Why Uncool Is Cool: An Interview with Paul Feig

Popshifter: Have you seen the Fatal Farm videos? They use the same laugh track in every one of the Lasagna Cat videos.

Paul Feig: [Robert] Smigel did that a few years ago, too. It had that really light one, like, “Ahahahaha. ” I used to memorize laugh tracks and laughs on laugh tracks.

Popshifter: Are you serious?

Paul Feig: Oh yeah! I just got to know them. Like on The Brady Bunch; I knew their whole laugh track.

Popshifter: (laughs)

Paul Feig: Like if Bobby was putting too much soap in the washing machine? In the middle of the laugh track you’d hear, “Wuh oh!” This woman would always go, “Wuh oh!”

Popshifter: (laughs)

Paul Feig: It was the exact same one.

And then there was some weird thing, if something kind of heart-warming happened, in the middle of the laugh, there was some sound that went, “Aaaahhaawww!”

Popshifter: (cracking up)

Paul Feig: I don’t know if it was a guy or a woman—

Popshifter: (still laughing) I don’t know of anybody else who’s ever said that!

Paul Feig: I’m telling you! You should study it!

Popshifter: That’s hilarious. In terms of your style of humor and your style of writing. . . so much of the pop culture coverage you see now is really sarcastic and snarky. But yours. . . there’s some sarcasm, but it’s really sincere, and there’s a sense of honesty and almost respect for the subjects, even in the cringe-inducing moments, like in your books. Is there anything in TV, movies, or books now that has that same sort of sincere approach that you like or admire?

Paul Feig: Yeah, you know what show I really like a lot, that I feel that way about? I mean, in its heart it’s sort of snarky—maybe not snarky; it’s more like self-parodying—but it’s very, very sweet: Flight of the Conchords.

Bret and Jemaine from
Flight of the Conchords

Popshifter: I’ve only seen one episode of that because we don’t get that channel.

Paul Feig: It’s great because they’ve made this choice to make these guys sort of sweet—I don’t know if “childlike” is the word—but there’s just something very innocent about it. It’s that comedy of innocence, like Laurel and Hardy. They sleep in the same bed, which is like, if you really think about it, you’re like, “Wait, what?” But you have these characters that are so innocent they don’t think about that.

I like that show a lot because its not a cruel show. It’s not, “Look how stupid these people are.” My thing about comedy—and I like all kinds of comedy, I really do—the only thing I ever ask in my comedy is that the writers and the actors actually like the people they’re playing.

This to me was 90s comedy; I just felt like I was out in the wilderness during that. Like Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler. I like those guys; I know those guys, and I think their stuff is very funny. But even Saturday Night Live got that way: these guys winking at the camera as they’re doing the character and saying, “I know I’m not serious and you know I’m not serious, and the person I’m playing is really stupid, so let’s just laugh at this guy.”

And that’s fine, and it clearly had a huge following because it’s fun. It walks like a duck and talks like a duck and smells like comedy. But I just don’t like it because I feel like I’m being treated like an asshole for actually wanting to engage in a character.

It’s the same problem I had with the movie Adaptation. Anything where they say, “Oh, we’re going to make you care about this character” and then, “And fuck you for caring.”

If a character is honest, and you, the writer, is treating them honestly and you love who they are, foibles and all, you can get away with anything. . . that’s how I direct actors. And they’ll ask, “How big do you want it?” But big or little doesn’t mean anything to me; I always ask, “Is this a real person? Do you care about this person? Are you honest when you’re playing this person?”

And if you are, then yeah, sometimes they can be huge, because that’s just who this person is. We all know people in our lives who are over the top. That’s a real person, whether you like them or not. They’re not putting it on.

Click to read more from Paul Feig on. . .

Directing Freaks and Geeks
Directing Arrested Development
His obsessive knowledge of laugh tracks
More on laugh tracks, plus the “comedy of innocence”
Dealing with Internet jerks
The outsider, plus embarrassing fanboy encounters
“If it’s fun, it’s fun.”
Music of today vs. music of yesterday
The Hollywood version of funny
What’s cool and uncool
Listening to “the notes”
Where television is today
The fallout from Unaccompanied Minors
His new show Kath and Kim and his upcoming book

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