Meet The Man Behind Comedy Bang! Bang! And Between Two Ferns

It’s a grey Thursday when I arrive at the Comedy Bang! Bang! TV show set in Glendale- a suburb in north-east LA. The production staff are discussing where ‘Furious 7’ was still playing in cinemas and taking down lunch orders (Chipotle). Scott Aukerman arrives from the editing suite; an entirely surreal experience to come face-to-face with someone whose voice you’ve listened to for endless hours over many, many years.

Aukerman is a comedian, writer, director, producer and podcaster. He turned his weekly live show into a huge following across his own podcast network (Earwolf), being the co-creator of ‘Between Two Ferns’ and his fake-talk/sketch television show (SBS2)- which has just been renewed for a 5th season. Across all his endeavours, Aukerman seems to bring out the best in the people that surround him. Highly in tune with their comedic strengths and receptive to their tastes. Avid fans of the podcast understand the frenetic, loose, loopy journey that the show can sometimes go on. Aukerman seems to masterfully steer the ship towards more accessible and digestible entertainment- whilst still keeping it pretty nutty. He helps funny people be funnier.

Between the proliferation of comedy podcasts, web series, mass enrolments at the UCB theatres in NY and LA, websites like ‘Funny or Die‘ turning into publishing powerhouses and shows like ‘Nathan for You’, ‘Kroll Show’ and ‘Broad City’ not only existing but garnering massive cult followings- much has been made about a ‘new wave of comedy’ here in America. What used to feel like you and your friend’s secret favourites, have now well and truly penetrated the mainstream. There are not only more ways than ever to consume comedy today, but more ways than ever for comedians to speak to and rally their fan bases. Whether or not you buy into the fact that there’s a resurgence happening in the comedy world, Aukerman is smack-bang in the centre of what is going on. It’s hard to think of many of today’s comic superstars who haven’t appeared on at least one iteration of Comedy Bang! Bang!

He tells us about the role he’s best known for playing (host), his complicated relationship with social media and the person who changed his approach to comedy.

 ON PODCAST GUESTS 
The podcast first started because I was producing my own show at the UCB Theatre in LA every week, so I knew who was really good and I tried to have them on every week. I would see something on stage like Jessica St Clair doing Marissa Wompler and think it would work really well on the podcast. Now it’s really recommendation. Neil Campbell, who is our head writer here at the TV show, was the Artistic Director of the UCB for several years so he will send me ideas for people.

Campbell: “Between the TV show, the podcast, and the old live standup show, Scott has always been amazing at providing opportunities for up-and-coming comedians. I think he just likes working with people who make him laugh, no matter their experience level.”

I got to know about Claudia O’Doherty [Ed. Note: the Australian comedian has been a recent regular on the show] because two people told me to check her out within hours of each other, as they had just seen her one-woman show. And they were both people I really trust so I just blindly asked her to be on the show. And that’s what I really like to do.
The show has changed so much over the 6 years that we’ve been doing it. The people who I started out having on as regulars, got too busy. They’re all successful now. People like Andy Daly– has his own TV show, Nick Kroll– has two TV shows and movies.

So it’s been about trying to find the younger talent and cultivating that, because I know that at a certain point, current favourites are going to get too busy and not be able to do it. So it’s about each wave, or every year- who has time now, who are the new people and who can we make a new fan favourite?

As far as the process, it is interesting because there are people that you think “oh wow, they’re so funny. they would nail an episode” and then they really don’t. You’d be surprised. But for me, the podcast isn’t about- “this is the best show ever!”- it’s about, what if we put these people in a room and who knows- maybe they have this great chemistry. And if they don’t, well better luck next week. Let’s take a chance on someone. I want to be able to put out shitty episodes. It’s just a podcast! 

 

ON PLAYING HOST 

For the podcast, what I kind of figured out and what I try to do as a host is this- there’s a tendency to try to get too crazy too quickly and jump to the comic idea too quickly. Sometimes someone will do a character and within two sentences they’ll say their really weird thing. And it’s such a leap that it’s difficult for an audience to go with them- because we’re just getting settled in.

For me, it’s about how to shape whatever information they have comedically, as a real person- almost like an audience surrogate or filter. And try to steer that information in a realistic way where we’re reacting like a human being would and saying, “oh, well that’s really weird, back up, back up, we need to settle first”- we need to reset and calm down and go back to the tiny thing before we unleash the big thing.

Hosting the TV show has had it’s own set of learning curves. For Season 1 we wrote the show, and then we shot it and then we edited it. In season 2, we had to shoot and edit at the same time. So while I was editing, I was looking at earlier episodes thinking “I wish I was talking faster”- we actually reshot some things so we could keep things in the show.

So in the middle of season 2, I learned to talk as fast as possible and I settled on my character. I went into it thinking I was going to be more like a calm, easygoing Mr Rogers who was blasé and unflappable. Instead, we just amplified the most annoying parts of my personality where I talk really fast and am really goofy and hyper and yelling a little more.

