The Comedy Couch - Bob Odenkirk Interview

BOB ODENKIRK: How is it that there's a magazine called
Georgia Straight in
Vancouver?

GUY MACPHERSON: Well, we're right beside the Georgia
Strait.
BO: Oh, I didn't know.

GM: What were you thinking?
BO: What's the Georgia Strait? A river?

GM: It's a, uh, a strait.
BO: I don't know what a strait is.

GM: Well, you got me. I don't either. I vaguely
remember it from geography. It's between Vancouver
Island and the mainland.
BO: Oh, yeah, yeah. A strait is a piece of water.

GM: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's a "piece" of water, I think
that's the way we learned it.
BO: It's a hunk of water.

GM: Right!... So how you doing?
BO: I'm doing good. I'm in Madison, Wisconsin. We're
gonna rent a bike.

GM: Oh. What are you doing there?
BO: We're doing a show tonight.

GM: So the tour has started, right?
BO: Oh, man, we've been going for a week and a half.

GM: And how's it been going?
BO: (long pause) It's going really well. It's really
good. We've got the show figured out.

GM: You got it figured out, so by the time you hit
Vancouver...
BO: It'll be drop dead boring.

GM: Oh, I see.
BO: No, we're having a good time.

GM: Mr. Show was a favourite of mine. How did the name
come about?
BO: Well, um, we had a competition to see who could
name it. We were just a little theatre show at the
time, you know? And it was like, put a name in a hat
and name the show. And this one guy, he didn't really
understand what the show was, right? And he wrote "Mr.
Show." It was really sloppy, you know. This guy, I
guess, hadn't even seen the show. He, like, stopped by
to pick up a friend or whatever, and he said, "I got a
name for a show." He kinda heard a little about it and
he wrote "Mr. Show." And we were like, that's a great
name for a show. It's real simple and it sounds
absurdist. And then we met the guy later and he had
written "Mrs. How." He thought it was a detective show
with a woman. He thought that's what we were doing in
the theatre, was a detective mystery, like a dinner
theatre show. Because he met one of the actresses
coming out. He was an old guy. He was, like, 70 years
old. And he had written "Mrs. How" and he told us that
was always a show he wanted to see, a show called Mrs.
How with a female detective. Isn't that weird? And he,
like, scribbled it so badly we thought it said Mr.
Show.

GM: And is that true?
BO: Yeah!

GM: Okay. I'll buy it.
BO: I mean, people think about TV a lot. So he was
some weird old guy
who thought about TV all the time.

GM: I didn't realize it started as a theatre show.
BO: Ah, yeah, we did it five times in the theatre.

GM: Where?
BO: In LA. Around. They weren't even theatres. One of
them was a disco.
And we did it there three times, and did it twice in a
place called the
Upfront Theater. You asked about names, it was
originally called The
Three Goofballz. Then it was called Grand National
Championship. And
then it was called The Cross-Odenkirk Problem. And
then it was this guy's
Mr. Show.

GM: So you're going back to your roots now. You're
back in the theatre.
BO: I guess so. I don't feel like I've been that far
from it. I've done a
number of shows in the theatre since the show went off
the air.

GM: And it's been off the air for three years. How
long was it on the air?
BO: It was on the air for 33 shows.

GM: Was it taken off the air because you guys wanted
to do other things or because HBO said, hey, no one's
watching?
BO: Well, David and I kind of had a falling out. We
haven't actually talked about this a whole lot. It
happened. But we're having a good time now so I guess
it's opened floodgates or whatever. We used to have
these races. You know, driving legal speed, but you
pick a place in another town that you don't know that
well, or a third person says Pancake House, Pasadena,
but doesn't tell you where it is. Then you race there.
But you have to drive legally. It's all about knowing
the backstreets in LA. It's key. There's actually a
book called, "Shortcuts in LA". I'm sure you can't buy
it where you are, but you can definitely get it in LA.
It tells streets that you can haul ass on.

GM: Legally, though.
BO: Well, they actually detail a thing called a
California rolling stop. Have you ever heard of that?

GM: Yeah.
BO: You know what I'm talking about.

GM: I know.
BO: And you don't stop, you just kind of roll through
the stop sign. So
anyway, it's all about driving like that. And you
gotta get there. And we
just were getting into it like you get into a video
game or whatever, having these races, you know. And he
beat me, then later I found out that he knew where
this Pancake House was. He'd been there before. And we
had
been working really, really hard on the fourth season.
It was a lot of work and we spent hours in the office
together. And I know it's a stupid fucking thing, but
this thing that he did, I just fucking went through
the roof. I was so mad. Because I almost got a ticket.
I almost hit something, I don't know what. A skunk or
something. And I was so mad. But it was about working
together so hard for four years. And spending, like,
twelve hours in an office with the guy everyday for
four years.

GM: And then he pulls something like that on you.
BO: Well, he said that he'd been there once but he
didn't know where it was, you know what I mean? Like
somebody else took him there to this
place. And he was like, "I'd been here but I
didn'tknow where it was." And
I got so fucking mad. I was dumb. It was just an
argument. I mean, you know, it sounds stupid but
that's what arguments are a lot of times.

GM: And are you talking now?
BO: Oh, are you kidding me? We're having a great time.
This tour has been
great. I mean, no, we couldn't do this otherwise.
We're talking and laughing and joking around. I've
never... We've never told anybody about
that race thing--

GM: So I have a scoop, then, is what you're telling
me?
BO: Yeah. But it doesn't matter. But now that you
print that, I bet you
people do those races like crazy because they're
really fun. The only thing is, please say "Drive the
legal speed" because it's not about driving fast; it's
about knowing streets that are fast and learning the
shortcuts. Have you ever been to Los Angeles?

GM: Yes, I have.
BO: Yeah, so you know... Have you lived there for any
length of time?

GM: No.
BO: Okay, well, the traffic is terrible. It's
terrible. So it's all about knowing side streets.

GM: It's about out-sitting the other person.
BO: Yeah, it's about knowing the streets and learning
them.

GM: When I think of Mr. Show, I think of the classic
sketch shows like...
Red Skelton and Carol Burnett. You're very similar to
all those shows.
BO: Uh, well, when I was a kid, my family didn't watch
a lot of TV, but we did watch Mary Tyler Moore and we
did watch Burnett. You know, I loved
that show. And I watched a lot of it when I was a kid.
To me, it's much more influenced by Python.

GM: I was joking about Carol Burnett and Red Skelton.
And your show,
more than any other, I mean, they say Kids in the Hall
was like Python, but
I think your show is, with characters going from one
sketch to the next
and sort of absurd.
BO: Yeah, we didn't repeat characters like Python
didn't repeat characters. They repeated a character
within an episode. But they never really repeated them
from episode to episode. And we did the same thing.

GM: In your show, you do a lot of double characters
and play different
people. How hard is that to duplicate on the stage?
BO: Well, it's not hard at all. I mean, we're
performers and, like I said, we did this show live.
And actually, the show itself was done live. We had an
audience there and we showed stuff on the video.

GM: It's called "Hurray For America!!!"
BO: Yeah.

GM: Obviously...
BO: Sarcastic?

GM: Full of irony and sarcasm, yeah.
BO: Yeah, absolutely, it is. There's no way around it.

GM: Are we the only Canadian city you're coming to?
BO: Yes, you are.

GM: And how do you think it'll play?
BO: I think it'll be great. I mean, I think you guys
are very tied to America. I mean, to me Canada's like
a fucking state of America. I don't know if that's an
insult or what, but... But you know, in that the
things that happen here, you guys know all about them.
You read about 'em. You know what I mean? Like, our
show references, in its own way it references
the Enron scandals. It's about electing a president
and the story we tell in it is about how Globo-chem,
this corporation, runs an actor for president, and
it's David Cross. They run David Cross for president.
So you guys get what that's about.

GM: Yeah. I mean, it's a little out-there to imagine
an actor being elected
president. I mean, that's a little ridiculous, but
other than that.
BO: Well, that's what you do in comedy, you stretch
things out a little to a funny sense. I mean, you're
right, but in its way it's true. You know, I mean,
people are elected president who are a frontispiece.

GM: A what?
BO: I think the word is frontispiece.

GM: Okay. I'll look that up.
BO: F-r-o-n-t-i-s-p-i-e-c-e. I believe that would be a
good descriptive word. I might be wrong. I'm just
using it. Or let's say a facade for an organization or
a group of people. You know what I mean? I mean, look
at
Reagan. Look at George W. Bush. I mean, these are not
leaders on their own. Bush is ridiculous. He's just an
old clubby boy who got in the group.
But Reagan was like a statue that you could move his
lips. He looked the
part and he knew how to play it and these guys backed
him on it. So it's
not a paranoid thing where we think there's some dark
backroom where
these deals are made, but it's what ends up happening
because the system eats so much money and the only
people with that kind of money are major, major
corporations and groups.

GM: Looking at your list of credits, I'm heartened to
see that you wrote
for Get A Life.
BO: Yeah.

GM: It was a great show.
BO: Thank you. I'm proud of it. We were watching it
the other night. I love
that show.

GM: Also, I guess you and David are pretty busy with
your Famous School
For Comedians.
BO: Yes, well, you know, there's always a new crop of
really promising
... idiots, who need to learn the rules of comedy.

GM: You have some great rules, such as "Izzarding up
your act." I thought
that was perfect.
BO: I think it's about time somebody said something,
announced the Emperor had no fancy feminine clothes.
You know, he's not really a transvestite like he
claims. He's a guy who wears fashionable clothes.
Transvestites want to appear as a woman. They don't
just wear women's clothes. He doesn't in any way want
to appear to be a woman.

GM: He's a cross-dresser.
BO: No. A cross-dresser wants to appear to be a woman.
He's fashionable.
That's what he is. He doesn't want to say that because
he wants middle-America to be tittilated by his little
dumb choice. And it works. But he's technically not
those things that he claims to be that are risque.
He's actually an avowed heterosexual, as he says in
his act, who isn't appearing to be a woman at all but
rather looks exactly like a man who happens to be
wearing some semi-feminine shows. And he has a little
bit of make-up, which a lot of men wear. And, oh yeah,
not that funny. But I think smoke and mirrors are
there for all to see. I mean, if he were funny, he
wouldn't fucking have to pretend he was a
transvestite.

GM: Have you seen his act?
BO: Yeah, I have seen his act. I couldn't believe that
in the year 2000,
which is the year I saw it, he was doing stuff about
the fact that the Star Trek character that you don't
recognize is the one who dies. I thought that was
about as lame as you can get... without smashing a
watermelon. I really couldn't believe it. It was
stunningly cheap.

GM: So you didn't go backstage and talk.
BO: Yeah, I did, actually. He's a nice guy. He's a
really nice guy... but his act sucks. Nothing against
him as a person, he's just fucking fake. And that's
what comedians do is point out that. Maybe he could
have another career pointing out what an empty bunch
of crap his first career was. Anyways, buddy, I'm on a
bike on a street. I'm probably going to get
run over by some idiot doing one of those dumb races I
just suggested
people try.