It would be hard to find someone who has created as many iconic film roles as Michael McKean. In his first major job, Laverne & Shirley, he created the wacky sexual harasser Lenny Kosnowski, then after that there is David St. Hubbins, one third of Spinal Tap, the rockingest rock band to ever rock and his many characters hes created as part of Christopher Guests improvised films. Their latest film, A Mighty Wind, garnered McKean and his wife, actor Annette O'Toole, an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song for their touching love ballad A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow.
I recently got a chance to talk with McKean in Manhattan while he was promoting his new cartoon show on the Independent Film Channel, Hopeless Pictures. That show was created by another Christopher Guest regular, Bob Balaban, it spoofs the hollow, narcissistic existence of a neurotic studio head named Mel Wax.
Hopeless Pictures airs on Fridays at 10 pm
Daniel Robert Epstein: Since were doing this interview at The Regency Hotel, I thought I would take this chance to ask you about the cabaret nights you did at Feinstein's with your wife. Did that come about because of the Academy Award nomination?
Michael McKean: Yeah, sort of. Annette and I sing together all the time and we got an invitation to appear at a Planned Parenthood rally at The Beacon Theater in New York. Annettes daughter Nell, whos 21, happened to be in town so she sang with us at this rally. We sang Kiss at the End of the Rainbow and another song called Hey Boys. The next day we got an offer from Feinsteins and we thought that was odd, but wanted to give it a shot. So we actually did it and we had a nice time. But its a little expensive for people to go there so we would rather play places like Joes Pub, where our friends can actually afford to get in.
DRE: So with Hopeless Pictures, had you wanted to do a cartoon or is it just something that Bob [Balaban] brought to you?
MM: The first run at this was about three years ago. I had worked with Bob in a number of capacities and he was always looking for just the right venue to do some satire on Hollywood. Bob has Hollywood in his blood, his father was a movie producer and his family had an actual chain of theaters in Vaudeville days. The first pass was actually pretty funny but I think he needed to find a home and IFC is exactly the right place. He doesnt have to worry about censorship and everything can be as tough as he wants but because Bob is a warmhearted guy, theres some actual affection in this. They are not just two-dimensional idiots. My character, Mel Wax, has two sides. One is just as venal as anyone in town when hes looking for his tentpole movie but he also fancies himself a storyteller who wants to make small pictures that mean something to people. I think hes still in love with his ex-wife, but he cant help it when someone is attractive. Hes an interesting conflicted guy.
DRE: And he has a giant head.
MM: Yes an enormous head.
DRE: You have some amazing actors and improvisers doing the voices such as Jennifer Coolidge, Jonathan Katz, Lisa Kudrow and Bob himself. Is the show improvised in the voice booth?
MM: We began by doing nothing but improvisation. Just a few suggestions from Bob about story and what the scene is about. I actually let Jonathan Katz actually analyze me for those scenes.
DRE: He had already done it for many years.
MM: Hes Americas favorite animated shrink. So that stuff is the easiest thing in the world. Of course when you get everybody into the scenes when people start pitching, then it becomes more competitive. It becomes each character trying to one up each other with idiotic ideas for movies so that becomes that game. But we started out just doing all improvisation and then Bob wrote some scenes that were more or less connective tissue between the improvised stuff.
DRE: You and Christopher Guest did a great Hollywood satire from the directors point of view with The Big Picture [released in 1989]. Did that lead into this for you?
MM: Possibly. In The Big Picture we had J.T. Walsh play the studio head and I miss that man everyday. He was one of the best actors we had. Amazingly funny guy. He didnt do many comedies where he had a big role. He was always useful and he was always funny when he was supposed to be. But I think his studio executive was probably the greatest we will ever see because hes the devil. Mel Wax is not the devil. Mel Wax does not have the mental equipment to be the devil and, like I said, hes conflicted. He actually has this part of him that wants to make good stuff.
DRE: When did you finally see a drawing of Mel Wax?
MM: Not until we had a lot of stuff in the can but it wasnt submitted for our approval or anything.
DRE: Where did you study improvisation?
MM: I went to Carnegie Mellon for one year and I went to NYU for two years. At NYU I did improvisation games with a guy named Omar Shapli, who had been a member of the original Compass Players, which branched off into Second City. Our class was pretty strong in improvisation and we did play some clubs as Section 10. Then in LA, I worked with the Credibility Gap, which was Harry Shearer, David Lander, and Richard Beebe and myself. But we didnt do any improvising at all. Everything was scripted and written, but we would rip and rave. We would look at news stories that morning and we would write sketches and have the sketch on the radio two hours after the event happened. Then after the radio years we were working live in clubs. For example, the day Nixon resigned, we had a great Nixon resignation sketch ready to go that night so it was really fun and edgy stuff, but not improvised. Then, in 1975, I started working in TV and later came Spinal Tap which was all improvised as well. Thats where we kind of boiled down that kind of technique.
DRE: Can you improvise anywhere at anytime? If Bob Balaban came in here and said something could you riff off that?
MM: Yeah but it wouldnt be very useful. The idea is to get something that you can make work. If you improvised for a couple of minutes, then it could be brilliant, but it might be totally useless in what youre doing. Chris [Guest] shoots between 50 and 100 hours on his films. Then, its like the old joke, how do you make an elephant out of a bar of soap? You just take a bar of soap and you carve away everything that doesnt look like an elephant. So he does that until he gets a 90 minute elephant, and thats probably the hardest job that anybody has in his films. So improvising is not difficult. The two of us are doing it right now. But to have something useful as a piece of a coherent whole, whether its an episode of Hopeless Pictures or a 90 minute film that Christopher Guest is directing.
DRE: Whats your role in the new Christopher Guest film, For Your Consideration?
MM: Bob Balaban and I are are partners, not lovers this time. We are a pair of very academic and again, as often happens in Chriss films, we fall into a pot of jam and rather than enjoying a fine breakfast, we slowly drown.
DRE: Any chance of another Spinal Tap tour?
MM: If we could figure out any way to make money doing it because we never have. But actually, last time we played we did ok. But we like it when Jack Black calls us up and says, Do you want to do a gig with Tenacious D for charity? Well do stuff like that but I dont see us designing another tour. For one thing, its a very selective audience but boy whenever we show up, they do too. We pretend to be rock stars and they pretend to like us. So its a perfect relationship.
DRE: But if you did, would the Folksmen open?
MM: That does wear you out especially with Chris with the bald cap. Plus Harrys character has to dress in drag because hes a woman now.
DRE: You would keep that close to the characters?
MM: Absolutely, the Folksmen are now two males and a female.
The other thing is that were all busy doing other things. We were asked to do some CBGB benefits, which we would have jumped at that but were all kind of involved in other stuff.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
I recently got a chance to talk with McKean in Manhattan while he was promoting his new cartoon show on the Independent Film Channel, Hopeless Pictures. That show was created by another Christopher Guest regular, Bob Balaban, it spoofs the hollow, narcissistic existence of a neurotic studio head named Mel Wax.
Hopeless Pictures airs on Fridays at 10 pm
Daniel Robert Epstein: Since were doing this interview at The Regency Hotel, I thought I would take this chance to ask you about the cabaret nights you did at Feinstein's with your wife. Did that come about because of the Academy Award nomination?
Michael McKean: Yeah, sort of. Annette and I sing together all the time and we got an invitation to appear at a Planned Parenthood rally at The Beacon Theater in New York. Annettes daughter Nell, whos 21, happened to be in town so she sang with us at this rally. We sang Kiss at the End of the Rainbow and another song called Hey Boys. The next day we got an offer from Feinsteins and we thought that was odd, but wanted to give it a shot. So we actually did it and we had a nice time. But its a little expensive for people to go there so we would rather play places like Joes Pub, where our friends can actually afford to get in.
DRE: So with Hopeless Pictures, had you wanted to do a cartoon or is it just something that Bob [Balaban] brought to you?
MM: The first run at this was about three years ago. I had worked with Bob in a number of capacities and he was always looking for just the right venue to do some satire on Hollywood. Bob has Hollywood in his blood, his father was a movie producer and his family had an actual chain of theaters in Vaudeville days. The first pass was actually pretty funny but I think he needed to find a home and IFC is exactly the right place. He doesnt have to worry about censorship and everything can be as tough as he wants but because Bob is a warmhearted guy, theres some actual affection in this. They are not just two-dimensional idiots. My character, Mel Wax, has two sides. One is just as venal as anyone in town when hes looking for his tentpole movie but he also fancies himself a storyteller who wants to make small pictures that mean something to people. I think hes still in love with his ex-wife, but he cant help it when someone is attractive. Hes an interesting conflicted guy.
DRE: And he has a giant head.
MM: Yes an enormous head.
DRE: You have some amazing actors and improvisers doing the voices such as Jennifer Coolidge, Jonathan Katz, Lisa Kudrow and Bob himself. Is the show improvised in the voice booth?
MM: We began by doing nothing but improvisation. Just a few suggestions from Bob about story and what the scene is about. I actually let Jonathan Katz actually analyze me for those scenes.
DRE: He had already done it for many years.
MM: Hes Americas favorite animated shrink. So that stuff is the easiest thing in the world. Of course when you get everybody into the scenes when people start pitching, then it becomes more competitive. It becomes each character trying to one up each other with idiotic ideas for movies so that becomes that game. But we started out just doing all improvisation and then Bob wrote some scenes that were more or less connective tissue between the improvised stuff.
DRE: You and Christopher Guest did a great Hollywood satire from the directors point of view with The Big Picture [released in 1989]. Did that lead into this for you?
MM: Possibly. In The Big Picture we had J.T. Walsh play the studio head and I miss that man everyday. He was one of the best actors we had. Amazingly funny guy. He didnt do many comedies where he had a big role. He was always useful and he was always funny when he was supposed to be. But I think his studio executive was probably the greatest we will ever see because hes the devil. Mel Wax is not the devil. Mel Wax does not have the mental equipment to be the devil and, like I said, hes conflicted. He actually has this part of him that wants to make good stuff.
DRE: When did you finally see a drawing of Mel Wax?
MM: Not until we had a lot of stuff in the can but it wasnt submitted for our approval or anything.
DRE: Where did you study improvisation?
MM: I went to Carnegie Mellon for one year and I went to NYU for two years. At NYU I did improvisation games with a guy named Omar Shapli, who had been a member of the original Compass Players, which branched off into Second City. Our class was pretty strong in improvisation and we did play some clubs as Section 10. Then in LA, I worked with the Credibility Gap, which was Harry Shearer, David Lander, and Richard Beebe and myself. But we didnt do any improvising at all. Everything was scripted and written, but we would rip and rave. We would look at news stories that morning and we would write sketches and have the sketch on the radio two hours after the event happened. Then after the radio years we were working live in clubs. For example, the day Nixon resigned, we had a great Nixon resignation sketch ready to go that night so it was really fun and edgy stuff, but not improvised. Then, in 1975, I started working in TV and later came Spinal Tap which was all improvised as well. Thats where we kind of boiled down that kind of technique.
DRE: Can you improvise anywhere at anytime? If Bob Balaban came in here and said something could you riff off that?
MM: Yeah but it wouldnt be very useful. The idea is to get something that you can make work. If you improvised for a couple of minutes, then it could be brilliant, but it might be totally useless in what youre doing. Chris [Guest] shoots between 50 and 100 hours on his films. Then, its like the old joke, how do you make an elephant out of a bar of soap? You just take a bar of soap and you carve away everything that doesnt look like an elephant. So he does that until he gets a 90 minute elephant, and thats probably the hardest job that anybody has in his films. So improvising is not difficult. The two of us are doing it right now. But to have something useful as a piece of a coherent whole, whether its an episode of Hopeless Pictures or a 90 minute film that Christopher Guest is directing.
DRE: Whats your role in the new Christopher Guest film, For Your Consideration?
MM: Bob Balaban and I are are partners, not lovers this time. We are a pair of very academic and again, as often happens in Chriss films, we fall into a pot of jam and rather than enjoying a fine breakfast, we slowly drown.
DRE: Any chance of another Spinal Tap tour?
MM: If we could figure out any way to make money doing it because we never have. But actually, last time we played we did ok. But we like it when Jack Black calls us up and says, Do you want to do a gig with Tenacious D for charity? Well do stuff like that but I dont see us designing another tour. For one thing, its a very selective audience but boy whenever we show up, they do too. We pretend to be rock stars and they pretend to like us. So its a perfect relationship.
DRE: But if you did, would the Folksmen open?
MM: That does wear you out especially with Chris with the bald cap. Plus Harrys character has to dress in drag because hes a woman now.
DRE: You would keep that close to the characters?
MM: Absolutely, the Folksmen are now two males and a female.
The other thing is that were all busy doing other things. We were asked to do some CBGB benefits, which we would have jumped at that but were all kind of involved in other stuff.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
courtneyriot:
It would be hard to find someone who has created as many iconic film roles as Michael McKean. In his first major job, Laverne & Shirley, he created the wacky sexual harasser Lenny Kosnowski, then after that there is David St. Hubbins, one third of Spinal Tap, the rockingest rock band to ever rock...
googused:
I think if I had a chance to switch lives with anyone it would be Michael McKean. It would be great to be that funny and clever AND get to bone Annette O'Toole!