Interview: Bob Odenkirk

The A.V. Club, May 17, 2007 Link

The full version's long. Intro and excerpts:

Bob Odenkirk has never lacked an unmistakable comedic voice, but he'll admit that he's struggled to find the right place for it since he and David Cross finished with the sketch comedy of Mr. Show. It's been a treat whenever Odenkirk has popped up at all over the past nine years; he's taken small parts in TV shows and movies, directed several films that didn't satisfy him or his audience, and successfully mentored Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, the creators of Tom Goes To The Mayor and the new Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! Odenkirk recently told The A.V. Club why he thinks he's ready to rally with projects like Derek & Simon, a new series debuting May 16 on superdeluxe.com, and The Brothers Solomon, a film due for a fall release.

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AVC: Since you've got such a writing background, it seems like it'd be pretty hard to get used to directing something you didn't write.

BO: Well, when I worked at Saturday Night Live and on Mr. Show, I worked with a lot of material that other people wrote, and I helped people develop pieces that they wrote, so I've looked at directing films that I didn't write in a similar way. "Look, I think I get your idea here, is this what you're going for? Well, I'll try to do that. I think I know how to do that." The problem is that when you're talking about sketches, it doesn't take so long to do, and it isn't so much pressure, and whether you fall short or not, you finish up and hope the writers are happy. That's how I feel about it. With a feature, to find yourself working as hard as you work and going under the stress you go through, and then going, "I didn't even write that, I'm only trying to help this be good. It's not necessarily something I would have done."

Obviously, if I had my way, I would've spent the last few years of my life doing a Mr. Show sketch movie, and doing my adaptation of The Fuck Up, or my movie [Kanan Rhodes: Unkillable Servant Of Justice] that I wrote with Scott [Aukerman] and BJ [Porter] and all that stuff. But to make my way into the feature-directing world, I have to make it any way I can. The first film I made was called Melvin Goes To Dinner, and it was a small movie that I co-financed that Mike Blieden had written, and I had a really good idea of how to shoot it, and had a great experience doing that. Still, again, nothing measures up to Mr. Show, even though I'm very proud of that and think I did a great job.

But in a lot of ways, I felt like I took someone else's vision and helped them to make it happen in a really strong way. And then I made two films that other people financed that they were auditioning people to direct, and I got those jobs: Let's Go To Prison and The Brothers Solomon, which comes out in September. I've gotten a lot out of those. To me, they're like film school—learning about running a set, learning about everything, and learning about the most important thing, which is dealing with the studios and the producers and the money people, and making a project go, and what makes something go for the business end of it, so that you can get to make the movies that you write.

AVC: So you're still learning to control the process.

BO: Yeah, absolutely. When it comes to features, if I have to do one to just make a living, I'll do it, but if I don't, I'm gonna try to do TV until I can find a movie that I think is extremely good. Either written by someone else or written by me, where I just really believe in it as much as I believed in Mr. Show or anything. I've done my service now. I've done my learning.

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AVC: Does it surprise you that shows like [Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!] are attracting prestigious guest stars and a slightly wider audience?

BO: That's a strange thing, but I know all these people from a million places. I know John C. Reilly from Mr. Show, and then he was on Tenacious D, which I produced. There was one where I think Tim and Eric finally did cold-call people. It is a surprising and funny occurrence. Tim and Eric and I were saying how they went and saw John at the set he's on right now, and he can't wait to do Steve Brule again. Then you see the other side of that, which is all these celebrities did it because they love a chance to just be crazy. Tom Goes To The Mayor wasn't a hard production. You just walked in and went in the room and read your stuff and posed a few times, and it took a total of 40 minutes to do your guest spot, which is very rare and not how most things are done. I don't think there's a great proliferation of shows like that, so I don't see that things are too different overall.

I think the biggest change is the Internet and Funny Or Die and Super Deluxe, because Super Deluxe is not found video and it's not one-offs. It's not kids in their dorms eating as much baloney as they can, and saying, "Watch me change T-shirts 100 times." It's people making shows, and it's not just regular people, it's people in the comedy scene in L.A., and most are interesting people with funny, interesting points of view. That's the big new step, to me.

T.V. Club entry: The Boondocks: "...Or Die Tryin'"

The A.V. Club, Oct. 9, 2007 Link

Adult Swim has a habit of fattening its lineup with joyfully goofy, if often moronic, tidbits like Squidbillies, Assy McGee, and Frisky Dingo, and The Boondocks seems determined to wall off its own voice from all that. Even during its silliest moments, the adaptation of Aaron McGruder's comic strip gives its audience a stern stare.

The show also seems determined to bridge AS' comedy and anime audiences, tempering the strip's often explosive humor with a pacing that leaves a lot of room for emotional shifts. It doesn't force itself to be funny all the time, though its second season begins with a stinging, distinctly McGruder laugh, in a trailer for the fictitious terrorism thriller-cum-blaxploitation comedy Soul Plane 2: The Blackjacking! ("Come see why black incompetence is our funniest weapon in the war on terror!"). The hero? 50 Cent, voiced perfectly (kind of like a little kid mumbling a gangsta-rap fantasy to himself): "I'll stop those terrorists—or die tryin'."

Grandpa and Riley bounce off to the cineplex, dragging along Huey and the exceedingly innocent Jazmine. Huey keeps his mind on the wider struggles (inciting the theater's employees to unionize), while Grandpa continues his lifelong war against paying for tickets and overpriced snacks (oh, and having to butter your own popcorn). Soon, the satire gets almost too brutal to draw laughs--a pre-feature ad in the theater reminds that "Stealing movies is a felony. It's just like robbing the elderly--or murder," setting the message against a gruesome mugging-shooting scene. Again, The Boondocks doesn't insist on comedy--it's a collage of threats, fears, temptations, degradations, and obstacles a family faces (and sometimes brings upon itself).

The series felt a bit disappointing at first--narrow Adult Swim comedy-not-anime viewer that I am, I just expected more laughs--but now I'm actually grateful that the series is willing to do the things a strip can't. The strip needs punch, so the jokes and underlying pettiness tend to come out in neat, almost predictable jabs. The show lets you wallow in Huey's world a little longer, which actually makes it harder to, say, dismiss Grandpa as a jackass. Sure, he goes off on a needless rant about snack-counter service, making a scene in the theater lobby, but at least we see the filthy, disappointing condiments area through his eyes. All that uneasy space between the cruel laughs and the fight sequences? That's where this show thrives. This is the programming block that gave us Sealab 2021 and Tom Goes To The Mayor, so why not push the discomfort even further?

Grade: B+

Stray observations:

—"This is going to be the worst day of your life. I'm bringing nunchuks."

—Anime-styled crying children are the saddest crying children of all.

—Guest voices: Snoop Dogg and Mo'Nique, who appeared in the original Soul Plane.

—Really, whoever wrote this Soul Plane parody should've been born 15 years earlier and written parody bits for The Critic.

—Somehow, it's always satisfying when Huey's idealism meets not just frustration but true spite. When a ticket-taker tells Huey the theater's employers formed a union (on Huey's advice), and promptly got fired, this exchange follows:

"Well, uh, power to the peop--"

"Fuck you."

Album Review: Patton Oswalt: Werewolves And Lollipops

The A.V. Club, July 10, 2007 Link

Jon Voight's scrotum, megalomaniac chefs, and the epic flash-frying of a heckler—it all folds comfortably into Patton Oswalt's geeky warmth on his second stand-up album, Werewolves And Lollipops. As on his 2004 debut, Feelin' Kinda Patton, the bits swoop in for multiple kills, obsessing over absurd realities and morbid parallels. And again, this yields enough phrase-nuggets to rival Oswalt's collection of Star Wars memorabilia—"goof juice," "courtesy fat," "broods of failure." If Oswalt has a shtick, it's exhausting the crowd, propping it up, and wearing it out again, all without trying its patience. Playing Feelin' and Werewolves back to back has the same effect, in spite of the albums' similarities. From Oswalt, "more of the same" is never exactly that.

A.V. Club Rating: A

Interview: Ricky Gervais

The A.V. Club, Jan. 10 2007 Link

This one's long, so just click the link for the whole thing, but here are some highlights.

AVC: Do you think people sometimes laugh at things for the wrong reasons?

RG: I just don't think there's any pleasure in getting an easy laugh. There can be no reward. You stand at the back of a chain comedy club, and those guys come out and they're going, "Ha! What's going on with Scooby-Doo? A talking dog!" And I want to shout, "It's a kids' program!" What vein of comedy gold have they really hit upon there? Then some other guy goes, "Ugh, the '70s, haircuts were different, weren't they?" I want to go, "Well, yeah, but I don't know what you've done there." I don't get observational comedy. It's observational, but they've just left out the comedy bit. And these people are cracking up! They couldn't laugh any more. So you think, "Why would I try and make those people laugh? I don't need to make them laugh. They're happy enough. I'd probably just spoil it for them." I'm aiming at someone else. I'm not uptight about it. I don't want to close those comedy clubs down, I just don't want to play them.

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AVC: Is Andy's disastrous sitcom, When The Whistle Blows, your nightmare show?

RG: I just wouldn't do it, and I know that I wouldn't be happy doing it, because it's too easy. There's nothing wrong with it. Those shows still exist in England, they have for 30 years, there's no change there, but you know what? On one side, there's people wearing wigs and doing smutty innuendo and shouting a catchphrase, and on the other side, there's Curb Your Enthusiasm and Arrested Development and Larry Sanders and Christopher Guest. I don't sit through shows and go, "Damn them, why do they put that on?" I just don't watch them. It's not a crusade. It's a source of comedy for me. That those shows exist is better for me, I think. That's great. Long live them!

Unfortunately, I'm compared with The Office. I can't win. That's what's unfair. I want Extras to be compared to When The Whistle Blows. For every wacky postcard, there's a million people waiting to buy it, and for every $10 million of those things, there's one Rembrandt. Purposely, I think I want to aim at doing something that a lot of people won't like. You want a door policy on your club. It's as simple as that. I'm just worried that it looks like I've compared my work with Rembrandt. "Gervais says he's better than Rembrandt!"

AVC: Don't worry, this isn't the British press.

RG: Oh, fuckin' tell me about it. There's not a day goes by when I don't go, "You fuckers!" And I've had a really good ride with them. And The Office is better than Shakespeare as well, by the way.

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AVC: You didn't have any problem getting Diana Rigg to get a condom thrown on her head?

RG: That's a day's work, isn't it? I remember it. It was a really hot day on the bus, and I remember laughing while I was going, "Can you just hang it over the right eye a little bit more?" And I was thinking, That's a weird job. Asking Dame Diana Rigg to wear a condom hanging over her eye a little bit more. "What did you do at the office today?" "I hung a condom off Diana Rigg's head. What did you do?" But no, she was fine. It was in the script. She was a good sport.

AVC: One of the funniest scenes in season two is when David Bowie writes a song about you in a bar. Did he write that himself?

RG: He wrote the music, [but not] the lyrics. I sent him the script and I said, "We thought maybe it could be quite retro, something off Hunky Dory, with an anthemic chorus, like 'Life On Mars.'" He went, "Oh, sure, I'll just knock off a 'Life On Mars.'" And I laughed and went, "Oh, yeah, that did sound quite insulting, didn't it?" He knew what to give us. He gave us über-Bowie. [Sings.] "See his pug-nosed face…" The crew was singing it for about a week.

Lisa Lampanelli

(The Onion A.V. Club, Madison print edition, Nov. 30, 2006)

A slightly different version of this piece later ran on The A.V. Club's Web site.

Hope for Lisa Lampanelli’s sake that her current tour of theaters like the Barrymore works out, because she says she’ll end up “Xeroxing my twat at Kinko’s if I ever have to go back to [comedy] clubs again.” Lampanelli has pursued her brand of warm-yet-abrasive comedy for 16 years, but her recent gigs slamming celebrities (most famously Pamela Anderson) on Comedy Central’s roasts have made Lampanelli a go-to insult comic. (Though she’s happily respectful of nearly every other successful comedian out there, from Larry The Cable Guy to Patton Oswalt.) She says she’ll be branching out a little in material from her new Comedy Central special and CD, Dirty Girl, both due out in January. Lampanelli went pretty easy on The A.V. Club for a talk about the finer points of offensive humor and her former career as a journalist.

The A.V. Club: Do people ever think you’re joking when you assert yourself in earnest?

Lisa Lampanelli: Yes! Dude, it happens all the time, which is good in one way because you don’t lose fans. But it’s bad in one way ’cause they don’t respect you. I’m really nice. I sign stuff after the show, every single thing. I will stand there for three hours, how Larry The Cable Guy did it—it really helps your fans feel a connection. And it’s fun, too. I don’t give a fuck. I think it’s fun to sign shit and have people take your picture. But sometimes somebody will be drunk and push too hard and just won’t leave and move along, and I’ll be like, “Move it along, fuckhead.” And they’ll go, “Ha ha ha, great!” And they’ll stand there, and I’m like, “No, you’re a douche-cock and everybody hates you. Die of cancer.” “Aaaah ha ha! She’s so funny.”

AVC: What was your journalism career like?

LL: Right out of college, I was a feature reporter for this newspaper in Connecticut, and they pissed me off, so I quit and said, “I want to work for a magazine that’s interesting and that everybody knows so I can brag about it.” Subconsciously, I’m sure I said that. I worked at Popular Mechanics, and it sounds so gay, but it’s famous, so I said, “Fuck it.” I was a copy editor there, and I got a job as an assistant at Rolling Stone. I didn’t want to stick to it long enough to pay my dues to become a writer at Rolling Stone. I was writing freelance, so I started writing for all these heavy-metal magazines because I love writing about the music business and those longhairs, and it was the ’80s, so I was interviewing heavy-metal bands and Bon Jovi for Hit Parader and all this stuff. I just loved that. And you got all these free records and you could sell ’em the next day. Then I decided my life had no meaning, and I decided to go to Harvard for a publishing-procedures course, where they teach you how to be a hardcore publishing magnate. And I continued to do a little journalism and this and that. But then I was like, “My life’s meaningless again, so why don’t I be a teacher?” I have these weird, emotional decisions I used to make, ’cause I was like, “I need warmth in my life, I’ll teach and touch children’s lives.” And then I went to Columbia for that, and decided I hated kids after half a year of student-teaching. Then somehow, thank God, I decided to do comedy and that’s the one thing that really hit right in my heart.

AVC: The insult-comic thing is working out pretty well for you, but are you trying other kinds of material?

LL: [The new special is] 100 percent different. I was really scared that the audience was gonna say, “Why isn’t she calling us spics and chinks anymore?” I was so angry in the last year, ’cause I had this breakup, and I was so angry with my dates and so angry with how my life was going, except for my career.

AVC: You often pronounce “Arabs” as “A-rabs” and “whore” as “hoo-uh.” Is that natural?

LL: No, I just fuck with words a little bit, and I use bad grammar on purpose because I was a journalist and I had the best copy-editing and English skills in the world. I’m just anal about all that, so I know if you know all the rules, you can break them. I have a joke about a kid being in a car accident, and I go, “Come on, the kid’s one years old, how attached could you really be?” That’s just part of the joke. I say “one years.” I know it’s not “one years,” but it sounds funnier to me.