Modest Proposal
Bob Odenkirk
by Brodie Foster Hubbard
February 2004

Just a few days into the New Year, I had the pleasure of telling Bob Odenkirk that one of his favorite musicians is a fan.

“Frank Black was talking about you… I don’t know if you were a Pixies fan.”

“I was a huge fan… what?”

“He was talking about you from the stage.”

I was at a Frank Black show a few years back when he mentioned a frustrating road experience, and he referenced Odenkirk by name. The comedian’s penchant for cathartic obscenity in some of his well-known “Mr. Show” sketches inspired the legendary musician to not merely drop an f-bomb, but hurl it into the heavens in a similar fashion to one of Odenkirk’s foul-mouthed exclamations.

“Wow, I just bought his latest album. Goddamn, it’s good, isn’t it?”

The same assessment could be easily made for Odenkirk’s body of work… but “good” would be an understatement.

Bob Odenkirk may be best known for his role as actor, writer, executive producer, and co-creator (with David Cross) of “Mr. Show,” the much beloved (and, yes, obscenity-laden) sketch comedy show that ran on HBO from 1995 to 1998.

However, he has been responsible for even more examples of great American comedy that should make him a household name. He created several memorable characters and sketches from 1987 to 1991 as a staff writer at “Saturday Night Live,” where he received an Emmy. He then wrote for Chris Elliot’s cult favorite “Get A Life,” and for “Late Night with Conan O’ Brien.” His first break from out behind the cameras and in front of a national audience was as a writer/performer on Fox Television’s “The Ben Stiller Show,” which received an Emmy AFTER its cancellation.

While still appearing on HBO‘s “The Larry Sanders Show” as Larry’s agent, Odenkirk was prolific in the alternative comedy scene in Los Angeles. During and after the run of “Mr. Show,” which is covered in a new book Mr. Show: What Happened? by his wife Naomi Odenkirk, he also appeared in small roles in several network sitcoms and filmed television pilots of his own, all of which went unsold.

One franchise that did go over well was the original three episode run of Tenacious D’s HBO program, propelling the then merely buzz-worthy two-piece from obscurity to a religious following, laying the foundation for the status they enjoy today as superstars (Jack Black) and sex symbols (Kyle Gass). Odenkirk and Cross were executive producers and writers for the six 15 minute films that made up the series run.

Still prominent in the Los Angeles scene, appearing in showcases at the M Bar and running his pilots at the Knitting Factory, Odenkirk is now testing the waters of the film world. The Naperville, Illinois native, now 41, has attempted two forays into cinema. The first, Run Ronnie Run, a spin-off from a “Mr. Show” sketch about a man that becomes famous for being arrested on reality police shows, was hampered by conflicts with the studio and a falling out with the director, former “Mr. Show” director Troy Miller.

Melvin Goes To Dinner is Odenkirk’s directorial debut. Based on Michael Bleiden’s play about four friends coming together for a dinner and candid conversation. The movie played at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and has won several festival awards. It features Maura Tierney, “Saturday Night Live’s” Fred Armisen, and an uncredited Jack Black.

It is clear when talking to Odenkirk that he is proud of his past accomplishments, but just as excited about what lies on the horizon.

The “Mr. Show” book and DVDs are out in stores, I’m sure you’ve got a positive response from it. Do you really grasp how huge of a following that show had?

I don’t know if I do. I pretty much live about 10 minutes from my office. I have two kids, and I have about 8 projects that I’m working on, so I basically just get up and go to work, and go home every night and play with my kids, so I don’t really know. I know we’ve exponentially grown since we’ve gone off the air, and I couldn’t be happier that we have those DVDs out, because it’s a huge, huge difference. It’s a huge step forward for the show that people can see it when they want to. There’s some access to it. That wasn’t true when it was on the air and that wasn’t true for years after it was on the air.

We just got a check, because we self-published that book. No one would publish it. It was a pretty big check. I guess that means a lot of them are being sold. We just get a small, small cut of the cover price. And I know it’s not even in every store, I mean, there’s a lot of big stores that don’t know it exists. So I’m really happy. I don’t know if I really sense… I can’t really say how big the cult is. But I’m proud of it. I’m proud that it has a life.

I want to ask you briefly about Run Ronnie Run since it’s out on DVD…

David and I got cut out the editing process on that. We were able to affect it more than not. We sent in our notes, we were able to see cuts. We weren’t allowed to see dailies and we weren’t allowed to sit in the editing room and just work. So, it’s much better than it was, and, in fact, the version that came out on DVD is even better than the version that they were going to release to the theaters.

I think the director (Troy Miller) finally got a sense of how bad it was after (the studio) said “We’re not releasing it.” We gave him a list of 5 big notes. They weren’t specific little things that could be done. They were big choices that were easy to do. They were sort of big chunks notes. He did them all. And they were all things that he wouldn’t have done the whole time we were editing it. The version you’re seeing on DVD is the best possible version. It’s still not very good. It still drags, and as far as David and I are concerned, it’s nowhere near the movie it could be.

Having worked in TV for such a long time, with the options out there, is cable TV going to be the medium for groundbreaking comedy, or do you think film is a viable medium for that?

I think that it changes every 3 or 4 years, it’s a different place you need to go. I think that cable TV is a great venue to do something interesting. I actually think there’s a potential, a crazy potential, that network TV could become something valuable and worthwhile, just because of fear on the part of the networks. They’re just getting so trumped by cable.

I just say move around and you’ve got to take your ideas where they belong. I mean, if your idea belongs on cable TV than that’s where you should take it and you shouldn’t try to force it into network TV, and vice versa.

I think independent movies are actually very challenging right now, because it was this huge scene and it was great for a few years. Then, it was totally co-opted by the studios. Now, it’s become very corporate, the independent scene. I’m about to go to Sundance for my third year, and Sundance has never felt like a real independent festival at all. On the other hand, it might to start feel that way. I feel the the independent feature scene is starting to evolve. The bottom’s dropping out of it, and in a good way that’s going to open it up to real alternative films again in a few years. I have this weird feeling that it’s sort of evolving in a great way. It’s falling apart and that’s very good.

In that vein, what about the independent/alternative comedy scene? You’re still involved in Los Angeles, do you see any trends in comedy that you like or dislike?

I don’t really see any trends in it. It’s nice that the independent scene is taken seriously, and has been. The alternative scene, for a couple years now, has been taken seriously and that’s a cool thing. I don’t think it’s exploded or anything, but I think it’s pretty cool that it still exists, it’s still affecting people. We’re still doing alternative nights here in LA. M Bar is great, and I think Largo still does shows, and there’s shows all over town, and it’s more of a legitimate scene. It’s more legitimate than it was when I was doing it at first with Janeane Garofalo and David Cross, and all those guys about ten years ago. It was very marginalized. Agents go to it, and it’s considered totally legitimate for performers and writers to be working in that area. It hasn’t exactly exploded to the mainstream airwaves, but everyone acknowledges it. When I go to M Bar there’s all kinds of agents there, looking for people who doing good stuff. Like Fred Armisen, making it to ‘SNL.’ Fred came out of Largo and the alternative scenes here.

Tell me about the characters you’ve created over the years that have had a lasting effect, like Matt Foley, motivational speaker.

I’m proud of those things, because the actors did them so well. Farley was made to do that character. As much as I wrote it, he brought it to life. I’m proud of it. But I don’t know what it means. I’m more obsessed with what I’m trying to get done now.

It’s odd, the other night, I was watching TV, and there was an ad for “The Best of Chris Farley.” There’s Matt Foley, and it’s just, “Goddamnit, I wrote that. I was in a fucking apartment. Shitty, shitty apartment in Chicago feeling like shit and I just wrote that out on some lined paper, and there it is on TV 12 years later, and people are buying it, and I’m getting no money for it.” But so what? There’s my friend and he’s dead and he killed himself. Fuck. What is this world?

It is so weird to be on this side of that, because when you’re starting out, and it seems like you’re starting out for so long, you look up to the people who have made their mark. And you sort of want to be that. And then, when you look at something like that, you sort of think, ‘well, a big part of my life is done, and I did something with it.’ I got there, on some level, I got there, and I can’t believe that, because I’m still just me. I still just, I don’t really feel like I earned… I almost feel like I didn’t grasp it as it was happening. It was just sort of drudgery. A drudgery kind of work that I was doing, and here it is, it’s done, and there it is, it went to this place, and that’s it. I’m proud of it, but it’s a little weird. I guess the key to that is that I wished enjoyed it more getting there. But you know, I probably wouldn’t have worked as hard if I enjoyed it more.

You’re still working hard, you’re out promoting Melvin Goes To Dinner. What don’t people know about that film that they should know?

It’s not “Mr. Show.” It’s not broad comedy with people wearing fake mustaches. It is funny, though. Don’t be afraid of it. It’s funny. It’s funny dialog. It was made very cheaply, it’s a nice little independent feature. I’m proud of it, so I hope everyone will check it out. See this move. It’s smart. It’s well acted and decently directed. (laughs)

What projects do you have on the horizon that you’re looking forward to?

I’m trying to get a movie going about disco demolition, which is this event that happened in Chicago years ago, and it was where this DJ had a promotional event where he was going to blow up disco albums. Basically, it turned into a riot, and it really did change the tone in the country against disco music. It’s really just a silly event that, for a short moment, seemed to actually to be kind of dangerous, and possibly a tragedy, but it just kind of went away. And David and I wrote a sketch movie that we’re still finishing, and I’m very proud of it, and I can’t wait to shoot it, and I hope we get to. And I’m writing a screenplay of a book called The Fuck Up (written by Arthur Nersesian). So if you want to read that book, you’ll see what I’m writing.

Have your sensibilities changed with being married, having two kids?

I think people might think I’ve gotten a little more serious, but I just don’t think that’s true. I sort of always liked the same stuff. One thing that is true, and it has nothing to do with being married, I’m a probably little less apt to do, because I have kids, to do a joke about someone who’s retarded or even about Hitler or something. Just because certain things become more serious when you have kids, you just can’t take them as a joke anymore. You just have this strange connection to the world that you didn’t have, this emotional connection to the world that, before, everything in the world was just a concept that you could laugh at, that you had some distance from, and you could just kind of poke fun at everything. Then, when you have kids, you feel worried for them, and connected to the world a little more. But that’s having kids. I think that changes you more than marriage, I mean, marriage, it doesn’t really change my sense of humor.

How do you, Bob Odenkirk, keep it real?

(long pause) I smoke pot once a year.