Why Uncool Is Cool: An Interview with Paul Feig

Paul Feig: Your Nirvana was my Led Zeppelin. Everybody at my school was so into Zeppelin that I was like, “Ugh.” You know, I liked Zeppelin, but I refused to let myself be fanatical about them.

After I got out of high school, later on, it was different. Just because you’ve got to pare away. . . it’s that same thing you were talking about: you’re competing with the other fans.

Popshifter: And sometimes the whole hype thing, it’s like: if it’s this popular, then I don’t want to be another one of these nameless people in this big movement.

Paul Feig: Exactly. I’d be hard pressed to think of any one particular band right now, but I know when I hear stuff, I really like it. Even bands like Wolfmother; I hear that and I go, “Oh, cool! That’s like stuff we listened to in school, just kind of updated a bit.”

“Back in my day. . . ”

I really like it all. There’s really very little music I don’t like, although I don’t really like the Top Ten. I look at those charts and I’ll hear those songs and I’ll just go, “They’re all so milquetoast.”

Popshifter: And they all sound the same.

Paul Feig: Yeah, they really do, but I don’t want to be the old guy going, “Oh, the crap today.”

Popshifter: I’m totally that person! (laughs) It’s so sad.

Paul Feig: But we’re not because you know, I didn’t even like Top Ten when I was a teenager.

Popshifter: No, I know, I didn’t either. Except for Duran Duran. It was a little different because they were writing their own music and no one was behind the scenes going, “Wear this outfit and sing it this way.” It wasn’t all coordinated.

Paul Feig: Well, even Duran Duran for me was very alternative. I was in film school at the time. I’d moved from Michigan to L.A. and there was the radio station KROQ.

Popshifter: Oh yeah!

Paul Feig: So to me, anything on KROQ was like, “Oh, cool, it’s not the mainstream.”

Popshifter: I lived in California from like, 1987 to 1993 and KROQ. . . I was so happy to have it.

Rodney Bingenheimer and
Debbie Harry

Have you seen The Mayor of the Sunset Strip about Rodney Bingenheimer?

Paul Feig: No, I haven’t but I know the guy who directed it [George Hickenlooper].

Popshifter: Wow, it’s really great.

Paul Feig: I always loved what Rodney played but he was the worst on air (imitates Rodney’s odd voice), “Oh hi!” And then when you see him and his pageboy haircut!

Popshifter: (laughs) Poor Rodney, he hasn’t changed since the sixties!

You were talking about MST3K, too and that actually was my favorite show until Freaks and Geeks, so—

Paul Feig: Oh cool! Yeah, same here.

Popshifter: And there’s such a similar feeling, like you’ve said so many times, “Oh, that’s not going to play in the Midwest.”

Paul Feig: (laughs) Right.

Popshifter: But really, that kind of humor is so less calculated and more honest that a lot of the L.A.- or New York-based shows.

Paul Feig: Totally. Now to me, those two shows (Freaks and Geeks and MST3K) are the definition of Midwestern humor. Which is more low key; it’s smart, it’s not based on over-the-top characters.

I really had a hard time out here in L.A. developing other kinds of comedy. Even before Freaks I was a comedian and sketch player. I was always trying to sell or write sketch shows. And we’d go in for the script reading and all the stuff that we thought was funniest—it would have played funniest on film, because it was subtle, and for lack of a better term “Kids in the Hall-y”—it never went over at the table.

I remember the only character they ever responded to was this friend of ours, this over-the-top nerd character, and she would snort when she laughed. . . that was the only thing that they laughed at. Like, “You need more stuff like the snorting girl.”

Popshifter: Oh geez.

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

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15