AVC: You've done a blog for Deadspin. Have you always been a big sports fan?
MS: Yes. I know more about sports than I know about any other subject, unfortunately. I'm embarrassed to admit that. You could pretty much ask me anything, and I'll tell you a little bit about it.
AVC: Tell us about cricket.
MS: I know a lot about cricket. You were joking, see? You were like, "I'm going to ask him about something he knows nothing about." But I know a lot about cricket.
AVC: Well, you haven't actually told us anything about cricket yet.
MS: Well, what do you want to know?
AVC: Who invented cricket?
MS: I don't know. But I could tell you who some of the best cricket players are.
AVC: Okay, so who's the best cricket player today?
MS: I don't know. However, I can tell you that one of the best cricket players of all time—and I would really equate him to Mickey Mantle, maybe even Joe DiMaggio—is [Arif] Imran Kant. Google it. He was the best cricket player for Pakistan. He's now an opposition leader in Pakistan, and he's in exile. His ex-wife—and this is a piece of information I wish I didn't know, but I'll tell you anyway—is the recent ex-girlfriend of Hugh Grant.
AVC: You're not just reading this off Wikipedia, right?
MS: No, I'm not. Why would I do that? I don't bullshit. I wouldn't lower myself to that. I'll be the first person to admit that if you'd said, "Tell me something about hockey," it would have been a short conversation. Boxing, that could be a long conversation. Baseball, basketball, football, tennis: long conversation.
AVC: Were you ever an athlete?
MS: I am very athletic, actually, and I'm good at most sports. But I was never a successful athlete, because I have a lot of trouble with authority. To be a good athlete, you have to have sort of a military attitude. You have to enjoy being coached, and that was not something I ever liked. But more than that, I don't like practice, and coaches hate anybody that doesn't like practice. Plus I'm pretty slow, I have very little upper body strength, and I tire easily. But I'm very coordinated. If you saw me throwing a football, you'd say, "Wow, he knows how to throw a football." But put me on a field, I'm not gonna stand out. Although I am a standout softball player. I hit a lot of home runs, and I'm a good fielder.
AVC: Another recent announcement was your planned remake of Night Of The Living Dorks. What's that about?
MS: That's a teen comedy in the vein of a John Hughes movie. It's basically about a bunch of dorky high-school kids who become zombies, kind of like Sixteen Candles meets Dawn Of The Dead. I wrote a draft of the script, and I plan to direct.
AVC: How has the writers' strike affected the future of these projects?
MS: The zombie movie actually hasn't been affected, because we got all of our writing in before the strike. The State movie and another project that I'm working on with Michael Black is on hold.
AVC: Was that the pilot you were working on last year: Michael Ian Black Doesn't Understand?
MS: That particular pilot isn't happening, but he and I are doing another project at Comedy Central, where Mike and I are co-hosts of a fictional show. I can't say too much about it, because it's not written. Otherwise I would.
AVC: Have you participated in the strike much?
MS: Not really, no. I would if I was called upon to do so, but as of yet, I have not walked the picket line.
AVC: Given your critical approach—and the fact that you come from a very intellectual, Ivy League family—would you say you look at comedy from an intellectual standpoint? Is there a philosophy to what you find funny?
MS: That's an interesting question. My answer is no. I like silly things. I think that "silly-stupid" or "stupid-smart" might be my philosophy, which is to combine a veneer of intelligence with an undercurrent of crass stupidity. Sometimes that stupidity is in the form of the actual joke that's being told, or it could be in the way the joke is told. Like, repetition is really stupid, but it's really funny. Or it could be that the punchline itself is stupid.
AVC: Is there any sort of humor that's beneath you?
MS: I'm not big on fat jokes. That's a little beneath me. I'm not a huge fan of making a joke—and as I say this, I'm sure I do it—completely at someone else's expense. Even though I think he does it better than anyone else, I don't love… Well, it's different with Sacha Baron Cohen, but that whole thing where you're "punking" people? I don't like that. I don't like doing it, and I don't particularly find it funny when the joke is on a person who doesn't know they're being set up.
AVC: What about Don Rickles-style insult comedy?
MS: Eh. I have nothing against Don Rickles. I don't find him that funny. I know people think he's brilliant. But I do think Dane Cook can be funny. I think observational humor is funny. I don't mind Dane Cook. He makes me laugh. I would say that what's funny about Dane Cook is how committed he is to his ideas of things. I'm not complicated enough or knowledgeable enough to say that Dane Cook isn't funny. He finds humor in very mundane scenarios, and he's passionate about it, and that's funny to me. Is he my favorite comedian? Of course not. But I don't hate him either.
AVC: While you were promoting The Baxter, The Stranger noted that during a Seattle stop, you "politely but firmly railed against Wedding Crashers-type comedies," and then added, "It doesn't have to make sense; it just has to have Will Ferrell." That's probably not a direct quote, but—
MS: Well, let me start by saying that Will Ferrell is probably the funniest comic actor, certainly of my generation. I am a huge, huge Will Ferrell fan. I'm not a huge comedy buff, truthfully. What I find funny is either something unbelievably stupid, like Dumb And Dumber or Airplane!, where the jokes are just so stupid and pointless, or something like The Office or The Comeback, where the humor is in the excruciating awkwardness of a situation. Stella kind of explores both of those, stupidity and awkwardness. The Baxter is definitely a lot about being awkward, and I was attempting to celebrate a character who was awkward. At the time that I wrote it, that was definitely a period that was pre-Judd Apatow, and a lot of the comedies were big, over-the-top, There's Something About Mary-type stuff. Lots of bathroom humor. That was the whole Farrelly brothers era—and I like the Farrelly brothers, but there were a lot of Farrelly-type movies getting made. It's not that I don't like those kinds of movies as much as I wanted to do a comedy that was quiet. I wanted peace and quiet in my life, and that's why that script was written that way.
AVC: Do you think aiming for that kind of peace and quiet caught your fans off guard, the ones who knew you from The State and Wet Hot American Summer?
MS: Yeah, I do. And it caught me off guard that anyone had any expectations. I didn't expect people to be like, "Why isn't this more like Wet Hot?" I didn't even know people were paying attention. First of all, I don't think I made a perfect movie by any stretch of the imagination. There are a million things I would have done differently. That said, I'm really proud of it, and I think it's a really good movie. I don't think people got it. I don't think people saw the joke that I was telling, and that's totally my fault.
AVC: Would you ever consider tackling a project like that again?
MS: You mean a movie that nobody sees?
AVC: Maybe, but more specifically, something that balances drama and comedy—a passion project, something a little more serious?
MS: Maybe. Never say never. Actually yes, I can almost guarantee that will happen.
« Previous | 1 | 2 | 3
- Comments