Catching Up With Scott Aukerman
Last week, Scott Aukerman not only ended the first season of his new IFC show Comedy Bang! Bang!, but he also wrapped up the final dates on the Comedy Bang! Bang! tour. In addition, his year included hosting the incredibly popular Comedy Bang! Bang! podcast, running his own Earwolf podcast network and directing the instantly viral “Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis” videos. We spoke with Aukerman about his packed 2012, balancing his brand and the possibility of a Comedy Bang! Bang! space movie.
Paste: So the Comedy Bang Bang brand has gone from stage, radio, podcast, now onto TV and a tour. Are there any elements that you want to transfer from one to the other or do you see each of these as kind of separate ventures with a similar aesthetic?
Scott Aukerman: Yeah, I sort of see it as separate things with a similar aesthetic, I mean what I’m trying to do with the tour is trying to do a combination of the live show, the TV show and the podcast. So basically for the tour, half of it is going to be sort of like the shows I do at the UCB Theatre in LA where the performers and I will be doing sort of prepared, more polished material. We’re going to show some stuff from the TV show, I may do kind of a bit based on the TV show, and then the last half of the show is going to be totally improvised show akin to the podcast. So I’m really just trying to hit all the bases of what people like about the brand for this tour right now.
As far as bringing stuff over, well it’s an interesting thing adapting the podcast into a TV show, there was a little discussion at one point, I was like, “okay, is it going to be called something totally different, is it going to be called ‘The Scott Aukerman Totally Rocks Show,’ or should I call it ‘Comedy Bang! Bang!’?” So basically what I was doing was I was just making a TV show that I wanted to make that sort of was inspired by the podcast. So when we finished the pilot and I took a look at it and I kind of made that decision, you know what, this is similar enough to the podcast, it has the same basic premise, which is me talking to celebrities and also talking to comedians who are playing fake people. That’s similar enough that I think it should be called Comedy Bang! Bang!
So you know that’s an interesting process, on the flip side it’s given me a lot more press, people are really interested in it as a talking point in interviews, what’s it like translating the podcast into a TV show?, because it already exists, it gives people something to talk about, as Bonnie Raitt once said. But you know the flip side of that is the expectation is maybe that it would be a bit more like the podcast, but it really is just me wanting to do the TV show that I’ve wanted to do ever since I was a kid and having it be kind of what you said, similar with the same aesthetic but sort of different from each other as well.
Paste: So when you were creating the show, where did the inspiration come from? Like to me it feels like Mr. Show and a lot like Letterman, the bits he used to do. Was that kind of what you were going for or were there other inspirations?
Aukerman: Yeah, I was a huge Letterman acolyte growing up. He was my biggest influence, he’s really like, when I was in high school, I based my entire personality on him to the delight of everyone around me. No one likes anyone better than a sarcastic grump. But no, I was a huge fan of his, I was definitely inspired by him and that sensibility, the more surreal sensibility that his late night show had back in the early 80s is a huge influence for me. A lot of what we tried to do on the show was we were just trying to take anything that had a host, any type of show that had a host, we were trying to do some sort of take on it, so from Letterman, Leno, Conan, everybody, to what other shows that had a host that we talked about, to Dick Cavett, Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, to Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Anything that had a personality at the center of it, we tried it, Jerry Springer, we tried a Jerry Springer thing, The Henry Rollins Show, you know? We were trying to do takes on all of these types of things and the cool part of the format for me is the fact that it’s a talk show with a host is the through line that makes everything hold together.
Paste: Now when you do the podcast and the TV show and the tour, how do you decide which guests go together, or is it just like a scheduling thing or are you just like, Andy Richter and Cake Boss would be great together?
Aukerman: It’s a certain weird alchemy that is difficult to figure out. I mean, what people should know about the podcast is that I’m really just playing it by ear, and they’re getting scheduled at the last minute. I mean, sometimes I’m just throwing together whoever is around and hoping that they have a certain type of chemistry. What’s great is when that chemistry is fantastic, like the episode, I had three disparate people, Jessica St. Clair, Paul Rust and Jerrod Carmichael, neither of the other two had met Jerrod before, and Paul and Jessica sort of know each other, but don’t really work together. But I somehow had a feeling like those three would be really good together and yeah they were great together. Then there’s the show’s where you put people together in a room and it’s like oil and water and it doesn’t really come off that well. But you know every single podcast that we do is an experiment and it’s not planned out, it’s totally improvised, so you know I think that’s kind of the thrill to it for some listeners is they know that that is what is happening and so if one doesn’t exactly come off right, it’s an interesting experiment at the least.
For the TV show, I tried to put people together that I thought would be, we put a little more care into it and tried to put people together that we thought would work together really well. For instance, with Ed Helms, we had a couple of guests that he started doing comedy with, we had Seth Morris doing Bob Ducca, those guys work together really well, we had Owen Burke doing Evel Knievel, and those guys have known each other for a million years. There’s just a certain sense of comfort when all the people have worked together and there’s a lot of trust that made that show really special. The same kind of thing with Jon Hamm and El Chupacabra, we knew those guys had a really great chemistry from the podcast, so we made sure they were both on the same show for the TV show.