Mark Weber, Deputy Music Director of WXAV, had the chance to interview Dave Ferguson and Mike Hanford from IFC’s show Birthday Boys.
Q- Why should people watch the Birthday Boys on IFC this fall?
A- “ One of the things we love doing is a little bit of timelessness to our comedy. A little bit of genre-parody and big ideas.
Stuff that is funny whether you watch it tonight, tomorrow, or the next ten years but hopefully you watch it this years, because it’ll only impact the ratings if you do.
One of the reasons to check it out is I don’t think its disposable comedy. Bob Odenkirk influences fun sketch comedy that we really enjoy watching let alone making.”
Q- Is the show going to be very sketch based or will there be reoccurring themes and characters through-out the show?
Mike- “It’s going to be very sketch-like. In a given episode you might have some scenes that pop back up. Yeah, but it’s pretty close to a sketch show.”
Dave- “We’re influence obviously by Mr. Show but obviously Monty Python and Kids in the Hall and I think what we’re hoping to achieve a little bit with this show is to be an ensemble sketch show in the true sense of that definition.
In order to sell a sketch comedy right now in the TV marketplace a lot of times you have to package it with a specific celebrity or a hook and one of the cool things about IFC is they kind of let us put our voice first without filtering that too much.
What they are banking on is that people buy into that attitude and that sense of humor and Bob’s influence and Bob’s involvement with the show.
I think the cool thing was we were able to not compromise too much with what we thought was funny.”
Q- How did you guys become a part of the Comedy Bang Bang Live Tour?
Mike- “The show is October 8th at the Vic and it does going to be a ton of fun. The tour came about in part because three of us have been writing for Comedy Bang Bang and two of the guys direct some of the web stuff for Comedy Bang Bang.
So we definitely already knew Scott but we knew him prior to that through the L.A. comedy scene. We had done his stage show and stand up show out here in L.A. many times before we ever stated working with him officially but yeah it’s a good shared sensibility.
We have different points of view and we do different types of comedy but Paul F. Tompkins, Scott Aukerman, and the Birthday Boys are definitely the kind of thing that can share fans.”
Q- Are there any guest appearances on the show?
Mike – “The show is executive producers by Bob Odenkirk. It’s also executive produced by Ben Stiller. Both of them make appearances on the show.
Bob is in every episode and we have fun cameos from veterans of SNL, from veterans of Mr. Show. So it’s not a cameo-fest but we were able to tap into the community of comedians that we work with and come up with in a big way.”
Q- When you first started the Birthday Boys did you think you’d end up where you are today?
Mike- “I think it was always an unspoken goal after a year or two of doing the live show at UCB and kind of touring around a little and doing some shows out on the road there was this unspoken goal of a TV show and what it might be and whether it would be a traditional sketch show or um something with more of a premise and story driven thing just so we could sell something and we kind of through sheer stubbornness were eventually able to do this sketch show but it did take a lot of staying power.
Probably more than we would have anticipated when we first started doing silly sketch comedy at UCB at midnight on a Friday night. But also what can you expect? A show with our own name in collaboration with Bob Odenkirk on a network that is free-fun loving and good with new talent is about as much as we can ask for.”
Dave- “Yeah and getting put on this network that gets us and understands our sensibility and we fit in so well with their existing sensibility and are very helpful.”
Mark Weber
Deputy Music Director
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