Weird Al Yankovic

I’m very complex; I’ll leave that to your self discretion as to how you want to handle that. I just present the options and let you decide.

Ok [laughs].

I’m a huge animation fan and I thought that this was a good opportunity since I knew that this album was going to be a dual disc. So I had a whole DVD side that I needed to fill with video content. As soon as I finished the music I made some phone calls and I was very happy and surprised to get some of my favorite animators involved in this project like Bill Plympton, John Kricfalusi, the guys from Robot Chicken and some of the hottest new Flash animators like Dave Lovelace and Thomas Lee. So heaven knows I’m so happy to have all these extremely talented people working on the album.

No, like you said there are little bits of the Saturday Morning Show like there was The Adventures of Fatman and that was done by Keith Alcorn and the guys at DNA Animation who went on to do Jimmy Neutron. But I never had a full on animated show.

Well, that’d be cool. I’d love to do that at some point.

Well, it’s my own personal way to combat piracy. Instead of suing people or spending money to make better anti-piracy protection for the CD I thought the best way to combat it is just to make the CD package so great that people really want to buy it. Give them videos, 5.1 mixes, instrumentals, on screen lyrics, there’s a 24 page color booklet. I just think that the best way to battle it is to give them something that they just can’t not buy.

Pretty much within reason. They leave me alone and they don’t tell me like, “You should do this song” or “you should tackle this topic.” Basically they’re fine with whatever I give them and they’re very supportive and we get along very well.

The only artist over the years that’s consistently turned me down is Prince but it’s not like I keep away from him. Every couple years we call him up and say “Hey, just calling to see if you have a sense of humor yet. No? Ok, just checking.”

Yeah, I certainly never had a problem with Coolio but I was always a little concerned that he seemed to have a problem with me because when I did Amish Paradise he didn’t seem all that happy about it. But I was at a consumer electronics show in Las Vegas earlier this year and I was signing autographs at a booth. He came up to me and we gave each other a nice hug and it seems like there’s no grudge there anymore so I was very happy about that.

Well, I was actually trying to get him into my video.

For White and Nerdy but we were trying to track him down and we couldn’t find him anywhere, maybe the next video.

Yeah, we’re probably not going to be on the road until next summer. It’s a fun show. There are film clips and a lot of costume changes and a lot of stuff going on. It’s a pretty theatrical show.

I’ve been doing live shows since the early 80’s. My audience has always been multi-generational. It’s a family show so there are kids and parents and grandparents. It always changes. People have grown up with me and they’re bringing their kids now, which is really nice. It is not like super G rated Disney fare. There’s some stuff in there that probably that wouldn’t pass muster with the Disney crowd but I like to think that it’s a family show that many generations can enjoy.

It’s not an easy process to describe because it really varies from song to song. It’s whatever concept fits with me at a particular point. There are some songs that seem like they’d be great candidates for parody. They seem like they’re just begging for something and yet I can’t think of a clever enough idea. I can think of bad ideas for anything but coming up with a clever idea doesn’t always happen. So in those cases I just have to unfortunately walk away.

Well parody has never really been in vogue per se. It’s always been considered the lowest form of comedy, which is why it was so hard for me to get started in my career and for anybody to really respect what I do. It isn’t that easy to do well and to do it consistently. I’m happy to say that I’ve been able to eke out a career that’s longer than a lot of the people that I have parodied.

You mean like for like an Adult Swim thing?

Sure, even if it’s not a big money maker but if it makes sense creatively. I like being involved in projects that I think are of quality.

A lot of denial. I figured the best way for me to emotionally get through it would just be to keep myself as distracted as possible. It wasn’t easy but I think it was helpful to continue on with the tour just because it helped me, at least for a few hours each night, take my mind out of my situation. It was definitely the hardest thing I’d ever done but the outpouring of love and support from the fans helped me get through an extremely difficult time.

Well, she makes me laugh. She’s very amusing. Her name’s Nina and we play all sorts of little role-playing games. I can’t be flip or make jokes about her just because all the clichés are true about how it changes your life and changes your perspective and it’s just a wonderful thing. She’s a great, wonderful child and I’m just very happy to have her in my life.

Maybe I’m just lucky. [laughs]. People that do what I do for a living generally have one hit and then you never hear from them again. The fact that I’ve been able to last as long as I have just doesn’t seem to make sense [laughs]. But I’m very lucky because I love what I do and I’m glad that I’ve been able to sustain a living and do movies and TV and everything I’ve ever dreamed of doing. I have a degree in architecture so I figured I’d have a typical adult job right now but that’s not the case.

I’d love to but it would have to make sense. All the stuff I’m being offered is stuff that I really wouldn’t want to do. I get scripts every now and then and it’s just not funny or it’s vulgar or it’s bad or it just doesn’t work creatively for me. I’d rather not work than do something that I’m not comfortable with. I suppose I could write up a screenplay and pitch it but it’s so much work doing a movie. It was a miracle that UHF got made and at this point in my life don’t know if I want to spend a year writing a screenplay that may or may not ever get made. I’d rather put all of my effort into something that I know is going to come out like my albums.

There are a lot of things that I’d like to do that I’ve never done before. I just got an offer earlier this year for a major part in a Broadway play, which for a number of reasons I couldn’t accept. But I’m open to any of that stuff. I would love to have new live experiences and I’d like to do more feature films and TV and various other types of performances.

[laughs] Yeah, just don’t tell my wife I go to the website.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck