Jesse Thorn: Hi, I'm Jesse Thorn, America's Radio Sweetheart, and this is The Sound of Young America.
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Jesse Thorn: Hey friends. Welcome to The Sound of Young America, a public radio show about things that are awesome. I'm Jesse Thorn, America's Radio Sweetheart. On this week's program we’ll talk to two really great comedians, two comedian's comedians, two New York comedians and two comedians whose comedy is very, very different. First we'll talk with Dave Attell. You might know him from Comedy Central's ”Insomniac,” or his many stand-up comedy specials. He's a blue comedian, he's a very dark comedian, and he turns out to be just one of the sweetest guys you could ever talk to. We talked with Dave about his career and all kinds of other stuff.
Jesse Thorn: Also coming up on this show is Michael Showalter. You might know him from MTV's “The State” and Comedy Central's “Stella”. He's currently out on tour, doing a solo act for the very first time, with two other former Sound of Young America guests -- Leo Allen and Eugene Mirman. Anyway, we talked with Mike about making his first feature film, “The Baxter”, working on “Wet Hot American Summer,” the comedy cult classic, and a lot of other cool stuff.
Jesse Thorn: All of that to come on this week's Sound of Young America broadcast, on The Sound of Young America Audio Entertainment network, and on the internet at maximumfun.org. We'll be back in just a second with Dave Attell.
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Jesse Thorn: You're listening to The Sound of Young America. I'm Jesse Thorn, America’s Radio Sweetheart. My guest on the program, Dave Attell, is a noted stand-up comedian, the former host of Comedy Central's “Insomniac” and he's playing at Cobb's Comedy club in San Francisco this weekend. Dave, welcome back to The Sound of Young America.
Dave Attell: Jesse thanks for having me on. Now, is this a dance show?
Jesse Thorn: Is this a dance show?
Dave Attell: Young America, that sounds very, you know, kind of like... do you remember” Soul Train”?
Jesse Thorn: You mean like a dance party kind of show?
Dave Attell: Yeah, that's what I mean.
Jesse Thorn: Well, every time I have you on it is.
Dave Attell: [laughter]
Jesse Thorn: If you want to have a dance party show, I say bring on Earth, Wind & Fire.
Dave Attell: I do. I want to get all jiggy tonight, let's do it.
Jesse Thorn: I’m on it. So you were on this show a number of years ago, and you made a remark that has stuck in my mind ever since. You claimed that if you could have done “Insomniac” in any time period, from the dinosaurs to today, it would be the seventies, because there were less smoking laws.
Dave Attell: That's the truth. Not the 1870s, -- like, a “Deadwood” time would be fun -- but the 1970s. Let's say like between '72 and '75 would be the best. LSD was still legal, so it would have been a whole different show. Lot of revolutionary talk, you know? Gonna change the world, that kind of stuff, you know? Like the hippies, but they're already kind of like drug addicts.
Jesse Thorn: [laughter] Right, the spiral downward of the hippie generation. I know my father was a participant in that.
Dave Attell: Oh really?
Jesse Thorn: Yeah, yeah. One time when I was in college, I'm driving to college, and we are talking about Sly and the Family Stone. He asked whatever happened to Sly Stone. I'm like, "I think he's a vegetable because of drugs, you know?" And my dad's like, "Hey, did I ever tell you about my drug-induced psychosis?” I was like, “Drug-induced psychosis?" It turns out he was in a drunk tank-slash-prison hospital kind of operation, for like three months.
Dave Attell: Oh cool.
[Laughter]
Jesse Thorn: Anyway…
Dave Attell: I give him a lot of credit, you know? Because nobody drinks that hard. And the people that do always do a one-man show about it now.
Jesse Thorn: [Laughter.] Well, anyway, so “Insomniac” has been done and wrapped for quite some time. It must have really changed your life in a lot of different ways to do this show, that started out as a modest sort of late night time-filler program, but really became sort of a phenomenon.
Dave Attell: I think I kind of pulled the plug before it became a big phenomenon. And I really appreciate all of the people who liked it. According to MySpace, I rock and that people love the show. But, yeah I like to think that I pulled it before it got too corny and predictable. And the thing about that show is that it was not a sketch comedy show or variety show, it was a ‘what you'd find on the street’ show. But after a while, you can only go to so many gay fetish clubs and so many strip clubs, you know? There is only so much stuff going on late at night, and I didn't want to repeat it. But let’s face it, since I’ve stopped, people really don't know what I've been up to. But I've done like a bunch of stuff too.
Jesse Thorn: One of the things that struck me about the program, when it was on, that I think I might be hearing in your description of why you pulled the plug was that it had a lot of honesty and sincerity that you don’t really see on television a lot. Was that sort of one of your goals?
Dave Attell: Yeah. I liked doing it and wanted it to be one of the things where everybody’s included, and it's just whoever's up late. But after a while, you know, kids you know, especially the college kids, once it caught on, it got to the point where it was just people following us around. So it was kind of kind of hard to get that just talking one-on-one to people. You know, poor me, I mean, it was great that people even wanted to talk, because when we went overseas they just saw us as the ugly Americans, you know?
Jesse Thorn: It must have changed your stand-up career. I mean, you'd been a headliner for quite some time before then , but you'd never really had a real big kind of television breakthrough thing that makes it so that people who are just regular Joes on the street know who you are.
Dave Attell: True. Yeah, it’s always the getting recognized at the airport and, like when you are hung-over going to the airport, that makes you feel like, “I’ve got to change my look.” [Laughter] But yeah, it really did help me. It promoted me into a real national headliner. That does make you feel good when you can fill out a club. And hopefully I can do it at Cobb's.
Jesse Thorn: Was there a burden associated with that? Did you find yourself, or do you ever find yourself now thinking, "I’d like to go back to being an anonymous club comic, who succeeds or fails exclusively on the strength of my own act."
Dave Attell: I think that I am still like that. I don't think I'm as big as you know, definitely Chappelle, or Carlos Mencia or the Blue Collar guys. I still play the clubs mostly because of that. I want to think up new material and keep it loose and not have it turn into a super big business. I mean, I've done two or three big tours. One was with Lewis Black, who now is probably one of the biggest acts in America. And touring is what comics do, but if you just keep touring, then after a while you are going to run out of places to play and also you are going to run out of new material, so… [Weird sounds in background] Oh, I'm sorry; I'm playing porn on my computer. I’m kidding. So that's pretty much why I do love the clubs.
Jesse Thorn: Tell me a little bit about your process for generating material. Are you the kind of guy who writes off-stage, or are you the kind of guy who tries to find places where there are relatively low expectations -- walk on gigs and that kind of thing, and write on stage?
Dave Attell: I do shows pretty much any chance I get, you know? Like, in New York at least, that’s where I live, that's my home base. I perform pretty much every night I'm there. When I'm not in New York I'm usually on the road doing headlining work. So I feel that I take ideas that I think of during the day and try to get them as close to a solid joke as possible, you know, writing it. And you really don't know if it’s funny until you try it out. I'm lucky, I get to do a lot of stand-up, so I can generate a new joke quicker than if I only went on like two or three times a month, you know?
Jesse Thorn: A lot of comedians feel sort of a compulsion to get on stage, I think, and play as many shows as they can. Is that your experience, or is that how you feel?
Dave Attell: Yeah. I think what happens is you try and grow with the audience. But if you’re known for drinking or whatever like that, you still get that college audience. Sometimes I don't feel bad by getting upstaged, I feel bad about some of the stuff I talk about, especially like the drinking and the partying and stuff like that. I am 41, so... But I'm not really political. That seems to be the other side of comedy.
Jesse Thorn: Tell me a little bit about why you stayed so long in New York City. I think you could have at some point, you know, moved to Los Angeles and maybe had more opportunities to do acting. But I think the New York comedy scene seems to be a very particular one that people are very loyal to. What does it mean to you?
Dave Attell: New York to me is where I'm from. And it's also a great place for comedy. There's just so many clubs and it's a late town, so you can go in stage in like 2 in the morning. In LA it's rare that you go on that late. And I'm not an actor, really. I've dome some movie stuff since the "Insomniac" thing, but I know I have to keep my comedy sharp. That's what I do. I don't have much of a life, so I'm always looking for a place to go on, and New York's the best place for that I think.
Jesse Thorn: It seems like the scene is a very unique one, in that it involves a lot of different kinds of comedians in a lot of different clubs, which isn't always the case. I mean in Los Angeles you wouldn’t necessarily see Dan Cook and Andy Kindler sharing a stage, or Carlos Mencia and David Cross or something.
Dave Attell: But out in LA though they do that. They all work, you know, the different clubs, the Melrose Improv, Catch A Rising Star, The Comedy Store, when I go out there I try and work those clubs too, but it just seems. In LA it’s just an earlier town and you don’t get... it’s just a different vibe, I think, comedy-wise. The audience and comedy wise. If I do a joke in New York, and it works, I pretty much know it’s going to work anywhere. But, if I do a joke in LA and it works, I'm not too sure. Because people there are a little more laid back, they're a little more, not so much giving, but they like to be performed to. So you don't know if it's just the way that I move my head that they found was funny, or what I said.
Jesse Thorn: Can you think of any kind of examples of that difference, like particular things?
Dave Attell: I'd say in LA especially, there's a lot of people that are there to be in show business, so there's a lot of hanging back and kind of judging what you're doing, in terms of, "Is this something like my screenplay? Is this guy this?" And you pick up on it too. You start thinking like, "Somebody out there is looking at me," and it's like, "Is one of my lines gonna end up in a screenplay? Or are they looking at me going “This guy's totally offensive. He's not going to be right for whatever stupid show we're thinking about.'" So then you start editing yourself, and you just want to just kill. Whereas in New York, you bomb a bit and you feel bad about it. You get drunk on it, but you don't feel like, "Oh my career's over!" I mean, LA's one of the few places where I've felt I've been totally sober and said things that made me feel so bad like when I'm drunk. Like we've all had that thing were you've said something and you've been like, "Oh god!"
Jesse Thorn: You have a reputation as kind of a blue comedian. But you also have a reputation for being sort of a comedian's comedian. Do you every think in terms of how blue your material is? Are you the kind of guy that just doesn't self-censor at all? Or do you try and keep control, and sort of modulate the offensiveness quotient in your act?
Dave Attell: Yeah. There’s some things, especially since you get older, it's not so much it's not funny, it's just sometimes I feel like I'm repeating myself. I'll come up with another joke about oral sex, or I'll come up with another thing about some other taboo or something, and you're like, "Well I've gotta get more experiences or something." That's pretty much the censoring that I do. It's like, "Oh, I have a joke just like that," or, "I have bits just like that." But the longer you do comedy, the harder it is to think of, not only new jokes, but new topics, just new perspectives on things. And I'm not really a preachy comic. I'm not like trying to lay down my philosophy to everybody. If anything, I always take the Devil’s advocate route, like something that I hope the audience gets is just a totally wrong way to think about it, and then work my way back. So, that's kind of the problem I have, which is just thinking of new.. oiling the mill with new topics and things.
Jesse Thorn: Has the subject matter of your comedy changed as you've moved from being a twenty-something into now being a forty-something?
Dave Attell: Yeah, I feel like now I have very little tolerance for a lot of this self-promotion and stuff, even though like we all have to do it to some degree. But I feel like we live in a country of self-promoters and not so much like MySpace, you know, “Come see my band.” It's like everybody has something to promote, and that there's shows basically designed for it, like all of these reality shows and Amarosa and all of these people that, that's a career, just the self-promotion. And it’s weird because when I was kid, you wanted to be an astronaut. Now it's more important to be on a show where you pretend to be an astronaut.
Jesse Thorn: How do you feel about the comedians who have really made a name for themselves through exceptional self-promotion?
Dave Attell: I think that the ones who've done it with the help of the internet and everything are really smart, because they locked into how especially this generation gets its information and finds out what fun stuff it wants to do. That's cool if they're comics, but if they are just comics who... You know, I get a lot of emails from people who have never tried comedy and they just want to know how to get an agent. And I’m like, ”Well, what is he gonna help you with if you've never done comedy?” And they're so convinced that that's really the only thing you need. And in a way it's naive and it another way it's kind of like I’ve been doing this for nineteen years in bars and whatever all over the country, like.. I don't know what to tell them. I feel like that's very, very very naive.
Jesse Thorn: Do you ever think that maybe you should develop a more of like the hook or the fifty thousand MySpace friends?
Dave Attell: Yeah I do. I have that, and I do see the internet for what it really could be. It's an uncensored medium, and I think these kids are up on it. I'm not exactly sure lips-synching and falling down is like the ultimate comedy, but I think it's cool for a lot of kids who, you know, just like doing it in their basement or their room -- doing something they think is funny and sending it to their friends, and they are going crazy all over the country. I think that is amazing, you know? I give them a lot of credit.
Jesse Thorn: Have your goals in comedy changed in the twenty years that you've been in the profession? Do you have different sort of values or objectives now than you had when you were twenty-five?
Dave Attell: Well I think my goal was always to get better and be recognized as a good comic. And sometimes you do it, sometimes you don't. And sometimes you just have to watch out, if you do things for the money. After a while you lose track of the actual work of the comedy. You can say it's an art form or not, but I can definitely tell when I’m doing it, when I’m phoning it in, and I don't like that. And I don't like not having anything new to say when I go to a club, especially if I hit these clubs two times a year. I can't expect people to come back to hear the same stuff.
Dave Attell: For me the ultimate goal right now would be to put out another DVD with a lot of cool extras on it, and let it fly from there. And then also to develop other TV things. I really do like TV and the “Insomniac” show was a great example of just a simple idea done right. A lot of people helped me do that, and I'd like a chance to do that again. But it seems that with TV, every time you stop you have to start from the beginning again, unless you are super, super famous. So I’m hoping I get another chance to get an idea out there.
Jesse Thorn: Are there other things like that that you're working over?
Dave Attell: Yeah. I'm not sure if it will be reality-based. As far as the thing with the comedy on the “Insomniac” shows, I had no control over it. I had no control over if a guy was gonna walk past me or if it was gonna be a drunk woman I had to talk to. So in a way I was kinda jealous of these other shows where they could script it out and know what they were doing and make sure they got it right, and it wasn’t one of these things like, "Oh it's raining out so we can't do it.” So I guess basically I want to do something where I work inside. I think in like a mobile home or a bubble and just travel around and do stuff.
Jesse Thorn: You seem like a guy who’s so committed to this craft of comedy and you said one of your objectives was to get better. How do you define getting better? Do you think of getting better in terms of… a lot of comedians think getting better is the ability to go out and kill any audience, any group of people will be able to relate to it. I know I talked a couple months ago to a comedian you’ve worked with a lot - Louis C.K -- and he talked a lot about how everything changed from him when he went from being a comedian who could kill a really clever room into a comedian that was talking about some things that were really universal and killing, and still being clever. What defines getting better for you?
Dave Attell: Getting better for me is having new material, that I like, that is like really honed down to the hardest possible joke it can be, and not so much killing to any audience, but not disappointing the audience I have, I guess. And also not feeling that I’m a slave to doing shots on stage and all that kind of stuff. I mean, that stuff's fun and it’s good distraction, but it does kind of slow the show down sometimes and it gets a little out of hand. But I really don’t know. I wish I had a better answer for you, like what getting better is. Comedy is like one of these things where you start doing it and when you turn around again you’re like, "Wow I’ve done this pretty much every night, every holiday for the last whatever years.. ten, fifteen, nineteen… like for me it's nineteen years. You are thinking like, “This is my life," and you don't want it to kill you, which it can if you fall prey to the road. But you do want to be able to go out there and think people aren’t doing you a favor coming down to see you. Like you're relevant, I guess.
Jesse Thorn: Do you ever feel like giving it up? What's you're describing is such a monumentally difficult thing. You know, I couldn't personally imagine a life of performing literally every single night and being on the road thirty weeks out of the year, or thirty five. I don't know how many you are, but it sounds so hard to me.
Dave Attell: It really depends on your... I think it's one of those self-esteem things. If you have a lot of self-esteem then you take care of yourself. Thee travel wears you down. I'm at the level where I have it pretty good. I get a hotel and I fly to most of my gigs. I do all of that kind of stuff. But for a lot of these new guys, it's driving, living in a motel, a Motel Six kind of thing and getting by as best you can. The clubs, sometimes they treat you like an illegal alien -- they don't even give you free food. And the guy's not making any money to begin with, and if he wants to drink, it becomes this big... he has to budget himself out. I'm kind of past that point, but it does make you feel like you're drifting all the time and you're not really centered in something like that. I don’t have family and I don't have like kids that I'm missing or a wife I'm cheating on or anything like that. So I can pretty much do what I want, and it still feels like you're missing something. So it's like, "Boo hoo for me," but after the years have built up and it builds to this kind of wall to like regular stuff, you've gotta watch that.
Jesse Thorn: Have you experienced that? Have you ever found yourself checking yourself or thinking, "I've really found myself living in this weirdo comedy world instead of the actual world?"
Dave Attell: Yeah, I think you wake up sometimes and you go... I like to think I'm pretty connected to the world. I watch the news. I did the USO shows, and I kinda know what's going on. I don't live in this kinda fantasy Hollywood world or anything like that. But still, the fact that I don't have to work a 9-to-5 like I did when I first started. It's pretty amazing and you realize that most of the people at the show have to do that, and this is could be their fun for the month, so you want to give them a good show. But yet you don't want to kowtow to anybody, so you want to try new things and be, I guess you could call it a little edgy, push the envelope. Sometimes that gets in my head.
Jesse Thorn: Well, Dave I want to thank you for taking the time to be on the show. It was really a pleasure to have you.
Dave Attell: Thank you man, and thanks so much for supporting comedy the way you do.
Jesse Thorn: Dave Attell appears July 22nd and 23rd at Cobb's Comedy Club in San Francisco. And you can find him on the internet at www.daveattell.com.
Jesse Thorn: Hey before we go to our interview with Michael Showalter, let's take a listen to a funny song from Jonathan Colton, one of the only guys who writes funny songs that actually are funny.
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Jesse Thorn: You can hear more of Jonathan Colton's music, or buy his cds or mp3s at jonathancolton.com. Hey we're gonna take a quick break. We'll be back in just one short minute with Michael Showalter of MTV's ”The State” and Comedy Central's “Stella”. You're listing to The Sound of Young America from maxumumfun.org
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Jesse Thorn: Did you know that demographic studies have concluded that over 90% of The Sound of Young America's audience are incredibly rich babies, with huge vats of disposable income, who have no built in brand loyalties at all? It's true. I made it up. If you're interested in supporting The Sound of Young America by becoming an underwriter and sharing your message with our vast audience of awesome, awesome babies, just email me, Jesse, at splangy@splangy.com, and well talk about it. I'm telling you folks, solid gold rattles... the wave of the future.
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Jesse Thorn: You're listening to The Sound of Young America. I am Jesse Thorn, America's Radio Sweetheart. My guest on the program, Michael Showalter, is a founding member of the comedy troupe The State and most recently one of the three members of Comedy Central's “Stella”. He's also the writer and director of the film, “The Baxter,” and was a co-writer and co-star of the film “Wet Hot American Summer”. He’s also been on several of those shows where comedians talk about a thing. Michael, welcome to The Sound of Young America, how are you?
