“Philadelphia:” Freedom to shock
Herewith, the transcript of the interview with Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton, Kaitlin Olson and Danny DeVito of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” (another snippet appears here).
Q: When writing scripts, do you have Danny say “whore” as often as possible because…
Kaitlin: It sounds funny. Yes.
Danny: It’s also in my contract that I have a certain amount of “whores” to say.
Rob: He pronounces it with the “W.” Most people do not.
Glenn: But to answer your question, yes, and then Danny sprinkles a few of them in there himself. I think he enjoys saying it.
Rob: Even when the scene doesn’t call for it at all.
Q: (To Danny) In the first four episodes, you’re doing a lot of drooling and sweating.
Danny: They put me through my paces there. We shoot in very cramped quarters and I get very emotional. It cranks the old ticker up there.
Rob: We found that when we crank the temperature up to 102 degrees, this guy comes alive.
Danny: It’s a myth that only cold is funny. (Being) uncomfortable forces you into a spot where you’re sexually active all the time and you’re funny. You also have a chafing problem.
Glenn: A lot of talcum powder.
Danny: Naw, I use dirt.
Q: Is it hard to top yourselves in terms of outrageous behavior?
Danny: I’m not writing the shows – they’re writing the shows – so I’ll answer that question. When I say, we’ve got to pull out all the stops, I get scripts that are so f@ckin’ far out. I don’t think it’s more difficult for them. They don’t act like it. They bitch and moan constantly, but I think it’s second-nature for them to come up with these sleazy, scummy, lowlife views on the human race.
Rob: Ultimately, we’re not looking to push any boundaries, it’s just that inevitably, what we end up finding funny ends up being kind of out there. It starts out as a regular joke …
Danny: It is a fun genre, you must admit.
Glenn: We also don’t want to do what everyone else is doing on TV. You watch most of the shows on CBS …
Rob: But it’s not like we don’t want to do what everyone else is doing; it’s that we don’t find what everyone else is doing funny. If everybody else was funny, I’d have no problem doing what they were doing. But we don’t find it funny. It’s excruciating, played out.
Danny: There is something to be said for uniqueness. You don’t take the easy way out. The characters think they’re taking the easy road. But as writers, you always push yourselves into corners and work yourselves out. You’re in an era where you have to come across with the goods or get the f@ck outta town.
(Danny leaves to catch a plane.)
Q: blah blah blah about the online episode in which the gang believe Mac is a serial killer based on no evidence whatsoever.
Rob: I’ve heard some criticism of that episode – it didn’t make any sense that the characters thought that their friend could be a serial killer. To me, whoever thinks that doesn’t understand the show, because that’s the nature of the show. You’re never gonna see that on ‘Friends,’ because on ‘Friends’ it doesn’t make any fucking sense. But in this world, without any shred of evidence, they could instantly assume the worse.
Glenn: Of their best friends.
Kaitlin: It’s fun for them, because everyone had some selfish reason to think that.
Q: The characters are perfectly comfortable with the fact that they are absolutely venal and will sacrifice one another at the drop of a hat.
Glenn: I think our characters have extremely short-term memories, episode to episode, which is fun to use. They genuinely have absolutely no idea.
Kaitlin: We’re too busy thinking about ourselves to remember stuff. Any stuff.
Glenn: We’re onto the next thing. We like to think of it as living in the moment.
Kaitlin: Yeah, it’s really spiritual.
Rob: So many sitcoms that have been really great have come from a place where the characters have to be nice and likable an you have to understand their motivations all the time. And we want to do something different; that’s been done.
Q: Any protests from Philadelphia’s inbred families? (referring to the McPoyles, the gang’s avowed enemies)
Kaitlin: (laughs) You mean, like in letter form? They don’t know how to write.
Glenn: Maybe in the form of feces flung.
Kaitlin: However they’re expressing it to us, it’s not getting to us.
Glenn: They haven’t figured out how to communicate through – what’s the word? – language?
Q: (to Howerton) What’s it like, making out with a McPoyle?
Glenn: It was a little uncomfortable. But it worked, it was supposed to be uncomfortable.
Kaitlin: What made him comfortable was he got to be only in his underwear in that scene and that always relaxes him.
Glenn: And also to be covered in glycerin. If I’m wet and shirtless.
Rob: In a bathroom that was a set and not a bathroom, and not a lot of people knew that, so people would still go in there and piss. I did.
Kaitlin: Really?
Rob: One time. So it smelled like piss.
Q: While watching the second episode with the entire McPoyle clan, I wondered what could be weirder? And then I decided that if they had their own family variety hour …
Rob: There’s a spinoff.
Q: … like ‘The Carol Burnett Show,’ where they laugh at their own jokes. So then I wondered, what would they laugh at?
Glenn: What would the McPoyles laugh at?
Rob: Wow.
Q: It’s a brain-teaser, I know.
Glenn: I imagine the McPoyles love to take magnifying glasses and burn …
Kaitlin: Each other?
Glenn: … ants. And heating up their milk.
Kaitlin: Seeing if it will curdle?
Glenn: And laughing hysterically the whole time.
Kaitlin: Just at the sun.
Glenn: Staring into the sun, seeing who can get blind first and finding that extremely funny.
Rob: Group self-circumcision, something that most people might take very seriously, they would be very amused by themselves.
Q: Do you have debates on which character is the worst? Would that be a point of pride?
Rob: I don’t think so.
Kaitlin: I don’t think any of them think of themselves as bad.
Q: They don’t, but do you?
Kaitlin: I don’t think of them as bad, I think of them as retarded.
Rob: Sad…
Kaitlin: Sad, and insecure and self-serving.
Glenn: They’ve very insecure.
Rob: Really just pathetic. I kind of feel sorry for them.
Kaitlin: I want to hug all of them and bring them over for dinner.
Rob: But they would just ruin your life.
Glenn: Someone might recognize these characters and feel sorry for them and really genuinely try to help them and then they’d just ruin their lives.
Q: blah blah blah tightly plotted but feels loose and improvisatory blah blah blah
Rob: We spend a lot, a lot of time crafting those episodes. Then, after we figured out all of the storylines and how they weave together and how they tie in together and spend them work from a story standpoint, then we can allow ourselves the freedom of doing whatever we want within a scene. But it takes a lot of work to get there.
Glenn: At that point, we’re so clear as to what our characters’ motivations are that we’re able to play within that scenario as much as we want. We know what the boundaries are.
Q: It’s not hard, then, to make it look off-handed?
Glenn: That’s the only way we know how to act. That’s not entirely true. But one of the things that makes comedy funny is the element of surprise. If you feel you know what’s coming, it’s not really going to be that funny. So any actor’s job is to make it seem like it’s acting for the first time, because if you feel like the person performing it doesn’t know what’s happening, then you’re going to feel like you don’t know what’s going to happen. And if anything feels too ba-dum-bump scripted, you get comfortable and sit back and watch people weave through the dialogue. But if you feel that the characters are on a razor’s edge, that the actors don’t know even what the f@ck’s going to come out each other’s mouths, it has an affect on you. So that is something we strive for and that’s one of the reasons we ad-lib a lot. We want to keep it surprising and fresh.
Q: Will the $150 pilot ever be seen? (FX bought the show based on a pilot McElhenney produced for $150.)
Rob: It’s on the DVD, scenes from it.
Kaitlin: It’s got a good shot of Rob’s crotch.
Rob: Yeah!
Kaitlin: Real good shot.
Rob: You can see my testicles …
Kaitlin: Ballsack …
Rob: … and the outline of my penis. If you look real hard.
Kaitlin: Pause it! And you will. You’ll need one of those McPoyle magnifying glasses.
Q: blah blah blah on premiering in competition with the networks’ new fall lineups blah blah
Rob: Bring’em on! F@ck it!
Kaitlin: It’s the only way to do it. We’re either going to make it or not but showing it at a time when nobody’s watching TV isn’t doing anything.
Glenn: I feel we’re just as funny if not funnier than any TV show out there, so why not compete against them? Bring ’em on.
Kaitlin: What bring ’em on? We’re not mad at ’em.
Glenn: No, I want to have sex with them.
Q: Which ones?
Glenn: “ER,” All the McDreamys and McSteamys.
Kaitlin: All the fat guys with their hot wives.
Glenn: I guess “ER’s” our competition – what else?
Q: “Without a Trace” ...
Glenn: “Without an Audience!” (high-fives Rob)
Q: And a new thing on ABC, “Big Shots.”
Rob: Dylan McDermott. I love Dylan McDermott.
Kaitlin: He’s so dreamy.
Rob: We’re the only comedy.
Kaitlin: I’m going to watch that show. I also hope that “Pushing Daisies” is good.
Glenn: I went to school with Lee (Pace, of “Pushing Daisies”). Have you interviewed him?
Q: No.
Glenn: If you do, tell him I say hello.
Kaitlin: Tell him I said hello, too. He’s never met me, but I’ll think he’ll like that.
- “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” 10 and 10:30 tonight, repeating at 11 and 11:30 tonight; also midnight Sunday and 11 p.m. Monday, FX.
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David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place.
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