AVC: Does that subversive streak carry through to Awesome Show? You mentioned that you're not interested in being mean-spirited, but there's an element of pointing fingers at everyday stupidity.
TH: We are making fun of stuff. It is subversive, I think, and in many ways political. It's a reaction against the society we live in, very much so. When we make a commercial for a product that doesn't do anything… B'Owl doesn't serve a purpose, and by the end of the commercial, it gives you information on how best not to use the product. That comes right from watching all the garbage that people try to sell us every day. It's pretty direct.
AVC: Do you have those sorts of serious conversations when you're putting together something so ridiculous? Your Shrek 3 promo parodies were hilarious, but they didn't seem angry at all.
TH: No, I think we all just come from that perspective already. We all accept that we're fucked.
EW: All of us here are over the debate. All that we're concerned with now is what we can do to highlight those horrible things in our life, like Shrek. We got obsessed with that. And it's still such a confusing thing to people.
TH: And that's a direct response to being just bombarded with promotion and advertising. It's our way of striking back and putting the magnifying glass on it. A lot of our stuff is like, "We're fucked, so let's dance." Things have become so absurd that we just have to make poop jokes. [Laughs.] We don't hand jokes to anybody on silver platters, and we don't make it easy for someone to necessarily like it or get it. You have to be on our side already. Of course, there are certain things that can appeal to more people than others. In an episode like the anniversary show, we have an animated character, Grum, come out and sing a song about how he likes crackers and snacks, and that really happens. If you watch the Oscars, they have animated characters come out and perform for the audience. You have to be an idiot to think that's really happening, that the audience is seeing this cartoon on stage. So Grum comes out and sings off-key for a minute about how he likes crackers and snacks, and the audience loves it. That's not real, but it's not far away from what we see in entertainment—people applauding garbage.
AVC: So are you sitting there shaking your fist at the TV, or just furiously scribbling notes and laughing?
TH: We send each other YouTube clips every day. We always focus on how they package and present things. What were you watching, Eric, the MTV Movie Awards, where they were having commercials within the segments?
EW: Oh my God, the latest Awards, before they would present a new video or movie, the celebrity would look right in the camera and say, "You gotta check out the new Ford Expedition." I couldn't believe it, like a huge picture of a Ford Expedition in back. There's also seeing kids coming out of McDonald's with green Shrek ears and green straws. The kids have no choice. They're gonna be buying DVDs!
TH: There was that when we were kids, but I don't think it was anywhere near as bad as now.
EW: Moving to L.A. has heightened our senses to people trying to make it, people trying to promote things, people doing anything to push products and themselves. That whole idea of that performance aspect comes across in what we do.
AVC: Do you ever see yourselves moving closer to that realm, doing something more mainstream?
TH: I think as long as it has our sensibility. I don't think we'd be able to write a sitcom or a political thriller. We'll do whatever idea comes to us, and hopefully a bigger audience will embrace that. We know there are things we could do to make it easier for people to take, but it'll always probably involve Eric and me trying to do something ridiculous with ridiculous consequences.
AVC: Looking back on Tom Goes To The Mayor now that it's over, how do you feel about it?
TH: I'm surprised that we got to make it.
EW: After making Awesome Show and then watching a couple episodes of Tom, it's actually quite shocking, how it's paced and how it looks.
TH: But we got to do some awesome, crazy, far-left ideas on that show that we would never be able to do anywhere else. We got to talk about so many things that we wanted to talk about, and be more political than this show, and maybe talk more about the society we live in and how gross it is.
EW: Making a singular idea like Tom is somewhat simpler than what we're doing now, which is all over the place. It was a great way to start.
TH: It was a great education. We had never made television before, and suddenly we were writing, directing, and producing a series—only 11 minutes, but still—every episode had to have a beginning, middle, and end, and had to be funny to some people, and had to make sense. Bob Odenkirk was around to teach us a lot of that. It was amazing that Adult Swim let us be in charge. We didn't have to go to some kind of school to make TV shows. I guess that's what college was supposed to be for, but it didn't help.
AVC: Did you have any idea that Tom would be as polarizing as it was? People loved it or just didn't get it at all.
TH: I don't remember feeling like it was going to be polarizing. It was a surprise. I guess the only people that had seen it before were friends, and people that were interested in seeing it, so we'd only gotten positive reactions. Obviously, when it came out, there was this other side. We were warned by Adult Swim, who said, "Listen, there's this element out there of pathetic, sad people that feel it's important to write on these message boards if they don't like something. It happens to all our shows, and it's kind of meaningless, and it represents a very small portion of people." There's also 90 percent of the public that would never know the show exists at all, and probably wouldn't get it if they did. So we're talking about this really small percentage of people that watch the show, and then out of that, there's this little, little group of people that hate it—and love talking about how much they hate it.
