Photo: Adult Swim
Meeting Chris Monsanto
And Brett, and Susie, and director Jason Woliner: all this and more about Dave and Tara's visit to the set of Eagleheart!
I think this is the very first time I ever covered something that was under embargo, but: way back in June, my esteemed colleague David T. Cole and I were invited to a press day for the third season of Eagleheart. As you may not know BUT SHOULD, Eagleheart stars Chris Elliott as Chris Monsanto, a U.S. marshal who has a lot more in common with Walker, Texas Ranger than with, let's say, Raylan Givens. If the involvement of Elliott — the absurdist-humour savant behind Get A Life and Cabin Boy — doesn't tip you to the show's delightful weirdness, you should know that it's produced by Conan O'Brien's Conaco, and co-created by former Late Night writers Michael Koman and Andrew Weinberg, and directed by Jason Woliner, who's known to comedy nerds as the fourth member of Human Giant (along with Aziz Ansari, Rob Huebel, and Paul Scheer).
We got to chat a little with Woliner, and watch the shooting of a typically surreal scene (no spoilers, but...it featured a character's disembodied head on a camping trip) (and the head talked), but the most fun part of the day was when we got to interview members of the cast. I could explain how this third season of Eagleheart is different from the first two, but they can do it much better than I.
First up, we talked to Elliott and co-star Maria "Susie" Thayer (who, though I don't include it, prefaced virtually all her answers by giggling; they were very cute together).
Who's Who
Hi, I'm Chris Elliott.
Hello, I am Maria Thayer.
Hi, I'm Brett Gelman.
Hello, I'm Previously.TV West Coast Editor Tara Ariano.
Hey, I'm David T. Cole, a guy.
Our Interview with Chris Elliott and Maria Thayer
How has it been different to shoot this big continuing storyline versus one-offs?
It's been pretty challenging, because we're still shooting kind of on the same schedule that we shot Season 1 and 2, where we, in one day, can shoot scenes from three or four different episodes, and it's really hard to keep track of what you're feeling in a particular scene, because you may not have done the scene before, from that show. So it's a little bit more challenging, I think, in that sense. But it's also really a lot more fun for me, because we're sort of developing the characters: instead of this really short amount of time, we're letting it breathe a little more. How I feel Maria's character interacts with mine — it won't be starting over in the next episode.
Our episodes sort of have an inner logic, but they don't totally make sense, so you could just have an episode and then just forget about it, and you're on to a new thing. There's still that craziness, but now it's all interconnected, so I think more than past seasons, I had to ask the director or the writers what was happening.
You do hear that a lot from Maria on the set. "What's happening?"
Like I didn't know what the starfish were, on the set the other day.
Okay. Tantalizing.
I still don't know, so I'm not going to spoil anything.
There have been scenes where I've walked out and I've played a scene light-heartedly and realized, "Oh, I was supposed to be depressed."
Are there a lot of rewrites that happen between when you get the script and when you're on the set, or are they pretty well locked?
We've done some, but we can't improvise a lot, because there isn't a lot of time. That stuff just doesn't make it in, because you have to stick to story when you're telling it this tightly, but there's been some rewriting, depending on casting and so forth, as we've been going along.
I got a new scene today.
I told them we need to get more scenes for you. You just don't have enough this season.
That's so generous!
It's also, she's trying to make a plane, and I want her to miss it. It's been really fun working with her this season.
Yeah, it's been super-fun.
Because we have a lot more scenes together, and Maria is really, really funny, and I think she makes me a better person.
[Chris and Maria: laughing; raspberry noise]
It's a different dynamic than working with another guy. It's like, Maria — I mean, Maria is basically a guy.
Thank you. Thank you.
Her approach is different.
Susie has historically been one of the most abused characters on the show—
Oh, that's not going to change. I mean, a little bit.
It's changing a little bit. I mean, I get a little abused toward the end.
But not necessarily by me — by other women.
Right, right. I'm looking for that one person.
You don't turn into some kind of werewolf monster like Susie did last season.
No. That's the only way I got respect last season!
I know, that's what everybody brings up: they liked you when you were a boy!
It was kind of a boy and kind of something even more grotesque. How is it different for you to go on hiatus and work on shows like New Girl and Cougar Town that are more conventional?
I didn't know you did a Cougar Town!
She did a bunch!
I did an arc on it!
You did an arc? Wow!
You missed that?
As the younger woman? That's a show about older women, right?
I guess I'm not a cougar. I'm dating—
You're dating one?
I'm not dating a cougar. I'm dating an older gentleman.
Oh. Okay.
But that was another kind of boyish character, too.
It was. I played a tomboy on it. I had a little hat, like a little baseball hat. It was a lot like Little Dude.
I'm sorry I missed it.
You didn't get my email blast?
I hardly ever miss that show, too. And New Girl, you did a New Girl?
Stop it! You got me in trouble.
This breakdown describes a ghastly murder.
What?
Is this as ghastly as previous murders that we've seen?
I think this one is probably over the top.
Wait, what's the question? What's happening?
"What's happening." We're being interviewed. This is not part of the show. This is not a scene.
But I don't remember a murder!
Sorry, not a murder — a death. I misspoke.
There is a ghastly death.
There's a lot of ghastly dying!
Yes, but there's one that sets us off on a journey, right at the top.
Ohhhhhh, yes. Yes.
I feel like the bar for ghastliness has already been set quite high by the previous two seasons.
Yeah.
I think it goes a little higher.
Whoa.
I get more bloody this season. It's exciting for me. Oh, I love it so much.
You do, yeah, yeah. This was the first time you got totally blasted.
I got blasted, yeah, which is like when the cannon blows blood — but I was mad because Jason said, when he was talking to the—
Oh no, oh no, I told him to do that.
You did?
Yeah, because it was really tough on me.
Why? You did?! I'm so mad at you!
I didn't want you to hear that; I knew you would be pissed.
Are you kidding me?! This is what happened.
It's high-pressure blast spray. It was really powerful—
Okay, so you have to sit there, and you have to look into it and scream, right? And so Chris did it, and I've seen him do it a couple of times, I'm really excited, finally I get to do it.
I can't believe we're going to talk about this.
I can't believe it was your fault! So then I'm sitting there waiting to get blasted, and Jason comes over and tells the special effects guy, "Can you just take it down a couple of notches?"
I told him just before you went.
"Just soften it a little bit?" And I felt mad, because I was like, "I can totally take this!"
You weren't supposed to hear him do that, a.
It was right in front of me, a. B. is that was none of your business!
Maria, I'm sorry! But it was really hard! It almost knocked my teeth out!
It got under my contacts.
OH GOD.
Okay, so am I wrong?
No, you were wrong, because I wish I'd taken it.
By the way, I didn't say two notches. I said, you know—
You were just like, "Like a girl."
"Set it to 'Girl'"?
Yeah, "Set it to 'Girl.'"
Fuck you! I was looking out for you! And also I didn't want to have to stop because you got screwed up. It was for me, I wanted to get out of there early.
You were robbed of your rite of passage.
Exactly.
Okay, let's get back in there, turn it up. Blast away, as far as I'm concerned. Knock your block off.
How do the logistics of that work? Do they just have seventeen changes of clothes for you?
We just do it once.
We try to do it as the last shot.
But you have to have your mouth open....
Is it sweet? Syrupy?
It tastes like cherry, doesn't it?
This year it's sweet, for some reason. I think because Maria's doing it more and they thought, "Well, for girls, we should make it sweet."
Normally it tastes like Tabasco sauce.
Right — no, like spitting tobacco! And I said that to Jason. "We got her the sweet stuff, right?"
What is the most formative TV show of your life?
Wow.
And you don't even have to explain yourself, to take the pressure off.
You can if you want, but you're not required to.
I would say Late Night With David Letterman, but—
That's mine.
Well, I worked on the fucking thing, before you were born, honey.
I can still like it! It can be formative!
That's when I started, and that sort of formed my sense of humour.
And that's yours too, Maria?
Well, you told me Cougar Town.
What's your favourite show?
Of all time? Medical Center. Chad Everett.
That's mine too!
Our Interview with Brett Gelman
It's just one long storyline this season, which is a big departure. How would you describe the show for people that are just jumping in, if they're starting with Season 3?
I go missing, so it's a little bit of a search for me. So that is an arc to the show, which is really cool. I'm kind of like the Spock or the Locke this season, which I'm very excited about. I love that I'm kind of like God, I have this an ever-pressing presence. And Paz De La Huerta plays my sister.
...Is that true?!
Yes! She does a few episodes.
Please tell her to join Twitter! Someone had a fake Twitter account of her and it was the funniest thing ever, but if she were really on Twitter, it would be amazing.
It's pretty incredible that she's doing some episodes. Yeah, she's the perfect Brett Mobley sister.
Of course! Yes, I can imagine her having sprung from a bezoar at some point.
We've got Jack [Wallace] back as the Chief, and he's an amazing actor. I'm really excited about this season, and coming back to Camp Crazy.
This description of the season that we were handed promises "a ghastly death," and I asked this of Chris and Maria as well: how do you top all the ghastly deaths that have already happened?
You top them. You top them.
That's a promise?
I'm sure it'll at least equal it. You can't tell until you see it. There's definitely a lot of violence in this show, so it should be really fun.
I feel like that has to be one of the most challenging things: how do you find new ways to crack the hideous egg?
I feel like this show is the heir to the cartoons I used to watch when I was a kid, before they started cutting them for content.
This show, to me, has a real sense of history to it. I think that Jason and Michael and Andrew, they really draw from a long, long line — that even predates them and their own births — for influences. That's just what great writers they are, and one of the reasons it's so great to be a part of the show. I also don't think that you'd be able to get Chris to be on a show for this long had that not been the case, because he has more integrity than anyone I've ever known. Maybe too much! [laughs]
Do you find that guest stars come having seen the show and knowing what they're getting into?
I think some people have not, and some people have. I know Pat Healy, who's guest-starring, is a fan of the show, but there's so much to watch now, you don't know what people have seen. There's tons of amazing shows that I haven't gotten a chance to see yet.
What do you feel are the biggest gaps in your TV knowledge at the moment?
I'd like to watch Justified.
It's good.
I'm way behind on Mad Men. I mean, I'm three seasons in, but I need to massively catch up. And I need to get caught up on Sherlock. I love that show. I saw the first season and I haven't had a chance to watch the second season. I'm IN Arrested Development, but I need to finish watching all of that.
Eagleheart and Justified are about as different as two shows about the Marshals Service can be.
Well, we're not really marshals. We're idiots. We're crime-fighters. I don't think we do what marshals actually do. I think marshals, what they do is like what Tommy Lee Jones did in The Fugitive. They're definitely not going to hobo planets and things like that. Oh, I've got to get caught up on Homeland.
Hmmmm.
No comment.
Not a fan?
No, no: Season 1 is great. Season 2 gets weird. Not Eagleheart weird, but weird.
It shows its 24.
Right.
With the single storyline in Eagleheart Season 3, is there a sense that you're building upon memes and jokes throughout the season that you didn't really had an opportunity to do before?
I feel that it's more of a cinematic accomplishment. It's putting these guys in something that they have to deal with and see through. You don't just hit the reset button after each episode — not that I had a problem with that either. I think that's its own great thing.
It's more of a live-action cartoon that way.
Yeah. I mean, this is definitely cartoonish. And there's definitely a lot of things that are presented that are completely insane.
But it has continuity now.
It does, yeah. It does. As much as it can have.
In the elastic reality.
Exactly. And I think there's probably more stakes now, because that builds.
I think they want us to wrap it up, so we'll close out with our last three questions: what is the most formative TV show of your life?
Wow. It's a toss-up. Like what's my favourite one?
No, that's the next one.
Or what was like, whoa, what really shaped my sensibility?
Yes, that — most influential.
I guess, I wasn't even born yet, but watching the original cast of Saturday Night Live really shaped how I thought about comedy. In a lot of ways, that show was different than everything else that shaped what I thought about comedy: the earliest things that changed my life were the Marx Brothers and Mel Brooks, which are a lot more tightly written. But I definitely think that original SNL cast, that energy, it really shaped what I'm about. And then, I would say The Simpsons from Season 3 to Season 10.
Correct.
That was a really good qualifier.
And Seinfeld. I think that those are my two favourite shows. But when I first saw Mr. Show, when I moved to New York in 1999, a couple of comedy nerds had every episode on one videotape, and they would loan them out to people or make copies for people, and I was like, "Oh my God." I had never really seen anything like that. But you look at Seinfeld and you see it's really the most insane accomplishment in American television — the fact that it was on the air, and it was as huge as it was.
Favourite TV character?
That's hard. Like right now?
Sure.
It's a toss-up between Homer Simpson, George Costanza, Big Hank — you know, Jeffrey Tambor — or Heathcliff Huxtable. Oh: and Basil Fawlty!