anderswolleck

Thank god Comedy Central has started rerunning Crossballs: The Debate Show at 6:30 pm EST on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Its one of the funniest shows ever on television and it will appeal to your dark black comedic heart. I got a chance to talk with Matt Besser the co-creator of Crossballs and a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade comedy troupe.

Crossballs featured comedians posing as experts, debating real people, who don't realize that the show is a sham. Besser, Jerry Minor, Mary Birdsong and Andrew Daly appeared on every episode as guest characters with Chris Tallman as the host. The show courted controversy after Jim March, a lobbyist for the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, appeared on an episode and later his lawyer sent a letter threatening legal action on the basis of fraud if the show airs. The show never aired.

However, the future looks rosy for Matt Besser. He and the other members of the UCB recently finished their first independent film, Wild Girls Gone. He always has a new show on the stage of the UCB theatre and does comedy in LA.

Check out Comedy Centrals website for Crossballs

Daniel Robert Epstein: I know most of the cast members from Crossballs, except for Mary Birdsong, just from coming to the UCB Theatre for such a long time. Shes really amazing. Where did she come from?

Matt Besser: I think she started out in New York. She did this sketch show which was a pilot for NBC a long time ago and she was on the sitcom Welcome to New York. Shes really funny and is amazing with characters. Even if its a southern belle she has the Texas southern belle accent.

DRE: How did you and [Crossballs co-creator] Charlie Siskel come with the show?

MB: Ive been collecting letters to the editor since I lived in Chicago back in the early 90s. One of the early things I did was stir up controversy and create characters by writing letters to the editor.

DRE: Would you just write to conservative papers?

MB: All of them, whoever would take the letters. It was pretty easy to get into the Tribune also the Reader and New City. Its hard to get into the New York Times. I would write stuff like that I wanted Cubs games stopped because I was performing a Waiting for Godot parody out in front of Wrigley Field and I thought the fans didnt appreciate it because they would beat me up. A band got criticized in a record review and I wrote in as the lead singer of that band and gave this really pretentious response to the review. Then there were responses to that and then the guy who I was impersonating, who I am now friends with, wrote in. Getting real people to respond to characters is a fun thing. I would get phone numbers of some of the people who responded to my letters and call them live during my one man show and argue with them about whatever they were pissed off about. It was fun but it was so hard to combine the phone with the microphone and then keep the audience quiet. I would get feedback and the people would say What was that? Its like doing a crank call in front of hundreds of people. I always wanted to turn that into a show somehow.

There were many different stages of development of this show. With Sean Conroy at one point we did a show called The Hard and Fast Report. It was more like Crossfire with the two host format. We played around with that for a while, and then I decided I didnt want to host, but be a different character every week. Any place where people give their opinion is a good place to prank people by giving the opposite opinion. That was the basic idea, and the exact format went through a lot of different changes even from the pilot episode. Even the structure of how we placed the people and how long they would stay out there was a choice we had to make. Even the live audience was an issue because most debate shows dont have a live audience but we wanted to use the audience by pissing them off a little.

DRE: How did it get to Comedy Central?

MB: We did a stage show for at least a couple of years in New York and then we did it live in LA at a place called the Comedy Central Workspace at the Hudson Theatre.

DRE: At first I thought Crossballs was making fun of liberals, then I thought it was making fun of the format itself, and then I think it came to the conclusion that you were just trying to stir things up.

MB: I guess thats what Im saying overall. Wherever people give their opinion, no matter what the venue; its a great opportunity to tweak them. So the more absurd your opinion is, it can work, as long as you keep it in the bounds of logic so they can believe it. At times we did bring people to level of them not believing us, but usually that happened towards the fourth act of the show. Such as when we had these twins on, with one on the satellite monitor, and the other in the audience. They were arguing about whether there could be clones. Then we had them splitscreened with one another, and Im looking at these really intelligent liberals, and it all of sudden it hits them. Sometimes the guests would think that halfway through the show that I was a person that was fucking with the show Crossballs, like they thought that Chris Tallman was being fucked with. But very few figured out that the entire show is a prank.

DRE: The only episode I missed of Crossballs was the gun episode.

MB: That episode never aired!

DRE: When did Jim March get upset?

MB: He got upset at my characters opinions during the taping. My character was handing him a penis pump. His exaggeration of what happened is hilarious but he didnt realize what was going until he got home and thought about it.

DRE: I know on many talk shows, during the commercials, handlers come out and talk to the guests. What would they say to them on Crossballs?

MB: We never told a lie. We said it was on MTV Networks and the contracts say MTV Networks on every Comedy Central show. The two facts we didnt tell before they got there was that it was on Comedy Central and the actual name of the show. We said the show was called The Debate Show and when they got there they obviously saw that the show was called Crossballs. The handlers would tell them to really get in there and tell them what they think. The guests would say something like, Is this guy joking over here? and the handler would say I know that guy is being an idiot, you should tell them what you think of them? I dont think anyone got as specific as asking if it was a prank show.

DRE: Like you said, youve been doing this kind of stuff for years before it. But do you feel that with Crossballs, you did anything wrong or crossed a line?

MB: No I dont think so. I felt bad only with one person of all the people we fucked with, and I bet no one would ever guess which one. It was the music critic and the only reason I felt bad was because I so agreed with everything the guy was saying. I agreed with a lot of people I argued with, but for some reason with that guy I felt bad, though I didnt feel like I did something wrong to this person.

People are giving their opinion and its a debate thats not life or death. They are being screwed with and being made fun of, but too bad. Theyre putting their opinion out there and entering the arena. Im entering the arena with you right now. Ive done interviews where Ive talked for 30 minutes, and everything I say is boiled down to one quote that makes me seem like an idiot or whatever the journalist wants me to seem like. Ive gone on radio shows thinking they are going to plug my show, and then, like me, the host will make fun of the fact that the Upright Citizens Brigade TV show got cancelled, or criticize what were doing on Crossballs, but Im on his show so I cant bitch about that. Its his show and under his terms. I came on to get my thing out and thats what the guests are doing on Crossballs.

We always made sure we werent stepping on people that were already victims. We did a crime show and we werent going to have someone on that had been raped or have someone on the gun control show that had known someone who had been shot. We did interview those people but we stayed away from them.

DRE: You had on a lot of the self-declared spokespeople.

MB: Which most of the people on the real debate shows are anyway. I guess thats the satire of the show. But as for whether or not I feel bad about what we did, the answer is definitely not.

DRE: Did Comedy Central not think that Crossballs would be controversial?

MB: I think youd be surprised, but all these hidden camera shows have problems like that, so they are used to it. I did one for MTV called Stung and we did a lot of stuff like that for UCB and there is always someone getting mad. Its either legal or its not, and if its not legal, then it doesnt go on. I think the show is a hassle for Comedy Central.

DRE: Did you ever get any flack personally?

MB: You can find it on the internet. There is something on the internet; I think its called GOP USA or something, a conservative website that criticized the show. Its so funny how they portray the show or how they portray a moment from the show, because its completely off base. It just shows that you cant believe anything you read or see on TV because everyone is so full of shit. We, of course, got a lot of emails, and, during the show itself, the audience would get upset at the characters.

DRE: Will it affect the next thing you do?

MB: Im not even thinking in the reality genre now so Im not really worried about it. There is always a lawyer at the network so let them figure it out. Im a comedian so I just trust the network to tell me what not to do and I wont do it.

DRE: Will there be a Crossballs DVD?

MB: I think there might be. We shot each episode for an hour and a half, sometimes even two hours, and cut it down to a half hour show. So there is a lot of extra funny stuff. We killed a lot of babies, as they say. I think the full hour and a half of the gun show is funny, and the drug show as well.

DRE: I read that Jim March actually had a knife on him during the taping.

MB: We knew that beforehand because our producer wanted to fly him in, but he said that he would take a train so he could carry his knife.

DRE: How did you find the guests?

MB: Just doing research, finding out who has written a book or finding someone with an organization. Usually it wasnt just some random person, but someone that is some kind of spokesperson. Even the gun show came from us looking for a spokesperson that would be anti electronic voting, and Jim March was anti that as well.

DRE: I read that some guest originally sent in a video.

MB: That was Chris Simcox [the founder of Civil Homeland Defense], the volunteer border patrol guy. He takes videos of Mexicans crossing the border, and he and his buddies tell them to go back.

DRE: I just read that article in Entertainment Weekly on the talking head comedians who appear on the VH1 shows. They mentioned the UCB Theater and they also mentioned the theatre in the article on Rob Huebel in the New York Times. Is the name Upright Citizens Brigade becoming a brand?

MB: We hope so. Thats a big goal of ours. We want this to be bigger than the school and the theatre. We want to make our stage shows seeds for TV shows and movies.

DRE: I know that the movie Martin & Orloff didnt cause many waves because it was never picked up by a distributor. Do you feel like its lack of success affected the UCB?

MB: Its not an Upright Citizens Brigade movie. I really didnt have anything to do with that movie except for the days I acted in it. I just dont view it as a UCB movie anymore than Id view Crossballs as a UCB show. Its just another one of our individual projects. We just shot our first movie on digital video, Wild Girls Gone, and its taking forever to edit it. Its an official UCB movie that all four of us improvised and wrote. Were psyched about it.

DRE: Whats Wild Girls Gone about?

MB: There is this place, White Sands, Florida, which is one of the spring break capitals of the world. The town is well known for their world famous ass contest. Thats why everyone comes there, to do and see the ass contest. But the sheriff of the town, played by Matt Walsh, is running for mayor and his platform is for shutting down spring break, which he thinks is ruining the town. The first stop is stopping the ass contest. His wife, Amy Poehler, is going through a midlife crisis and is a former ass contest queen. Shes very upset that her husband is stopping the ass contest which defined her life. Meanwhile on the other side of town there are these two unemployed losers, myself and Ian Roberts. Ians character fancies himself a documentary filmmaker. Im just a con artist/pothead. I get this idea of making a Girls Gone Wild type tape and to sell. He thinks thats horrible, because hes an artist. Then, I convince him that its a documentary about spring break. So were making this video while the sheriff is trying to shut down spring break. Then, of course, intentions clash and hijinks ensue.

DRE: Is it like a satire of an underdog movie like Meatballs?

MB: We are struggling to have the ass contest returned.

DRE: Who owns the name Upright Citizens Brigade?

MB: All four of us. Were a company.

DRE: So decisions come down to a vote?

MB: Yup.

DRE: How about the former members like Horatio Sanz and Adam McKay [director of Anchorman]?

MB: We started in 1990 in Chicago, and went through a couple of different formations. The original group had Horatio, Adam McKay, and a few other guys who would come in for a while, like Neil Flynn or Rich Fulcher. The final formation before we came from Chicago to New York was Walsh, Amy, Ian and myself. So what became the TV show became the official UCB.

DRE: So do you think the success of the UCB name has done anything for you?

MB: Its weird because I will be on an audition and someone will read my resume and go Oh youve been a student at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre? Im like No, Im not a student. I dont think people give you acting jobs because you own a theatre. Im glad it has a good reputation, but I dont know if its helped my acting career.

DRE: I heard that Del Close called you the best teacher he ever taught?

MB: I never heard that but Ill take it. That would surprise me if he said that. The only compliment that I remember Del giving me is that he once came and saw a show of mine, and afterwards, he said, Youre the loudest comedian I ever heard.

DRE: And he taught Chris Farley!

MB: Yeah so thats kind of a compliment.

DRE: Obviously you respect Del so much. Do you find his direct teachings still affect you now?

MB: Without question, especially with the UCB. The TV show was very much based on the Harold, which is the circular form he teaches. I still improvise and he taught us everything we know.

DRE: Do you still smoke pot?

MB: Occasionally. I fight the good fight. If any of your readers want to send me samples because I still havent found the bud which gets me really high.

One time, we did this festival called The Gathering of The Vibes, which is this jam band festival. They set us up on this side stage in front of 1000 people, and it was hard to do any kind of improv. So we were just interacting with the crowd. Finally Ian points to me and says, Bong Boy here says nobody out there has any weed that will get him high. Immediately people were coming forward and throwing buds onstage. That was when I realized it was good to have pot based characters.

DRE: Will there be anymore DVDs of the UCB TV show?

MB: Its not up to us. We want them to come out. If people keep mailing Comedy Central, maybe they will do it.

DRE: I know Peter Bagge did some artwork for your CD and stage show, May I Help You...Dumbass? When did you meet him?

MB: At the Aspen Comedy Festival. He was probably the guy I was the most obsessed with that I was able to meet. I was such a fan and Ive probably got nearly everything hes done.

DRE: What did you think when you saw the first picture of you drawn by him?

MB: It was great. I can die now. There is something about the way he draws someone, as he captures the emotion of the person.

DRE: What do you think of Amy Poehler getting on Saturday Night Live?

MB: Its great. I think her Michael Jackson character is one of the funniest moments of last season. Rob Riggle [of Respecto Montalban] just joined SNL.

DRE: Would you audition for SNL? I know the deals now are that Lorne Michaels owns you for a long time.

MB: It would never be about that anyway. I have yet to strike a good deal, so obviously thats not important to me. I can see doing that, but I like doing my own thing. It seems like Ive been lucky enough to develop my own ideas since the UCB show stopped. Even if it doesnt necessarily reach the air, there is still something satisfying about seeing it finished. I had a deal at NBC that nothing came out of, and I was in a Judd Apatow pilot called Life on Patrol. Like that Stung show with Method Man and Redman that I was hoping would become my show, but they didnt think I had the pull that Method Man and Redman have.

DRE: Whats the next thing youre doing?

MB: I do have some ideas and well see what happens. Were trying to make Asssscat into a TV show. We tried it a couple of years ago and there was some interest, but it fell apart. Now were trying it again. It would be the four us with Horatio and four or five other guests. We would even like to shoot it in our theatre.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck