables at Chin Chin there was this guy, Marco Pennette, who created “Caroline In The City.” This was a year before he created “Caroline in the City.” [He] would go in there all the time -- he was working on some shitty show at the Radford lot. And you know, we struck up a friendship -- I was always talking to him, I was like, “Oh I want to be a writer” and all this kind of stuff, and he was like, “Oh, send me, you know, give me something. I’d love to read something you did.” So I gave him that script, and he never talked to me again. He would like actively avoid my section and never… And then he went from that to “Caroline in the City.” So Bravo Marco Pennette. You fucking asshole. [laughs]
BJ: You both won in that situation. [pause] Maybe he was avoiding you because he was ashamed of -- [laughs]
SA: He knew… He read that and it was so good that he was shamed by “Caroline in the City.”
isoS: So when did you become the Fun Bunch officially? I know the story goes that you were making fun of improv…
SA: Yes, we were making fun of improv, which is all we wanted to do in life, was to make fun of improv --
BJ: Right. Which I now feel bad about, because we’re here --
SA: -- because improv is so good here [at UCB].
BJ: Yeah.
SA: No, the story -- Okay, what happened was, I knew this girl Meleva [Barbula] who was in “A Christmas Carol” with me in Sacramento. Really funny girl. And she moved down here, and she was roommates with Karen Kilgariff. I actually picked Karen up at the airport when she moved here. And, so Meleva was always like, “What are you doing with your life?” -- she didn’t like our script either. [laughs] … And then she was like, “You’re so funny, why don’t you do this comedy night that my friends do?” And at the time, you know -- When you’re not officially a comedian, everyone treats you like an asshole if you’re trying to be funny, you know, because you’re not a comic. You know, they’re just like, “Ha-ha, shut up.” So any time you make a joke that’s what the rest of the world does. But she was actually like, “You know, you’re really funny, why don’t you do this?” So her friends turned out to be Janeane Garofalo and David Cross and Bob Odenkirk and all these people -- some of whom we didn’t know and some of whom we did -- and she was just like, “Go do this show.” And it was a show at the Comedy Store called Windows 95 --
BJ: It was up in the Belly Room.
SA: -- hosted by Mary-Lynn Rajskub and CJ Arabia. And they said “You can do whatever you want.” They were basically taking Meleva’s word that we were funny. Meanwhile, everyone has always told us that we’re not funny, our whole life, and were really annoyed by us, so we were convinced this [was] going to go horribly. And I remember [BJ’s] girlfriend at the time -- we used to rehearse at the rec room underneath our apartment, and … once we had worked out what we were going to do --
BJ: My girlfriend and another one of our old friends from Orange Coast College --
SA: Yeah, they watched us, once we worked it out, and we finished and they just kinda went, “Well… Yeah, good luck. I don’t think this is gonna go over. I mean, you know, it’s not very good.” But for some reason we thought it was really good and we did it at the Comedy Store. And I was so nervous, I had never been nervous like that before, I was just like pacing outside. And it blew the roof off, it was awesome.
BJ: Right, and because we were doing an improv bit, or we were pretending to do improv, we kept it really loose. We didn’t really script it very strictly, so that we could kind of just find these things that we had planned to do, and I remember that really scared me because it was a little like doing improv, you know?
SA: We had beats and we had certain lines on the beats, and of course we ended with me getting fucked in the ass --
BJ: Of course.
SA: But it was really loose. Also, since no one knew us, people thought we actually were a really bad improv group, so they were a little like -- I remember Jeremy Kramer telling me that he was like, “When you guys went up there, I was like ‘Oh, these guys are horrible.’” And then, once we started doing it, people really --
BJ: -- they started to get that it was going somewhere.
SA: [to BJ] And you were saying that down in the main room, Pauly Shore was on-stage?
BJ: Yeah. It was very strange, ‘cause after you do a bit where someone gets fucked in the ass you have to run off-stage as quickly as possible --
SA: -- and crying.
BJ: Yeah, so we ran away from the theater… I’m not sure of the legal issues of even simulating ass rape on a live stage to an audience that doesn’t know they’re going to get that, but we ran downstairs really quick, and then we were gonna loop around through the Comedy Store to see the rest of the show upstairs. And it was really great, ‘cause as we were downstairs we could still hear like raucous laughter and cheering as we left, and in the main room of the Comedy Store: dead silence as Pauly Shore was making fun of the audience for not laughing at his jokes.
SA: And hearing the audience from upstairs [and] wondering what was going on up there. So that was the first time.
BJ: That was encouraging.
SA: And they asked us to do it again two weeks later, and that’s how we got into the rut of writing scenes about people getting fucked in the ass.
BJ: Figured if they had us back that must be what they want.
SA: Yeah.
isoS: So the second one was the one Bob was at, right?
SA/BJ: Yeah.
SA: That was the one were BJ pees on me.
BJ: In your mouth.
SA: In my mouth. Which is one we’ve done over the years to much acclaim.
BJ: Right.
SA: Yeah, Bob was at the back -- and I didn’t hear any of this, because I think I ran off crying in that one too --
BJ: Right.
SA: So I would always run off crying and I would end up in the parking lot like not talking to everyone, but BJ, because he was in charge, he was the dominant one, he would always get to hang around and talk to people.
BJ: Right. And Bob was really nice and very complimentary of it, you know, just said…
SA: He said [in Bob voice], “Hey buddy, I’m uh, I got this show I’m workin’ on, and I don’t know, maybe you guys could work on it or something…”
BJ: “Look at some scripts --“
SA: “Maybe you could be on it or somethin’.”
BJ: Yeah.
isoS: And you had met him before…
SA: I met him once at this guy Joey Cheesy’s act, and I just mentioned I was a writer and he goes, “Oh, that’s cool, what have you written?” and I [said], “Nothing.” And he was like, “Here, here’s a show I’m doing, come check it out, it might be good, it might -- I don’t know.” And that was the early Mr. Show, which was “The Cross/Odenkirk Problem.”
BJ: They were performing for HBO to get Mr. Show.
isoS: At that point, you kind of knew people in that scene, or…?
SA: Not really.
BJ: I knew of them. I knew of David Cross, I didn’t know him.
SA: We had been at one party maybe they were at, and that was it. Like I said, I picked up Karen at the airport, but I never saw her after that. [laughs] She didn’t think I was very cool, because I mean, I was living in Azusa, you know? So we didn’t really know anybody. After that [Belly Room show], all of a sudden, we were comedians. And we could call ourselves that because we were performing on a regular basis at the Comedy Store.
Back to the other point, it was really interesting how everyone treats you differently. Now all of a sudden if you’re making a joke, they laugh, because, “Oh yeah, he’s a comedian. He’s really funny.”
BJ: “Performs at the Comedy Store.”
SA: Yeah. So life immediately got better.
BJ: As far as being “The Fun Bunch,” that was completely Doug Benson’s fault. We were going to use that name one time to make fun of improv and then perform as ourselves --
SA: And there actually was a comedy group called the Fun Bunch at the time … we found out later they were really mad at us for stealing their name. But they meant it for real.
BJ: Which is baffling to me.
isoS: I was actually supposed to interview them today.
SA/BJ: [laugh]
SA: Damn it! [It’s] really weird because I used to be in a band called Lave Los Manos and there was another one in the same Central California town of San Luis Obispo that were like mad at us for stealing their name too, even though we came first. Very strange.
BJ: You’ve never had an original idea in your life.
SA: No. Yeah, but Doug Benson started [that]. Every time he would see us he’d go [Doug voice] “Fun Bunch!” and just shout at us, which to us was like thrilling because Doug was this guy who we’d seen in shows --
BJ: Really funny and really established.
SA: And here he was acknowledging us, basically.
BJ: Yeah.
SA: It’s like when people say “Sasquatch” on stage to you. You know, it makes you feel dirty, but at the same time it gives you a huge boner. Then you go pound Mrs. Sasquatch after the show -- “I fuckin’ told you they knew who I was!”
SA/BJ/isoS: [laugh]
isoS: Can you describe what the L.A. scene was like at that time, because it’s now kind of referred to as this amazing --
SA: “The Scene!” “The Wildcats!” [see “Mr. Show: What Happened?!” --ed.]
isoS: Right.
SA: Which I had never even heard until I guess it was done.
It was a great time. What’s really weird is we came in at the tail end of it, and when I say “tail-end” I mean literally two months after everyone else. We were always viewed as the junior members, from people who had just arrived in town two months before us, but we were always the new guys. But it was awesome. You know, the people who were sort of revered at the time were Janeane and Dana Gould and Kindler.
BJ: They had just kind of defined alternative comedy really. There had been an article in the New Yorker written about Janeane and Andy Kindler specifically, and -- of course we knew who Janeane was, but I was always like, “Who’s this Andy Kindler guy?” And the first time we went to see a taping of a Mr. Show episode they acknowledged him. He stood up and waved, but I still hadn’t seen his comedy, so when I finally saw it, it was like, oh man, no wonder people are talking about this guy. It was great.
SA: It was real interesting because there was a place to perform every single night, and these guys who were amazing at it like Kindler -- Kindler would perform every single night, in the worst places, in the shittiest little tiny coffee shops. I remember we did a show together in a basement once.
BJ: There was this really obscure new open mic that was just starting in Santa Monica, it was like the second week, and the guy running it asked us to do it. We drive all the way over there, ‘cause we live in the Valley, and we get there and there’s Andy Kindler going, “Hey guys!”
SA: So he would do everything. It was such a great work ethic. I talk to him about that sometimes now, just how inspiring that to see someone who doesn’t need it to be out there practicing that hard.
But you know, the other part of it was every night there was a party somewhere. Every night you would go to, usually it was a different bar -- for a while it was that bar that’s on Gower and Melrose at the very end of the street, I can’t remember what it was called. It was kind of regular there, and then it kind of closed right when we first started going to it, but every night there was something, there was a party at someone’s house, there was a party at a bar or something --
BJ: Cat and the Fiddle.
SA: Cat and the Fiddle, so it was really like all of a sudden you felt like you were part of this group, and it was like you had thirty instant friends, at least. It was a really great time. And just creatively, the shows were like everyone trying everything. Cross was constantly just doing characters or doing weird things like commenting on how he lost his keys … and having a huge bit about losing his keys…
I think the shows were so good -- when you think about it, they’re in these little tiny, tiny places, and hardly anyone saw them… It was a really fun time. The Diamond Club… We did a few of those shows.
Posted by funbunch at 08:07 AM | Comments (1)