Eric Wareheim and Tim Heidecker shook up the world of Adult Swim with their divisive animated series Tom Goes to the Mayor. With the simple premise of a small town man, Tom [played by Heidecker], every week coming up with a new idea which he presents to the towns mayor [played by Wareheim] who twists it into something awful. Tom Goes to the Mayor is chock full of insane humor and guests stars like Jack Black and Sarah Silverman. The shows cult popularity has led to Tim and Erics new Adult Swim show Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! While it appears Tom Goes to the Mayor will not have any new episodes all the previous shows are now collected into one DVD.
Buy the complete series DVD of Tom Goes to the Mayor
Daniel Robert Epstein: Where are you guys today?
Eric Wareheim: Im in Los Angeles, but Tims in Florida right now.
Tim Heidecker: Im in Florida sitting next to my mom.
DRE: How is she doing?
Tim: Shes driving.
DRE: Is that good?
Tim: Yeah, shes a good driver.
DRE: Hows the tour going?
Eric: It was great. We had a grand finale show on Tuesday in Los Angeles, so were officially on vacation for a couple of days.
DRE: Did you guys shoot all your episodes of Awesome Show?
Eric: We finished ten and those are airing now. In about a month were going back to record about 30 more.
DRE: Oh wow.
Eric: Yeah, they picked up a really big order about a month ago. They are really into the show.
DRE: Is it a different experience than Tom [Goes to the Mayor]?
Eric: Absolutely.
Tim: Yes, much different. We dont have to stick to any type of story or plot, and we can do exactly what we want to do right now. Its pretty freeing. All that matters is if it makes us laugh a lot.
DRE: Is Tom Goes to the Mayor officially done?
Tim: Yeah, were not working on it anymore. Its something that if we ever want to do it again, there will be an opportunity. If the Tom DVD sells really well, there will be demand for more and well make more of it. But right now were just having a lot of fun making the Awesome Show.
DRE: In the beginning of Tom you guys did all the animation, right?
Eric: Yeah, when we lived back on the East Coast in Philadelphia, Tim and I did two shorts and we did all the voices, all the animation, all the photography, everything. But when we came out to Los Angeles to do the first episode, we hired a whole crew of editors and artists and all that stuff.
Tim: It wasnt because we wanted to do it all; it was because we had to. There was no one else around.
DRE: Did the idea for Tom come from finding out about this animation process or did you come up with the story first?
Tim: Originally we wanted to do a little short film without it being a film. So we had the idea about these two characters who always had to deal with each other and then we found an animation style that worked with it. So it was probably the idea first.
Eric: The visual look came accidentally as we were trying different styles and different techniques out. That was all we could afford to do.
Tim: Yeah, it was also built on the limits of our artistic ability. If you look at the first one, the drawing is very much based on the fact that Eric and I cant draw. It is very much cut and paste so it could draw your attention.
Eric: That is what I think the network liked about it. It wasnt about how it looked, it was about the dialogue and being forced to sit and look at the dumb facial expressions for way too long. Theres a different type of comedy that came out of doing that.
DRE: Did you guys have to hold those stupid expressions on your face or did you do your thing and capture it later?
Tim: It was all the editing. It was all about how long you plan to stay on something and the decisions you make afterwards.
Eric: Sometimes you can make a joke a lot funnier by putting a happy face on Tom while he is talking about his sons not being away or something like that. Its a real contrast of just being ridiculous.
DRE: You guys are probably big comedy fans from way back. What is it like to create a show that a hardcore group of fans love, but then everyone else hates it and hates you as a result?
Tim: Well I think we need to put that in perspective. The hatred for our show comprises about one-tenth of the population of people who actually go onto a message board or the Internet to communicate how they feel about something so I dont think that represents a lot of people. Theres just not that many people that communicate what they think about something so publicly. I dont know anybody who would go online and say how much they hate Murphy Brown if they didnt like Murphy Brown. I think that in the very beginning, there was a reaction from people that hated the show but they also hated all the other shows when they first came out. They hated Aqua Teen Hunger Force when it came out. I think they use that forum to just be ridiculous and say horrible things. Over time much of that went away. There are still people that really hated it but we are more interested in the positive than the negative, especially with the new show. There are always people who just dont get it and thats fine with us. We dont want everyone to get it, because who cares.
DRE: We booked this interview about a week ago and just yesterday a SuicideGirl emailed me and said I should interview the two of you. The audience for most Adult Swim shows are mostly young men, are you finding that your audience is different?
Tim: It feels that with our shows there are more ladies than the dude shows. Its because Tim and I are these characters you can sort of understand especially with the new show. Weve gotten lots of marriage proposals, a lot of erotic sex proposals, nude photos, and on tour a lot of boob signings, which I personally was into. Girls like guys with a sense of humor.
Eric: We actually got an email saying that Tim and I redefining what it is sexy. Tim and I arent the most fit men
Tim: No, were not.
DRE: I know your guys relationship with Bob Odenkirk is ongoing, but whats it like to work with someone who is one of the greatest short form comedy writers of all time.
Tim: We feel lucky. Hes taught us so much about how to make TV, not only with the making of it but the politics and the stupid little production elements of it. He loves working with us because its playtime for him since we are so absurd and on the fringe where he cant really be anymore because hes trying to make movies.
Eric: Its literally like working with your idol. When Tim and I started working with him, he was our number one guy, too. So it was the most surreal, unbelievable experience ever and it continues to be like that.
DRE: Talk about working with Dino Stamatopoulos on Tom as well.
Tim: I was a huge fan of Dino just from TV Funhouse which he did with [Robert] Smigel. He came on to help with Tom a little bit. We had fun time hanging out with him but he will be the first one to tell you he had very little impact on Tom Goes to the Mayor. But hes awesome and just a good dude.
DRE: You had so many amazing guest stars. Which ones surprised you the most in terms of guys who got right into the show?
Tim: We knew John C. Reilly was talented and professional and we were fans of his work. But I dont think we knew how great he was to work with and how big of an asset he would be to our show. On Tom he was one of the first things that clicked.
Eric: When we did a live tour, we showed a little segment of Steve Brule from Awesome show and people freaked out. It was one of the biggest laughs in the live show.
Tim: Thats something that he brought to us. He had this very skeleton idea of what it was going to be and we worked on it together. He gave such a great performance and was so selfless too like, I want to do this because this is the only place to do this stuff.
Eric: A lot of these like big time guys come into our world and have fun because there are few limitations and rules. They get to try out new stuff and just have fun. Theres very little risk.
Tim: Will Forte, from Saturday Night Live, was amazing. He was very thankful to do it because I guess his experience elsewhere is very constricting or not very creative. When we have people in, its very free, and we have a very small young crew. We have time to mess around.
DRE: Ive spoken to the creators of Wonder Showzen and theyve said that what they find funny is what certain people find disturbing, weird and scary about their show. Do you feel the same way?
Eric: Absolutely. The stuff that makes Tim and I laugh is everyday normal people and everyday interactions that are awkward or disturbing. Thats hilarious to us. Even more, a lot of people say our show is so crazy and weird, but more and more its really not that weird to Tim and me. Its just that the stuff that Tim and I find fascinating and interesting, and thats what we put in the show.
Tim: We feel like our stuff generally doesnt really ever get too absurd in the sense that it isnt rooted in the world already. I think our stuff is the magnification of the absurdity thats already occurring on the television. If you watch The Today Show or any game show or any commercial, you know that were just making fun of that stuff and making it stupid or funnier. The culture thats on TV right now is so absurd and weird already so were just reflecting on it.
DRE: One of the really odd things about Tom was the pacing.
Tim: Yeah, the pacing, timing and beats were huge for that show. When you dont have a lot of animation going on, its all about timing.
Eric: Timing is nothing new but I think we pushed it forward a little bit. Awesome Show has a totally different pacing but its not like we wanted to make a high-energy show. Its just how it feels compared to the old one.
DRE: The Awesome Show reminds me of 70s variety shows especially with all the guest stars, were you going for that kind of feel?
Tim: We had been talking about doing a sketch show for a long time with MTV and Comedy Central and some other places. There was this real need to put it in a box, to make sense of it and what the approach was going to be. But when Adult Swim approached us about doing another show, we said, You have to trust us. You know us. You know what we do. Its just going to be our show. Its not going to be Tim and Eric in a treehouse or Tim and Eric in space or anything like that. Its going to be stuff that we think is funny. It is a show that has its own style, its own sensibilities and isnt like nothing else which is about as close to Monty Python as I think you can get. We build every show to feel like a TV show as opposed to a bunch of clips. But it was very conscious and deliberate of us to not make it so the best reason to watch is that its an awesome show thats going to make you laugh.
DRE: Part of the look of Awesome Show is from doing wild greenscreen effects on a limited budget but is that the look you wanted or was it if you want to do something cool with greenscreen, you got to hire people who are talented, can do it and can do it on the cheap?
Tim: Both of that. We have a great editing crew who loves to experiment. We can give them anything and theyll be able to figure it out. We dont have a lot of money for production, so a lot of sketches have to be shot in the greenscreen room because we dont have the money to go and rent a studio.
Eric: Half of our sketches purposely look shitty. We do them on a bad greenscreen, and then we run them through VCRs so it looks like it was on a public access channel ten years ago. We want a lot of this stuff to have a feeling that it didnt happen too long ago. In the first episode there are the professional Hacky Sack people and we tried to make that look pretty good and were happy with how it turned out.
DRE: Were the two of you always interested in performing?
Tim: I was.
Eric: I played in bands and stuff but I would never do theater and stuff. Absolutely not.
DRE: Do you feel that youve settled into the style that you guys want to work in or will Awesome Show change?
Eric: I think it has to develop.
Tim: Yeah, we did ten episodes and every one is very different than the next one. I think were a little concerned that were already losing our minds with this new show and its going to start becoming very bizarre. But I think over the next 30 [episodes], youre going to see some really wild ones and then youll see some that feel like the early ones.
DRE: Short films have gotten a lot of attention with Lonely Island on SNL and Channel 101 doing really well, are you finding that there are a lot more short films out there?
Eric: With Youtube out there, its an excuse for people to make the films theyve always wanted to make, but that just floods the market with some really shitty films. We did Channel 101 when it first started and it was an amazing outlet. Tim and I made short films before MySpace and Youtube and all that stuff so there was no place to really put them except on your personal website. Then along came Channel 101 and there was a place to showcase these things besides a film festival.
DRE: Tim, I read you were stabbed by a guy on PCP, is that true?
Tim: Yeah, it is true. Its been almost a year ago now.
DRE: Um, congratulations?
Tim: I was in the middle of the street and took two knife wounds in the back.
DRE: Did he have the superhuman strength I always read about with PCP?
Tim: Yeah. Luckily, he wasnt wearing his glasses though. I think he could have gotten a better hit on me if he was wearing his glasses. But it was a horrible event in my life. It was a good check-in to make sure you like being alive.
DRE: Besides on the tour are you guys being recognized a lot?
Tim: I think Eric gets it more, but I got it a couple of times.
DRE: What about any SuicideGirls?
Eric: I hope so. Ive been writing to one recently.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Buy the complete series DVD of Tom Goes to the Mayor
Daniel Robert Epstein: Where are you guys today?
Eric Wareheim: Im in Los Angeles, but Tims in Florida right now.
Tim Heidecker: Im in Florida sitting next to my mom.
DRE: How is she doing?
Tim: Shes driving.
DRE: Is that good?
Tim: Yeah, shes a good driver.
DRE: Hows the tour going?
Eric: It was great. We had a grand finale show on Tuesday in Los Angeles, so were officially on vacation for a couple of days.
DRE: Did you guys shoot all your episodes of Awesome Show?
Eric: We finished ten and those are airing now. In about a month were going back to record about 30 more.
DRE: Oh wow.
Eric: Yeah, they picked up a really big order about a month ago. They are really into the show.
DRE: Is it a different experience than Tom [Goes to the Mayor]?
Eric: Absolutely.
Tim: Yes, much different. We dont have to stick to any type of story or plot, and we can do exactly what we want to do right now. Its pretty freeing. All that matters is if it makes us laugh a lot.
DRE: Is Tom Goes to the Mayor officially done?
Tim: Yeah, were not working on it anymore. Its something that if we ever want to do it again, there will be an opportunity. If the Tom DVD sells really well, there will be demand for more and well make more of it. But right now were just having a lot of fun making the Awesome Show.
DRE: In the beginning of Tom you guys did all the animation, right?
Eric: Yeah, when we lived back on the East Coast in Philadelphia, Tim and I did two shorts and we did all the voices, all the animation, all the photography, everything. But when we came out to Los Angeles to do the first episode, we hired a whole crew of editors and artists and all that stuff.
Tim: It wasnt because we wanted to do it all; it was because we had to. There was no one else around.
DRE: Did the idea for Tom come from finding out about this animation process or did you come up with the story first?
Tim: Originally we wanted to do a little short film without it being a film. So we had the idea about these two characters who always had to deal with each other and then we found an animation style that worked with it. So it was probably the idea first.
Eric: The visual look came accidentally as we were trying different styles and different techniques out. That was all we could afford to do.