Michael Showalter: It's great to be here, on your show. I'm really impressed by my own resume.
Jesse Thorn: Isn’t it impressive? I'm personally quite impressed.
Michael Showalter: Yeah, I was really impressed by myself.
Jesse Thorn: You know, there's so many things that I want to ask you, but I want to start with what you are doing right now, which is going on tour. Have you ever performed solo before?
Michael Showalter: Yes and no. I, over the years, have performed here and there, solo, at one of the many kind of alternative comedy places that we have here in New York. But I have never really focused on it. And in the last year I've had the opportunity to perform a lot, and went on tour in May with Eugene Mirman and Leo Allen, who are both friends and fellow comedians. And we each did about a thirty minute set and I discovered that I had accumulated quite a bit of solo material and also really loved performing alone, and have since really started working on a lot of material. I guess you could call it stand-up comedy, as much as anything that I’ve done is categorizable by the genre. I guess you could say I have been doing stand-up comedy lately, but it is certainly my voice and my perspective, and I'm really enjoying it.
Jesse Thorn: Now the two guys that you mentioned almost certainly work in the alternative comedy milieu.
Michael Showalter: Yes.
Jesse Thorn: But, they are also rather distinctly stand-up comedians, and have been such for quite some time.
Michael Showalter: Right.
Jesse Thorn: But you’re headlining the tour. Among other things, you are definitely the most famous.
Michael Showalter: Yeah.
Jesse Thorn: Is it kind of intimidating to think that you are going out, playing significantly sized venues, as the headliner, with two guys who are stand-up actual comedians, and you’re a guy who's certainly an actual comedian, but has only really been doing stand-up comedy for a year or so?
Michael Showalter: Well, Eugene is the official headliner. So Leo goes first, then I go, then Eugene takes the last round, the last lap.
Jesse Thorn: Okay, well let me change that question. How does it feel to go in-between two guys?
Michael Showalter: I mean honestly, I’m looking at it as a learning experience. I'm learning a lot of from those guys, I ask them a lot of questions and I'm studying what they do. It's true that I have been doing comedy for as long as they have, and I certainly have plenty of experience performing live in front of an audience, so it’s not such a huge transition for me that it's like I've never done this before. And as I've said, I do have a lot of material that I have accumulated over the years having done shows. I've just never focused on it. And so I am looking at it as a learning experience and I am kind of picking up pointers from those guys whenever I can, but luckily the kind of shows that we are doing and the kind of audiences we play in front of aren’t expecting the super streamlined, typical stand-up comedy piece. So it's a little bit rough around the edges and that seems to be working okay
Jesse Thorn: You are not playing the sorts of venues where the owner stands in the back counting the number of laughs per minute.
Michael Showalter: Yeah, exactly.
Jesse Thorn: Tell me about why you went solo, or at least are doing this solo turn after fifteen years of doing comedy in a collaborative context.
Michael Showalter: I mean, in a sense the question answers itself. I've been doing collaborations for fifteen years and I've just, had a kind of come to a natural turning point where I, kind of excited to , I don't know, for a lack or a better word, I guess I’m wanting to be my own guy for a little while. And performing in front of an audience is something I've always loved, with Stella and by myself, and I've just sort of seized upon this opportunity to get out there and perform. If Stella were performing, that's what I'd be doing too. It wasn't such a directed choice. It was just like I had some time on my hands, the other guys were doing different things. We were all doing different things and I just decided to focus on performing and touring.
Jesse Thorn: Now, “Stella” ran on Comedy Central for only for one year, but you guys started doing Stella live on stage in the late 1990s, I think in 1997.
Michael Showalter: Right.
Jesse Thorn: That's like eight years of refining this aesthetic, and I think by the time it hit Comedy Central, it was like it was really, really specific and razor sharp as well.
Michael Showalter: Yeah.
Jesse Thorn: Well, first of all, what was it like to be in such a narrow chute, even if you were going bobsled fast? And what's it like to be out of that now?
Michael Showalter: That's a very good question. I mean, in a sense, because of the fact that we actually started in '97, in a way it's like “Stella” came on Comedy Central like almost at the end of the arc for Stella. You know, like you'd said, we had kind of come full circle with what we were doing twice by the time we got onto Comedy Central. And I think that I looked at it, on a personal level, whenever you are collaborating, there is going to be a lot of compromise involved, and I just sort of celebrated it for what it was. But Stella was very much the by-product of three people's visions combined. And there is something just much more simple and clean about performing my own stuff, even if it means reaching a smaller audience, which, at this juncture, is what it means. I mean, the trade-off is that most people know “Stella” but not everybody knows me. So whereas when Stella was touring, we were playing in front of a thousand people, now I'm playing in front of a few hundred people. But creatively it’s very joyful. It's very joyful to not have to compromise, and to make my own mistakes.
Jesse Thorn: It's interesting, considering the various arcs of your career. I mean, you started when MTV's “The State” was on television, the lot of you were really very young for people who were on television.
Michael Showalter: Yeah. Yeah.
Jesse Thorn: And that ended, at least industry-wise, kind of awkwardly and badly with a move to CBS, which was ultimately sort of abortive.
Michael Showalter: Ill-fated. Yeah.
Jesse Thorn: So tell me about how, in some ways I think this one year run on Comedy Central was kind of ill fated as well…
Michael Showalter: Yeah.
Jesse Thorn: Tell me about how those two experiences were similar, and also how they were different.
Michael Showalter: Gosh, that's a really interesting question. I think the only thing that was similar was that some of the players were the same. Sensibility-wise, because of it being the same players, you had... You know you had Michael, David and I who were also all from “The State” now doing another sketch show together, on a different Viacom Cable network. That’s where the similarities end. “The State” was a really... We were young. We were cocky. We didn't know what the hell was going on. We felt entitled. That was a kind of a brightest candle burns the fastest, or whatever that is. We really burnt out. There were so many of us, the voices were so strong. And MTV would have kept us on MTV. We were succeeding on MTV. There was an opportunity for us to remain at MTV and continue to make shows on that network, and we sort of dug our own grave, so to speak.
Michael Showalter: At Comedy Central we were really company men. We were however many years older and wiser than we were, and were ready to not make the same mistake, and would have liked nothing more than to have had the show succeed and be given the opportunity to continue, and make a season two and a season three and on and on, and kind of be company guys and not be cocky, and not take for granted the opportunity that we'd had. And, the kind of sad reality is just that the show didn't find an audience. I think a better comparison with “Stella” would be “Wet Hot American Summer”, which somehow found a rabid cult following, but could not break out of that into a mainstream awareness.
Michael Showalter: And, I just try to take all that stuff with a grain of salt, you know? I look at in the bigger picture. I've been able to continually make projects that I care about and that I believe in. I am very proud of the ten episodes that we did in that one season, and I think that they really speak for themselves. There's a DVD coming out in September, and hopefully people will watch the show and discover how great it was.
Jesse Thorn: You’re listening to The Sound of Young America. I’m Jesse Thorn, America’s Radio Sweetheart. My guest, Michael Showalter, is headed out on tour this year. He’s also been seen in MTV’s “The State,” Comedy Central’s ‘Stella” and the films “Wet Hot American Summer” and “The Baxter,” among others.
Jesse Thorn: You know, you mentioned…
Michael Showalter: I’m really impressed by my resume.
Jesse Thorn: Again?
Michael Showalter: Every time you hear it, I just get a little pep in my step.
Jesse Thorn: Isn't that nice? It's good.
Michael Showalter: Yeah.
Jesse Thorn: I'm glad that you feel that way, because if you were to say my resume right now, I'd just go skulk in a corner.
Michael Showalter: Oh, okay. Well then I won't.
Jesse Thorn: It would be like "Oh, Jesse Thorn hosts a radio show, which he produces in the living room, and he was once in a local television commercial."
Michael Showalter: That's a lot, Jesse.
Jesse Thorn: So, I want to ask you about "The Baxter." Because "The Baxter" in a way felt like... well, for one thing it was you specifically behind that film.
Michael Showalter: Yeah.
Jesse Thorn: And while it retained some of the tonal qualities of your other work, it also had a lot of other things going on. I mean, in some ways it almost felt like a kind of a classic Hollywood comedy tribute -- sort of like ”Manhattan,” or “The Apartment” or something like that.
Michael Showalter: Right.
Jesse Thorn: Tell me about why you decided, when you made a movie for yourself, why you decided to move it in that direction tonally.
Michael Showalter: That's a good question. I guess left to my own devices, that's kind of where I go. I think I have a sentimental side and I really like genre movies. And I really like a good story well-told. That really gets me excited when I see a really, just a good old-fashioned Hollywood story well-told. And I think growing up, I always sort of said to myself, “One day I want to make a great romantic comedy.” And having done the “Stella” videos, which are kind of pornographic, and then having done “Wet Hot American Summer”, which is very funny, but quite sophomoric, that just for my own piece of mind, while I was working on it, I just wanted to live in a world that was a little bit more polite, where the characters were a little bit more refined. And so I really challenged myself to do something that was funny, but really very sweet and sentimental.
Jesse Thorn: At the same time, and I should explain in “The Baxter”, which is a film that you wrote, directed and starred in.
Michael Showalter: Right.
Jesse Thorn: You play sort of a schlubby, nebbishy guy, the titular Baxter, which is a name that you give to the kind of male second banana.
Michael Showalter: The wrong guy.
Jesse Thorn: Exactly.
Michael Showalter: The wrong guy.
Jesse Thorn: The wrong guy in a romantic comedy film. Now, this character that you play in the film is, despite your description just now, remains a very silly-mannered character, dropped into a relatively sort of straight-shooting world.
Michael Showalter: Yeah.
Jesse Thorn: Tell me about why you decided to do it that way and not the... I think traditionally probably one would say, "Look we'll take a regular guy everyone can identify with, who is totally of normal, and drop him into a world of wacky misfits.”
Michael Showalter: I wish I had a really good answer for that. I think in a way I though that's what I had done -- which sort of shows you -- I'm definitely not the best judge of my own material. I came to learn, "Wow, I thought that I hadn't," and the same could be said of “Stella” and “Wet Hot American Summer”. It's sort of like, in a sense, I'm much like my character in “The Baxter”, in that I'm kind of a man out of time. I thought The Baxter was a very straight-forward story and I thought that he was a normal guy dropped into a world of wacky characters. And I realized that other peoples' perceptions was that he was like the sort of kind of like weirdo retard and that everybody else was straight. And I’m like, "Okay, fine, I guess." I'm perfectly happy to look at it that way. I think if a different actor had played the role -- which I think would have been interesting -- maybe the character would have seemed less mannered, and seemed less kind of Chauncey Gardner-ish, for lack of a better comparison. Maybe I had some limitations as an actor that prevented some of Elliot's other things that I'd liked about him to come through. But I feel like we had the same thing with “Stella.” We thought “Stella” was very accessible and funny. We really did. I think all three of us felt that we were making a TV show that was certainly a strong individual voice, but that was very funny in a way everyone could get. And we were really surprised when that wasn't the case. I think we were genuinely surprised that, 'Wow, everyone's saying this is so weird and off-the-wall and absurd." And with “The Baxter”, people were not reacting to it the way I thought they would. And that's something that's pretty hard to get used to.
Jesse Thorn: It seems like particularly in the critical world, where basically all of the work that you and the other members of The State have created in the last 15 years has either been passionately beloved by 25 percent and just hated by 75 percent.
Michael Showalter: Yeah.
Jesse Thorn: There seems to be, folks seem to have a hard time accepting sort of the silliness of some of the stuff that you're doing, sort of for face value. It seems like people want to see either what they've seen... critics expect to see what they've seen before, or sort of a satirical, angry reinvention or satire, et cetera, et cetera. Which is really not what you're offering.
Michael Showalter: No, and you're very right to say that. Because really, at the core of all of it, it is just silly. It is that's really all it is. It aspires to be almost nothing more that that and think that people don’t get that. People are looking for more. And it's not there. There's nothing more to understand. It's just silly and stupid. And you're supposed to revel in the stupidity, and you're supposed to have fun with it. You know, I was watching that Steve Martin movie, “The Man with Two Brains”, earlier and I feel like I was brought up on that. I was raised on silly, stupid comedy, whether it was Steve Martin, Benny Hill or even "Three's Company" or something. That's what I thought was funny. People acting stupid made me laugh. And somehow that got lost in the shuffle somewhere along the way, and so there is a... there is... you're right. The critical response always seems to be like, "This isn't silly-stupid, it's just stupid."
Jesse Thorn: Almost everything that you've worked on has been something that you've had a strong hand in creating. And I wonder if that's something that's been happenstance and been a by-product of the old, you know, "if you don't get cast in a play, then put one on yourself," sort of thing, or if it's sort of a self-conscious choice. Because in my imagination, between being a funny guy and a good looking guy, you could play at least the best friend in some movie that Paul Rudd is cast in, you know what I mean?
Michael Showalter: Yeah.
Jesse Thorn: Is it a choice, or is it Hollywood conspiring against you or something?
Michael Showalter: I think in the beginning it was Hollywood conspiring against me. And when I say the beginning, I mean seven or eight years ago. You know, once “The State” had ended, and we all kind of had our... I had my visions of cashing in whatever juice I had off of that and going and becoming a TV star or something or a movie star or whatever. I think I thought you know that Hollywood was conspiring against me, but I don't think that at all now. And more and more it's just a choice. The guy that plays Paul Rudd's best friend has to really want that. And I'm a kind of a little bit of a habitual guy and I live in Brooklyn and I'm not in the middle of the action, and I think that if I really wanted to do that I probably could have more success at that than I've had. But I'm pretty happy doing what I'm doing, which is right now, stand-up comedy. And I've started teaching classes here in New York, which gives me a lot of, I get a lot of satisfaction out of that. And I will eventually write another screenplay and hopefully direct it, as well as I've started working on animating.. I'm a cartoonist and I've started animating some of my cartoons. I’m learning how to use the software to animate in sort of like in a kind of Terry Gilliam fashion. And I guess, it would be nice if someone called me up and said, "Hey do you want to play Paul Rudd's best friend in a movie?" and I'd probably say yes, but I do think that people kind of fall into their natural place. And my natural place is probably more doing what I'm doing, and focusing on creating my own stuff, and if at any point along the line, I fall into getting some of that stuff, that would be great. But I don't think it's in the... it's not something that I'm really pursuing.
Jesse Thorn: I want to ask you one last thing, which is... you graduated from an Ivy League University and you got your degree, I read, in media studies or something along those lines?
Michael Showalter: Well, semiotics.
Jesse Thorn: I was about to say, what were you doing studying semiotics or something? It was 1992-93.
Michael Showalter: Yeah, exactly.
Jesse Thorn: So how does your study of semiotics, which is sort of the study… well you'd probably be better able to define it than I. It’s sort of the study of symbols and their meaning and meaning as intended and perceived.
Michael Showalter: Yeah.
Jesse Thorn: How is that education at a top university effected your ....
Michael Showalter: Well, I don't want to get like esoteric or overly...
Jesse Thorn: That's what this show is for.
Michael Showalter: Okay, good.
Jesse Thorn: There's no other program on the radio where you could ask a comedian about semiotics and it would be within the acceptable bounds to respond genuinely.
Michael Showalter: I think I've got a lot of, without meaning to, without turning it into a specific idea.. I think I have a very semiotic take on comedy and humor. A lot of what I find funny sort of starts with the question of why is something funny. A lot of the jokes I do are kind of deconstructing jokes, saying sometimes the reason we think things are funny isn't because they're funny, but more just because we're kind of programmed to think they're funny. Like the way someone intones a line, or the way we've been taught to look at different thing. And certainly genres are funny or just people saying certain things or looking a certain way. So, “Wet Hot American Summer” and “Stella” both, in particular and “The Baxter” are really genre. They are all genre pieces and the humor is things are funny just because we're doing them. I think that's a pretty inarticulate way of saying something, but...
Jesse Thorn: Can you give an example of what you're talking about, like either like a scene or a joke or something like that?
Michael Showalter: Well like in WHAS, there's a scene where my character Coop slips on a banana peel. And the reason that joke is funny, if you think it's funny, is that we did it at all. That’s why that's a funny joke. Me actually slipping on the banana peel isn't funny, but that we did it is funny, to us. And so that's a kind of a meta joke, I mean, I can't explain it any further, because when we’re doing these jokes, we're not thinking in those terms. Another example is in my stand-up comedy, I do a series of jokes that I dreamt, and I talk about that. Sometimes I'll wake up and I'll have dreamt a joke in my sleep, and I write the joke down, and then when I look at it later on in the day, it's not as funny. I don't say it's not funny, but it's not as funny as I thought it was when I first wrote it down, because it has its own logic. An example is how many prison security guards does it take to screw in a light bulb.
Jesse Thorn: How many, Michael?
Michael Showalter: Ethan Murphy and Lt John LeShoff. And then I say it's a dream joke; it has its own logic. But for some reason, there's something funny there and I'm not sure why, because there's really no joke. But I guess, in a sense, it's sort of the anti-joke. It’s deconstructing a joke. It's funny because it's not funny.
Jesse Thorn: Can you tell me why I think the funniest thinking that I can possibly imagine is when you guys say a word that's just got like two letters transposed or something like that, just very slightly wrong.
Michael Showalter: Yes. Yeah, exactly. We do that all the time. We mispronounce words all the time.
Jesse Thorn: [laughter] “Oh, I need a shower in the warst..."
Michael Showalter: In the warst way, yes. Yes, I love that line too.
Jesse Thorn: [Laughter] I think that's like the funniest thing that's...
Michael Showalter: I do too.
Jesse Thorn: I probably saw that for the first time like maybe like four or five years ago.
Michael Showalter: Yeah.
Jesse Thorn: This is totally sincere laughter, of me just thinking of warst instead or worst.
Michael Showalter: Yeah. But there's a thing in like Stella, when we used to do Stella live, where we'd be talking and then, without any build-up to it, David and I just start calling Michael "Mitch." Just for like two or three exchanges, as if it's like a nickname we'd had for him all along.
Jesse Thorn: Michael Showalter's tour with Leo Allen and Eugene Mirman hits Anchorage, Seattle, Eugene, San Francisco and Los Angeles this week. You can find out more at michaelshowalter.net. Thanks for being on The Sound of Young America. It was a pleasure to have you.
Michael Showalter: Thanks, man.
Jesse Thorn: Well that's about all the time we have for this week's Sound of Young America broadcast. I've been your host, Jesse Thorn, America's Radio Sweetheart. This show was produced by Speaking Into Microphones. Our theme music was written, composed and performed by Dan Grayson, with help from myself on two of those counts. Our incidental music was produced by DJ W -- you can find a link to his website at ours. And, in fact you can find a link to all kinds of cool stuff on The Sound of Young America blog page for this week's program. It's at maximumfun.org. And don't forget, for the balance of the month of July, it remains Listener Appreciation Month, and we're doing a giveaway every day on The Sound of Young America blog which, again, is at maximumfun.org. Upcoming guests on this program: Art Brute, The Flaming Lips and lots more. Keep it locked. See you next time. Bye.
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"Like a youthful maiden, Dawn shines brightly forth
Stirring to motion every living creature.
Divine fire was kindled for the use of men;
Dawn created light, driving away the dark."
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