A New Article
Prepare to be unprepared for this new comedy series
By Liz Schroeter
Published: April 1st, 2007 | 11:44am
Warning: The following magic is real. If you even attempt to consider replicating the magifications you are about to see, you will DIE.
These words warn you at the opening of “Illusionators,” one of many oddball sketches created by the comedy trio known as Human Giant.
“Magifications?” says comedian Rob Huebel. “That’s not even a word!”
It should be clear to most that the absurd spoofs and scenarios acted out by Huebel along with fellow Giants Aziz Ansari and Paul Scheer are comedy. Even when they keep a straight face while cursing at children in their child talent-agency shorts “Shutterbugs” or when making corpses rise from the dead to participate in card tricks in “Illusionators.” Still, they’ve found some people don’t really get it. “I’m always astounded at how dumb people are,” Huebel says. “We’re nice guys. It just looks like we’re swearing at [children].”
On April 6, 2007, MTV will premier the comedy shorts as a half-hour TV show. But even the developed material that will make its way onto MTV will be a long way from the initial ideas that come out of these comics’ brains. Some concepts that didn’t make it past the ideas phase include “three guys reading quietly in a hot tub of honey-mustard,” “Aziz finds a human ear in his wallet,” and “Old guy makeout fights” to name a few on Huebel’s list. He admits that “sometimes stuff sounds hilarious; then you go and shoot it … and, well.” Or sometimes a tub of honey-mustard is just too expensive.
As for the ideas that did make the cut, he says, “Some turned out better than we even planned it. I think it was just luck.”
So what can we expect to see on Human Giant”s debut? “There’s TV show stuff, there’s some stuff where it’s us playing ourselves, there’s shorter weird stuff,” Ansari says. There will be new “Shutterbug” shorts, new “Illusionators” episodes, a bit called “Space Lords,” and there’s already a Human Giant preview online showing a hilariously gory bit called “Camping Weekend.”
The show’s format is a series of weirdo videos where the action just happens without any explanation or narration. Human Giant& is entrusting its audience to make sense of what’s happening, but perhaps with YouTube’s soaring popularity, we’re getting used to this kind of viewing experience. “The Ben Stiller Show was kind of like that,” says Ansari, giving a nod to a show that provided big laughs with goofball video shorts long before the YouTube days.
The Human Giant guys came together via the Upright Citizens Brigade theater in New York City. This improv theater has seen many of today’s favorite indie comics on its stage, including Amy Poehler, Janeane Garofalo, and Andy Richter. “UCB is this cool little place where sketch, stand-up, and improv kind of merge,” says Scheer, a regular at the theater, as well as a regular on VH1’s Best Week Ever along with Huebel (who is perhaps best known from the movie-theater commercial campaign, “Inconsiderate Cell Phone Man”).
The two met Ansari a couple years ago and started contributing to a regular Monday night UCB standup show called Crash Test hosted by the young comic. One of their first stage collaborations involved Scheer and Ansari visiting a Scientology center and then relaying their funny and slightly frightening experience onstage. “We went for the free movie and stayed for the enlightenment,” Scheer says. “Once you go to the scientology center together, you connect for life.”
Since then, Ansari has gained much Internet love — starting in his short films poking fun at indie rock. One of his shorts makes fun of snooty record-store clerks at Manhattan’s Other Music, and another called “Clell Tickle: Indie Marketing Guru” depicts a band manager threatening Pitchfork staff for higher review ratings and giving head wounds to Ted Leo for not giving a shout-out to Tapes N Tapes on stage.
Huebel figures it makes sense that indie comedy and indie music are merging together these days. “So many bands want to be comedians, and so many comedians want to be rock stars,” he says. It only makes sense then that the Human Giant trio performed at SXSW 2007.
Before the launch of the MTV show, the guys enjoyed showing their material around Los Angeles and New York. “It’s cool we get to test it out,” Huebel says. “Things live or die by the audience’s response. If it tanks, we will kill ourselves.”
Images courtesy of MTV.com
Issue #35
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