A Word with Michael Ian Black
by Ken Payne
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If you haven’t seen him discussing Pet Rocks or other wonders of the 70’s on VH1’s “I Love the …” series you may have caught Michael Ian Black in TV shows Viva Variety, Ed, Crank Yankers, Reno 911, or in the film Wet Hot American Summer. Despite his work in film and TV, Michael is quick to confess that his true love is performing comedy in front of live audiences, which he will be doing here in Chicago July 13th and 14th at the Lakeshore Theater.
Michael’s quick sarcastic wit and
candidness have propelled him
into the entertainment spotlight
gaining popularity ever since he
first appeared on MTV’s The
State, a show that was based on
the comedy group to which he
belonged. He has since appeared
on numerous TV shows and even
acted as guest-host of CBS’s The
Late Late Show in 2004.
Michael’s writing credits are
many, including work on Comedy
Central Presents, Viva Variety
and 10 episodes of Stella.
Amidst his busy schedule we got
a chance to catch up with the
hilarious and talented star. From
poker to tater tots to Jeff
Foxworthy, Michael is truly an
entertaining person who certainly
“knows a lot of things about a lot
of things”.
Buzz – So, are you looking forward
to coming to Chicago?
Michael – I’m a big fan of
Chicago and I chose Chicago to
record my first album at. That’s
why I’m coming to Lakeshore
[Theater].
Buzz – Cool. Have you been to
Lakeshore before?
Michael – No, I’ve never been to
Lakeshore, but I’ve been to a couple
other venues there before. I
think Metro was the last one I was
at.
Buzz – Alot of people don’t know
this, but you were born in
Chicago. You then moved to New
Jersey?
Michael – Yeah, I moved to New
Jersey when I was four.
Buzz – So what kind of projects
are you working on right now?
Michael – I just did a pilot for
Comedy Central called Michael
Ian Black Doesn’t Understand. So
I’m waiting to hear if that gets
picked up or not.
Buzz – So is the waiting kind of a
tense period for you?
Michael – Tense? No. No, no.
We’ll I’m on very serious psychotropic
pharmaceuticals. So the
tension doesn’t really get to me.
Buzz - I was just reading that one
of the best times Janeane Garofalo
had making a movie was during
Wet Hot American Summer, a film
in which you also starred. She
mentioned that it was in part
because there was heavy drinking.
What memories do you have in
making that film?
Michael – Primarily, mud. There
was a lot of mud. A lot of mud and
tater tots.
Buzz – Tater tots?
Michael – Yeah, well, the camp
that we were shooting at was providing
the actual catering for the
film, so they were feeding us camp
food, which consisted primarily of
tater tots.
Buzz – That’s kind of cool,
though. It probably brought you
back to when you went to camp as
a kid.
Michael – Well, pizza bagels and
tater tots are fun for the first three
days, but it gets a little tiresome
after that.
Michael – Film and TV are kind of the same in terms of when you’re working unless you’re doing a sitcom or something and you’re in front of a studio audience. But it’s pretty much the same experience. But nothing’s as fun as being in front of a live audience.
Buzz – Where does performing live rank for you?
Michael – That’s always the most fun.
Buzz – So performing here, you’re probably somewhat familiar with Chicago. Is there anywhere in the city that you have to go when you visit?
Michael – Every time I visit Chicago I have to go to the Sears Tower. I can’t miss it. It’s not even called the Sears Tower now is it? It’s called the John Hancock Tower?
Buzz – No, those are two separate buildings.
Michael – Oh, they’re two separate things? I thought they were the same thing.
Buzz – No, the Sears Tower is the taller one…
Michael – Yeah, yeah yeah, I never miss it. I have to go there.
Buzz – Why is that?
Michael – I love shopping at Sears so much. That’s where I get all my shopping done when I’m in Chicago. I go right to the Sears Tower. I get hammers, vacuum cleaners, blouses…
Buzz – How about Cubs games? You ever take in a Cubs game when you’re in town?
Michael – You know what? I’ve never been to Wrigley Field. I’ve driven by it many times. I’ve never been to Comiskey either.
Buzz – Really? They should get you to sing the seventh inning stretch at Wrigley Field.
Michael – That’d be great! Can you set that up?
Buzz – Do you want me to put in the word?
Michael – No, I’d be too self-conscious.
Buzz – C’mon, you’ve heard some of the singers they’ve had. Look at Ozzy Osbourne’s performance.
Michael – But he’s a singer. Whether you like it or not. He’s a narcoleptic singer.
Buzz - What do you do during down time? What do you do to chill out?
Michael – Uh, lately I’ve been playing a lot of online Boggle.
Buzz – Boggle?
Michael – Boggle.
Buzz – Is that like the old word game…
Michael – That’s right. You get sixteen cubes with different letters on them and then you try to make words. So me and Michael Showalter, who I tour with and is one of my partners in comedy, we have a kind of running competition to see who can get the highest Boggle score.
Buzz – And who wins?
Michael – Me.
Buzz – I am aware that you are also big into poker.
Michael – Yeah, but I haven’t been playing poker much lately, because I’m out of a job.
Buzz – You’ve been on Celebrity Poker Showdown?
Michael – Yep, a few times.
Buzz – How was that? Did you end up winning?
Michael – Well, I won my table twice but then you go to the Championship game and I lost both times I was in it.
Buzz – So what do you attribute your winning to? A serious bluff face?
Michael – When I win I attribute it to tremendous skill and when I lose I attribute it to horrendous luck.
Buzz – I can’t even play Texas Hold ‘Em because I just get so bored after a while.
Michael – Well, I knew you couldn’t play because you used the term “bluff face”, which isn’t a term.
Buzz – It’s not? What do they call it?
Michael – Well, there’s a poker face. See, I’d do very well against you in poker because I know you’re a terrible, terrible player.
Buzz – Yeah, plus I get bored and give up too fast.
Michael – I hope that’s not true in life.
Buzz – I’m more into watching Scrabble tournaments. You know it’s big. There are actually people that make a living playing Scrabble.
Michael – I am well aware. Have you read Stefan Fatsis book Word Freak?
Buzz – I have not.
Michael – You would enjoy it. It’s about the competitive Scrabble scene.
Buzz – Wow, you’re really into your board games.
Michael – Well, look…I know a lot about a lot of things, Scrabble being one of them.
Buzz – As in triple word score… Michael – You don’t play Scrabble either.
Buzz – No…I do…I swear to God…
Michael – What serious Scrabble player would throw out “triple word score” as evidence of his knowledge of Scrabble?
Buzz – Dude, I would totally beat you in Scrabble.
Michael – No you wouldn’t. How about giving me some “Q” words that don’t have “U” in them.
Buzz – I think “Qe” is a word, isn’t it.
Michael – No. “Q-I”. “Q-I’ was recently added to the dictionary.
Buzz – What does it mean? Michael – It’s qi. It’s a Chinese…I think it something like karma…or life energy maybe.
Buzz – Qi. I’m going to try and use it in a sentence later today.
Michael – You can try, but if you try to use it in Scrabble all your friends that don’t know that’s a Scrabble word will go, “That’s not a word – you’re an asshole!” Then you feel like a dick. It’s hard to play Scrabble against people who don’t play Scrabble regularly.
Michael – Of course it’s true. I want you to study up a little bit.
Buzz – I swear, if you have time when you’re here on the 13th and 14th, I will play Scrabble with you and you will be amazed.
Michael – Right. I mean, as much as I want to hang out with you on the 13th and 14th, my schedule is sooooo jammed packed...I have to go to the Sears Tower, I have to eat some deep dish pizza…
Buzz – I can’t believe you wouldn’t make Scrabble a priority while you’re in Chicago.
Michael – Not when I’m in Chicago though. I have to go swimming in Lake Michigan…
Buzz – Well, check the warnings before you do.
Michael – I don’t have to check anything. When I’m in Chicago, I go swimming in Lake Michigan.
Buzz – You’ve also been in episodes of Reno 911. It seems like working with those guys would be a blast.
Michael – Yeah, I think that’s a fair way to put it. They’re great performers, they’re good friends and it's a lot of fun.
