Together Again
First, while it has only been two months since I've seen Schad, but what a welcome sight. I feel I've done this move perfectly, some time away, then a well-needed visit.
We had lunch at a restaurant around the corner and the bits began to flow, just like old...er two month ago times.
We headed back to our hotels, which had the best view of L.A. and living rooms to work in, as opposed to sitting on our beds.
We got together to figure out what we wanted out of our meeting the next day and then worked on our next screenplay and after an hour had a really good outline for Phudi Mart. Alderman is a noteable success for being our first screenplay, but I think Phudi will be firing on a whole bunch of cylinders unavailable to Ed's tale, like parody and voiceover. Over the last Nine years we've been building up our stock portfolio of characters. Ed Bus started as a solo character guest of Susan & Jaime in the Sign Language sketch seven eight years ago, his campaign manager, Jason Challenger would be added a few months later and the plotline of Gretchen Ross-Stephenson would creep in a few months before we started the radio show. The radio show would turn out to be an incubator for hundreds of characters we're not harvesting. Did you know Todd Voorhies was created for the radio show?
Meeting Time
We drove through Beverly Hills to the agency and got there a little early so we took a couple laps around the neighborhood. Kanye came on the radio which really made us feel like we were rolling, then while rounding a corner Kate shouted "holy shit, it's Christopher Guest!" and sure enough, there he was. "Holy shit, Nigel, what a fucking omen!" Shouted Justin. I must say it was the most exciting celebrity sighting so far, the omen factor was high.
We met with the agency and you just couldn't have asked for a better meeting. On the same page was a place I never expected to be with an agency, but these were our type of people who appreciate our type of comedy and have gotten other comedies in our style off the ground in the last few years. We heard the list of the people that will be reading the script over the next few months and I realized the value of things being "on time and in their perfect place." as Wayne Dyer would say. Would we have loved to have had this meeting six or seven years ago? Yes, did we come very close to this meeting a number of times in the interim? Yes. But only now, in the wake of successes of people like Adam McKay, Judd Apatow, and Todd Phillips, have people like us, with our comedic style have made it and made a lot of money for studios with their comedic understanding. What was the big comedy eight years ago? Ace Ventura 2? Major Payne? Things have changed and this has been worth the wait, and once again we all got to walk out of a meeting with each other and be able to smile at each other knowing that it took a lot of shitty gigs a lot of doubt, a lot of slogging and schlepping props, a lot of repetitions of sketches like "bitches in the closet." to get here. A lot of failures at trying to get into Aspen. A lot of nights not wanting to perform for fifteen people at the Wing & Groove on a twelve degree night with no parking, a lot of nights of putting on the Scruffy McMuffin costume. Of course, we've still got a lot of tough nights ahead of us, but the journey has been made all that much better by being able to laugh at Sandy's recurring bits, Stephe's dry wit, and Justin's mania over trying to get into events for free. Which brings me to the rest of the night.
The Rest of The Night
In between laying out our plan for the future, laying out the skeleton for Phudi Mart and future films, we were organizing a party, we wanted the biggest party we'd ever thrown, we were trying to confirm everyone we knew in L.A. to come to our Bears football party and we nailed it. Fresh from our mini-high of hearing people we didn't know talk about Jason Challenger the people talk about Jason Bourne we shuffled our ass over to Monroe's and the party began.
The all-star lineup:
Ryan Anglin
Nick from Arizona
Ike Barinholtz
Josh Meyers
Missi Pyle
Rachel Romanski
Frank Caeti
Harvey Sid-Fisher
LA Ray
Barb
The Kias
Keegan Michael Key
Joe Nunez
Lew Temple
Jill Benjamin
Gillian Vigman
An IMDB-splosion of Bears fans. So this was already one of the best nights. And then I met my childhood hero.
To the warning track...
Now let me take a step back, a step back to 1987, to an Adam Witt living in Ohio, home of the Cincinnati Reds. Two forces influenced how much you liked certain baseball players, whether they were on the Reds and how much their baseball card was worth. Eric Davis made big headlines on week by banging out a number of homeruns, stealing a number of bases and stealing two homeruns over the outfield wall. He was an instant MVP. But it was Cincinnati so talk radio continued to give him shit for being black, pretty much. He would stay with the team until his crowning moment, World Series 1990 Game 1 against the unbeatable McGwire/Canseco/Stewart/Eckersly Oakland A's. First pitch, to Davis, homerun. Go. Fuck. Yourself.
Justin runs up to me and said something I never believed would be said to me "Dude, Eric Davis is downstairs." I'm terrible at noticing celebrities, I would've never noticed Chris Guest, and I certainly would've never noticed Eric Davis. I ran downstairs, Justin in tow and just bombarded him with everything I've ever wanted to say. My knowledge of his career cracked him up. I believe it came out like this "EricI'maCincinnatiBoymycousinandIarethebiggestfanseverthankyousomuchforallthoseyearsIforanybodythatsaysyouaren't thegreatestIgotonewordforthemfirstpitchhomerunoffofDaveStewartChrisSabo,neverheardoftheman, Idon'tcarewhatCincinnatitalkradioeversaidaboutyou,you'rethegreatest."
He really laughed hard when I was so bombastic about his 1990 homerun off Dave Stewart, I'm sure not many people in the bar that night brought it up. I called my cousin who was groggy, I had to call and tell him though. I got a picture of me with him somewhere, I'll share it when I do.
The Viper Room
Justin and I are always the last up, add Ryan Anglin and you've got the party crew, add Nick from AZ and you've got the dream team. I love how Justin thinks he can talk his way into anywhere. It's his funniest trait. But him trying to talk his way into the Viper Room is like JK playing in the big leagues. We didn't get in for free, or at a discount, but you're not gonna hit a homerun at your first at bat in the Majors. It was just fun to watch.
We walked fifty feet to the Cat Club next to the Whiskey A-Go-Go and the guy told us it would be $7, Justin pushed us aside and thirty seconds later we were in for free.
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