[…continued from Friday. If you’re just joining us, the entire series starts here.]

Apotheosis: Our Projects Get Longer

Trek Wars expanded our consciousness to the realization that we could write longer productions, finish them, and—in some loose sense of the term—actually have them make sense. This opened up our golden age, during which we released our longest projects with surprising regularity. Suddenly, with a thirty-seven minute-er under our belt, lengths that were previously incomprehensible to us were no big deal. Ten minutes was nothing. Fifteen minutes? Yawn. Twenty minutes? I’ve still got one hand tied behind my back, pal.

“Suddenly, with a thirty seven minute-er under our belt, lengths that were previously incomprehensible to us were no big deal.”

The first production after Trek Wars was Hydro: First Flood, a very approximate parody of Rambo: First Blood that ended up focusing more on the antagonist, Badimir Evilinski, than on the hero, John Hydro. Although it turned out hokey, I had a lot of fun doing it. Badimir, for all his ineffectual wimpiness, was one of my favorite characters to play. [Fun trivia factoid: The first part of the script for Hydro was written by Graham and I in the girls locker room at school. The explanation is simpler than you think, but it’s not something I have time to get into here.]

Speaking of Badimir, this is probably a good time to talk about typecasting. It’s not just a matter of reoccurring characters—who I’ll be talking about tomorrow—but also that we just seemed to play the same types of roles again and again. That’s not to say that we always played these roles every single time, but there’s definitely a pattern here. My thanks to Graham for coming up with these so I didn’t have to think too much.

Me: The Suit

This was Graham’s suggestion; I actually never realized this, myself, but it’s true: whenever the script calls for someone wearing a suit, I was there. A large part of this was announcers and hosts: Doofus McAllister in Absent Minded Camera Man, William Fatnerd in both Inanimates, and later Arthur Pendergrass in A Public Service Announcement. (He’s not wearing a suit, but he should be.) I was also one of the two hosts on Mincemeat! and the voice over for Bomb Squad Sketch.

Perhaps due to my penchant for donning the suit, I also played the government-agent types. There’s Moldy, of course, from X-Files, also Agent Philips in A Public Service Annoucement, and the unnamed but well-dressed antagonist in Midnight Fugue. Somewhat in this vein is also the Prosecutor in Fatal Killings whom one can imagine as an attorney general, if one were so inclined.

Besides the suit, I also sometimes played the ineffectual, wimpy bad guy. Although I didn’t have tons of bad guy roles (they were pretty evenly split among us), the ones I did get seem memorable to many people. Of course, any evil in our movies was always benign. The villains never accomplish anything useful and although they may talk a big game and appear to mastermind grand plans, they are actually rather inept. This extends even to when other people play bad guys, not just me. A few examples include: Conservationist Eileen Frayer, Inanimate; The Evil Guy, Trek Wars; the Pizza Delivery Guy, New Oddity; the Alien King in From Beyond; and, yes, Murray Ermer in Fatal Killings. My bad guys included Badimir and The Prosecutor—two characters who, despite their distain for the incompetence of others around them, are really no more competent themselves.

Dave: The Crazy Nutjob

In the same way that I played suits really well, Dave had a knack for crazies. Most notably, of course, is Murray Ermer from PA Chainsaw Massacre and Fatal Killings. As I wrote in the Failed Jokes Explained article, It’s Just Music, Murray Ermer is defined by killing people. He doesn’t have motives or grudges or anything like that. He’s just a guy who goes around killing. It’s very sensible. Additionally, Dave also played such bizarre characters as the Pizza Delivery Guy in A New Oddity and Balaclava Man, also from Fatal.

But Dave also plays a more toned-down version of the maniac. He plays the goofy secondary character. Sometimes this is a sidekick, like the Trooper from Hydro. But it also includes the scientist David Neimkawitz—and the myriad of sketches he appears in, starting with Inanimate; not to mention the leader of the bomb squad from Bomb Squad; and Mr. Me-Young from Scarlet Ninja. Even Devin Clauser from From Beyond was a little crazy with some sort of split personality disorder going on there, unable to decide if he really is an evil serial killer or a good guy destined to save the day.

Graham: The Dim-Witted, Well Meaning Guy

This is another one of his suggestions that I hadn’t realized. Originally I was going to say that Graham wasn’t type-cast at all; that he managed to avoid the curse which hit the rest of us. But on reconsideration, I have to agree: this is typical for him. The Judge in Fatal is a pretty standard dim-witted, well meaning guy. Although the Judge is very easily bored, it does seem like he wants to help Spencer, and get the trial wrapped up as soon as possible. He’s trying—he means well—he’s just not assertive enough to get things done.

General Lee from Trek Wars is very much the same way. You get the impression that he’s a genuinely nice guy, but he doesn’t actually do anything. The Informant from X-Files and John Hydro from Hydro appear to be this guy, also, although they’re somewhat more under-acted. Even Yoachum forgot where Kevin James’ house was.

Aaron: The Clueless Slacker

Before I talk about Aaron’s typecasting, I have to say this. Without a doubt, Aaron was our John Cleese. Any sketch he was in, he stole the show. Dave said—and I completely agree—that Aaron was largely underutilized, particularly in the early days of the TTT. Later, he would pull some excellent performances, like Charles As In Charles Manson in From Beyond

Aaron’s first appearance as a clueless slacker was also his first appearance: Gary Cutter in the original Inanimate. Maybe we set a precedent, there, I’m not sure. The Gary Cutter character was the one who found the sleeping bag while over at his friend’s (Kevin James) house. The small exchange of dialogue at the beginning of the scene and Cutter’s subsequent interview later place him firmly in the “clueless, stoned slacker” camp.

His ultimate type-casted clueless slacker role was, of course, Spencer Herbenstein in Fatal Killings. Spencer was Murray Ermer’s defense attorney when Ermer is put on trial for killing the people in PA Chainsaw Massacre. His opening scene shows him laying face down on the bed. When his assistant comes in asking him if he shouldn’t be getting ready for the trial, he says, “oh, yeah. When is that again?” The assistant says, “today”. It goes down hill from there.

The Bartender, in his original appearance in the Crappy Restaurant sketch, was not necessarily a slacker, but certainly clueless. Aaron would later play General Pickett in Trek Wars, a character who was oblivious to some pretty important details regarding their battle with the crew of the Entersurprise. In Mincemeat!, he played the ultimate clueless slacker who knew nothing about cooking, yet still managed to win the cooking competition; while in A New Oddity his character was clueless, but mostly apathetic to the goings on. Even in One Minute, it was Aaron who declared (though not without reason), “None of this is making any sense.”

Evan: The Comic Relief

Evan was our over-actor. We could always count on him to put in a performance and a half. Perhaps also because he was the youngest of the group (except maybe Kathie—I’m not sure), he always seemed to play the character whose entire existence was the joke.

It starts out innocently enough with Evan playing the cool youth in Pringles. In PA Chainsaw Massacre, Evan gets killed three times, and each time he’s the punchline. The first time is just him walking into the house with the rest of us, so that could be excused on the grounds that we all died that way. But the second time he’s killed because of his terrible taste in music (he’s listening to the Spice Girls on a boombox in the middle of the woods), and the third time he’s killed because he’s painting a “no chainsaws” sign, preventing Murray Ermer from taking the chainsaw in the house. In Trek Wars Evan brilliantly overacted the ship’s engineer, Scottish, while setting off this performance with an underacted Luke Skawalker. He also played the confederate soldier who, again, was the joke of the battle scene—and that’s even taking into account that he wins, single-handedly, against the Entersurprise’s away team. Even in victory, he was still the punchline.

Kathie: The “I can barely tolerate all these men” Woman

While we all got exasperated with each other during shoots, I don’t think Kathie was ever like this for real. She wouldn’t have kept coming to all the TTT meetings, for one thing. But for some reason, this is always the character that she ended up playing. Her debut was, as I mentioned, the Medical Officer in Trek Wars. The Medical Officer doesn’t have many lines, but what lines she does have are very sarcastic. What lines she has are also with the Princess, so we don’t actually get to see her interacting with any of the male crew—but if she did, it would be in the same, “I can barely stand you” tone.

