Michael Showalter

Washington D.C.

No, I grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. But they moved to D.C. a couple of years ago. My sister has two kids. Both of my parents are retired now and so they moved closer to the grandchildren.

No, they’re not. I don’t even have a girlfriend. They’d be happy if I just had a girlfriend.

I suck at it. It’s not for that I can’t meet people or anything like that. It’s my own fault.

I’ve had some long term relationships in my 20’s but the last four or five years I’ve been pretty much a bachelor.

I haven’t necessarily wanted one. I think it’s neither here nor there.

No, definitely not. But you definitely find that people know a lot more about you than you do about them before you even start talking.

Yeah.

I think they did a pretty good job. It was a tiny, low budget movie. We made that movie for under a million and a half, which in movie terms is real low. At the time, there was no promotable name in the cast. Now they could’ve promoted Michelle Williams. I think they did a pretty good job with it but it just didn’t catch on with the audience. I think a lot of it had to do with timing of the release. It came out at the same time that The 40 Year Old Virgin was out and a lot of the reviews were comparing the two movies and they’re very different. It got eaten alive by the momentum of 40 Year Old Virgin and so a lot of the reviews said “This isn’t as good as 40 Year Old Virgin” as opposed to just talking about it on its own.

I’m very proud of the movie. It ended up being a little bit of a different movie than the one I had originally intended to make. There are definitely things I would’ve done differently. I learned a lot from the experience, but I think it’s a good movie. It has a real heart and a real soul and I think that there are real funny performances and moments throughout the whole thing. If I could do it again, I would make it funnier. I find it very funny, but I also understand that what I find very funny and what audiences find very funny are two different things. A lot of what’s funny about this movie to me is that this is how people talk in romantic comedies. That’s a very subtle joke to actually find funny. It’s funny to me to just sit and watch character after character talk the way characters talk in a romantic comedy. If I would do it again, I would add more genuine set pieces to the movie. The scene that always got the best response was the scene that involved Peter Dinklage as the wedding planner where Michelle Williams’ character is hiding under the bed. That’s a big scene of comic misadventure and the audiences really love that. I wish I had put more stuff like that in the movie to counterbalance the kind of semantic comedy that I find funny. But we had a 20 day shooting schedule so there was no margin for error. I cut 30 pages out of my original screenplay to shoot the movie that we shot. When I wrote the movie, I envisioned a budget closer to 10 or 15 million. I feel like we made the movie that I set out to make. Unfortunately, it didn’t click with audiences, but that’s nothing new for me. I’m hoping that over time people can pass it along to each other, they’ll enjoy it and it’ll stand the test of time the way Wet Hot American Summer has.

Yeah, I think they were. I was feeling an internal rebelliousness towards what Wet Hot was and what the Stella videos were in terms of their kind of crassness and lowbrowness. That sophomoric comedy which is stupid beyond words, but really funny. I really wanted to do something that had more sophistication and was more structurally sound. So when writing this movie jokes weren’t my number one priority. My number one priority was to accomplish a mood and a feeling and in fact, I really set out to write something that would have a G rating. To see how clean I could make it. As opposed to Wet Hot or Stella which is how disgusting and pornographic can I make it. I had been watching nothing but old movies when I wrote The Baxter. There was no color coming off of my television. I was so fucking sick of all these movies where everything is about bodily functions and exploitation of one variation or another.

I was thrilled.

I saw her at an event and thought she’d be perfect for the part. Then she moved to Brooklyn and I bumped into her on the street once or twice. I introduced myself and then offered her a part through her agent. I had to really talk her into it. She was a hard sell.

Yeah. She’s a serious actress and I don’t think she quite understood the sensibility. She’s almost like a method actor so this kind of comedy is hard for her. I think she’s fantastic in the movie, but Justin Theroux or Elizabeth Banks know what they’re doing with this kind of material. They were very good at kind of playing their conventional type characters. Michelle needed to feel like she actually understood her character, which is a foreign concept to a comic actor.

I don’t know that that’s true. I think that the most I can say about Stella on Comedy Central is that they want to bring the show back. I’m speaking about Comedy Central. It’s an expensive show for them and nobody watched it, but they really liked the show. I think they feel like it’s a great show. I think that internally they need to figure out how to make it work and that’s why it’s taking them so long to make a decision. It would be false to say that they’re not bringing the show back. Right now it’s neither nor. They haven’t picked it up. They haven’t not picked it up. I don’t think they’re ever going to not pick up the show. I think what they may do is wait and see how well the DVD does. They’re going to put a decent amount of money and marketing behind that. If the DVD sells well, a year and a half from now, you might see Stella back on Comedy Central. That’s kind of how they do it.

Honestly, I was. What I learned this year, having had both Stella and The Baxter hit the marketplace in a pretty short period of time and have both projects not get the response that I had hoped for, is that I can’t blame other people for not pushing this stuff. It’s just something that a mainstream audience just may never get. I just have to look at it and be like, “This is something that a small group of people really love and they understand it and they get it and it has real meaning for them.” I think Comedy Central felt like they really had something because it’s quality. They’ve got other stuff that’s just farting and shitting but I also can’t blame the audience because they just don’t get it. There’s nothing else to say. People watch Stella and they don’t understand why it’s funny. I think part of the problem is that nobody knows if comedy is an art form or not. If they do, they don’t want to say it. There’s no critical level that is guiding an audience toward what’s good and putting it into context. With music and other mediums there’s critics, there’s websites, there’s magazines. There’s an entire media devoted to whatever that art form is telling the consumer what’s out there and why it’s good. So when something like Stella comes out, the audience is hanging in the wind. The consumer just is left totally to their own devices to figure it out on their own and there’s a lot to figure out. Also it’s about timing because the audience for Stella is in college and high school. Stella came out in the summer when school wasn’t in session. There was no word of mouth.

I’ve encountered a lot of high profile people like that who like the show. Rob Burnett, who is the executive producer of David Letterman’s show, loves it. He thinks it’s the best show on TV.

That’s the thing. They love it, but it’s too avant garde.

I am indeed. I’m really excited about it.

We came to each other mutually. I’ve wanted to have a steady gig like that and I’m friendly with Ali Farahnakian, who runs the PIT. He and I got into a conversation one day and he followed up on it.

I’m going to be doing a fair amount of performing in the next couple of months. I’m going to be going on tour with Eugene Mirman in May. He and I and a third guy are going to go on tour doing clubs.

It’s not really standup. It’s alternative standup, which is a completely different animal all together. We basically go on tour and we do our comedy at a music venue. I’m also going to continue to do acting jobs. I’m doing a cartoon voice for a show called Ghost Foot. It’s going to be on Comedy Central.

Yeah, that was amazing. It was the whole group. I don’t think we’ve all been together since the mid-90s so it was a true reunion. We had a blast being together. It was just like old times. It was really cool.

The answer is definitely yes. The question is what, when and how. There’s so many of us and people are busy and all this stuff. But I think there’s a genuine desire on everyone’s part to do something. We just have to figure out what?

I think we would do it as the State. Personally, I would love to do an annual special on Comedy Central.

The latest words are that there’s been some movement there but there have been five different regime changes at MTV since this conversation came up and every single one of them starts by saying they’re going to make a State DVD and it never happens. I really don’t understand why it’s such a big deal.

I know. Also, why don’t they rerun it? Why doesn’t Comedy Central rerun the show? It makes no sense.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck