hdtgm

Paul Scheer & Jason Mantzoukas talk 'How Did This Get Made?' (which is at BAM this week), music & more in BV interview

hdtgm

Since the start of the decade, comedians Paul Scheer, Jason Mantzoukas and June Diane Raphael have hosted Earwolf Network podcast How Did This Get Made? where they discuss a different bad movie every episode. (If you’ve never listened, it is more like funny friends chatting than Mystery Science Theater-style riffing.) What began as a primarily studio podcast, is now often taped in front of a live audience which gives the show a completely different energy. It will be in Brooklyn on Wednesday (7/18) at BAM for two shows: the early show they’ll be talking about 1982 Pavarotti romantic comedy, Yes, Giorgio (sold-out), and the late show is 2011 romantic fantasy Beastly (tickets).

Though they’ve got very busy schedules these days — among other things, Paul is adapting the 1999 sci-fi comedy Galaxy Quest into a series for Amazon — they all seem to still really enjoy doing How Did This Get Made? Ahead of the BAM shows, Paul and Jason took a little time to talk about the podcast, what makes seeing it live different than just listening, the Del Close Marathon (Paul, Jason and June all came up through the Upright Citizens Brigade), what pop culture they’re currently digging, and more.

Both of you were in New York not too long ago for the Del Close Marathon, which is the last year it will be in New York City. How did that go for the both of you?

Jason Mantzoukas: Oh, we both were there, we both did a bunch of shows. It was fun. It was an interesting mix of … yeah, because it was the final one in New York, but also the 20th anniversary, it was a really heady mix of celebration but also nostalgia, and also feeling sad that it’s wrapping up in New York, but excited that it’s … there’s nothing crazier than looking at this scene that when we all started in the late ’90’s was this small upstart, punk rock club kind of comedy scene and is now this big vibrant New York institution, and all the young people that are still there. It was fun to be around all the old guys, and reminiscing and all that, but it was also really cool to see all the young people doing all their crazy shows. It wasn’t … it’s great. I had a great time.

Paul Scheer: For me, I think that you take for granted something that is so a part of your performing life, and I think that’s the way I feel about Del Close. Jason and I were lucky enough to be there from the very beginning of it, and it just became a yearly tradition, and now to see it 20 years later.  I did the first 12 and maybe came back once or twice more, but I had taken a couple years off. For me it was just a tremendous treat to be here in this theater that’s so upgraded, and now to see all these people that we perform with who all have their own teams and their own things going on, really just get into this consistent mash up.

I say this with, understanding it sounds dickish to say, but it was like doing the All Stars games all weekend. These are people that I love playing with, that I don’t normally get to play with, that I respect and I admire, and we’re all just having fun. There are no stakes here besides just doing fun shows and having a good time. I feel like that’s the closest comparison I can make is like that All Star game.

Jason: If the audience at the All Star game was also all people who play the game. That’s another thing. Of course there are plenty of people that are there because they’re comedy fans, but also a lot of the people that are there watching the shows themselves have shows at some other time during the festival. You really get such a great sense of community on stage and off, because whether it’s getting to spend time with improvisors from Chicago, or Canada, or hearing about what people are doing in other improv scenes is so much a part of the marathon. It’s not just about doing shows, or whatever. It’s also about, “Oh, I’m gonna now spend the next hour talking to the team from Iceland, and see what they do.” That’s really neat.

Paul: The other thing I would say too is, and I say this as a dad, my time in L.A. is spent for the most part, you can’t stay out pretty much past 1 or 1:30, and what I loved about the Del Close marathon in the sense of not having … that you can stay out until 5 O’Clock in the morning, and just talking. Not even like we’re partying. I remember at one point on Saturday into Sunday a handful of us were just holed up in a corner just having a conversation. There’s like a real clubhouse mentality to it. It really is … it’s like a giant sleepover if you think of it like that, too. I mean there’s just an energy of just have fun, and see fun stuff and talk to people and catch up. It’s really great. Like a family reunion of sorts.

As far as it going to L.A., there’s something about New York that is irreplaceable to me. I love  L.A., it’s my home right now, but New York is where I’m from. There’s something about the idea of people lining up down the block and a 7-11’s open at five in the morning, and people are out and the city is alive and vibrant, that I just don’t think L.A. has geographically. I don’t know … I think the shows will still be as fun and interesting, but there’s something really special about everyone diverging on New York because New York is such a special place, too.

I tried to go to the “Match Game 76” show on late Saturday night / Sunday morning, but I was coming from a concert and didn’t get there till after midnight, and the line went around three sides of the block. I realized there was no way I was gonna get in, but it was still fun to see the line, and hear people talking, stuff like that.

Jason: The thing that I always like, as much as it is a fun, great festival for us to do, the people, the kids that I talk to who spent time waiting in lines, or sat in the theater for eight hours, just watching shows, whatever it is, they are also getting a chance to see each other and hang out, and they’re having great, fun, cool experiences, just as the audience. I like that element of it too. I was like, these poor kids are in these crazy lines that are … and it’s so hot and everything, but I talked to a bunch of people and they were just having a blast. I was like, “That’s what it is.” That’s how I would have felt, if this had existed on this level when I was their age.

As you said, both of you guys came up through the early days of UCB and lived in New York. What do you miss about living here, and what don’t you miss?

Jason: I like New York. I like the schedule that New York is on. I like eating dinner later, staying out later. I love walking everywhere. New York is a city that you are engaging with constantly. The people, the places, riding the subway.The minute you leave your apartment you are engaging with the city itself and its inhabitants, and I love that. L.A. is a lot more like living in the suburbs. It’s a lot more like if you leave your house it’s to drive to wherever you’re going and that’s about it. Maybe you get into some traffic, but you’re not really engaging with the city itself. It feels a little more like you’re just negotiating the suburbs. As for what I don’t miss about New York… I don’t miss humidity.

Paul: Yeah, I think that there’s always that sensibility about New York. It’s like “leave New York before it makes you too hard, and leave L.A. before it makes you too soft”. That idea, I think there are benefits to both places, I love New York because I feel like it just, like Jason said, it feels alive at all times, and you are bound to bump into people. I think that’s the thing that I miss, is the idea that you can be taken up in an evening because it’s easy to get somewhere. You don’t have a car, you don’t have to find parking. You don’t have to worry about anything, you just can leave your house and you know that it’s easy enough to get home so you can kind of be up for a little bit more of an adventure. Like you said, you saw a concert, you walked over to 42nd and 11th, and then you saw a line, and then wherever you went after that, you went after that. There’s just an ability to, I think, try stuff where L.A. is I feel like more of a one event city.

Jason: Yeah, I was gonna say, it’s kind of related to what we’re talking about. You’re able to improvise your life in New York. You can leave the house not knowing how it’s gonna exactly go that day and have a pretty full exciting day in New York, and L.A. feels like your life is much more scripted. You’re like “I gotta go across town for that. I gotta do this, and I gotta drive,” or this or that, and it just doesn’t feel the same. It doesn’t feel like there’s happy accidents, and discoveries throughout the day in L.A. the way there is in New York.

You guys and June are coming back to NYC soon for two shows at BAM which is often home to the likes of Philip Glass and John Cale. You were at Town Hall last time right?

Jason: Yes and Philip Glass told us after that Town Hall show, he said “It’s time. You guys have to play BAM,” and we are like, “Phil, baby, come on what are you talking about?”, and he was like, “Listen, I talked to everybody in the Kronos quartet and Laurie Anderson and we decided you guys have to play BAM.”

And I’m guessing that the shows being specifically at the Howard Gilman Opera House has something do with one of the films being Pavarotti’s only starring film, Yes, Giorgio

Paul: We always try to figure out a fun tie-in to something. I think for when we travel we at least try to find a movie that was shot in the city that we’re in, and BAM being an opera house and Yes, Giorgio taking place in New York City, it felt like a perfect fit. It was something that we had been sitting on for a little bit. Then every time we do a live show we normally do at least two, so we try to steam it out, and it’s Yes, Giorgio about a opera singer who has lost his voice but will find it again through true love, and then Beastly, which is about a pretty boy who becomes a beastly boy but then finds his inner beauty through true love. So, it’s a really a night of men are beasts and women will cure them. So, that’s what we’ve got in store for BAM.

 Have you both watched Yes, Giorgio yet?

Jason: No, not yet.

Paul: No, I have not.

It’s a movie that I have weirdly seen multiple times, believe it or not, because it was one of these films that I feel like was on HBO every other day when I was growing up and you just watched whatever was on.

Jason: Oh, that’s funny. Until we chose it, I’d literally never even heard of it.

Paul: Interesting fact about Yes, Giorgio is it was written by Norman Steinberg, the co-writer of Blazing Saddles.  A friend of mine, Michael Weber, who wrote The Disaster Artist, which Jason and June and I are all in, he had had lunch with this writer, and I was convinced like, “Oh, he wrote a movie about an opera singer and the studio is like you gotta get Pavarotti, and “No no, I really wanna get an actor.” but the truth of the matter is he wanted Pavarotti. He saw something in Pavarotti, and that to me is the thing that I love about How Did This Get Made, or doing the show, is stumbling upon things like that. It’s like, wait, who thought that was a good idea? Let’s get Pavarotti in a romantic comedy. I mean, it’s so funny because when you watch little clips from the film, the camera almost moves off Pavarotti during his lines. It’s like the camera’s like, “Oh I’m looking away, too. Everyone’s looking away from the Pavarotti performance.

Jason: I am dreading/very excited to watch it.

I rewatched it ahead of this interview, for some reason on Fourth of July night.  

Jason: And that’s how you decided to celebrate our nation?

Apparently so.

Jason: It was a private screening of Yes, Giorgio. Did it make you give up on democracy?

Paul: If you haven’t seen Beastly yet you’re also in for a treat.

I have not seen Beastly. I tend to be more of an old bad movies fan than I am a young bad movies fan.

Paul: Oh, interesting.

Jason: Yeah, I think that’s understandable. I get that. It’s easier to have nostalgia for the old ones versus like … some of these new ones, I’m just like, why … but I’m assuming people would then be, young people would then be nostalgic for Vampire Academy in 15 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Neo6W1f7hyY

Right, though I imagine that the new movies probably go over better, right, in general?

Jason: It’s a mix. I feel like sometimes it’s about people. Different parts of the audience, I think different things resonate with them. I think people get really excited if we do a Hurricane Heist or a Geostorm, ’cause there’s something exciting about the fact that we just saw these trailers, or this is recent news, but then if we do a Garbage Pail Kids people go bananas because so many people have these … kind of like you, “Oh I watched it, that was on when I was a kid. It was on every week on HBO, or whatever.” People have allegiances to some of these movies. I love when people…. we did Ladybugs, the Rodney Dangerfield movie, a couple months ago. So many people, the reaction was “I loved that movie when I was a kid and only because of this re-watch have I realized it’s super creepy and weird.” But the kids had really … it had been a staple of their childhood, that movie.

Paul: What I love about doing the podcast is that I feel like this is the show where you want to discover stuff and revisit things at the same time. So it is like, when you have people come over to your house and you’re like, “Oh I gotta show you this thing, I gotta show you this thing.” When we do find something that’s old it’s kind of like people having so much fun tracking it down. When we did Rad, which is a BMX movie, it’s unavailable on DVD, so we had to set up a Vimeo link, and so there is a whole idea of people getting together to have these Rad parties which was so fun.

Jason: I like that we can service and scratch all of those issues. It’s like for people that are excited for us to do Geostorm is that they would also be excited by Miami Connection and the craziness that is this movie they’ve never heard of. What is great about this show is we’re not limited to just bits of arcane cult stuff, we’re not limited to just what’s in theaters, we can kind of … we can also do stuff as we’ve done in the past stuff that we just love. The Fast and Furious movies — we just unabashedly love these movies, and so absolutely we’re gonna do them.

Paul: I think what’s cool about … with the show and the live show, you’re getting a whole different experience than what you get on the podcast. We try really hard … I think Jason, June and I all come from these performing backgrounds so we understand when you’re doing a show, we want to make sure that you’re seeing a show. Yes, we still are doing the show that you’re gonna listen to in your ears, but we have all these video clips and sometimes we have these special video clips that we could never really play on the podcast ’cause they are so visual, these little video mashups. We often edit that stuff out of the show. I would say our live shows we cut about 30 minutes out of because we’re in the crowd, we’re talking to more people, we’re keeping a certain pace to the live show that’s different to the podcast.

On top of the unique experience in it being a live show versus the studio show, you’re also getting an even more unique experience by being in the audience because you’re seeing stuff that no one will ever see or hear, for many different reasons. There was one person in the past, a special guest that we had, who told some really fascinating stories about an actor. We just couldn’t in good faith put that out into the world, because it was pretty shocking, but they were great stories. So, I love that idea that we live in this thing where anything can happen and we protect it a little bit more. We’re a little bit more judicious about what we present to our podcast audience, but our live audience is kind of like in a cone of silence if something like that happens.

Jason: It’s also I think being cognizant of the fact that even though, yes this is going to go out on the podcast feed, these are different shows than when we’re sitting in the studio recording an episode. We show up to a BAM or someplace to do a show. To have a show that has different acts in it, that has a flow, and that the people in the audience not just are there to see a visual representation of what they could otherwise hear when the podcast is uploaded, but in fact they’ve gone and seen a whole thing that is a unique experience. I think that’s very important to us.

Paul: Yeah, the audience becomes part of the show. I mean, we’ll go out into the crowd and have them… our audience that comes to these shows are amazing. They’re coming in costumes based on the movies. They’re coming with notebooks and shreds of paper with lots of ideas written down because they know we’re gonna go into the audience and talk to them and see what they want to talk about. They kind of ignite the entire second half of the show. Basically, their questions let us go in very different directions, ’cause Jason, June and I all come in with things we want to talk about, and it’s always a little bit different, but then the audience comes in with another point of view, and it’s even different from that. It’s really fun, and then we also have the audience sing songs. That’s become so popular. They write their own songs for the “Second Opinions” part of the podcast. Now, we almost have song battles. We have six or seven people up there and they’re just all coming and performing anything from operatic things to rap, to bringing out instruments. It’s like a funnier version of American Idol.

Jason: Which we all agree is the funniest show on television.

So on that, when you were saying there’s some stuff that doesn’t leave the cone of silence, with you and June working in the industry, has it ever blown back on you from roasting a certain movie? Have you ended up having to work with somebody? Anything like that?

Jason: I haven’t. I mean, I’ve only ever met people who are fans of the show. No, I haven’t had that happen. But also I will say we do cover a lot of old movies.

Paul: I have had this experience where someone will come up to me and say, “I listened to your podcast about “blank movie” that I either directed, wrote, or acted in,” and then there’s this moment where you’re like, “Oh no,” and they’re like “You were 100% right.”

Jason: That happened to me with writers a couple of times. That actually happened to me last night. Somebody approached me who wrote a movie that we’ve recently covered and said that what we had said was true, which I loved.

Paul: That to me is fun. I don’t think it’s really a conscious choice as much as it is just our personalities, but we come at this stuff … we are writers, we’re creators, we’re actors, we understand what goes into it. We’ve also been in things that we … I’m sure we all are like, “Well that’s not the best.” We come at it from a sense of, not like trying to take down the system, but more just sort of enjoying a movie. And I think we enjoy these movies. It’s not there to really set the record straight, it’s more just like “Oh my gosh, you gotta see this.” We wanna share this with you the audience, because we think this is worthy of something to be enjoyed. I think even the worst movies, we are finding a joy in them.

Jason: Oh yeah. I don’t think we would cover things if all we had to say was super negative stuff about it, like truly negative. I think we try and do movies that have gone wonderfully off the rails. The discussion would be fun rather than just talking about…if it was just bad it would be unenjoyable to just talk week after week about things that were genuinely bad.

Are there any movies that are too famously bad for you to do? Like a Showgirls or a Baby Geniuses or something like that?

Jason: I don’t think so.

Paul: My rule of thumb on it is like I feel like if it’s been talked enough about I don’t know if we’ll uncover more ground with it.  I like doing Yes, Giorgio over the Phantom Menace, per se. That being said I think we would do anything. Even when we did The Room, we did it with [the film’s co-star and producer] Greg Sestero, which just added an element to it. Again, it’s all open to interpretation. It’s just we want to add to the dialogue or at least be our own thing.

Jason: Yeah, I think that’s true. There are certain things … for example, we wouldn’t do The Room now. I feel like we wouldn’t do The Room now after it’s gone through all of the analysis and all of the takes, and the making of Disaster Artist, and all of … I don’t think we would do a movie that has already then been so publicly digested in a way. It would just be hard for us to just do takes on it that hadn’t already been covered.

I would like to nominate the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band movie.

Paul: Oh, the Bee Gees.

Jason: Yeah.

Paul: That has definitely been one that people have really brought up. I think that would be really fun to watch. People send us a lot of copies of stuff and that is one that I have multiple copies of at home.

Jason: Yeah no, but you’re right that would be a good one. I remember watching that as a kid and being so confused ’cause it was The Bee Gees which I understood, but I also understood this to be Beatles music, so what is this?  then Peter Frampton, I was just like, I don’t know what’s going on here.

Paul: I mean it’s such a bizarre thing it’s like that The Bee Gees would be like, “Yeah, yeah we’ll do this.” I could see an actor saying it, but a musician saying it … it’s a bizarre thing to be like, “I am a musician who makes pop music going to then be the stars of this pop …” Yeah, it just kind of falls in on itself.

Jason: That conversation alone makes it worth doing.

It’s kinda like how they talk about records that are “coke albums,” I feel like this has to be the ultimate like coke movie.

Paul: Oh coke, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like everything just seems like the greatest idea in the world.

Jason: Yeah. Yeah.

Paul: I always feel like the greatest example of a coke movie … I always wanna do it on the podcast but it’s very specific, is Captain EO which is the Michael Jackson based sci-fi movie directed by Francis Ford Coppola and produced by George Lucas. It’s the height of the ’80’s, they spent like a hundred million dollars on a 12 minute short, where essentially Michael Jackson is Han Solo. It’s so bananas, and you can watch the whole thing on YouTube, and it’s just one of the most insane… they ran out of money on a 12-minute short that they had to hire dancers who were not dancers. Doug Benson, from Doug Loves Movies, and the comedian, he’s a great guy, he is a background dancer in the movie because they couldn’t afford the day rate of dancers, so they kind of threw him in there and they’re like, just don’t look too much at these people in the background.

Jason: Wow. Oh that’s great, I didn’t know that.

Paul: Oh yeah, Captain EO is a real trippy ride of just like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Whoever was green lighting that went off the rails. Seeing it again recently after Michael Jackson passed at Disneyland I was like, “What is going on?”

Most episodes of HDTGM these days have special guests…is there a “white whale” guest you’ve always wanted on the show but haven’t gotten to come in?

Paul: I wonder. I mean, there’s a couple of people that have expressed interest that we’ve never quite figured out how to slot them in yet, but when we do it will be exciting.

Jason: Yeah, I think for us, this show has always been an opportunity, because this show is set up as a conversation amongst friends, we’ve always tried to get just people who are either our friends or that we’ve worked with, just to ensure that the conversation is still easy and … that’s the most important component, so we’re not trying to get big named people. There are some of our friends who still haven’t done it, but I’m sure they’ll work their way in.

The shows you taped during the Onion Comedy Fest in Chicago, there were no guests.

Paul: We don’t want to just have a guest to have a guest. I think that part of the fun of the show is the repertoire between all of us, so the idea that for us what we found and stumbled upon organically is how much fun we just had doing the show without a guest, because it just allows us to be … just really converse with each other and not have to make room for anybody else. That’s been kind of fun and I think we may play with that in New York too, simply because it allows us to, I think, find really fun tangents. I think in each one of the episodes that we did in Chicago, we found these great little nuggets and the shows had this kind of pop to them because it was just us talking, and being loose.

Jason: Yeah.

So the whole gang’s gonna be at the BAM shows?

Paul: Yes. June will be there, Jason and I, yeah.

You guys are all very busy, is it becoming harder to get everybody together, especially when you go to different cities?

Jason: It’s like, it comes and goes. We are luckily all busy, but we’ve gotten pretty good at being able to carve out time. It’s also not an insane schedule, and some of these opportunities, like we go to Chicago and do four shows in two nights, that’s two months worth of shows right there. We just … we can get it out of the way in a way that is both great — in two nights we can do four shows, but also I find those back to back shows, back to back nights, that was a fun weekend of shows. Chicago showed up for those shows, and it was a blast. That’s always also how I’ve felt about the New York shows. The Town Hall show, shows last year, or when we played Irving Plaza, those were rowdy, big, fun shows, and so if we can both record a bunch of episodes, but also go into a city and really get in front of a bunch of people who are excited about the show, that’s great. That’s been really nice to carve out space to go to fun places. We did D.C., and Austin last year, and San Francisco, and it’s been very enjoyable. But again, I expect New York to show up.

Paul: Yeah, for us what we love too, is that our audience does show up for multiple shows. I think that’s part of the fun. You can go see Chris Rock when he comes to your town, but you can’t see him twice in one night and see two totally different shows. I think that was one of the things that we love so much is we’re able to do totally different shows, so you kind of get two very unique experiences if you come. It’s not like I’ve seen it once, I don’t need to see it again.

That’s why I think even in Chicago we had a lot of repeat audience over the four nights because it’s constantly … every crowd dictates the response. The energies are different. The Sunday night late night show in Chicago was so high energy because those people have chosen to be out late. I think I’m excited to see what the Wednesday night 10 O’Clock show is because they’re like, “Fuck it, we have work tomorrow but we’re here now.” I love that.

I think because it’s not our primary job it’s something we all look forward to. For us to get to go in front of whatever it is, a couple thousand people in one night it’s the most fun for us. It never feels like a job or a hassle. Although I will tell you sometimes getting from minute 45 to minute 89 is probably the hardest part of this entire thing, when you’re watching those movies. that’s the hardest part is just getting through the movie.

Definitely Yes, Giorgio lags in the middle I will say.

Paul: I would think so, yeah. I would argue that most of the movies that we do on the podcast lag in the middle. It’s so funny, whenever I get a comment like, “We didn’t get a good movie.” I’m like “Wait, you realize that none of them are?” I remember someone was mad that they bought tickets for Yes, Giorgio, and the last one they got was Freejack, Freejack was good to them but Yes, Giorgio isn’t.  I don’t even know the difference between Freejack and Yes, Giorgio on like a quality scale. I would say they’re pretty equal. It’s funny how people justify what they think is an acceptable bad movie versus an unacceptable bad movie.

What are some good movies you seen recently?

Jason: Best movie I’ve seen recently was Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade. Absolutely phenomenal. It is such a wonderful, realistic, beautifully acted, wonderfully written portrait of that harrowing time in life of being in middle school. It was … I don’t know it was really terrific I thought.

Paul: I’ve actually been on a tear of great movies. I feel like every movie I’ve seen has been really great, and I think it all started with the Mr. Rogers documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, which felt a little bit to me like, “I know it’s gonna be good, but it feels a little bit like homework. I’m sure it’s gonna be fine. Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna cry.” And when I left that thing I left in such high spirits and felt so wonderful. Yeah, I cried, but I cried in unexpected ways. I would never have thought that I would have cried during Mr. Rogers testifying in front of the senate.

It’s so good.

Paul: It’s not a manipulative cry. I was blown away by just the joyousness of that movie, and just the goodness, and then conversely, or not conversely, is that then also in the same way when I saw Sorry to Bother You it was so exciting to see this new director doing something so exciting, and out of the box with this really cool cast. Robert Townsend made this movie called Hollywood Shuffle a long time ago, it felt a little bit like that. It just felt cool and different. I don’t know I was just really, really, really into it..

Since BrooklynVegan is primarily a music blog do you have any top music picks? Either records you’ve bought or shows, concerts you’ve seen?

Paul: Actually, I wanted to talk about one thing that I think is kinda cool. When you come to a How Did This Get Made live show, before it starts you will be hearing this amazing Spotify playlist that we have put together that compiles all the music from all these movies that we have done, and it is one of my favorites. It’s one of my favorite playlists because it is everything from Sylvester Stallone singing “Drinkenstein,” which is a crazy country western song from Rhinestone, to like these ’80’s pop songs from the movie Rad, to The Green Lantern oath. It’s so much fun.

Jason: I’ll shout out a couple of records that I’m just that I’m liking this summer. The Snail Mail record I think is fantastic. That Soccer Mommy record I thought was great. The new Deafheaven, I only listened to a little bit of it but I’m obsessed with it already.

Paul: I love the Pusha T record, I was really into that new Nas album because I felt like it was everything you like about Nas but with beats now. I thought that was really good. Kids See Ghosts, I thought was a great album…

Jason: You’re on all the Kanye records, Paul. You love all the Kanye records.

Paul: I know, yeah, but only if he produces. I will point out one album that I’ve really been enjoying is some of The Birthday Boys, which is a sketch comedy group. They released this album called Lifelong Vacation as The Sloppy Boys. It’s a very ’80’s themed band and they sing about Tim Collins, the drink, and loving the Cincinnati Reds.

Paul I was looking,… you may not remember this but you wrote a best of 2007 list for us.

Paul: Oh yeah, I’m sure I remember that.

Do you remember what your number one pick was?

Paul: My number one pick … geez was it like, We Are Scientists or … what was it?

It was The National’s Boxer.

Paul: Oh, well that’s a pretty good solid choice.

You said, “I probably listen to Kanye’s Graduation more than the National but I just wanted to put him as my number 2 to piss him off.”

Paul: Kanye is really coming through on my musical taste.

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Catch these guys in Brooklyn on Wednesday (7/18) at BAM for two shows: the early show they’ll be talking about 1982 Pavarotti romantic comedy, Yes, Giorgio (sold-out), and the late show is 2011 romantic fantasy Beastly (tickets).