Along these same lines we have Sculler, who, even though she would appear to be ruminating on some profound point Moldy made, still gave off the impression that she was only putting up with him until her transfer to the West Coast office went through at which point she’d be outta there. Natasha definitely gave off this vibe—although that’s mostly because she didn’t talk. Natasha had lines as I recall, but Kathie couldn’t do a Russian accent to save her life, so we just dropped them. The Scarlet Ninja, in the sketch with the same name, was the ultimate in “couldn’t stand men”: she just went around killing them—much to the frustration of the men who just assumed she was another man until the end. They finally defeat her, only to have her reveal her identity as a woman. “Oh well,” says my (unnamed) character, “we’ll kill her anyway!” No wonder the loathing.

In A New Oddity, her character gets her film shot down by the male producer, and in A Public Service Announcement, her character’s kiss is interrupted by the ringing telephone, which her boyfriend deems more important. Finally, in From Beyond, Veronica Teem is none too happy to have been kidnapped by the incompetent Alien King—yet she escapes from his clutches into the arms of an even more incompetent man: her husband. Her acceptance of this smacks of a 50’s era sit-com resolution: “This guy is really dumb,” she thinks, “and while I can barely tolerate him, he is better than the alternative.”

Isn’t that always the way?

Following Hydro, we started to kick around the idea of remaking When Inanimate Objects Attack. The biggest problem with the first try was, as I mentioned, the lack of editing. We hadn’t yet mastered the in-camera editing timing, and so the sketch was choppy and at some parts, barely comprehensible. Now that we finished Trek Wars, it was obvious that, if we attempted it again, it would be a much better production.

I was against this pretty much from the get-go. Rather than remaking old stuff, I thought, we should be focusing on making more new stuff. Despite my initial opposition, the remake did turn out pretty good, and I had a lot of fun in the process. I even mocked my own view on this. The opening of Special Edition was actually a pseudo-interview with the TTT reminiscing about the first Inanimate. In reality it was a scripted take of us making fun of ourselves. David talked about how he was not David Neimkawitz (reminiscent of Leonard Nimoy’s book? Anybody?) and Aaron talked about how he loved playing the bartender to the point of obsession, when in reality he couldn’t stand the character.

So one of my lines was, “We got an idea to do a remake of When Inanimate Objects Attack. I mean, it’s all Hollywood ever does, so why not us?” This is essentially the same line of reasoning I was using to argue against making a new Inanimate. Delivering that line as I did in the interview was basically me waving the white flag, saying, “okay, I’m on board. Let’s do this and make it great.”

And it did turn out great. Inanimate is one of the truer parodies we’ve done. It’s basically a straight-up parody of When Animals Attack. As such, it’s immediately approachable by people who aren’t familiar with our other work. Since most jokes take place within one shot (that is, the person being “interviewed” is delivering the joke), it makes sense, it flows, and it’s pretty funny. Unfortunately, we found out later that Fox actually did a parody of their own show, putting out something similar to Inanimate. Still, ours was good, we like it—and it was first.

The Scarlet Ninja was our kung-fu movie parody. Everyone’s got one, and we do, too. Like the Inanimates, it’s a pretty straight parody, although it’s more of a genre pastiche than it is making fun of any particular kung-fu movie. The great thing about doing this was that we could overdub the voices. This meant the entire production got really sloppy. The script went back to being scribbled on two sides of a sheet of notebook paper. We didn’t try too hard to make the visuals match what we were saying. When we went back to overdub it, we ran out of time and finished a few weekends later, using Kathie to continue the dub of Evan’s voice when he couldn’t make it. That was just the icing on the cake.

Overall, I liked Scarlet Ninja. It was dumb, but it was fun—and it had the best ratio of movie length to time spent working on it. I think we did it in two afternoons, and it’s about 15 minutes long. From a production standpoint, it was ideal.

The downfall, so to speak, of the Scarlet Ninja was when we tried to show it to non-TTT fans. There was a mutual friend of ours in high school, who was a fan, but not actually associated with the TTT (there weren’t many of these people—but perhaps more than we thought), who saw Scarlet and thought it was hysterical. He convinced us to show it to a class we were all in. Now, I believe this class had seen some of our Humanity Piece Theater material—so they knew Dave and I made movies. They liked the goofy productions we did for the class, but when we showed them Scarlet, it fell flat. There might have been one person who laughed once. That was pretty much the moment when I said to myself that doing this stuff was fun—I’m definitely going to keep doing it—but I’m not going to go out of my way to show it to anyone. I have always been like this, of course, but the Scarlet Ninja incident served to remind me that we weren’t as funny as we thought we were.

If Inanimate: Special Edition and Scarlet Ninja were two of our truer parodies, then Fatal Killings was something entirely different. Fatal had some pretenses of being a parody of courtroom drama, and we threw in the running gag with Survivor, too. But it really wasn’t based on anything in particular. Despite it’s mish-mash nature of TTT inside jokes, strange characters, and utter lack of production quality—it’s still, to my mind, a very sophisticated production.

This will probably sound pretentious, but I’ll stand by it. To me, Fatal Killings is the thinking man’s sketch. There are a lot of things going on that you might not pick up the first time around. Since it’s not a direct parody of anything, it makes it difficult to jump into if it’s your first exposure with the TTT. But if you’re a fan, Fatal Killings shows us in some rare form that’s never been precisely duplicated elsewhere.

One gag I really like is Guy #2. On paper, this was the most hilarious thing ever. On screen it didn’t work so well, partially because Sean (as Guy #2) and Aaron (as Spencer Herbenstein) adlibbed a lot of their exchange, and so the original gag was lost in the shuffle. But basically, Guy #2 is a writer’s inside joke. It’s when the writer needs to explain some plot point, but doesn’t feel like working it into the story in a nice, plausible way, so they just bring in another guy for no other reason than the main character gets to talk to them about this plot point so the audience hears it, too. Dave explained in a much funnier way (if not slightly more esoteric) in one of his Antidotes to Anecdotes columns, Catcher in the Guy. Anyway, we have a Guy #2 who knows it—and the phrase “Guy #2″ has entered my lexicon as a general descriptor of this character. Look around: Guy #2’s are more common than you think.

Besides Guy #2, the jury is just sheer brilliance. I’m pretty sure this was Dave’s idea, but we all might have contributed to it. Basically, we made the jury work in the same way as Survivor: each recess, the jurors vote off another member, until the one who’s left decides the verdict. This is great because real juries have to reach a unanimous consensus to pass a “guilty” judgment. Well, here we have a unanimous consensus, too—unanimous because there’s only one person left. Naturally, that person is the most inept juror of all: Balaclava Man. And of course, the verdict consensus he reaches is not guilty, despite a huge mountain of evidence. It works on so many levels.

The jury itself was adlibbed. The original, typed draft of the script didn’t specify who the jurors were going to be. The judge had a statement where he explained the new jury situation, and as that’s happening, the jurors are walking in front of the camera. We set up a big pile of hats and props behind the camera, got in a line, and then grabbed one and adlibbed a character walking each time we went past the camera. Utilizing this method, we ended up with such classics as Balaclava Man, Angry Tie Man, Buchanan, Old Guy, Black Cape Man, and the Phantom of the Opera, among others. Some were inside jokes—and some became inside jokes at the precise moment they crossed the camera plane.

But my all-time favorite joke in Fatal Killings is our nonchalant explaining away of the fact that we were quite obviously just shooting in someone’s basement. Fatal was shot at Dave’s second house, opposed to Trek Wars or X-files which were shot at his first house. The basement of the first house was finished. It still looked like a house (rather than, say, a space ship), but a finished one. The basement at the new house was unfinished. It was basically a glorified storage room. Did we put any work into this to make it look like not a storage room? Did we do anything to it at all? Of course not.

So we’re having a trial in the basement of a house. In addition, we needed some place to keep Murray Ermer locked up because he was obviously a dangerous criminal. Our explanation for this was delivered by Graham, as Judge Stewart Blervner, in one brilliant block of exposition and non-apology for our lack of production value. Spencer walks up to him and, in the process, trips over a sign on the lawn.

“Oh, hello Spencer,” says the Judge. “That’s the new courthouse sign, ever since the courthouse burned down.”

“But this is your house.”

“Yeah, my wife’s not to happy about it.”

After Stewart gets chewed out by his perpetually off-screen wife, Spencer says, “I was told my client is here. Was I mistaken, or—”

“No, I’m afraid not. Ever since the jail burned down, we’ve used the tool shed around back. Come on, I’ll take you to him.”

The courthouse and jail burned down, hence the reason the trial is taking place in a generic suburban home. No apologies. No effort to present the viewer with anything more than what we had. Just beautiful, sweet, exposition, a basement, and a tool shead. We were at the top of our game—and yet, we were about to go higher. And this time, we would modify that basement.

[To be continued on Wednesday…]