The acting is definitely not the most fun part for me- it is the most laborious. I think the editing is the most fun; figuring out- how do jokes work, how does stuff that was really funny on the page, that we shot and we think is really funny as well- and then it just lays there. How do we save it? We had one piece this week that just aired in the States, ‘Reality House’, which was was a sketch that really didn’t work in the room when we first put it together. And then we figured it out and it was really, really funny. That, I enjoy. 

ON TWITTER HAVING ZERO CHILL 

It gets me upset when fans actively tweet negative comments to guests. When I have someone new on the podcast and they don’t deliver whatever the fan expectations are, they get really mad and say “That person didn’t play along “right” or “That person wasn’t as funny as…”. How terrible is that, to be an entertainer, get asked to do a podcast you’ve never done before, show up, have a good time and then start receiving messages from fans that you sucked. Or when people just directly tweet at me that they don’t like this week’s episode. Every single episode is going to have people who hate it, so how does that make me feel, every Monday, dreading a podcast coming out because I know I’m going to get several messages saying “hey this one sucked”.

I mean I know it’s my ‘job’ technically, but I do it because I love comedy. I know when an episode doesn’t work. But I’m still going to put it out. What would you rather me do, just have no episode that week?

Twitter used to be way more fun about five years ago. It’s not really fun anymore. Too much attention is paid to it, people take it too seriously. When people are digging up comedians old tweets to derail their chances of getting jobs- that’s not fun anymore. You see more and more of it now where- one wrong move or one wrong joke and people blow up at someone and they go “ok forget it, this isn’t worth it anymore”.

The stakes in your mind when you tweet something or put something out on the internet are the stakes of your current reality. To explain, I was thinking about this yesterday, a high school kid who tweets something- their reality is, “well who cares, I’m in high school- who’s going to see it, my high school friends?” They’re not seeing that their reality will change down the line. So, to take the Trevor Noah thing for ‘The Daily Show’- his reality when he was tweeting those things was that he was just a young comic who is tweeting dumb jokes. He doesn’t know that his reality is going to change so drastically. He had no idea that he would ever be considered to be the host of ‘The Daily Show’ and that the stakes would be that high, where a tweet could derail a major financial and career opportunity for him. It starts to become like, well why put anything on the internet because what if your reality changes to such a degree that people are looking up that stuff.

It’s pretty frightening because there are some dumb tweets I made early on and podcasts where I’ve made off-colour jokes that I would never make now. And I haven’t deleted anything at this point.

ON THE WHITE HOUSE  

When I was in the White House and we were doing the ‘Between Two Ferns’ episode, they were talking about YouTube personalities who were going to be visiting the White House. President Obama was going to come in to say hi and get a photo with them. They were talking about the vetting process and certain people who they mentioned “nope they can’t come” and “nope they can’t come”. So I enquired as to why, and it was because of maybe one video that they had made back in the day. You make a video on YouTube and your reality is, I have 500 fans and then suddenly you have a million fans- but your reality is never, I may have a chance to go to the White House and meet President Obama. Well, that changed for a lot of people who were vetted on that occasion and they’ll never know that they weren’t invited because of some dumb video.

ON BOB ODENKIRK 

On ‘Mr Show’, Bob Odenkirk taught me a different way of looking at comedy. Not just a better way of writing comedy (which he did teach me) but also, a little more about a responsibility of what you’re saying when you’re doing it. With ‘Mr Show’, they did a lot of offensive material. When I first got that job as a writer, I was like “oh good, let’s do offensive comedy!” and I still think it’s really funny when people curse in the middle of sketches for no reason or whatever. But there was a lot of stuff that we would do around the office that was just offensive; ‘house’ comedy- it’s funny around the house but don’t put it on stage or on TV. And I would say we should do it on the show, and Bob would say “Why would we do it? What’s the purpose behind it? What are we trying to say?”. He never wanted to put out something offensive without having a reason to back it up. For example, “I’m saying this because I’m trying to make a satirical point about people in positions of power, and I’m not just making fun of people who are less than me”.

That changed my way of looking at comedy- not just for offensive material, but with Bang! Bang!- this show is very silly and we do stuff that is just dumb. Sometimes people will write something and I’ll say “it’s fine but what are we trying to say?”. There was one episode we did- the musical episode. A lot of what we do on this show is an idea- doing a musical is an idea- but why. So why we’re doing the musical episode is that we’re a talk show and what if Andrew Lloyd Webber decided he loved our show- but the only thing he hated was all the talking. What is a talk show if everyone sings? That gets you excited to do an idea- not just “now everyone sings”.

Comedy Bang! Bang! airs on SBS2. You can find the Comedy Bang! Bang! podcast here.

Interview by Neha Potalia @nehapotalia
Images supplied.