AVC: But it's still easy to take personally.
TH: It's never fun to read death threats. It was always like, "I hate Tim and Eric, I hope they die, they should die."
EW: Coming from a 15-year-old kid. Where you hear reaction is on the Internet, and you know who that demographic is. We've gotten such a huge positive reaction from people that we respect. A lot of awesome bands and actors have reached out to us; they just want to be on the show because they like it.
TH: Frank Black loves Tom Goes To The Mayor. That's all I needed to know. You can send me a million notes about how you fucking hate the show, but if Frank Black says it's okay, I can go home.
AVC: How long does it take to do one episode of Awesome Show?
TH: Three weeks. About 15 people are involved.
EW: That's not including writing it.
TH: Writing takes about 10 minutes.
AVC: Do you write with guest stars in mind?
TH: Most of the time, we write something and then figure out who would be best to do it. Rainn Wilson wrote us and said, "Hey, I'd love to be on the show." He's one that we had something lying around that seemed right for him. It's not like there's a big pot to pick from. There's only maybe 10 people that are really good on the show, really funny.
AVC: Who's going to show up on season two?
EW: Jeff Goldblum, Tom Skerritt, David Cross, Bob Odenkirk, Fred Armisen, Will Forte, Zach Galifianakis. John C. Reilly obviously. Weird Al.
AVC: It was strange to see Weird Al as a semi-regular on Awesome Show. EW: He wrote us and wanted to be on Tom Goes To The Mayor, and that was around the time we were starting to make this show. We were both fans of his, and we had him come in. He did a couple of things, and being the host [of The Uncle Muscles Hour] just kind of worked for us.
TH: I don't think anybody's ever asked him to do something besides be Weird Al. We were so lucky that we got to be the ones to ask him to do something different.
EW: We were big fans of his movie as well.
TH: You can't not like Weird Al. He's the nicest guy in the world, which isn't that surprising. You can't get away with being an asshole if you're Weird Al. The career wouldn't have lasted very long.
AVC: The first season was 10 episodes, and now you're working on 30 more. Does your sensibility change with that many on the horizon?
TH: We've gotten technically better. We have the capacity to make something that looks really good, and it's trying to control yourself and also making stuff that doesn't look good, because that's some of the charm of the show. Just because we can shoot something that looks like a movie doesn't mean we should. Sometimes if something looks too good, it's not funny. Some things need to look good, because we think it's funny that you'd spend so much time and be so precious about such a stupid idea.
AVC: Your fans for both shows seem pretty diehard; how was your fan gathering this year at Comic Con?
EW: It was great. We wanted to do something outside the convention. Two years ago, we had Tomicon, where all the Tom Goes To The Mayor fans got together and ate nachos at this sports bar, and then we marched through the convention screaming "Tom Goes To The Mayor!", which caused this huge mess. For Awesomecon, we just wanted to have a picnic, play some games. Hundreds of kids came out, it was pretty cool.
AVC: And they dress up, right?
EW: Some of them did. Some Beaver Boys, Carol and Mr. Henderson. My new blog has pictures of people from Halloween, which is so crazy and flattering, how many Beaver Boys and Casey and his brothers were out there.
AVC: Are you getting approached more in public now?
EW: It happens more and more. The other day, I was at this bar with my friend, and this bartender comes out, right in the middle of a conversation, and goes, "Hey, good job, man." I didn't respond, and he's like, "Good job, man." He didn't even get it right. We get a lot of "Great job!"
AVC: Do you think Awesome Show has the "comedy of discomfort" sensibility that's been used to describe Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office?
TH: Absolutely. Every bit in our show has an element of that. Steve Brule is a great example, just watching this man have a breakdown or forgetting his lines or losing his mind. This latest one we just shot, he's doing a wine-tasting segment, where he drinks too much and reveals lots of things you wouldn't want to be heard saying. There are also lots of weird child-man relationships. Child clowns.
EW: There's a lot of tension and then release. I was just talking to a friend who loves Carol and Mr. Henderson, but the first bit she said she could barely watch, because it's so brutal and uncomfortable. But then you've gotta watch the love song at the end. We're huge fans of The Office and Christopher Guest movies, and those are the same principle, just setting up these really awkward experiences.
TH: We know we can't just create uncomfortable moments; you have to let them go a little bit, and dance around and sing a song, too.
EW: We had A.D. Miles in here the other day, and we were having him selling some products on a home-shopping network. And then we said, "Oh, then we thought you could go crazy and break stuff," and he's like, "Oh, of course." He's like, "That's your whole show, these strings of people really losing their minds." Which we like.
AVC: In a way, it's like avoiding an actual punchline. It's like post-punchline humor.
