Seeds Entertainment: Basically what your job boils down to is being a host…

Scott Aukerman: It’s definitely a different skill than just being a comedian. I just did my friend Kurt Braunohler podcast and because it’s just us doing dumb bits, it’s fun because it’s just us doing dumb bits. I don’t have to steer it; it’s his responsibility to steer it. And why, frankly, some people criticize the show and say “the host isn’t as good as the comedian” well, that’s because I have to host it. It’s tough. You have to know exactly what you’re saying. You have to keep the thing up in the air. That’s what the host has to do: give the piece structure. People don’t like things without structure, I’ve found. How many times have you watched or listened to something and you don’t know what it is and you’re searching for that to lock you into “oh, I get this.” That’s what a host does: gives a piece structure and gives it form so the listener can relax and just enjoy. That’s the job and you just get better with in time. I started off pretty shaky and now I’m better at knowing to focus on this for a bit or don’t pay attention to that, that is not leading us anywhere. It’s about giving something that could be free flowing and ambiguous an amorphous shape and thereby letting people enjoy it more.

Seeds: If a captain’s doing his job, the passengers don’t know they’re on a ship.

SA: Yes, they can just play shuffleboard and get drunk. That’s exactly it.

Seeds: To continue that metaphor, have you ever…

SA: Gotten drunk?

Seeds: I was going to say been in charge of a sinking ship…

SA: Well, that’s always the challenge. If it’s not hitting, why is it not hitting. Why is something not landing? Turn that into something that does land. That’s success. There have been times where I’m just “This is not fucking going well, what do we do?” That’s the nature of improv. That’s where you have to relax and be comfortable with “I’ve done this enough times, we’ll figure it out.” When you can get to that space where you’re comfortable, that’s where the great people –and I’m not saying I’m one of the greats– if you go see UCB people doing ASCAT or one of their many improv shows, the people up there have a level of comfort where if this goes off the rails for a minute, it’s okay, we are still funny people, we’ll figure out a way to do it. That’s where you wanna get at when you’re doing improv.

Seeds: So when you’re at that comfort level, say when you have the Paul F. Tompkins doing “Cake Boss” or one of his other great characters, it’s just you in a room with Paul and Reggie [Watts], you know that whatever happens is going to be great..

SA: You hope. You hope you have a level of comfort where you know you’ll pull it out. We’ll figure it out, yeah.

Seeds: People use to give Jimmy Fallon shit all the time because he used to break in scenes, but what ended up happening is some like, say, Will Ferrell would purposefully try and throw him off. Do you feel comfortable bouncing stuff off Paul or someone like James Adomian who is on your podcast all the time, do you feel free to throw them a curveball that even they won’t expect?

SA: To me it’s about fun, it’s about people having fun together. And that’s the interesting part of the TV show to me. We do edit the show, so we’re lying essentially. Every time you see the camera cut to another angle,that is a lie. It’s shorter and we edit it a bit. That’s the challenge, we’re trying to get better about this season… Someone once told me you have to show the seams in order to appreciate the whole sometimes. So we’re trying to show you a little bit in the editing the fun we’re having. We’ll include maybe one instance of someone, out of the corner of your eye, breaking. The second episode, Aziz Ansari and Nick Kroll are both of my guests. Nick is playing Fabrice Fabrice on of his characters that really makes us laugh, and we were dying during the entire interview. We can’t show us just constantly laughing, but we do try and show you a little bit of that to try and show you the fun that we’re having.

Seeds: Since David [Cross] is here, I feel obligated to ask…

SA: Is my middle name David? Yes. Asked and answered.

Seeds: Well, there aren’t many outlets for comedy in Nebraska and a lot of our writers and readers may want to be comedians. Is there something you learned when you were writing with him [and Bob Odenkirk] on “Mr. Show” that you still use today?

Seeds:I think that Neil Campbell and my head writer were just talking about this the other day. One thing I learned that I passed on to my writers is to not shut down ideas right away. If an idea that someone is pitching is not landing, don’t make fun of the idea or go “that’s stupid” there’s usually a reason it’s funny to them. It’s about talking to them and figure out why they came up with that idea. The more you talk to them and go “What do you mean? Why did you find that funny?” They’ll usually tell the story and usually in telling why they thought of it, you go “Oh! That’s why that’s funny” or it could lead to a totally different execution of the joke but the important thing is to not shut people down or just roll your eyes and continue.The other thing is about rewriting i hear a lot of shows will write one draft and if it’s not good, people will toss it. There’s always something in there and it’s about constant rewriting and most of the stuff you’ll see on my show is in it 8th draft, 9th draft, 10th draft. It’s about refining and figuring it out and not throwing something away the first time just because its not perfect the first time you write it.

Seeds: When the core of what you do is to live “off the rails” being silly, sburd, whatever. How do you know when the train is careening, whether to keep pushing or pull it back.

SA: I get nervous sometimes. There’ve been times when I thought “how the fuck do we get out of this?” Recently when Bobby Moynihan and Paul F. Tompkins were on and we were doing a sequel to “Time Bobby” which is where Bobby Moynihan plays a little tiny orphan boy, it got into a really weird place where Bobby’s character was saying he is the younger me. Because we had all established we were all time travelers, first of all. [Laughs] We all kind of looked at each other like “what are we doing? how do we get out of this?” And we figured a way to get out of it. It was a funny show. It’s the trust you have in other people. I totally rely on the great guests we have on the show to not leave us out in a lurch.

Seeds: Anything in particular that didn’t translate well between the podcast and television?

SA: The first season, I tried to include nods in the show for fans of the podcast. I guess I assumed they would know what I was doing. I assumed that fans of the podcast, would know it’s a TV show, he’s probably going to do something different with it.” What I didn’t realize is a lot of people really wanted a direct translation. They wanted me just sitting there for a half hour having conversations with these characters. I think they were surprised by that. I put in all these cool, subtle nods to the podcast. For instance, Harris Wittels on a phone telling a one liner, that would relate to Harris‘ Foam/Phone corner. thought fans (of the podcast) would really love this, and instead fans said “why don’t you just have Harris on for a half hour?” It was a little disappointing. I think, this year, now that we’ve established a template of what the show is, and people finally came around to it and got it, and people who are new fans who just came around and have never heard of the podcast just really like it. We’re just trying to do stuff we did really successfully in the first season and I’m not really worried about the podcast audience anymore, we’re just doing the best TV show we can.

I think we have changed it a little bit this and opened it up… to get really specific because you’re a comedy newspaper I feel like I can, the first year we did takes on what talk shows were doing, we were saying this is our “Jay-walking” bit or doing where David Letterman would show up at people’s houses, this is our version of it. Basically anything a host would do, we would do our take on it and it would be a  comedy take. I think by the tenth episode we had exhausted what we wanted to do with that. So what we did this year is, the first day I told everyone, this year we’re going to do any idea. Any sketch you want to do. Don’t worry about it having to fit into the prism of a talk show format. I said we will do any sketch, but the great thing about my show is the talk show part feels like a hub and an anchor and its a part that makes everyone feel comfortable, like you were talking about with the host part, so that it can go anywhere. That’s what we realized… it doesn’t have to be a talk show. It really is anything. So you’re going to see this season, a bunch of crazy ideas, it’s going to go anywhere it wants to this year. That was really fun for the writers, and it was more fun for us too. I think we had to do 20 episodes, well we didn’t have to, we got to. That kind of thinking opened it up to do any kind of comedy idea or sketch, really helped out.

Seeds: When you and Reggie went in to do the show, I’m sure they brought on a bunch of crew, or IFC brought on some crew that you had never worked with before…

SA: Well, it’s not IFC it’s Absolutely, the production company. Basically IFC came to me and asked if I wanted to produce the show and I thought it was too big of a job at that point so I talked to the guys at Absolutely who had just finished doing Tim and Eric’s show and… I think they had just done “Jon Benjamin Has A Van” but yeah it was a lot of people that I didn’t know.

Seeds: So, when you’re doing this weird thing that has a history of its own: the podcast, Comedy Death Ray… how do you convince them? Say “Hey, I know this is weird. Trust me.”

SA: It’s interesting because the director, whose directed every episode. He didn’t know the podcast. He didn’t know me. He came and watched me do one podcast and that was all he really knew, that was his training. So it was a learning thing with I didn’t know him, he didn’t know me, and where do we figure out how to do it? It was a challenge because a lot of comedy, as you know, is comfort level. Feeling like you could do anything in front of people.

Seeds: Knowing their beats. Their comedic rhythm.

SA: Exactly. So by this point, 30 episodes in, we know each other really well and there’s a comfort level. I do remember the first episode we shot of the season after the pilot was Michael Cera’s episode and it was… the crew not knowing if this was going to be funny and me not knowing if this was going to be funny and by the middle of it you heard the crew laughing during the interview and we locked in. Then also Reggie and I did some of our banter –when I introduce him– we improvised a lot of that and people we laughing at that. By season two, people knew what [the show] was so we just had fun this year.

Seeds: Middle aged like watching “their stories” on soap operas for the drama or comfort or whatever. What do you think people get from watching “Comedy Bang! Bang!”?

SA: First of all, we just try to pack as many jokes as we can into it. That’s really important to me. You mentioned middle aged women, but I’ve seen some older reviewers [say] “It goes too fast!” Which makes me laugh, because that’s what people really like about it. There’s more jokes in a half hour of our show than almost any other show. I look at other talk shows and there’s so much time wasted by people applauding and people going “Thank you!” In an hour talk show, I’d say they focus on comedy 4 or 5 minutes of that. Our show is a half hour of pure, straight comedy. What is great about our show, in my opinion, is: Andy Samberg is on the season premiere and he was saying he was way more excited about doing it than –not just talk shows- any other thing he was doing, because the guests just have fun. Andy and I just had a ball all day together just doing bits and having so much fun. I talked to him later and he said “I’m so excited to see the edit of that show.” I think what we’re trying to translate to people who watch it is not only jokes, but we are having a lot of fun. And that’s the difference between “Comedy Bang! Bang!” and “Between Two Ferns” for instance. When we do [“Between Two Ferns”] they’re all about slams and being rude and getting clever. We try on “Comedy Bang! Bang!” to be a show where everyone has fun and likes each other. Like “Parks & Rec.” The first six episodes were people being mean to each other and they switched it to everyone liking each other.

Seeds: Kind of when “The Office” first started, Michael used to just be a dick.

SA: That’s what we’re trying to do on our show. Reggie and I are having fun and we’re friends and there’s some mean jokes, but it’s mainly about friendly humor. If that makes sense. It’s a weird term because that might turn someone off, but “friendly humor” is really interesting to me.

Seeds: This one’s kind of for me, but of the nicknames the flash of you onscreen (i.e., “Hot Saucerman” “Hot Soccermom”) which one’s your favorite?

SA: Wow. that’s presuming I can even remember any of them.

Seeds: Personally, mine’s “Hot Saucerman”

SA: That was the original. That was the one. Those were all (the director) Ben Bermann’s idea. [When] he saw the podcast he said, “how do we translate that to the television show?” He thought of the lower third idea, which I think is really funny. It’s very weird because any time I tweet or post a picture on Instagram, all the comments all the comments are just people saying their idea of whatever the name should be.

Seeds: You mentioned guesting on other podcasts earlier, so when you’re on a show like “Doug Loves Movies” and your objective becomes to slay Samm Levine [in movie trivia], do you get to “exercise different comedy muscles”?

SA: Definitely. I get to lay out during most of the show and come in and say something really mean every 40 seconds or so instead of, when you’re a host you have to constantly be talking. I love being on “Doug Loves Movies” because I can just wait for my moments. Get a big laugh.

Seeds: The [Anthony] Jeselnik method. Say it and get out.

SA: Stealth bomber. In and out, that’s what I like to do. That’s fun for me. That’s why I like appearing on other people’s shows a lot.

Seeds: I’m not sure what kind of numbers IFC pulls in, buu I’m interested in what you have noticed from the bureaucratic side of things with IFC. Obviously “Maron” won’t ever have “Big Bang Theory” numbers…

SA: The great thing about IFC is that the numbers are not the most important thing.

Seeds: Should we ask the IFC publicist to leave?

SA: (Laughs) Yeah, take off man.

Seeds: Do they like the show?

SA: Yeah. They love the show. When you’re doing this as a business it’s always going to be a combination of are you doing a show people like at a price point they can do it. I think our show is relatively cheap. It’s cheaper than a narrative show, because half of the show is set on a stage which is cheaper to do than being out there. So, it’s always a weird combination of are the ratings going upwards instead of downwards, do people like the show, do people like you, do they like working with you, are people talking about it? The more people talk about it, even on twitter, people track that. So telling your friends, in the new models, is actually more important than watching the show sometimes. The fact that it does really well on Netflix. There’s all these little factors that go into keep a show on the air and a big part of it is fan reaction. And it didn’t always used to be that way.

Seeds: There also used to only be three channels.

SA: That’s why it’s important for fans of TV shows to mobilize. You mentioned Community, I think they’ve kept that show on the air for five years.

Seeds: With just 4 million viewers in that “coveted” time slot.

SA: And we’re not getting near 4 million, but IFC likes the show and keeps it on, because at this point fans seem to love it and it’s doing well in all of those other ways that I mentioned. So the question is does it seem like it’s growing. Does it seem like has the opportunity to get more fans. I think “Portlandia” between season 1 and season 2 people heard about the show after it had aired. “Portlandia, I’ve heard of that. I’ll check that out when it comes back.” That’s what we’re hoping for this show.

