Ep. 1300: Where we Bang! Bang! with Scott Aukerman

-It's Wednesday, July 10, 2013. This is the 404 Show on CNET. Thanks for tuning in, I'm Jeff Bakalar. -I'm Justin Yu. -I'm Ariel Nunez. -Welcome to the program everybody. Episode number 1300. I said we're gonna make a big deal about it, but we're gonna make a big deal about it because on the show today, Mr. Scott Aukerman is in the studio. Welcome Mr. Aukerman. Hello sir! -Hello to America and all the ships in sea! This is lucky 1300. -You're the lucky 1300, huge marathon podcast. So, we're in good shape. Mr. Aukerman is the host of Comedy Bang! Bang! the podcast and the IFC show with this very same, which is premiering its second season starting this Friday on IFC at 10 o'clock, that's July 12. -And I wanna stress this is 10:00 p.m. Don't wake up at 9:55 a.m. and we are all excited. Oh boy, my favorite show is on the air. No. No. No. You have to wait 12 hours. -I know who aren't gonna be competing with like The View or anything like that. -No, we can't compete with The View. -Okay! -Are you kidding? They're a professional show. -Of course. So, speaking of professional shows. -Sure. -Tell us-- -Great segueway first of all. -I know. I bet. Tell us about Comedy Bang! Bang! -I would love to work on your segueways with you. So, it's-- it's pretty much so any sentence-- -Yeah. -All you have to do is say, "Speaking of that." -Let's see. -Okay. So like, "Oh, you know what today, I had a corn muffin." -Speaking of corn muffins-- -Speaking of corn muffins-- -Yeah. -Tell us about the show. -Just tell us about the number. -Tell us about the number 3. -Exactly. -Yeah. -So 'cause I listen to the podcast. -Thank you. -I'm a fan of your podcast. It's an excellent show. -Thank you. -The-- The TV show on IFC, same name, cut from the same cloth, but a little bit more wacky. -Yeah, it's different. I mean, it's-- -It's like more drugs major. But is that okay to say? -There was-- You know, it was really funny because I used to get that a lot at Mr. Show as a writer on Mr. Show and-- -Which I think we all need to take a second to thank you for that. -Ouch! -Rock 'n Roll. -I mean, I'd-- You don't need to thank me. You thank Bob and David of course. -Oh yes, but my generation-- our generation has a very big love for that program so we appreciate that. -Thank you. You're welcome. But everyone used to say to us like, "What drugs were you taking when you made that show?" -Sure. -I'm like, none of us-- one of us was drunk all the time, but like-- -No drug. -But none of us were taking drugs-- and that's, you know, it was so funny on Comedy Bang! Bang! this year 'cause none of us really take drugs either, and about I think 2-1/2 months into it, we all of a sudden taped an episode with musicians-- -Uh huh. -and they were all in the green room and all of a sudden all you could smell everywhere was pod-- -Yeah. -and we're just like, woah, this is what it's like, you know, this is what it was like making SNL back in the 70s or something. -Right. -But, yeah, the show is different than the podcast. I don't know if people know what either of them are. But the basic concept of both a podcast and the TV show is it's like a talk show. I host it and I speak to celebrities like we'll have Jon Hamm or Adam Scott or Amy Poehler. And-- Then, I also have comedian's playing fake people-- -Uh huh. -and weirdos and fake guests. So, that's both the podcast and the TV version. The TV version is more visual. It's shorter and it has more sketches in it. It's kinda like a sketch show as well. -Sure. -So, I didn't wanna do a podcast that-- or a TV show that was exactly like a podcast because like, you know, I mean, this is great, something like this is great for people to watch at home on the computer. -Right. -But you know, when you're watching a TV show I just wanted to be a little more visual. -Right. I mean, let's be honest this could never work on television. -Oh come on. -I don't know. You guys are solid. -We won you over already. -Yeah, I mean, you know, the chemistry. -You're enthusiasm. -You know, this guy who talks a lot, you never talk. -Yup. -You listen, but never talk. -Yeah. Yeah. -How was that-- -Oh, you have a camera on you. -Yeah, I know. -You took it. -This season's guest include Andy Samberg, Aziz Ansari, Sarah Silverman, David Cross, and more. How are you friends with all these people? -Wow! I mean-- Well, I've been in comedy for a long time. I think this is my 18th year in comedy and so just, you know, comedy is great. You get to know everybody and you-- you know, the more people you kinda like hang out with or work with, you get to be friendly with them. Andy Samberg, I was his headwriter on the MTV Movie Awards when he did it. -All right. -So, I got to be his friend from that. Sarah, you know, I've known her forever. David Cross, obviously, I worked him on Mr. Show. -Sure. -So, most to the first season were people that I was friends with, that I could-- you know, because that is the first year we did the show. -Right. -They didn't know what it was so I got-- You know, I would call up Jon Hamm who I-- you know, played poker with for years and going like, "Well, you'd be [unk], you know, who believes," and he has no choice, but to say yes because he's my friend. But then the show turned out really well. So, this year, we're getting a lot of people who we have never seen up before, who have heard it's good, who I don't know personally. -Right. Sure. -People like Jessica Alba or Zoe Saldana. People that I've never met before which is great for the show I think, you know, because I only have 10 friends, -Right. -you know, and we did 20 episodes this year. So, you know-- -That it come from someone. -Yeah, we'd be guestless for half of the episodes. -Right. Right ad. I wanna-- So, you mentioned how like other celebrities sort of have these other-- bit parts on the show. -Uh huh. -I saw the first couple of episodes of Season 2 where like Christopher Meloni-- -From Law & Order, yeah, and Wet Hot American Summer, he's great in that. -He's Gene, of course. -Of course. -And there was like this very strange sort of subplot line. How does that come together? I'm really-- I'm very curious. Is that something you guys all sort of have like a brain trust on. How's that work? -Well, meaning, how did he get in the show or how do we come up with the idea, or both? -Yeah. That-- With those like sort of really wackadoo subplot lines. Where does that come from? Is that like a few sentences? -You know, that's-- that's pretty much like the writers and I-- -Yeah. -I have a great team of writers headed by Neil Campbell who's the artistic director at UCB Theatre in L.A. and we just, you know, at some point, we were tossing around, "Hey, we should have something like Fantastic Voyage in the show." -Right. -You know, which is that 60s movie where a team assigned to shrinks down and gets injected into a body and floats around to the body and so we just thought of a way for that to happen and we wrote this really dumb script about it and Chris Meloni, we sent it to him hoping he would do it and he told us 'cause he signed up right away and we're like, wow, Chris Meloni like-- What an easy get Chris Meloni is. But no, I guess he had it sent to him and he gets a lot of scripts sent to him and he said, "This was the dumbest thing I'd ever read. I had to do it." -Because it was so silly. -It was so silly and so-- and he was so funny in it. -Yeah. -He was-- He takes it so seriously in such he-- -That's the best part. -He's probably the best actor who was on the show of all 20 episodes. -Right. -And he-- he has a monologue and he takes it really seriously with just him saying stupid stuff, but he says it so seriously. It's really, really funny. -His conviction is uncanny. -Yeah. -It's remarkable. Definitely check it out. -I mean, he learned how to convict all those people on Law & Order so, you know-- -Right come on. -Yeah, so he-- -He's got some experience. -Yeah. -We have a clip we wanna run. This is from I believe episode 2 with Aziz Ansari talking about emojis, which we'll talk more about after this clip. Here's Comedy Bang! Bang! with Aziz Ansari. -So, Aziz, tell me how much Twitter has helped your career in a 140 characters or less and you can use emojis. -I actually just bought the Life Rights to the lady with the red dress emoji. The woman is like, wooh, wooh. She has like a long, red dress. -What are you gonna do with it? -I'm-- I'm writing a screenplay about her life. -What's it called? -It's the posters and it has no title. -A first movie based on an emoji, which has a title that is an Emoji. -You know, maybe-- maybe in poster, they can kind of like put these pictures up so people know I'm talking about don't have the motive, but so--that right there. Jennifer Lawrence is gonna play in full red dress. -Wow. -Dustin Hoffman is gonna be this guy. I may put a photo of Dustin beside that. -Amazing. -So, you're going to see that. Blake Lively is gonna play this lady. You just throw that up, a photo of Blake. -I love her. This is a great cast. This is like the Valentines Day of Emoji movie. -Would you play the little blonde guy? -I wanna play the hospital. -Yeah. -You will play the hospital? -Yeah. -Well, cool. -It means a lot to me. -Emojis are super weird and I'm like it never really take a second to just take and sit back and be like, "Oh my god, where's these ridiculous clip are? It seems like it's being outsourced to a Third World Country, right? -Yeah. I-- Yeah, it does. Yeah. -Weird. -Like emojis, it could get so much better. -That could be-- We have phones with HD screens on them- -Yeah. -and lose this shitty little, you know, 3-pixel crap. I don't get it. -Yeah. I love them though. I love like sending them to people when they don't have the emojis too, -Yeah. -because-- then they'll always go, "What is that thing? You gave me a little box?" -It's just a little box or some Chinese character. -Yes. -What do they-- Maybe-- Is that like just a trace of it because it's been outsourced? -Yeah, it's-- Yeah, I don't know what it is. But yeah, I love emojis. -I don't know- -And that's the thing. This is like we talked about them on the show and it's like, "Does everyone understand what emojis are?" But, hey, I don't know. I don't care either. -But do we want the future to remember us through emojis? -Oh yeah, definitely. -Yeah. -Me, I think that's the one thing that if aliens-- I'm sorry, the fact that aliens do exist-- I love that noise. -Yeah. -Do you like that? -Yeah and it's great. -I just like go off whenever you say aliens. -It's just to know there out there. -Hello! -Hello! -Yeah, I think they would just-- That's been one thing I hope we're sending out in the space. I remember they were sending like records out in the space. -Set-- -Yeah. -It was [unk] -Yeah. Yeah. Like what record was it? It was like a Tom Petty record or something like that. Like this is what aliens should listen to. -I don't think they-- -Free fallin' Woah! -There's no way they'll be hostile if they hear that. -Yeah. -It's the piece of the galaxy. It's just a strange thing and I've noticed if you notice like a lot of emojis like the lady in the dress, no face. -Uh huh. -Yeah. -Faceless. -Well, they're so tiny that it's-- it's hard to get detail on them I guess. -I don't get it. -Yeah. -There's-- There's so many weird ones too. There's ones that express emotions that I wasn't even sure humans had. -Like what? -It's just like strange like people pointing fingers in different directions. What is that mean? -Yeah. -Have you seen it? -It was like, "Hey, this guy over here needs to go down there." -You know like, when does that ever come out, -Absurd. -you know, it's like maybe if you're on top of a staircase and your co-workers approaching you and it's like you need to send him that emoji to go, you need to go downstairs. -That's right. -The one time-- -In the one time. -In interaction where it's appropriate. -Yeah. -So, do you-- do you appreciate technology like-- you like to make fun of it so how does that play out in your day to day? -I don't know. I like it. It's weird because I go through phases of stuff. I was really like to Facebook. -Yeah. -I barely on that because I didn't get in on the ground