Practically every article about Human Giant mentions two things: the Internet, and the possibility that the show's hilarious, well-crafted sketches might save MTV from its current state of Date-My-Mom-ification. The Internet comes into play because the show's bite-sized skits seem tailor-made for YouTube, though Human Giant troupe members Aziz Ansari, Paul Scheer, and Rob Huebel and show director Jason Woliner are quick to point out that they were never an Internet sensation. The second thing still remains to be seen, though Human Giant's sharp, absurd sketch comedy is promising enough to suggest that there's still hope for MTV. Human Giant's members come from different backgrounds: Woliner is a former child actor, Scheer and Huebel are veteran improv and sketch performers, and Ansari is a stand-up comic with a voice pitched somewhere between nerdy confidence and hip-hop swagger. The A.V. Club recently sat down with all four men to talk about their history, their methods, and whether they're really going to be MTV's salvation.
The A.V. Club: How did you all meet?
Paul Scheer: We connected through the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York. Rob and I performed improv for the last 10 years, and Aziz is this new stand-up dude that everyone was talking about.
Aziz Ansari: When we shot our skit "Shutterbugs" as a short film, we met Jason. And then Paul was in the second "Shutterbugs" short. And then a couple of months later, when me and Paul lived together, we came up with an idea for "The Illusionators," and we shot that with Jason and Rob.
AVC: MTV approached you about the show, not the other way around.
Rob Huebel: Yeah, we were lucky. We've all pitched shows before to other people. But I think because our stuff is on the Internet, they had a taste of it and saw that it had been fairly popular virally.
PS: When they approached us, it was weird , because no one pitches sketch shows anymore. It's that weird thing where it's like you have to come up with a crazy premise.
Jason Woliner: Like "You guys live in the belly of a giant who eats different things that you make sketches out of." We talked for months about if there was a framework, and ultimately, we just wanted to make these little videos.
PS: It was our dream come true, actually. All we want to do is make short, funny films and not have them connected, just have fun stuff all together in one episode.
RH: We just have the animation, the little bumpers, to get to the next thing. We don't ever introduce a sketch or explain what's about to happen.
AVC: Were you shocked that MTV would let you be all over the place?
RH: It was really crazy. When we did the pilot, we were like, "Great. They're gonna pay for it, and we get to go shoot more stuff that we think is funny." So we went and did that. We didn't really expect to get picked up.
PS: I think we were all kind of pessimists. It was great, but you go into everything thinking it's never gonna pan out the way you want it to. We have so many friends who're like, "Oh, yeah. I got a sitcom, and it's about this." And you see it, and it's not about that at all. Everything is watered down. I think the one cool thing about our show is that for the most part, we were able to keep a lot of it.
RH: They didn't give us too many parameters. They just let us pitch the funniest concepts. And they generally let us do what we want. That never, ever happens. Most of the time, it's like "We think our age group would be…" No, we didn't have to write for high-school kids. We just did whatever we think is funny.
AVC: What's your writing process like? Do you write together?
JW: We didn't have a writing process before the show, because we never wrote, the four of us together.
PS: We didn't write with discipline.
JW: We would write scripts, like for "Shutterbugs." Then when we shot it, everyone just came up with new stuff. We've definitely learned how to do it better as we've gotten along. So basically, that's how it went. We just go in with ideas and try to figure out funny stuff while we're there.
PS: I think the process itself became us in a room, and we'd all come up with a bunch of ideas. And if we all laugh at one idea, we roundtable a little to see if it has some legs.
RH: And someone would write that up, and then we would get the green light to go do it. And then we would try to build off that and make it better.
AA: Use it as a framework.
PS: But for every one idea that we got, there are hundreds that just died a painful death. One of us would come in on a Monday, like, "Oh! You guys, listen to this!"
AA: Anytime you were super-psyched about an idea, that was just a deathblow.
JW: There was one time when Aziz and I were driving around in L.A. and we had an idea that we thought was so funny: The World's Strongest Ghost.
AA: [Laughing.] Oh my God, we almost got into a car accident.
JW: We almost died, we were laughing so hard, and we came in on Monday and told them the idea, and it was basically nothing. No reaction.
RH: I figured out toward the end of the season, it depends on when and what time of the day you pitch it, and whether people had anything to eat. It's very specific.
PS: Also, if you came in very high-energy on an idea, it was immediately suspect.
JW: We all learned to undersell.
AA: And also, we didn't have, like, a writing staff, but we had consultants that would come in. Amazing people came and helped us out. Jon Glaser was really great. This guy Dan Mintz in L.A. And Brian Posehn. Those three were like our staff consultants that came in the most. The other guys would just come in every now and then for a day or two, like Patton Oswalt. He acted in the show too. We're just really flattered.
JW: Some of the people who helped us out [writing], we gave little cameos to, like Patton. Uh, we got a bunch of Mr. Show people…
AVC: Ghostface Killah?
PS: Yeah. The only thing about Ghostface is that when you see him on the episode, he's on a green screen. You can't tell. It's kind of hidden. But we never got to meet him.
RH: We shot the thing separately, and they superimposed Aziz in there.
PS: But we got Mary Lynn Rajskub from 24, and some of our good friends, like Rob Riggle from The Daily Show, Brian Posehn, Nick Swardson.
JW: Big comedy guys like Tony Hawk and Kelly Slater.
PS: Linda Cardellini. We tried to go after people we really liked.
JW: Like Bobb'e J. Thompson.
PS: Yeah! Bobb'e J. We're all addicted to this show called America's Most Talented Kid, hosted by Dave Coulier. This little kid, Bobb'e J., he's one of the judges. He was the best improviser, the best actor, the best physical comedian…
JW: He's the funniest person I've ever met.
AA: Honestly, he's the most talented kid. We thought he was just like a funny little kid, but he came there, and he was like… I've never seen a mind work like that, the stuff he was improvising. He's in the season finale of "Shutterbugs." He was making fun of me and Huebel, 'cause we kept breaking [character]. I was watching some behind-the-scenes we have from that day, and he kept making Huebel and me laugh when he did this one thing, and he was like, "Come on, guys. Get it together!"
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