Seeds: Sometimes you’ll run with bits of things people haven’t heard of where almost any network would say “can we change that to something more relevant?” Do you feel there’s anything exclusionary about CB!B!?

SA: You know, I had a conversation with IFC about this at one point, because they’d asked me to change a couple of jokes after we had submitted the show. And believe me, it’s not as bad as other places, it’s not even bad, I’ve worked at other networks where there is a fear that if a 13-year-old masturbating boy isn’t going to understand something, they want it out of the show and there’s no discussion. In my opinion, doing an obscure reference is not exclusionary, it’s actually inviting into your point of view. When I was a young kid, I would watch SEtv for instance and I remember they were doing… it was Sam Peckinpah directing something, I can’t remember what it was and I feel terrible and not like a true comedy nerd for not knowing it. But, I was 12-year-old kid, I don’t know who Sam Peckinpah is, but you know what, the way they were doing that scene made me realize what Sam Peckinpah’s aesthetic must be. I was like “Ha, that’s funny, that’s something I need to figure out.” Like I’m not smart enough, I need to go figure out who Sam Peckinpah is. Which I did.

Seeds: Nowadays people can just instantly Google it and they’ll get the joke.

SA: To me, you should never talk down to the lowest common denominator, you should always bring people up to where you’re at and I realize I’m talking about a show that probably has three fart jokes in the first two minutes, but at the same time I’m never really a fan of cutting out things because everyone might not get it. I think that those things should always stay in.

Seeds: Your audience is only going to be as smart as you treat them.

SA: Right.

Seeds: There are so many different metrics that influence how television is “scored” today. How has IFC worked with you guys when it comes to ratings and things of that nature?

SA: We talk about it a little. DVR+3, DVR+7, Netflix numbers. We did test it between seasons this year, which was terrifying. You know what that is? They show it to a group of strangers and they tell you: I don’t like this thing, they score it, they may have the knobs that they turn down. IFC didn’t take a lot of that stuff seriously, mainly they reported what the numbers were and we had a discussion about why we thought the numbers were going the way they we were going. Some of it was surprising, I had expected some people to say “I don’t like anything but when there’s a star on.” But we found other interesting things. They showed the first episode with Zach Galifianakis, Andy Daly and Will Forte and the surprising thing was WIll Forte scored really low, and I would’ve thought because he’s one of the more recognizable people he would’ve scored high and what we figured out was by that point in the show he was one element too many. It was like sensory overload. We adjusted the show accordingly so now we only have two guests on per show instead of three and we spend more time with the guests.

Little things like that. We’ve worked with [IFC] to make the show better, I think it has made the show better, it’s certainly nothing, if they were to ever come to me with an idea that would fundamentally change the show, we would have a discussion and I would probably say “I don’t want to fundamentally change it” and they would say “okay.” They’re good partners to work with because they’re trying to figure out what they’re doing as well. The great part about being at IFC is right now, it’s like being at FOX when they first started and you had stuff like “Married… with Children” and “The Simpsons” and even “The X Files” at a certain point something will hit… (Aukerman’s IFC representative crosses his fingers, Aukerman laughs) like when “X Files” was a hit and now everything has to be “The X Files” or even “The Simpsons” when it became a huge hit [FOX said] “well now what we do is family comedies with an edge]. That’s when networks go bad, once they start talking about “What we do is…”. At this point [IFC] is great to work with because they’re willing to wildly experiment. Does that mean sometimes they do things like forget to submit you for The Emmy’s? Yes. (Laughs) They don’t quite know what they’re doing now in terms of that, but it’s always a trade off in terms of we get a lot of creative freedom and we get not a ton of money but enough to do the show and they’re supportive of it. That’s the most important thing: they’re supportive and they like it. If you work for another network they will tell you how your show should work through the prism of what they think their audience wants. The great thing about IFC right now is they don’t know what their audience wants so it’s an exciting place to be.

Seeds: So in the year 2030 when all TV shows are based on podcasts and in the same way all movies are based on books, you guys will be The Beatles or The Rolling Stones of podcast television…

SA: We’re going to be The Beatles AND The Rolling Stones…

Seeds: …and [podcaster/comedian Marc] Maron can be, I don’t know, Bob Dylan if he wants.

SA: Mmm… The Lovin’ Spoonful? (Laughs)

Seeds: Perfect… Welp… that’s all I have.

SA: Really? That’s not even a question, it’s more of a theory.

Seeds: I just needed to get that out into the world.

SA: (Laughs) It’s been a pleasure.