Extended Q&A: Eric Wareheim of Tim and Eric

The trio's live show, Tim and Eric & Dr. Steve Brule, plays out like a vaudevillian showcase of abstraction: Rather than relying on weird tape edits, an endless barrage of beloved characters and musical acts creates a circuslike atmosphere. In advance of the show, which hits Portland tonight, we chatted with Wareheim about advertisers stealing their style, guest-star freakouts and the duo's new horror series, Tim and Eric's Bedtime Stories.

Willamette Week: I just watched Bedtime Stories and it looks a bit more hi-fi, like something you'd see on regular television rather than a traditional component of the Tim & Eric universe. What was the idea there?

Eric Wareheim: We made 50 episodes of Awesome Show, which had the lo-fi aesthetic. Then we made Billion Dollar Movie along with the short film The Terrys, and they put you in this really different kind of narrative, dramatic place. We thought, "What if we used that world, only all the themes were still kind of Tim and Eric­-like, and the sensibilities were still fucked-up?" We wanted to tell these little nightmare stories like The Twilight Zone, and I think it's best done when it looks good and you're semi-comfortable in this high-production world because it makes everything all the more shocking when things turn evil.

Your normal sensibilities juxtaposed against a higher production level makes things even more jarring and absurd.

Yeah, exactly. One reason is that people use the term "Tim and Eric" in advertising to describe a certain feel, like with a green screen background and weird editing.

That's a strange evolution. You did the Absolut Vodka ad with Zach Galifianakis, which was huge, but when did you start to notice advertisers were using your style?

I have a lot of friends who are ad writers at agencies who would tell me, "You're not gonna believe how many times I see the words 'Tim and Eric' on these pitch boards—it's so fucked up." I guess we're flattered. Tim and I actually made a couple commercials, like the Old Spice thing. We step in and do maybe one or two commercials a year as a money project, because our shows aren't these huge budget things, but most of that money goes to the look of what's onscreen. We're like, "Fuck it man, if people are gonna make Tim and Eric commercials, we might as well get paid too!" It's funny how me made fun of commercials for years on Awesome Show and they use that now as a model for how they want to sell their product. People are OK with making fun of their product now, which is wild.

Do you two claim any ownership of the trend?

No, we still feel very uncomfortable when someone mentions all this, but we do feel flattered because it's a style that grew mostly out of us not having any money and not knowing how to do shit any other way because we have this hatred for Hollywood and the way things look.

Speaking of Hollywood, has the growing cachet of some of your frequent guests—Bob Odenkirk and Zach Galifianakis for example—created any challenges when it comes to working together as often as you'd like?

No way. Both of those guys are good friends as well as collaborators. Any time I call them, they say yes no matter what. It's the same with John C. Reilly. We create this work environment that's outside of the Hollywood system where they have a lot of fun. They come in and they barely know the script, but they do know they have a day of experimenting and fun ahead of them. Like on the "Toes" episode of Bedtime Stories, Bob came in and thought it was really cool and a lot of fun to work on. Everyone's done the sketch show thing, so we felt like we were ready to make a show that was something we'd want to watch, which is this scary but also really funny experience.

On the first episode of Bedtime Stories, Galifianakis portrays a character he plays often when he's working with you guys, which is "the guy that's having the least amount of fun." Did you write that specifically for him because you know he nails it when he's prone to freakouts like that, or do you just ask him to "be Zach"?

I think a long time ago, when we generated these characters, you'd be right. The characters we played in the Absolut commercials are pretty much all we did because we loved the dynamic so much. It's really based on how every group of friends has this one curmudgeonly guy. You don't really know why you're friends with him because he doesn't fit in and he maybe drinks too much and is kind of a loose cannon. That's what Zach has been. Of course, when we started seeing him freak out, he's such a good actor that when he starts crying and having tantrums it's our favorite thing to watch—it's so funny. Another episode called "Bathroom Boys" has Zach as the guest star along with Lauren Cohan from The Walking Dead and we all live in this bathroom and it's this really fucked-up, funny scenario. 

Bedtimes Stories doesn't have any continuity between one episode and the next. How did you decide on vignette-style stories rather than a serial format?

The Twilight Zone was a big influence on the short films we did for the HBO Funny or Die series, which served as the inspiration for Bedtimes Stories. We made "The Terrys" and "Father and Son" and a bunch of these other short films that felt like they were from the Tim and Eric universe, but they also felt like were from The Twilight Zone because every episode had different characters but they might now have Tim and me in them. Every week you're coming back for a new tale and it might not look the same but I think we found our groove with it. We look at it like an anthology series where every week you're going to tune in and see a new nightmare that comes from the world of Tim and Eric. We wanted to work with a lot of really good actors this time around and have a lot of fun with it. John C. Reilly is in this one episode called "Baby" where he works with Laurie Metcalf, and it's one of the greatest scenes I've ever seen. I think working with these more dramatic people is going to be the future.

At what point did you decide to involve these more serious or mainstream actors like Laurie Metcalf, or even Alan Thicke in his weird cameo on Awesome Show?

It started with our first cartoon [Tom Goes To the Mayor], when we had Jack Black and Jeff Goldblum. It was really hard at first and then with Awesome Show we kept getting these larger and larger stars. It was wild to us. It was funny to put them in more fucked-up situations, but I think a lot of actors are bored with being typecast into the same role on a boring, regular Hollywood set, so it's a different kind of world we create and people tell their friends it was fun working with us, which is how we keep getting them on. 

Has an actor unfamiliar with the show ever had an on-camera freakout?

Back in the Tom Goes To the Mayor days, we had an infamous Gary Busey scenario. He showed up and had no idea what he was there for. He literally tore up the script because he hated the lines so much. He fired Tim from the show—he was a total lunatic. It was one of the greatest Hollywood experiences I've been a part of. He made Tim leave the room, then brought him back an hour later and counseled him on how to be respectful in Hollywood and how to be a good writer. It was unbelievable. He had, like, three lines in the episode. Michael Gross [of Family Ties and Tremors] came on and said, "My son told me he's a huge fan and said if I wanted to stay relevant you'll go do this show. I literally haven't seen anything you've done but I trust my son, so here I am." That happens a lot.

John C. Reilly is someone who's acted in a wide variety of roles, but his Dr. Steve Brule character isn't too far off from the rube he played in What's Eating Gilbert Grape. He now has his own show, Check It Out, which feels like a good place for a lot of the jokes and ideas that would otherwise have been on Awesome Show. What does the future hold for Dr. Steve Brule?

Around Season 3 is when he really hits his stride, and I think that's the best thing we've done so far. He wants to do more episodes and we also have a special coming out this year that features him and is super funny. Check It Out still satisfies a lot of our need for experimenting, especially when you make these hard cuts to a correspondent and it's all fucked-up in the editing. We make a lot of shorts for our YouTube channel Jash, so we still have plenty of outlets for the fucked-up shit that would've gone on Awesome Show.

You revel in the lo-fi aesthetic and those glitched-out moments when people's eyes roll back in their head and the TV explodes. How does that translate to a live setting?

It's a totally different experience—you can't rely on edits because it's all live. We started from a live background, whether it was music or doing these weird live experimental comedy bits. You'll see some characters you know from the show, but a lot of it will be brand new. It's more of a spectacular event—there'll be singing and dancing and a whole second half which is going to be Dr. Steve Brule.

How's the response been to Dr. Steve Brule on tour?

He just dominates. He's made special appearances before, like in Chicago, and people absolutely lose their shit. It blows us out of the water.

Are you OK with that? Do you feel like you've created a monster?

Oh, no, we're totally OK with it. We love Steve like he's our baby.

I've read that Reilly is very cagey about explaining his character. He generally says he's "a special person" and leaves it at that. What's with the mystique?

He thinks he's actually a different person. He's another part of his brain. He came in to do a voice on Tom Goes To the Mayor and said we should do a show together about some guy who's not really a doctor and is definitely not the smartest guy. He had so much fun with it that we decided to do a spinoff, and we've been doing it ever since. I think it speaks to a lot of people because everyone knows John—he's really an actor and he gets in to that character so well. You love him because he's so innocent but also so silly.

Adult Swim has been huge in the exposure of your brand, but the way you assemble sketches for Check It Out or Awesome Show is also tailor-made for the web. Do you feel like your web presence is reaching a point where it's more vital than being part of Adult Swim?

Our first joke was calling ourselves "TimandEric.com" before we started calling ourselves just Tim and Eric. This was before YouTube and Funny Or Die, so we've always embraced it. Because of YouTube and people passing our clips, we've been able to generate our fan base. Our fans are computer kids. Saying you saw that one bit online is great, but it's not connected to the greater whole. Part of us thinks that hurts us because we worked so hard to make this beautiful show, where every bit leads into another one, but on the other hand we don't really care because they're isolated. One of John C. Reilly's biggest complaints is that he hates how people only know these clips, even though we worked so hard on the show and it has an arc to it and people process bits of it that aren't part of the whole conceptual package. It's the world we live in and we totally understand it.

How do you hope Bedtime Stories is received?

We think Bedtime Stories should be screened in a movie theater because it looks so good, but the reality is that some kid is gonna be watching it on a torrent file while he's listening to Slayer and also having cybersex and playing a videogame at the same time. I think that's how kids watch things nowadays. I hope people will give it the respect to watch it in a dimly lit room on a large plasma screen TV, but I know 95 percent of people will probably watch it the other way.

SEE IT: Tim and Eric & Dr. Steve Brule is at the Newmark Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, 248-4335, on Wednesday, Sept. 10. 8 pm. $45.50. Tickets here.

WWeek 2015