Buzz – Do you hang out with them outside of filming?
Michael - Not really, because most of them live in Los Angeles and I live on the East Coast. So any hanging out we do would have to be someplace like Indiana (laughs).
Buzz – When you’re writing material are you like constantly inspired by every day events as they happen?
Michael – No, I’m not good enough at comedy to constantly think of jokes. I have to really concentrate, sit down and write. I’m not naturally gifted in that way.
Buzz – I think your fans would beg to differ.
Michael – Yeah…I don’t know. I haven’t talked to them about my natural gift.
Buzz – You’re a regular on VH1’s “I Love the 70s/80s/90s” series. It’s a hilarious show that really takes a funny poke at the fads and trends from when we were growing up. How do they go about filming that show?
Michael – You just sit in a room for about four hours and they ask you about various pop culture topics. They’ll say, “Talk about the Pet Rock” and you talk about the Pet Rock. That’s pretty much the way it goes.
Michael – I know a lot of things about a lot of things.
Buzz – I just think it’s funny that some of the celebrities are in their early twenties or so, yet they seem to act as though they experienced Coleco Head to Head Football, the Six Million Dollar Man action figure or other hits in the seventies. They weren’t even born yet.
Michael – Well, for me I certainly don’t remember a lot of stuff in the 70’s, but I know about all of it. I didn’t have a real visual connection with the movie Xanadu, but I know what it is.
Buzz – That’s weird because I actually had a dream about that last night.
Michael – I know. That’s why I referenced it.
Buzz – Sorry, let’s skip back to Janeane Garofalo. How was it working with her?
Michael – Well, at the time she was a raging alcoholic.
Buzz – Yeah, that what she said in an interview I recently read.
Michael – Did she say that too?
Buzz – Well, I’m not sure she said raging.
Michael – I’ll say raging.
Buzz – Are there any actors/entertainers that you see and think, “I’d like to work with him or her?”
Michael – I like Jeff Foxworthy a lot.
Buzz – Really?
Michael – No.
Buzz – That would have really surprised me.
Michael – Yeah, I guess that would have surprised me too. Well, I don’t dislike Jeff Foxworthy…I don’t know…I like anybody. I’m a people person. I’ll work with anybody. I’ll work with a chimp. I’ve worked with a chimp.
Buzz – Really? In what?
Michael – An old TV show I did. It was called Viva Variety.
Buzz – What was that like? Working with a chimp?
Michael – It was a lot like working with a very, very, very strong, 5- year-old, retarded child.
Buzz – You’ve also written and directed a film, The Pleasure of Your Company. Is that something you’d like to continue with? Writing and directing?
Michael – Yeah, I do write. Right now I’m writing a lot of jokes for stand up comedy.
Buzz – Are you still interested in writing for films?
Michael – I don’t know. The movie industry turns out to be a pretty shitty business.
Buzz – Why is that?
Michael – I feel like the people are shitty in it.
Buzz - You prefer TV?
Michael - I like doing TV better. Maybe it’s less politics, maybe it’s that they don’t think they are as important as the film people think they are. I don’t know what it is. But I find that I get almost no respect when I deal with film people and I get a lot more respect and I’m treated better when I work in TV. I just don’t want to be in a situation where people are treating you shitty.
Buzz – Is seems like TV has gone to a higher level anyway now with Comedy Central, HBO series like Entourage and so forth…
Michael – Creatively, television is a much better place to work right now than film, at least in the studio system. The studios are a nightmare. You’ve seen the movies they put out. I mean, independent film is a lot more interesting but it’s a lot harder to get done. Cable television is similar to independent television but they’re looking for programming and they want to spend money, so you don’t get paid as much but you have much more of an artistic license.
This August Michael returns to the big screen with Wedding Daze (originally titled The Pleasure of Your Company) as the film’s writer and director. Michael will then follow that up in September with Run, Fat Boy, Run, a film that he wrote and David Schwimmer directed. It’s a busy 2007 for Michael as he continues his comedy tour with Michael Showalter, which hits Chicago July 13th and 14th.