Brightest Young Things

Something happened before Portlandia's second season aired in early January. The buzz for the show was deafening. "Put a bird on it!" became a headline in the meme cycle. Washed Out's "Feel It All Around" hooked thousands of new ears. As something like a cousin to Stuff White People Like, the show skewered and celebrated caricatures of liberal culture: hyper-sensitive environmentalists, scene whores, feminists, foodies, television and movie obsessives, Apple acolytes, aspiring DJs, New Age parents, baristas, and locavores of art and agriculture.

Portlandia finds homes in the hearts of both those that resent hipster types and those that enjoy wallowing in self-deprecation (☑ stuff white people like). The only conceivable turn-off is its absurd, borderline surreal turns of humor. Like Mr. Show, it loops in layers of its own references (The "It's Over!" guy turning into a square, and vice-versa). And similar to Tim & Eric, its repetition and choppy editing generate a coked up, spasmodic tempo ("Did You Read...?")

Last Tuesday, Fred and Carrie chatted with us about Portlandia, their day jobs, and their upcoming live rendition of Portlandia this week at the 930 Club (BOTH SHOWS ARE SADLY SOLD OUT). Carrie dropped from the call early on but comes back damn strong in the second half.

What made you guys want to take Portlandia on the road in the first place?

Fred: We don’t really know. At first it was going to be kind of a promotional tour, just like going from city to city and doing interviews and stuff. So at first, Carrie and I had never done a stand up, we don’t have a live routine or anything. So someone suggested for us to do a live tour, and we kind of said yes without thinking about it. But then on the first show, we were like, wait, what the hell are we doing. And then we quickly, right there, just figured it out. So its been really great.

Did you ever think that Portlandia would be big enough to warrant a tour?

Fred: I could have never have foreseen that.

Carrie: Nor could I.

Fred: We thought maybe we'll have a few episodes, do a pilot. I remember Tim & Eric did a show. And I think recently even Mr. Show did a tour. Conan did a tour. It never occured to me that we could have done the same thing, but it was right under us the whole time.

If I understand correctly, the Portlandia tour is a mix of live music, sketches, and then trying some of the things that are going on in the second season.

Fred: It's some of the videos from the second season. Some music, we’ll be playing some songs from the show. But no real sketches, I mean its more like just talking, you know. Its pretty casual, it's like the equivalent of sitting with us in our living room.

How much of your music background do you think influences what you write and perform on the show.

Fred: A great deal. The way we write the sketches are sort of the same length as a song would be. There’s sort of a music quality to it all. It’s not just Carrie and I, its Jonathan Krisel, our director, he’s very musical as well. Coming from a music scene of sorts and then it just informs everything. It informs how we do DVD covers, it informs the order in which the sketches are, its kind of like an album. So we just relate it to stuff like that and just try to use it in our every day life.

Carrie, can you explain how you got into comedy and how easy or difficult it was?

Fred: [Carrie's call dropped] I think it made sense for THUNDERANT and for Portlandia. And I always thought she was really funny. I always thought she’d be really great, and she is. I don’t know how else to address it really. Are you asking how she made the leap from music?

I guess so yeah. How so and how comfortable that was.

Fred: I think, for her, it was probably a little bit of an adjustment. But so much of it is similar. When you’re in a band, you’ve got a microphone there and you talk to people. There’s something performance-y about it. So its a lot shorter of a leap, than say, if she was a bus driver or something. So it's like, she knows the performance and she used to make videos and Wild Flag made videos. That’s my guess, but I could be saying the wrong thing, I don’t know.

You think, you know in the title sequence when it says “Keep Portland weird” on the side of the wall of the building. Do you think thats like the mantra of this series?

Fred:  It's less about  Portland being weird and more about the fact that they would advertise something like that. They embrace the way that they are, but not in any way that they’re wallowing in it. Its not wallowing in self pride, its kind of like they embrace it gently.

There’s a gentle streak to this series, is that an intentional product?

Fred: Yeah, we don’t wanna overdo it or get too negative with it, you know. Gentle is probably the best way to go with things like that.

There seems to be an overwhelming politeness about a lot of these characters. Which kind of masks a bit of passive aggressive mean streak, would you agree?

Fred: Some of them might be a little more passive aggressive than others. I don’t know if I can describe myself as passive aggressive, but then again when I think about it, oh maybe I am a little bit. We keep it polite, but only because it's more pleasant. And whatever it is that its masking, that’s like a mystery a little bit. Like, I don’t over think we’re passive aggressive and that’s what these characters are. It might be hiding in there somewhere.

Can I ask you about the roots of this show? It seems like you take a lot of inspiration from a lot of short Internet clips. Would that be accurate?

Fred: Do you mean about the actual show?

I mean the inspiration for the show, looking at YouTube videos, and going yes, this would work as a show.

Fred: Oh. Huh. That’s not a thing we didn’t think about. You know, I think we got lucky. Later on, when the sketches could kinda be like modular, and could go online as pieces of their own. But the way we thought of was more, its like the length of thoughts you know, kind of an album. When we originally did a website, called THUNDERANT, with all of these fun pieces of it. I don’t think we put very much or anything on YouTube. So yeah. I think that’s just something that sort of worked out. It wasn’t any kind of reaction to online videos.

Obviously it's in Portland, but what do you see is the universal aspect to it? It would’t be a success if it didn’t have connections to other parts of the world. How do you see that working?

Fred: I know from traveling that, that’s the part of town, whatever that’s called, that I always gravitate towards. I just always end up whereever there’s a decent restaurant and coffee shop, and record store, whatever. So I find more and more that cities have it. You know, it used to be that you couldn’t it find anywhere. But you go to any town now and whoop, there’s that little area I was thinking of.

We. are. all Portlandia [protracted silence]

Fred: Yeah, especially when I talk to people about the show. They seem to be from everywhere, and some places I’ve never heard of.

How did you guys choose to focus on Portland?

Fred: It was just a convenience for Carrie since she lives close by. We began shooting on location in Portland, and little by little we realized it was a really great framework to focus the show on.

A lot of people look at Saturday Night Live as a comedy education/college. I wanted to know if you agree with that, do you think you could have been able to do this show, 3, 4, 5 years ago or had that experience writing every week and fine-tuning. How does that impact how this show exists?

Fred: In a huge way. There’s no way I would’ve been able to do it. I learned so much from SNL and its not just performance, its that you learn about writing that is. I can’t even... The value of it is incredible. You just learn so much and it enables you to think. It's not just like, this is how you do a character. It's like, how do you write, how do you tell a story quickly. And you just learn all this shorthand that there’s no way I would have been able to do this show without it. I don’t think I would’ve been able to use my time efficiently. I would be just paying attention to the wrong details. But then because of Saturday Night Live, because of Lorne Michaels actually, I just realized, it's about this, it's about that. That’s not important, this is important. That’s not important, this is important. It's interesting because SNL is kind of like, it is a college in a way and you do get an education from it, but it's also real life.It's a main part of my life anyway.

In terms of your writing style, you did a show last week, you’re going to do another show this week. Do you see yourself, sort of turning off the Portlandia side of your brain and turning on the SNL? Or whenever you’re working on SNL do you have a moment where its like, you know what that would work for the other thing.

Fred: No, I don’t split those up. Its all timing so, I just try to think of things. Hopefully it comes. And then whatever I’m working on, it’ll manifest itself into that. So I just think of stuff and whatever I’m doing at the time, that’s when it’ll come out.

Has there been any talk of like crossing over Portlandia or folding it into Saturday Night Live a little bit, like bring on Carrie as a guest and doing Portlandia characters?

Fred: I don’t know. Maybe one day, Carrie will host or something or you know. But, I’m saying in the future, not immediately. But I don’t know if it would make sense this early. I think it would be too much, I don’t know if it would work. Cause SNL has so much of its own language and the way it looks and everything, you know. And also, its in the family anyway. I mean Lorne produces the show, you know. We’ve had a bunch of SNL casts in Portlandia, so its already really mixed in. Its almost like, its in its own way of happened already, you know?

Who’s your favorite character that you’ve done on Portlandia and why?

Fred: It changes. Like usually, I’ll say the feminist bookstore character because, its kind of like we just get to sit behind the register and say things, crazy things all day.  There’s this one character I’ve really been liking and that’s the one in the Knot store. There’s a Knot store that Jeff Goldbloom runs and then I’ve got this crazy orange wig with a big orange mustache. And there’s something I like about it.

What do you think that is?

Fred: I think I just like the way it looks.

[laughs] That’s a valid reason.

Fred: Yeah, that’s half the battle. You know, that’s most the battle, as long as it looks funny or cool, I think you’re there.

Yeah, like buying a guitar or something.

Fred: Yeah, exactly.

How did the feminist book store characters come about? [Carrie's voice materializes]

Fred: I visited Portland once and while I was walking down the street and I saw this store called In Other Words. On the front there was a sign that said "the nation's first not for profit feminist book store." And I looked that the sign and thought, wow, that's a lot to say in a sign. Then I went to Carrie's house and we thought about what it would be like to work there, and that's how the characters came about.

Carrie: And we actually shoot the scenes in their store. It's not an antagonistic or anything. We do a lot to support them, and they help us out a lot.

Are there any specific character or songs that audience members have requested that surprised you?

Fred: Well when we first started the tour, we didn’t do “Dream of the 90s,” that song. And then little by little, actually someone suggested for us to do it. And we’re like okay, well lets just learn it and see what happens. And then it turned out to be a really good thing. Like people really liked hearing that song.

Where would you guys say you rank on the hipster scale?

Carrie: Oh, I think neither of us think of the show like that. Don’t you agree Fred?

Fred: Yeah.

Carrie: Like we don’t think of it like skewering hipsters. I feel like, I see some of the people on the show and I don’t think they’re like hipsters. Like Cass and Dave and Pete and Nance.

Fred: Like even the feminist book stores ladies aren’t really hipsters. They’re uncool in a way. But um, on a scale of one to ten. I don’t even, I don’t even know what I am. I mean, in a way, I can’t classify myself because its like, its not like I go see bands all the time. I certainly don’t read, I dress pretty normal. I don't have thrift store clothing or anything.

Carrie: I think I'm a 10 on the Preppy scale.

[can't hear] On the puppy scale?

Carrie and Fred: The Preppy scale

Fred: That said, I'm a 5 on the puppy scale.

Do you think hipsterdom will ever be over?

Fred: No, I don’t think it will ever be over. And I think things like, Bon Iver winning a Grammy, for some reason, I think people are like accepting things like that more and more.  I think as you see a lot of bands who I consider cool, who everyone considers is cool will do a TV commercial. And I think there was a time that people would be really upset about that. But I think that people are starting to understand that that’s okay. That its business and they’re just trying to stay afloat. So yeah, I think people, they understand.

How much of your characters are based on personal experience or people you know?

Carrie: I find that there's not a single character on the show that isn't an aspect or permutation of me or Fred. It's a world that's very familiar to us. I think certain aspects are very much a part of me, a little part of me, or they have potential to exist in me.

Fred: Some of them might look like people we've seen on the street. Once ina  while we'll see a style. Like we'll see a mustache, or a hair-do, or a beard that's being worn right now and we'll apply those things. But I don't think any of our characters are like, oh, we're doing this person that I know.

Carrie this one is for you in particular, as someone in pop culture who takes a feminist posture, how would you respond to people who say women can't be funny?

Carrie: [struggling to find the words] I don't even want to put credence into that question. It's just such a ridiculous thing to say, I don't even want to honor it. Yeah, it's stupid.

You're both active in your other projects. How do you find time to do things together?

Fred: We make time for each other. We make the show in the spring. For me it was easy. SNL is only 22 weeks out of the year. And even then you can always take a little time out to write. In a way I'm glad I do both things because it forces me to make good use of my time.

I had more to say about women not being funny, actually. It's made up; it's a fictional thing. Purely entertainment-wise I watched Carol Burnett and grew into watching Saturday Night Live, which had Gilda Radner, Jane Curtain, and Laraine Newman. And later on Ana Gasteyer, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey. My whole life has been this weird fictional thing—it isn't a discussion. All I know is that out of all the people I admired, a lot of them were women. Growing up this was never an issue. We didn't think of it like that. Not, "Oh, Carol Burnett is a lady!" it was "I love Carol Burnett."

How do you get guest stars on the show? Like Kyle McLachlan as the mayor.

Fred: Show business, through the regular channels. We were writing the show, and we were in LA, and we needed someone to be the mayor, and we said,"Oh someone like a Kyle McLaughlin type." And then we remembered we were in LA—in Hollywood, literally. So we called his agent and he agreed to do the show. There wasn't an inside track and we didn't know him before. And he was perfect. He's got a super personality.

The show seems really similar style of humor as Stuff White People Like. For one reason or another, usually misguided racism, Stuff White People Like has provoked a lot of negative feedback in its own comments section. Has anyone ever had a negative reaction, or an unexpected reaction, to your show?

Fred: No, so far so good.

Carrie: I can't think of anything like that.

Good! I'm glad to hear. Elsewhere you've listed Tim and Eric as influences. Are there any other shows or comics that have inspired you?

Fred: As far as Portlandia, yeah, Tim and Eric.

Carrie: Mr. Show, Kids In The Hall

Fred: The Mighty Boosh

What's the language like for casting calls, because in "Dream of 90s" there are some really rugged, authentic looking hipsters. I was wondering how you reach out to those people and put them in your show.

Carrie: We just have a really amazing casting director and team of coordinators based in Portland. They've done a lot of work with Gus Van Sant, who is into getting non-actors, getting people off the street. We do a lot of that and then just look at their audition tapes maybe.

I was wondering, in the upcoming year, with the election coming up, if you'll have any explicit political focus?

Fred: No, I think we would probably just stick with observational humor based on personality quirks. Political stuff, unless you're doing a live show, that stuff can become dated in a week or a month.

Carrie: And there's such a lag time between the time we write the piece and when it would air. We would run the risk of it being too narrow. We would be more likely to do something like that live.

Can we expect any of your DC punk friends to participate in the show?

Fred: Yeah, we'll certainly ask if anyone feels like doing anything.

Carrie: We should ask Ian [MacKaye], that's a good idea. Each live show has been such a spontaneous event that, even though we've been able to get such wonderful guests in each city, it's all kind of last minute. That's determined the day before or the day of depending on their availability. We do have a lot of great friends in DC.

Do you do any live improv technique on the tour?

Fred: Um, kind of. Sometimes. When we're recording the show we want to say something that will definitely get a laugh, whereas live we're  just having a conversation, reacting to things that are happening.

What do you find most rewarding thing about performing together?

Fred: One of the best things is hearing the audience. We had no idea who these people were beforehand. It's a nice feeling to see and hear them all in one place. We're also getting to know each other [Fred and Carrie] on another level. Selfishly, for me, I get to play music with Carrie Brownstein. I'm like, wow, I'm playing an instrument while she's playing an instrument.

Carrie: Yeah, I feel the same way. It's a coalescence of things we love. We get to spend time together, we get to spend an hour or more with an audience, for which we're very appreciative. The television show has an earnest sentiment, so it's nice to bring that out in a live setting.

Is Portlandia a long term project? Where do you see it in the future?

Fred: I want it to go on for a little while. Obviously nothing can go on forever. We're focused on doing next season and doing this live show. Even though there's plenty of stuff to look forward to, it's important to us for it to be good, so we're taking our time.

Carrie, you're a musician. What influenced you to put other musicians into the show?

Carrie: Between Fred and myself, we all came of age with music in the forefront of what inspires us. That was the lens through which we saw the world in our formative years. We get just as excited with bringing someone from a band onto the show as we do with an actor. It's also interesting to bring in a musician and show a side of them that you don't get to see in their music. It's fun to get someone like Eddie Vedder, who is such a passionate earnest performer, have fun and poke fun at himself.

Sleater-Kinner has played with Pearl Jam a bunch of times. Did you write the sketch with Eddie in mind, or did it come about because there's a character that has an Eddie Vedder tattoo?

Carrie: It was the latter. We had an idea of a bad tattoo as a deal breaker in a relationship. And then we thought of Eddie. That's usually a better way to approach the writing process. The guest star comes later. I think for next season you see someone and bring in an instinct for that person.

What bands from the DC music scene do you like?

Fred: Rites of Spring , Fugazi, Minor Threat, and Lungfish even though they're not originally from DC. I loved all the Dischord stuff.

Carrie: So many of the records I was collecting in high school came from DC. Whether it was Lungfish, or Fugazi, or Nation of Ulysses, Bad Brains, Circus Lupus. I can't think of a more vital scene. It's a very inspirational place. When I ended up in Olympia, Washington, we actually seemed to have this synergistic connection. DC represents one of the best moments in music that I know of.

Awesome. Thanks for your time guys. Looking forward to seeing you at the 930 Club.

WANT MORE: Follow Portlandia on FACEBOOK/TWITTER; Follow Carrie on TWITTER;

Previously in BYT interviews:

• 5/18: INTERVIEW: Jasmine Solano
• 5/18: Interview: Richard Linklater
• 5/17: Interview: Penguin Prison
• 5/16: Interview: Brian Regan
• 5/15: Richard Davies (Cardinal) Interviewed by Archie Moore
• 5/11: Interview: Horse Feathers' Justin Ringle
• 5/10: Reflections on a Conversation with Mickey Avalon
• 5/9: Inside the STYLELINER
• 5/8: The Politics of Mastodon
• 5/4: Preview: Mucca Pazza @ The Kennedy Center's "Look Both Ways" Festival