I always tried to do cool things. Scott Aukerman More Quotes by Scott Aukerman More Quotes From Scott Aukerman The best sketch shows are from a group of tight-knit people whove worked together for a really long time. Scott Aukerman together long people Thank you for listening to Comedy Bang Bang! My name is Scott Aukerman and I will see you next week. Scott Aukerman names listening next-week I always viewed [the podcast and the TV show] as two separate things. Scott Aukerman tv-shows tvs two It's really difficult to make things, and a lot of times you don't know you're at the end of something. Scott Aukerman difficult ends knows Things go away and projects crumble and disappear, or you make your movie and it comes out and no one watches it. Scott Aukerman disappear going-away watches Endings of television shows are sometimes such depressing things. I think shows that have more of a narrative and are about what's going to happen next, those need to wrap up as a complete story. But it's weird when a goofy comedy show needs to end, and we knew it was going to be the end, and sometimes it's just better if a comedy show ends and goes away and they never had a series finale. Scott Aukerman goofy depressing thinking I probably felt some sense of relief, because when you're on this continuous production cycle and you're doing a show for a network where they expect you to come back every May or every June, you just don't get time to sort of recharge. Scott Aukerman Оf course you can only write comedy when you're smoking weed. Scott Aukerman weed smoking writing When we came to the network, it was a very interesting time where Portlandia had just come on the air and had been very, very successful. I think people had Portlandia-sized expectations for Comedy Bang! Bang!, especially after the first episode was sampled by quite a large number of people. I remember getting the ratings after the first episode, and the network was over the moon about it. And then the second episode tanked so hard. Like, no one watched it. It was a resounding, "Hey, a bunch of people tried your show, and they all hate it!" Scott Aukerman hate moon successful Endings of television shows are sometimes such depressing things. It's like you're not going to hang out with these people anymore, and that's bad enough. Scott Aukerman depressing people television The key to being a singer - try to do it audibly. Scott Aukerman trying I find I've always been judgmental about comedy (laughs) and it's hard to turn that off, really. But what constant exposure to live comedy does is it makes you give people a second chance. Scott Aukerman second-chance giving people We like to keep the show small. Honestly, where we moved the show to the UCB theater, we moved it to a smaller space. Even though the show has technically gotten more popular. And that is, only because we like intimacy and the ability to experiment more. We don't want to be like, "We can get 250 people in a week. So let's do that. But we have to be careful about who we book..." Scott Aukerman space book people You become a victim of your own success. It's what happens in TV when Fox has a big hit with the X-Files. And they start chasing and the rest of their shows suffer. Because the experimentation that made the X-Files a show is all of the sudden lost. Scott Aukerman tvs suffering foxes Others may dispute this, we have tried to keep that sense of experimentation and putting new people up alive. And we haven't become a show, where we're like, "We know the 20 comics who are good and we're just going to keep on recycling them." Scott Aukerman alive may people The show became popular as aspecialthing became popular. And Sasquatch, the guy who runs that site, started coming to every show and reviewing it. And when people start talking about the reviews from the stage. That to me is really self indulgent and we tried to put a caper on that. Scott Aukerman self running talking You have to pay your dues. And what's nice, after booking a lot of new people... I counted the other day. We're in September and we've already booked between 30 or 40 people who've never done the show before. Scott Aukerman nice done people Each week we usually have one person who's never done the show before. Last year we had close to 60 who'd never done the show before. We're constantly booking new people, sometimes to the consternation of people who live here who do the show regularly. Scott Aukerman done people years But the great thing about shows now is since we've been doing (Comedy Death Ray), they have lightened up on their booking policies a bit more and are booking somebody who isn't famous and who hasn't been around ten years. It's great to see people who've done our show - the first big show they've ever done - now they can play around town. Scott Aukerman play people years And that's the thing about our show: what are they going to do put on the poster? I don't know. It's always easier when you have someone like Cedric the Entertainer where you can go, "You know this guy. You love this guy. Watch his sketch show." And then people tune in and go, "I though I knew that guy. I don't love that guy in a sketch show." Scott Aukerman guy tunes people