TH: We let the punchlines happen in people's heads. We just create a dead beat, then you know what to do. We don't need to spell it out. We joke about explaining it in a pamphlet, with explanations of why this should be funny to you.
AVC: Do your parents get it?
EW: My parents watch the show. They're super-proud of us. My parents love to tell their friends about it, like, "Oh, my son's on TV!" But they have to be careful of what they show. For most parents, it's not the funniest thing in the world.
TH: My dad is in the show, he's the "abso-lutely" man at the end of every show.
EW: People always wonder whether we have some major family or dad issues. A lot of our comedy is about dads. But we both had really nice upbringings, our families are really great. I was just remembering recently that, growing up, one of my friends' parents were divorced, and he was constantly the butt of discussion. "Where's your dad going tonight?" It's that whole idea of being a kid, and when your dad becomes a man, that idea comes across a lot in our stuff.
AVC: The kids singing "I smell my dad's dirty socks" is both funny and rough.
TH: That kind of stuff never happened to us directly, but it happened to people we knew. My dad is a very quick-witted, sarcastic, dry, humorous guy, whereas my mom's very silly, and that side of the family is very musical. I think those two things come together and make our show. It can be witty and dry, then a minute later, you're dancing in underwear and singing silly songs.
EW: Adultery is easier to swallow when you're dancing around, smelling socks.
AVC: You have pretty strict parameters about what you do, though, right?
EW: We have a set of rules, not a big set… It starts with us thinking it's funny. When people come in to act on the show, we say, "Just be extremely dry and not funny. Let the idea be the joke." That holds true through a lot of our stuff.
TH: And also in the way the idea is presented. We never do a sketch where it's just a scene. There has to be something else, a commercial or video or something that can exist on its own. The question is always, "Where is this idea going to exist? Where do you see this in real life?"
EW: And obviously there are things we don't do. We don't do any overtly political stuff. We don't touch current events. We don't do much with celebrities, like Lindsay Lohan jokes. That stuff's just not interesting to us at all. We prefer things like tiny hats.
TH: It's size-comedy mostly. [Laughs.]
EW: Dad issues.
TH: Technology from 10 years ago is good. We're doing commercials about fax machines, and treating the Internet like it's just fresh off the block.
EW: And the idea of capturing real people on camera who shouldn't be on camera.
AVC: The upcoming Robin Williams sketch, in which he's basically treated like an annoying pet, seems to go outside those boundaries a bit.
TH: That's a great example of breaking our own rule and being comfortable with that. There are a few people that we allow in, to make fun of. Robin Williams and Billy Crystal and a couple other guys. Robin Williams is at the core of what we think is wrong with comedy, and in a lot of ways, entertainment. I was a huge fan of his as a kid, but then you grow up and realize what he's doing—it's garbage. But even in that episode, there are layers. We're getting this guy to play Robin Williams who actually is a Robin Williams impersonator, and we never really acknowledge that. We're just kind of pretending that Robin Williams is a puppy dog, and that you could get somebody a Robin Williams as a gift. As a story, that could work with a puppy, or anything that's annoying and takes a lot of care and energy to take care of. In our world, that's a Robin Williams.
AVC: How long do you see Awesome Show lasting?
EW: We're making 30 in a row, which will take us another year, and I think we'll be ready to try something new at that point.
TH: We don't want to overstay our welcome. We have a lot of respect for the British Office and British television in general, where they don't make 300 of something. They make 12, and then they do something else. We'll have made 40 of these, and I don't know how many more dilemmas we could get ourselves in.
AVC: It's old news, I realize, but can you recount your story about being stabbed in the back?
TH: That is a little bit old news. I was stabbed in the back, literally, by a neighbor. Twice. With a kitchen knife.
EW: He was an intern on the show.
TH: That's right, he was. It was a middle-of-the-night, drug-fueled scenario where I was trying to… The mother came asking for help because she was worried that her son was going to do something terrible, and I thought he was going to be upstairs choking on his own vomit, but he was on PCP or something, which made him come after me. It was the worst nightmare you can imagine, running down the street in bare feet, being chased by a lunatic with an eight-inch kitchen knife. He got me twice in the back, which I didn't feel at the time. I ran into a gay bar and collapsed behind the bar. He ran in after me and was subdued. I was okay. It didn't put me out of commission for too long. It's just one of those things that happens that makes you glad you're not dead. And makes for a good story. We got some good publicity out of it. [Laughs.] Got some good pats on the back, not too hard, and some good scars to remember. The kid is fine, though, I think. He spent some time in the slammer. He really didn't know what happened. "Say no to drugs" is my message. But our show is better on them. But good drugs.
AVC: Any drugs in particular? TH: Ibuprofen.
EW: Sudafed.
TH: A nice glass of white wine.
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