Super-talented hyphenate Chelsea Peretti arrived in Austin this week to perform at the Moontower Comedy and Oddity Fest. I chatted with Peretti about her upcoming stand-up shows, her writing gig on NBC’s Parks and Recreation, and her work with other comedians, like Louis C.K. and Todd Glass. Here’s a bit from the interview:
How important is Twitter in your life? What has that medium really done for comedians?
Well, I’ve always felt very indebted to the Internet, even though it’s a stressful place. It can feel like the center of the universe, when it’s really hopefully not. But I used to have a blog, it’s still there, I have a blog. I had a web series, I had these videos we made, and I’ve been able to gain a following or a group of people who I can have access to that I wouldn’t have before, and I’m thankful for that. Twitter has been cool. For some reason, I think Twitter has been even better for me than blogging was, because the shorter format works well for me for some reason. It’s really cool. I guess the next thing that everyone is doing is podcasts. I try to hold off on technologies as long as I can because I’m so addictive. So, obviously Twitter is incredibly consuming in my mental space, which I don’t always love, but it’s pretty rewarding too. I like the immediacy of it, to be able to do something and then instantly see if people find it funny or not. It’s kind of a useful tool.
Read the full interview @ Austinist.
My first post for Austinist went live earlier today. It’s an interview with comedian and renowned stoner Ari Shaffir, who I spoke with on 4/20. You may know Shaffir from his polarizing Amazing Racist videos or from Joe Rogan’s podcast. Shaffir is heading to Austin this weekend to perform stand-up comedy jokes at the Moontower Comedy Fest. I encourage everyone to check out his show, especially if you like jokes about anal sex and racism! Here’s a snippet from the interview:
Some people might feel that your act is offensive just for the sake of being offensive or that you say controversial or vulgar things just to upset the audience. What you say to those people?
I do not say those things to upset the audience. I get it if you’re conservative, but I’m more casual about things like sex and race, so I just sort of take it casually. I just want to tell the joke, but the joke happens to be about doing anal with somebody or whatever. I’m not trying to be offensive, I’m trying to tell stories about human behavior, and a lot of them are fucking filthy.
Read the rest @ Austinist.
‘Stargate Universe’ is over. (Sadness.)
Syfy aired the show’s final episode on Monday (read my recap for AOL TV), and its pretty clear that the franchise won’t be bouncing back for at least a few years. It’s a shame, since ‘SGU’ was only starting to find its legs as a compelling, ambitious, arc-driven sci-fi drama, and ‘Stargate’ was one of the most consistently entertaining sci-fi brands of the last decade. Here’s hoping it’ll return some day in some form, and when it does, I hope I’ll be here to write about it again.
I interviewed ‘Stargate Universe’ co-creator Brad Wright and star David Blue about the series finale for a recent AOL TV feature. Below you’ll find text from a follow-up email interview I conducted with Wright about the show. The interview features Wright’s answers to specific questions about the finale that I didn’t use for the AOL feature in order to avoid giving away spoilers. Enjoy, ‘Stargate’ nerds:
Me: The final episode, to me, played like a series finale, thematically and emotionally. Is that what you were going for when you came up with this story and shot the episode?
Brad Wright: Actually we wanted it to be both. I had pitched the idea of putting the crew into suspended animation — with someone having to stay behind because one pod didn’t work — because I thought it made for an interesting reset of the earth side of things. A three year time cut would have been interesting. The story of the person that was going to be left behind was also a great opener for season three. But when we saw the Tuesday night ratings on Syfy we knew it might be the end. By having our leads come together for one last meal before going off into the void, we got a chance to see them as a team in the way we were always working toward. And by making the person left behind Eli, it brought the series full circle. Those two elements make it feel like a finale.
What was the most interesting or exciting aspect of this finale for you as a creator and as a viewer?
We all went down to watch the dinner scene. It was the last thing we shot main unit. Nobody on the crew or in the cast wanted it to be the end. But we knew if it was, it was a fitting end. And I think the final shots of the series are very moving.
We see the main crew members come together like a family in the finale. Was it always the plan to build to that?
Yes. It was always the plan for the wrong people to become the right people.
How would the characters and their relationships have grown and changed in the third season?
I don’t want to say where we were going to go with the story. It didn’t happen, so the show is what it is now. I think a pretty decent two seasons of television.
Earlier, we talked about your idea for a movie that would combine elements from all three ‘Stargate’ shows. Why did you think that would be the way to go to continue this story?
I intended to incorporate elements from both SG-1 and Atlantis to make it a “Stargate” movie and not just a “Universe” movie. The combination of elements also happened to be the only way I could think of compressing what was intended to be a longer series arc into one movie.
How do you feel when you look back on the accomplishment of producing 15 years of ‘Stargate?’
I feel proud. But I’d by lying if I didn’t say it’s a shame SGU was canceled. It deserved at least a final season, and where we were going with the story was very cool. Shepherding the final episodes through the post production process, sitting in mixes, etc, I kept thinking to myself “this show got canceled?” But business is business. And as I said to our crew members as we said our final goodbyes recently… “Time to start typing something else.”