Tim: Yeah, it was also built on the limits of our artistic ability. If you look at the first one, the drawing is very much based on the fact that Eric and I cant draw. It is very much cut and paste so it could draw your attention.
Eric: That is what I think the network liked about it. It wasnt about how it looked, it was about the dialogue and being forced to sit and look at the dumb facial expressions for way too long. Theres a different type of comedy that came out of doing that.
DRE: Did you guys have to hold those stupid expressions on your face or did you do your thing and capture it later?
Tim: It was all the editing. It was all about how long you plan to stay on something and the decisions you make afterwards.
Eric: Sometimes you can make a joke a lot funnier by putting a happy face on Tom while he is talking about his sons not being away or something like that. Its a real contrast of just being ridiculous.
DRE: You guys are probably big comedy fans from way back. What is it like to create a show that a hardcore group of fans love, but then everyone else hates it and hates you as a result?
Tim: Well I think we need to put that in perspective. The hatred for our show comprises about one-tenth of the population of people who actually go onto a message board or the Internet to communicate how they feel about something so I dont think that represents a lot of people. Theres just not that many people that communicate what they think about something so publicly. I dont know anybody who would go online and say how much they hate Murphy Brown if they didnt like Murphy Brown. I think that in the very beginning, there was a reaction from people that hated the show but they also hated all the other shows when they first came out. They hated Aqua Teen Hunger Force when it came out. I think they use that forum to just be ridiculous and say horrible things. Over time much of that went away. There are still people that really hated it but we are more interested in the positive than the negative, especially with the new show. There are always people who just dont get it and thats fine with us. We dont want everyone to get it, because who cares.
DRE: We booked this interview about a week ago and just yesterday a SuicideGirl emailed me and said I should interview the two of you. The audience for most Adult Swim shows are mostly young men, are you finding that your audience is different?
Tim: It feels that with our shows there are more ladies than the dude shows. Its because Tim and I are these characters you can sort of understand especially with the new show. Weve gotten lots of marriage proposals, a lot of erotic sex proposals, nude photos, and on tour a lot of boob signings, which I personally was into. Girls like guys with a sense of humor.
Eric: We actually got an email saying that Tim and I redefining what it is sexy. Tim and I arent the most fit men
Tim: No, were not.
DRE: I know your guys relationship with Bob Odenkirk is ongoing, but whats it like to work with someone who is one of the greatest short form comedy writers of all time.
Tim: We feel lucky. Hes taught us so much about how to make TV, not only with the making of it but the politics and the stupid little production elements of it. He loves working with us because its playtime for him since we are so absurd and on the fringe where he cant really be anymore because hes trying to make movies.
Eric: Its literally like working with your idol. When Tim and I started working with him, he was our number one guy, too. So it was the most surreal, unbelievable experience ever and it continues to be like that.
DRE: Talk about working with Dino Stamatopoulos on Tom as well.
Tim: I was a huge fan of Dino just from TV Funhouse which he did with [Robert] Smigel. He came on to help with Tom a little bit. We had fun time hanging out with him but he will be the first one to tell you he had very little impact on Tom Goes to the Mayor. But hes awesome and just a good dude.
DRE: You had so many amazing guest stars. Which ones surprised you the most in terms of guys who got right into the show?
Tim: We knew John C. Reilly was talented and professional and we were fans of his work. But I dont think we knew how great he was to work with and how big of an asset he would be to our show. On Tom he was one of the first things that clicked.
Eric: When we did a live tour, we showed a little segment of Steve Brule from Awesome show and people freaked out. It was one of the biggest laughs in the live show.
Tim: Thats something that he brought to us. He had this very skeleton idea of what it was going to be and we worked on it together. He gave such a great performance and was so selfless too like, I want to do this because this is the only place to do this stuff.
Eric: A lot of these like big time guys come into our world and have fun because there are few limitations and rules. They get to try out new stuff and just have fun. Theres very little risk.
Tim: Will Forte, from Saturday Night Live, was amazing. He was very thankful to do it because I guess his experience elsewhere is very constricting or not very creative. When we have people in, its very free, and we have a very small young crew. We have time to mess around.
DRE: Ive spoken to the creators of Wonder Showzen and theyve said that what they find funny is what certain people find disturbing, weird and scary about their show. Do you feel the same way?
Eric: Absolutely. The stuff that makes Tim and I laugh is everyday normal people and everyday interactions that are awkward or disturbing. Thats hilarious to us. Even more, a lot of people say our show is so crazy and weird, but more and more its really not that weird to Tim and me. Its just that the stuff that Tim and I find fascinating and interesting, and thats what we put in the show.
Tim: We feel like our stuff generally doesnt really ever get too absurd in the sense that it isnt rooted in the world already. I think our stuff is the magnification of the absurdity thats already occurring on the television. If you watch The Today Show or any game show or any commercial, you know that were just making fun of that stuff and making it stupid or funnier. The culture thats on TV right now is so absurd and weird already so were just reflecting on it.
DRE: One of the really odd things about Tom was the pacing.
Tim: Yeah, the pacing, timing and beats were huge for that show. When you dont have a lot of animation going on, its all about timing.
Eric: Timing is nothing new but I think we pushed it forward a little bit. Awesome Show has a totally different pacing but its not like we wanted to make a high-energy show. Its just how it feels compared to the old one.
DRE: The Awesome Show reminds me of 70s variety shows especially with all the guest stars, were you going for that kind of feel?
Tim: We had been talking about doing a sketch show for a long time with MTV and Comedy Central and some other places. There was this real need to put it in a box, to make sense of it and what the approach was going to be. But when Adult Swim approached us about doing another show, we said, You have to trust us. You know us. You know what we do. Its just going to be our show. Its not going to be Tim and Eric in a treehouse or Tim and Eric in space or anything like that. Its going to be stuff that we think is funny. It is a show that has its own style, its own sensibilities and isnt like nothing else which is about as close to Monty Python as I think you can get. We build every show to feel like a TV show as opposed to a bunch of clips. But it was very conscious and deliberate of us to not make it so the best reason to watch is that its an awesome show thats going to make you laugh.
DRE: Part of the look of Awesome Show is from doing wild greenscreen effects on a limited budget but is that the look you wanted or was it if you want to do something cool with greenscreen, you got to hire people who are talented, can do it and can do it on the cheap?
Tim: Both of that. We have a great editing crew who loves to experiment. We can give them anything and theyll be able to figure it out. We dont have a lot of money for production, so a lot of sketches have to be shot in the greenscreen room because we dont have the money to go and rent a studio.
Eric: Half of our sketches purposely look shitty. We do them on a bad greenscreen, and then we run them through VCRs so it looks like it was on a public access channel ten years ago. We want a lot of this stuff to have a feeling that it didnt happen too long ago. In the first episode there are the professional Hacky Sack people and we tried to make that look pretty good and were happy with how it turned out.
DRE: Were the two of you always interested in performing?
Tim: I was.
Eric: I played in bands and stuff but I would never do theater and stuff. Absolutely not.
DRE: Do you feel that youve settled into the style that you guys want to work in or will Awesome Show change?
Eric: I think it has to develop.
Tim: Yeah, we did ten episodes and every one is very different than the next one. I think were a little concerned that were already losing our minds with this new show and its going to start becoming very bizarre. But I think over the next 30 [episodes], youre going to see some really wild ones and then youll see some that feel like the early ones.
DRE: Short films have gotten a lot of attention with Lonely Island on SNL and Channel 101 doing really well, are you finding that there are a lot more short films out there?
Eric: With Youtube out there, its an excuse for people to make the films theyve always wanted to make, but that just floods the market with some really shitty films. We did Channel 101 when it first started and it was an amazing outlet. Tim and I made short films before MySpace and Youtube and all that stuff so there was no place to really put them except on your personal website. Then along came Channel 101 and there was a place to showcase these things besides a film festival.
DRE: Tim, I read you were stabbed by a guy on PCP, is that true?
Tim: Yeah, it is true. Its been almost a year ago now.
DRE: Um, congratulations?
Tim: I was in the middle of the street and took two knife wounds in the back.
DRE: Did he have the superhuman strength I always read about with PCP?
Tim: Yeah. Luckily, he wasnt wearing his glasses though. I think he could have gotten a better hit on me if he was wearing his glasses. But it was a horrible event in my life. It was a good check-in to make sure you like being alive.
DRE: Besides on the tour are you guys being recognized a lot?
Tim: I think Eric gets it more, but I got it a couple of times.
DRE: What about any SuicideGirls?
Eric: I hope so. Ive been writing to one recently.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 25 of 36 COMMENTS
_Ghost said:
so strange!
i had never heard of tim and eric, or there show before and my boyfriend showed it to me last night. then today - here we go, an interview with them - awesome. its a pretty hilarious show.