floor. I was like may be 2 years ago, I think I joined it. -Sure. -And I do it the wrong way to like I accept anyone's friend request. -Oh. -So, I have like 5000 friends or something and-- -Nice. -and I-- so I don't enjoy going on it because of all these strangers, you know, in timeline. -Right. -But like Twitter, I was pretty early on so I really-- I'm on that a lot. I still have not signed up for Vine. I totally miss the vote on Vine 'cause we're making the show and everyone was talking about Vine and I was just like, "I'm trying to write a TV show. Shut up. The hell out about Vine. But like Instagram, I got on that really early. So, it kinda goes, you know, every other thing I think I'm on top of. -To enter Facebook that late in the game, I'd be turned off right away by it-- -Yeah. -cause of what's evolved into it. -When people were talking about like, "Why has everything changed on my feed?" I was just like, "Same for me, I just got on here. I don't know." -Get some real problems, right? So tell us about Reggie Watts 'cause he is your musical cohort on the program. -Yeah, we saw a picture of him there. Reggie is the afro-musical band leader of the show. -Right. -And the show was, you know, it's like a fake talk show format and so every talk show has a band and a band leader and so we thought that Reggie would be great at it because not only as he really a great musician and we don't need any other musicians, but he is a really funny sketch performer as well and so, you know, we have a sort of a credo, which is a forever in trouble in the editing room, just capture Reggie. -That's it. -Just putting a shot of him, doing some weird and that gets a laugh and we're saved. -That's-- That's the best story of safety coverage you'll ever meet. -Yeah. Do you have-- You told me you had a story about Reggie? -I do, yeah. Let me tell this. -Well, I met Reggie one time. It was 6 months ago. -Great story. Anyway, so let's get back to me. Let's continue the interview. -No. -Yeah, so I met him 6 months ago, I was coming out of a Blue Bottle Coffee Shop in Brooklyn and I saw him sitting there and I was about to go up to him, before I could that he came up to me. -So-- -That's a twist. -Yeah, and he was like, "I know you." I was like, "Oh, well, thank you so much. I love everything you do. I'm glad you appreciate The 404." He's like, "I don't know what The 404 is. I recognized you from CNET videos." -Uh huh. -So on CNET, we do these product reviews, right? This isn't the only job we do. -Uh huh. -And we do these product reviews where we have to shoot videos every point and talk about and stuff. -Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. -So, apparently, he's been shopping for headphones 'cause that's the beat that I do. -Yes. He loves that stuff. -He loves headphones. -Everyday, he would wondering with some like new piece of technology like a new speaker or something-- -Yes. -and they're always like stuff that people have given him. -All right. -You know like I don't know how to get on that tip of that Reggie's on where it's just like people send you products. -Yeah. -But every-- like people gave him a car-- -What? -like one day he'd like-- because we would have to pick him up everyday to go to the show and one day he just like drove up. We're like, "What was going on?" He's like, "Hey, these people gave me a car." -He knows about-- -Yes. It's like I don't know how this happens, but yeah everyday he's fascinated with all this stuff and we would have conversations about like, "What's the best wireless speaker you know, and he would do product, you know, demonstrations for me and stuff like that. -Yeah. -So, yeah, that doesn't surprise me. -We need to get him on this show. -Yeah, we'll bonehead over here like meets the guy and this was-- this was not 6 months ago. This is like a year and a half. -No, it wasn't that long. -Either way. -Between 6 months and year and a half from what I can tell. -What's the-- What's the difference? -And I'm like, "Oh man, you know, that's funny because we do a show every goddamn day-- -Yeah. -and it would have been great to have Reggie Watts come in on the-- -I told him about it. He gave me his card and then I emailed him afterwards and then I wanna book him right then, you know. -Did he email you back? -No, he didn't-- -That does not surprise me. -Given that same treatment from him from Reggie. -No return emails. -He just-- if shows up great. -I-- He won't even answer me when I talk to him in the television show. -Right. Right. He's always this like looking you away. -He just kinda gives me a blank look anytime I ask him a question, so yeah--I used to get him in here. -How-- So, how did you guys meet though? -We met-- I mean, the real answer is we met in comedy quite a few years back. You know, as a show producer, I would book him on shows a lot. My wife actually was the producer of a show in L.A., which is where I first saw him, a show called Garage Comedy. -Uh huh. -And I first saw him and I was like, "Wow, that dude is really weird." And I don't think-- I don't think I get it. And-- Then, the second time I saw him I was like, "Oh, I get it and I love it" -Right. -which is I think a lot of people on our show kinda have that experience of like, "What is this-- I know what supposed to be funny, but what is this? And then by the second one they're like, oh yeah, this is exactly what I like." -I get it. Yeah. -So, yeah, so I just booked him on shows and when we were talking about what to do with the talk show-- -Uh huh. -and what to do with the band element of it, we have the idea to put him into it and, you know, it worked out great because we have a really similar sense of humor we found, which we did not expect 'cause we didn't know each other incredibly well before we did the show. But, the first day we filmed is actually was our Michael Cera episode. That's the first one we ever did and- as well as the Adam Scott episode too, that was the pilot. But we just kinda like started to banter a little bit and do this improv banter-- -Sure. -and we just ran on for a really long time making each other laugh and coming up with weird stuff, so that's always in the show at the beginning of the show when I introduce him. We have this kind of like improv a banter-- -Right. -that we caught together which is, you know, really fun for us to do. -Now, it works. It's pretty awesome. All right, let's-- let's take a step back a little bit and-- -One step. I allow you one step counselor. -Duh, man. -But watch yourself. -It's a big step, it's one big step. I want to talk about "Between Two Ferns" because a lot of people who like to laugh, enjoy that program. -Yes. -It was something like, I remember when that first came and let's prefaces with-- You were behind that. You-- -I am one of the co-creators. -Right. -I co-write them and lately I've been directing them. I think I've directed the last 8 maybe or so. -So-- So, tell-- So, how did that come to fruition? What was-- because that was an overnight success on the internet. -Yeah. It was crazy. -It was just incredible response. -We didn't-- We-- We just put it up for fun. Yeah, it was something that I did a pilot for a network, a skit show and it was a really cool show. It had a great cast. Casey Wilson was on it from SNL and Happy Endings before she did those shows and a bunch of great people. James Adomian who people did know from my show and another element that we had in that sketch show was we had like cartoons and just random stuff and so-- -Right. -I was a friend of Zach. I've known him for a really long time and I said, "Hey, do you want do something for this show?" And he said, "I've always wanted to sort to do like a fake public access thing." And he had the title. He was like, "And I call it Between Two Ferns." -Okay. -And I go, "What would be on it?" And he goes, "I don't know." So then, I was also talking to Michael Cera about doing something in the show and we were like, "Hey, why don't we put these guys together and do it together?" And Michael was like and immediately he was like, "Oh, yeah, yeah. I love that idea. Let's do it." -Sure. -And so we just kinda improved this interview and we're shooting in a really tiny room and the director of those first few was Ruben Fleischer from Zombieland and Gangster Squad. -Okay. -And we were just like kind of improving the whole thing and shouting jokes at him and he would try it and we just kind of improved it and stitched it together and then the show never ended up happening. -Uh huh. -So, we put it on the internet for fun because Funny or Die was a new site that we had some friends working there-- -Right. -and we're like, "Can we put up our thing?" And they were like, "Well, we'll put it up on the main page for a week and see how it does." -See what happened? -Yeah. And then, all of a sudden it just exploded and millions and millions of views and we're just like, "I don't understand what's happening." And we thought that was the only one we're ever gonna do. -Right. -We were just gonna do another idea. You know, we were like, "Okay, what else do you want to do Zach, you know." And then we just-- I think Jimmy Kimmel wanted to do one so he got a whole of us and we're like, "Do another one? I don't know. I don't know what we would do with it." And then, we did another one, then we were like, "Oh, that's probably it. That's-- that's the only one we'll ever do. Those two were the only one." And then Jon Hamm came to us and wanted to do one and we're like, "All right, maybe this-- let's try this." And then we're like, "I think we're on to something here because they just got more and more popular." -Funny people wanna do this. We should continue. -Yeah, so we just-- you know, we do them every 3 months maybe. -Right. -We don't wear people out on it. -Sure. -They're always a surprise even to us, you know, like we don't plan them out at all like, "Who's gonna do Between Two Ferns?" These are like we have none in the hopper-- -In the hopper. -at this point, you know, no idea. -Right. -Everyone and I will hear something like, oh, like I'll mention this person 'cause I know they want to do one, it's just never worked out, like Brad Pitt wants to do one, -All right. -and we'll try to chase it down, you know, it sometimes works out and sometimes it doesn't and, you know, they're just kind of fun to do and, you know, they're-- they're just ways for Zach I think to be really funny in a way that's truly him, you know, -Yeah. -that he may be doesn't get to do in other aspects of his career. -There's a lot of honesty in that show for sure. -Well, it's also great for me because we get to be super mean in them. -Yeah. -And Comedy Bang! Bang! The Show, it shot like Between Two Ferns. It's actually had 5 cameras, not 3-- -Right. -to get super technical. But, it shot like unedited like, but we're not mean in the same way. So, I love just like coming up with the meanest things to say to celebrities, things that no one will say to them and we don't tell the celebrities what-- what we're gonna talk about either. -There's a question I wanna ask. So, you sort of just like, you know-- -Zach springs it on. -Yeah, nice. -And they-- for the most part, they know what their-- their getting into. -Right. -But that's not to say that they like hearing this stuff. -You can tell sometimes it's a little eye rolling a little bit. -Yeah, you know. So-- So, that's what I really enjoy. He is-- -Yeah. -just the fact that it's Zach, he can get away with same-- that stuff to them. If he was a regular person, they would probably shut down the interview right away. -Unclip the mic later. -Yeah. -Yeah, that kind of thing. -What are you gonna say about? -I was gonna say I was really surprised to see Bruce Willis on the episode. -Yeah. -That was probably my favorite one 'cause he did such a great job of keeping that his straight faith. -He was a big fan of them. -He wanted to do one. He was very generous with his time. He was there and may be the longest out of anyone we've ever done with him. -Uh huh. -I think he was there 4 hours. -Oh, wow! -Wow! -Because there was a fire stunt that Zach wanted to do. -Okay. -Zach-- Zach was set on fire in it and, by the way, I was directing that one. I was like, "I'm gonna be the person that sets Zach Galifianakis on fire and like there's a John Landis-Vic Morrow's situation-- -Oh my God. -like I've killed America's beloved funny man. -Yeah. -But-- And Bruce Willis was-- he was the one who had to take the fire extinguisher and put it out and he actually said to us and he goes, I've never done this before." -I was like, "What do you mean?" He goes, "I've never done this particular stunt before." -How was that possible? -Yeah, he was just-- -He's John McClane. -Yeah, he was just like, "I've never-- This is really interesting. I've never done before." But he was super generous. He hanged out. We had to like rehearse the fire stunt for an hour and all these kinds of stuff and he was just like, "Yeah, I'm good. I'm fine here" you know, and he wants to cry and so he cries in it and it was-- -Yeah. -Yeah, it was fun. -That's ridiculous. -Is there-- Is there someone that you-- I know you said there's really no sort of production schedule with it and it's sort of like whenever everyone's free and obviously scheduling is a huge problem with-- with actors. Is there someone that you just like, "I don't care, one day we have to get this-- this actor or actress?" -We have dropped everything on two occasions to chase down-- We've had two separate leads on two people-- -Okay. -several times by the way that we have at one point with one of these people. Zach was out here in New York and we had this-- to film it in Montecito and it had to be in 2 days. -Okay. -And so he literally rearranged his entire filming schedule to do it and the two people-- and they've never-- they've just never have landed it. There's always been interest that never happens. And the two people are Oprah Winfrey who was in Montecito one and Barack Obama. -Yeah. -And we've-- we've tried-- -Yeah. -really, really hard and every once a while someone will go, Barack Obama is interesting in doing it. Let's figure out a time to do it and it's just never-- we've never closed it and-- -I feel like it'd be easier to do Obama than Oprah. -Yeah, almost. -Isn't that weird? -Yeah, you can get like-- like you need special clearances for Oprah. -Isn't that weird? I don't know. -We-- For Oprah, I really wanted to do this idea, which was-- It was right when Oprah Show was gonna end and it was in here like final season and we were talking about, "Are we gonna end Between Two Ferns? Are we gonna do anymore of them?" And the idea I had was that they would do the Between Two Ferns, which is always on the black background. -Sure. -And then they would conclude the interview and the walls would go up and it will be on Oprah's stage and see it like all of Oprah's audience applauding, and then Zach goes, "Thanks for letting me tape this here over the years." -Yeah. That would be great. -But, yeah, it's just-- it didn't happen. -Yeah. -It's just didn't happen. We'd love to do it though. -Now, that sounds amazing. -What would you-- I mean, that's sort of comedy style. -I feel like it's this may be budding sort of thing where it's like this deadpan sort of-- I know you said it-- -Dry. -dry. Your show conveys a lot of that. I think John C. Reilly Show on-- from that -Right, Steve Brule. -Steve Brule. -Yeah. -which is totally absurd. It's-- It's-- You guys are sort of like carrying that along where it's tough to describe, but I feel like-- -Yeah. -it's definitely a newer sort of comedy. -It's interesting because, you know, I said we shoot with 5 cameras. -Yeah. -But, it technically-- if you were to describe it it's like a single camera talk show. -Right. -It's one of the first kind of single camera talk shows with no audience sort of in the same way that the office was in single-camera sitcom. -Sure. -And it takes a little while of getting used to I know like some people just like hearing the audiences in talk shows and it's a totally different style. I know when I do my podcast I do it much like this with no audience in the studio. -Uh huh. -But I'll do live ones where there's a live audience and they're loving it and it's you perform differently in a way like you're playing to the audience a lot and you're-- you're waiting after you tell a joke for the laughs to die down-- -Sure. -and you're taking all these pauses and stuff. -The performance, yeah. -Yeah, you know. So, it's totally different, but we didn't wanna do that with the show like we-- with Between Two Ferns and with Between Two Ferns at one point when we showed it in that pilot that we did, it had a laugh track. -Right. -Oh, really? -Because we showed it to a live audience as a film kinda like SNL does the Lonely Island Shorts. -Right. -And it had people laughing over it. But when we put it on the internet, we did it without lesson. We're kinda like, "Is this the right thing to do because people are used to kind of hearing laughs" you know, but we're like, "I don't think this makes sense with laughs on it. Let's put it up without the laughs." So, once we saw that and we saw back at work, I think that really empowered us at Comedy Bang! Bang! We had a discussion at one point of like, "Is there gonna be a live audience?" And the people that I've seated and I was like, "Oh, are you kidding," -Right. -you know, and we felt really confident about that can work even though some people the first time they watched it they're like, "When do I laugh," you know. -Right. -That my upstairs neighbor, he's like a 70-year-old man he was talking to me about that once. He was like, "I don't like any of these new sitcoms like the office or parks and rec." He goes, "I mean, comedy old-fashioned, but I like to know when I should laugh." -Comedy old-fashioned. I like being applause-- -Yeah, you know, and that's would people-- you know, people like hearing audiences I get it, but-- -I mean, I get that too, but it's more of like this a aesthetic than anything else-- -Yeah. -where it's like this traditional sort of sitcomy thing. I mean, those are laugh tracks. -Yeah. -You know, those-- It's-- And I think the elimination of it and what you guys do is it's obviously delivered, but it's-- it's that style. That's the way it works. -Yeah. It definitely leads to a more awkward style-- -Exactly. -in a way, you know, and some people it's too awkward for them and they go, "Woah, it's just making me feel weird." -Yeah. -And then they turned it off, but we really relish it if that's the right-- we revel in it and we relish it. -Sure. -But we just, you know, like sometimes for us the more awkward the better. That said, we're-- this season I think we're getting into showing the people involved laughing a little more. -Okay. -In season 1 'cause we have so much fun doing the show and we're constantly cracking up, -Right. -but we edited all out usually. -Sure. -In this season, we're trying that show how much fun we're having a little bit. So like on podcast, you can hear all these laughing off mic a little bit. -Yeah. -You can hear that a little bit and people really enjoyed it like, "Oh, they're having fun." We're trying to do that this season in the show a little bit like I think of the one that you saw the Zs. We show a flash of a Zs just cracking up. -Yeah. -And then we cut away really quick, but-- -It tells you that we're all having fun, you know. -Yeah, that's interesting sort of thing 'cause it's, you know, whenever I watch something, you know, you wonder like, oh, did they mean to sort of cut around that, it was that deliberate. -Uh huh. -So, you're saying like it's like the slowly, creeping in sort of thing where one we wanna let everyone know it's okay. -Yeah. Yeah. Just like once per show we'll put in someone laughing really hard, you know. -Yeah. -Right. Right. -And we have a lot of discussions about it like I was just watching the edit of Rainn Wilson episode. -Okay. -And there's a part in that where this comedian, Andy Daly plays a character and Rainn and Reggie absolutely die in it. -Yeah. -And we would watch it and the editors put in them just like not being able to control themselves and we were just like it's a little match. -Uh huh. -There's a balance for us of like we wanna give you a taste of like, "Oh, just right." There's starting to crack up. We'll cut away and go back to the kind of dryness in a way. -Yeah. -So, it's kind of a balance. -For sure. Yes, speaking of my comedians-- -Oh, nice. We were actually speaking of balance, but go ahead. -Who was your favorite standup comedian right now or and-- you don't have to single someone else, but-- -Yeah. -I-- you know, I-- I recently saw a comedian that I now really upset-- -Oh, who? -I've never heard him before, John Mulaney. -Oh, he's so amazing. He's one of the best. -I was blown away, but-- -For how young he is too, he's incredible. -Right. Yeah. -Totally blew me away. -I-- He actually-- He's one of my favorites. I produced a live comedy show with the UCB Theatre in L.A. for 10 years. -Uh huh. -I just quit because we're doing so many episodes, but I-- So, I watched a ton of standup and John is one of the guys who anytime he was in L.A., I put him up and I would make sure that I was standing off to the side of the stage to see because he's just amazing at it. I mean, he's such an incredible writer and he takes very simple premises and can write so many jokes about them. -Yeah. -I mean, the fact that he has 22, I believe, minutes on Law & Order. -That's crazy. -I asked him recently 'cause it keeps getting-- it just keeps expanding-- -Yeah. -and I was like-- At one point, he had-- he started writing about land orders. He's like, "There's not a lot to write about this." And I think he noticed he had like 8 minutes. But I asked him the last time I saw him I was like, "However many minutes do you now 'cause it keeps just expanding." He's like, -I've got about 22-- -"22 minutes." Yeah, it's incredible. -Unbelievable. -I love Chelsea Peretti. She's really great. I don't know if you know her. -Uh huh. Yeah. -She's on the first episode of Comedy Bang! Bang! She has a tiny part. And Doug Benson, I've known him for, you know, as long as I've been doing comedy. He's really funny. He has a new record out. My friend, Brian Posehn, has a new record out, The Fartist. -Yeah. -And-- -And I just found out Brian Posehn writes Deadpool as well-- -Yeah, the comic book. -the comic. -Yeah, yeah, he and Gerry Duggan, another great person. -Yeah. -They have a podcast on my network, Earwolf, called Nerd Poker, -All right. -which you should listen too, which is-- these two guys, Brian Posehn, the comedian, Gerry Duggan also funny. They both write Deadpool and 3 of their other friends play dungeons and dragons. -Okay. -So, they've-- in the first episode, they roll up characters and they have a DM who's creating a brand new adventure for them, which-- -Wow! -and the adventure is really, really interesting too. -Yeah. -It's like fascinating. -Sure. -Because-- he works for [unk] and he's, you know, really interesting guy and he comes up with these huge worlds and this crazy adventure. And you know, there-- I they're in almost at 20 episodes now and they just kinda keep going on this adventure and some die and, you know, that's great. And people really love it. -Right. -I mean, it's a cool podcast. -Nerd Poker. -Yup. -I like it. Yeah, I have-- We were-- I caught Mulaney at-- in Central Park. It was like 2 weeks ago. -You were chasing him? -Yeah, you know, and finally said-- I grabbed him I said, okay, be funny -I got you. -Be-- Be funny. And he did something about how was email got hacked and he was talking about his fan mail and it was so funny. And I think what's amazing about him is he does-- he's not vulgar. -Uh huh. -He doesn't curse a lot and he's just sort of just so organically funny. -And he's got a great cadence too like-- -Oh, yeah. -that's-- that's an important part of comedians just figuring out a distinctive cadence. Because a lot of times when you start doing comedy, you kind of subtly or not so subtly reap off your influences and kind of-- -Tell jokes the way that they tell jokes. -Yeah. -Yeah, you know, like-- you know, the great comedians have their own cadence and John is so funny this, "Aw, you want-- yeah, I can't even do it-- -That's pretty good. -that it's like, "You one, what?" You know, he's a great-- It's really interesting. -Right. So, you've been doing the podcast for-- for a fairly long-- -4 years, yeah. -4 years now. -Almost as long as you guys. -Almost. -Having done 1300 episodes. -Right, and look at we have to show for. -I've only done 220. -Oh, I want, want-- Definitely check that out. Subscribe an iTunes and all that. Who would you have-- This week you had-- Last week, you had John Hodgman, right? -John Hodgman was last week, yeah. This week, we have Ben Schwartz who people know as Jean-Ralphio from Parks and Rec. -Right. -And Paul F. Tompkins doing his characterization of Werner Herzog, the director. -Okay. Excellent. -And-- Yeah, I love the podcast 'cause it's-- it started out much like this has an interview show-- -Sure. -where I was just interviewing comedians about their work and stuff like that and I remembered the third week I was doing it at a radio station in the 103.1 and the third week, the program director was like, "You know what? I'm not really interested in comedian's lives and I don't know that anyone else is." Now, this is before WTF. -Right. -So, little did we know that people would be really interested in comedian's lives. -Sure. -He's like, "I'm looking more for like an entertainment program. And so I just started doing the format as it is now where I would talk to a celebrity and then talk to a comedian doing a really weird character and we never say that it's a character. I got a tweet just the other day about this week's show saying, "I never knew Werner Herzog was so hilarious. -Oh no. -You should have him back on the show." -No. -Seriously, it happens all the time. -That's true. -I mean, because it's very dry and we don't-- -Sure. -we never tell anyone. The most we say is up on the episode page, we'll say who the comedian is, -Yeah. -but you have to like really look for that. So, the whole episode will go by and we never say that this comedian-- this is the fake person. -Right. -The Theatre of the Mind, you know. -Yeah, and people like, you know, imagine people. There's-- There was a great comedian, Jessica St. Clair who's on the show a lot as a character Marissa Wompler and Jessica is, you know, she's like-- she's younger than me, but she is, you know, an adult comedian. -Sure. -But she plays a 15-year-old girl and she's played this 15-year-old girl on probably 10 or 12 episodes of the show, maybe more and she's constructed this elaborate history with this girl and talked about her body type. She is such-- She's like an upside down pyramid, basically. But-- And Jes is nothing like that, -Yeah. -but the way you imagine her, people have this imagination of Marissa Wompler this 15-year-old girl who's on the show a lot and that's-- that's what we really like to do is we like to construct these bizarre characterizations and we improv the whole things so we never talk about where it's gonna go. -Right. -It's just kind of all comes up in the moment and, you know, we'll have like Bobby Moynihan from SNL line and he plays like a little orphan boy who's 2 feet tall and people are saying after that line they were like, "I cannot imaging that voice coming out of Bobby Moynihan." -Yeah. -So, people just imagine like a little boy whenever they listen to it. You know, it's really interesting. -It's just amazing rediscovery of radio. -Yeah. -It was really what it is. -It really is. I mean, the stuff that people used to do-- I was reading about radio, this is an interesting piece of trivia, Superman and the Comic Books-- -Uh huh. -did not fly. He leapt over buildings, right, -Right. -in most of the issues. So, he takes big jumps and that-- -Like a running jump or-- -Yeah, like he'd-- he'd run and he get leap over a building. -Okay. -That was like, "Wow, that's Superman, you know." -Oh man. Yeah. -But he started flying because the radio show, you can do anything and so they were like, "What's up and fly around. We don't have to film it. -Yeah. -Yeah. -We just make a wind sound. -Yeah, exactly. So, that's-- that's how Superman started flying and now, you know, it's the classic Superman and now that there are movies and stuff you have to figure out how do we make him, you know. -Yeah. -Like George Reeves on the old Superman 50s TV Show. He would basically like jumped out a window with his arms extended and-- -They let you used your imagination for that. -Yeah, exactly, yeah. -I just-- Yeah, it's just another reason to hate Superman. I just-- I first like hate-- -You don't like Superman? -I hate Superman. -I'm more of a Spiderman. -He's such a punk man. -Yeah. -Who is that your favorite, Superman or Spiderman? -Spiderman is absolutely my favorite, although I did not like the recent movie. -I haven't seen it. I've heard a lot of terrible reviews though. -It's just not Spiderman. It's like cool, skater guy who gets the girl in the first scene. Oh, and he happens to climb her on walls too. But that's how I felt about the Superman movie too. It's just like-- It's a good alien movie. It's not Superman, but it's you know-- -Yeah. -It's-- You know, it's kind of a good movie if like you wanted to make a movie about like Transformers invading the Earth, you know. -Right. I just struggle so-- Do you enjoy superhero movies for the most part or do you struggle-- like I feel like the only ones I really enjoyed are like the Nolan ones. -Yeah, I love the Batman movies because they were the only ones who really took Batman seriously. But Batman has a character that kind of benefits from realism in a way. -Of course, yeah. -The opposite to the spectrum is the Green Lantern movies, which-- the movie which was ridiculous and like she could have used the more realism in it. -Sure. -Yeah. -So, it depends. I think, you know, like Iron Man, Strucker, a really nice balance of-- -Yeah. -you know-- the good thing about the Marvel movies is they used a lot of humor. I pronounced it humor, I guess. -Humor. -And they used a lot of humor and-- and it's a nice balance of action and realism, you know. -I just think it's gonna be really tough to make Superman cool again, for me. -I mean, it was a success, right? I don't know. I don't know. -Was it? I feel like-- -I can't tell. -The nerd community is very divided. -Yeah. A lot of people are just like-- There's a lot of good stuff about it. I mean, there was a lot of choices that I was like, "Great, I've never seen that any Superman movie. I like it." But at the end of the day with Superman just careening in the buildings-- -Yeah. -and there would be thousands, if not millions of people dead and the end of that. -Dead. -Oh my God. -And there would be body parts thrown everywhere and he would have been responsible for it. -Right. -And then for him to like-- be like, "All right, everyone's dead. Let's get my mock on with Lois Lane, you know, it's-- -It's crazy. -it's insane. I don't understand it. -Yeah, then he would never-- he would be like the world's most hated person. -He would immediately-- the government instead of being like, "Hey, thanks for the assist Superman." -Yeah. -They would be devising ways to kill him. -They're like find the biggest piece of craft that-- -He is a mass murderer. -Yeah. -It's crazy. -Terrible. -Yeah. -That's why he is such a punk. I just hate him so much. The worst character of all time, Superman. -Uh huh. -I like-- There are ways to do Superman right. I think Grant Morrison did it really well. -All right. -Yeah. -All right, cool. Is this like an unknown sort of-- you had this big hickies sort of nerdy side to you? -I talked about it on the podcast and every once in a while dropped a comic book illusion like Uatu, The Watcher, something and-- -Okay. -I went to Marvel yesterday and kinda hang out there-- -Right. -did their podcast and was, you know, they were showing me around because they hear the podcast and no one can tell like the stuff I'm talking. -Right. -I think I was talking about Deadpool the other day on it, you know. So, yeah, I mean, there's-- like I grew up loving comic books and it's one of my hobbies, you know, just collecting. -I don't. -Cool. You're gonna be a comic man. -I am. Yeah, I'm doing a show there on Wednesday if anyone of you wants to go. -All right. Yeah, we'll be there. -Yeah. -Wednesday night at the House of Blues. -Okay, cool. -I'm doing a show and then I'll just be hanging out for the other. I'd been going I think-- The first year I went was 1985-- -Wow. when I was just really tiny and all there was-- was back issues of comics and that's really how-- -Because that's what it was. -Yeah, that's all it was. -Yeah. -So, I would-- I remember walking in the room and finding an issue of Fantastic Four 232, I think, and I was like, "Oh man, this is one that I was missing." -Yeah. -And it was too expensive and I was like, "Okay, what else is there to do" you know and there wasn't a lot to do. So, I've been going regularly I think since 1997 every year. -Oh, cool. -We went with Bob Odenkirk and Brian Posehn that year and then I just have come back every-- every year since. So-- -We saw-- We saw Brian Posehn walking around just sort of standing around. -Yeah. -Well, he's the Tom Cruise of Nerds so he's-- he stopped everywhere. -I'm sure. -So, yeah, if you see me, say hi and I command you to say hi. -And that's Wednesday night at the House of Blues? -Wednesday night at the House Blues, I'll be doing a special live show, yeah, doing stand up mix with a live podcast. -Fantastic. -Cool. -All right. And then, obviously, be sure to check out Comedy Bang! Bang!, the second season premiere this Friday, July 12 at 10:00 p.m. at night. -Yes. -Don't-- Thank God, you said that. -Set your freakin' alarm early. -Oh. -Make sure you're up. -Set it for 9:45 p.m. -That's it. -Do you encourage DVRaid? We always-- I like to ask people now. -Yeah. I mean, 'cause there was like networks that say DVRaid like TNT as this big campaign. -Yeah. Yeah. -DVRaid. -No. Definitely, the DVR plus 3 Ratings to get super technical about it. Those-- -Yeah. -They're very important. I don't even know who like don't-- you have to be a Nielsen Family or something for it to count. I don't know. -I thought. I thought. -I've no idea. I just want people to watch it anyway they wanna watch it. I mean, networks pay attention now almost as much as to social media and people talking about the show-- -For sure, yeah. -as they do ratings, you know. I don't think the rating is necessarily matter. I think if you do a good show and people like it and it gets talked about a lot, I think that's almost more important for certain networks. -Yeah, the matrix-- they're changing for sure. -Yeah, and Netflix-- People can watch the first season on Netflix right now and they can-- -Excellent. -they can watch the whole thing and that's where a lot of people have been saying that they've been catching up with the show and have first heard about it so-- -Right. -It was really popular on Netflix I think for the first couple of months and on GetGlue, it was number 4 the other day and stuff. -Oh, I don't-- -So, I think people are really catching up to it and I think, you know, I just encouraged people to see it, however, they wanna see it. I don't care if people pirate it or-- you know, it's just like-- -Yeah. -you know, watch it, however, you wanna watch it. -Excellent. Make sure you do that. Then, follow Scott on Twitter @scottaukerman and you can follow Comedy Bang! Bang! on Twitter as well @comedybangbang. This has been great dude. -Yeah, thanks so much for having me. -Next time you're-- We love to have you back. -My pleasure. -The show is fantastic. -Thank you. I really appreciate it and I really hope people watch it 'cause it's-- it's-- I think a really cool show. -Right. We do too. That's can do it for us, (866) 404 CNET, that's our phone number. Please call us up. Email us to 404@cnet.com, and then again, catch Comedy Bang! Bang! this Friday on IFC at 10:00 p.m. That's gonna do it for us. We're back here tomorrow. Have a great Wednesday and thanks for being here for our 1300 man. -Thanks. -This has been great. -1300. -This is it and now-- now we're done and close shop-- We'll see you tomorrow. I'm Jeff Bakalar. -I'm Justin Yu. -I'm Ariel Nunez. -This has been The 404 Show high tech, low brow. We're back tomorrow guys. We'll see you.