Interview: Michael Hitchcock (Pt. 1)
When it comes to describing individuals who pop up in this film or that TV series plenty often enough for you to recognize their face but maybe not enough for you to recognize their name, most folks tend to call them “That Guy.” Those who are slightly more polite refer to them as “character actors.” For my money, another solid choice of phrase is “dependable utility player,” because you know they wouldn’t keep getting hired if they weren’t dependable, and they’re skilled enough at their craft that you can literally plug them in just about anywhere, comfortable in the knowledge that they’re going to deliver exactly what you need from them, even if you don’t necessarily know what it is that you do need.
Basically, the entirety of the preceding paragraph describes Michael Hitchcock, a very, very funny fellow who - to the surprise of many who just know him for his work in front of the camera - is also gifted behind the camera, having served as a writer on MAD TV, Glee, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
For the record, those three shows I just cited? Yeah, we don’t discuss any of them in this part of our interview. But don’t worry, we talk about all three of them in Part Two, which will be coming up soon.
In the meantime, you’re still getting a delightful chat about his work with Christopher Guest, a few other mockumentaries in his back catalog, his work in in the 2001 film Heartbreakers, and some screenwriting gigs that even the people who know him for those three shows I mentioned may not realize that he had a hand in penning.
Join us, won’t you?
I suppose the first thing I should ask you about, just because it's what led us to first trade messages on Twitter, is the experience of doing Trial and Error, one of my favorite comedies in recent memory. I'm still mourning its loss.
Oh, yeah, I loved that show. It was so much fun to do, and it was such a pleasure to go to... Well, we shot my season in Vancouver, but the season before, they filmed it here in L.A., I think over at Warner Brothers. But then they moved it, so...it was really fun. I just had a ball. It was so many fun people, and Jeff Blitz directed it, who did a lot of The Office. He's so great. And Jeff Astrof is so funny. I dunno, it was like a weird little vacation.
It was a quirky little show, so in the grand scheme of things, I guess I'm not surprised that it didn't take off in a big way, but I really wish that it had. From week to week, you never knew what to expect, and you never knew what was going to pop out at you as a background gag.
Oh, yeah. I wish that NBC could've found a way to do one more season or move it to streaming or...something! The mysteries were fun, and the jokes just kept flying all the time. Yeah, I had a great time doing that show. And Vancouver's fun, anyway!
You know, I've never been there...and yet, ironically, I write for TV Week in Vancouver. Go figure.
Well, you should get up there sometime. It's fun, and it's beautiful.
I'd love to, believe me! Well, from here, I wanted to take you back to the very beginning, because I really had no idea until I started prepping for this conversation that you'd written the screenplay for Where the Day Takes You.
Yeah, I co-wrote that. I wrote the original draft a few times, and then a writer who I never met named Kurt Voss came in and did a rewrite, and then I did a rewrite after that, and it all kind of got combined and... Yeah! [Laughs.] It's weird for me because, you know, that's a drama, and I haven't really done a drama since then. But I'd love to. I'd love to do another one at some point.
And that was inspired by your own experiences working at a runaway shelter, is that right?
Well, when I went to UCLA Grad School, I worked at a... Well, I didn't work there, but I was in a group of UCLA students who volunteered to teach reading and math to kids who were in juvenile hall and in jail. It was a camp which was also a lockdown facility. And that started me. And then, yeah, after that, I worked at kind of a halfway house for kids. And weirdly I went in to pitch a comedy to this film company, and they said, "Well, we're really interested in doing a fictional version of a runaway story," so I said, "Well, I'd love to try that!" And I pitched them an idea, and they liked it, and I got to write it, and it went from there.
It was an incredible cast on that film: David Arquette, Sean Astin, Adam Baldwin, Lara Flynn Boyle, Balthazar Getty, Laura San Giacomo, Ricki Lake, James Legros, Kyle MacLachlan, Dermot Mulroney, Alyssa Milano, Stephen Tobolowsky, and Will Smith!
Yeah, and I think it was one of those things where so-and-so knew so-and-so, so all of a sudden they were involved, too! I think Kyle MacLachlan and Lara Flynn Boyle were going out at the time...
I believe they were, yeah.
Yeah, so it was just sort of a case where one leads to another, and...I think Dermot Mulroney was probably one of the first people who signed up, which led to other people signing up. And the director, Marc Rocco, knew some of them. Like, I think he'd worked with or was friends with Sean Astin before it started. So it was a strange mix and match of those people at that time.
For a brief moment, I thought I was going to help Marc's dad, Alex, do his memoir, but after about a dozen phone calls, he ultimately decided against it. But in those dozen calls, I heard some amazing stories told in that equally amazing voice of his.
I never got to meet him. But he seems like... I mean, what a cool guy.
Oh, he was something else. One of the best things I got out of the experience, even if we didn't end up doing the book, was that I visited him and his wife at their home, and after we discussed the possibility of the book, I left with an autographed photo of him as Moe Greene.
Wow, that's so cool!
Yeah, I'll take that.
I remember that, when Where the Day Takes You was over with, I became pretty good friends with Ricki Lake, who was also in it, and I remember at the time she was living in the San Fernando Valley of California, and I would go visit her. And she had previously done the original Hairspray, the John Waters movie, and she would do all those dances for me in her home. [Laughs.] Just because she liked to do it, you know what I mean? So it was such a fun time, just hanging out and seeing her do the Hairspray dances! And we're still friends. So, yeah, that was a great time.
So what was the timeframe when you were at the Groundlings? Was it after that or at the same time?
Same time. The Groundlings, for anyone who doesn't know, is a sketch comedy group in Los Angeles, and I started taking classes there probably in the mid to late '80s, and then I became a Groundlings main company member I think around mid-1990, and then I left in the mid-'90s at some point. I still will go there and do improv shows now and then. Obviously not during the pandemic! But they do do them online now. We're doing Zoom stuff. You just have to figure it out in this crazy time of ours.
Who were some of your Groundlings peers when you were there?
Oh, God, a lot of people: Will Ferrell, Cheri Oteri, Chris Kattan... Much more than that. Because we all weirdly overlapped depending on who did what. Lisa Kudrow, Kathy Griffin, Jennifer Coolidge, Chris Parnell... Yeah, many, many, many.
Was SNL something ever on your mind?
No. Never. It's very strange. At the time I was there, Julia Sweeney was actually on it, and people like Jon Lovitz had been there before my time at the Groundlings. But I really wasn't thinking that way about it. I was more thinking about being a writer. So, no, I didn't really think, like, "Oh, I'm gonna have a part on SNL as an actor!" Because at that time...
My acting stuff didn't really start happening until Christopher Guest came to see a show at the Groundlings. On Thursday nights, we have these all-improv shows, and he saw one of those, and I got to meet him, and that's kind of what started the acting ball rolling. Because I got to be interviewed about a movie that was going to be about a community theater, which became Waiting for Guffman. I grew up doing community theater back in the suburbs of Chicago, so when I met him, that's sort of what we talked about the whole time. And one thing led to another, and all of a sudden I was in Austin, Texas, doing that movie.
And at the time, you didn't really think much about it, because it was a mockumentary, it was very funny and had all of these amazing people in it, but when it came out... [Hesitates.] You know, it was one of those movies that came out and people sort of liked it, but then it stuck around, and it kept sticking around. Like, here in L.A., there was a theater called the Nuart Theater, and it was there for months. And that's sort of when the cult status took over. But I don't think anyone predicted it at the time.
I know it was an art-house film, because I saw it at the art-house theater here in Norfolk (the Naro Expanded Cinema).
Yeah, it's strange with that one, because...it just never left! [Laughs.] And the ball kind of just kept rolling! I even think at the beginning Variety... I don't think their initial review was all that stellar. But then they re-reviewed it later and liked it! So it's strange how that all went down.
I'm sure you had more than a few stars pass through the Groundlings theater to see shows, but when the celebrity in question was Christopher Guest... I mean, were you beside yourself?
Well, luckily, I didn't know he was there.
That helps.
Yeah, I don't like knowing if people who are famous are in the audience, because it really scares me. So I would tell at least the director, "I don't want to know if anybody's there." So it wasn't until later that I found out he was there, and I'm glad! [Laughs.] It's very strange with the Groundlings, because it's a small place. It only seats 99 people. So if there's someone famous there, the audience basically watches the famous person watch the show! So usually the crowd doesn't laugh as much, because they're going, "Well, did so-and-so laugh?" And it just takes on a weird energy. So to me it's always better not to know. It's just one more pressure that I'd rather not worry about.
I can only imagine the audience reaction if they were following Christopher Guest's lead on when to laugh. Comedic genius though he may be, he is not exactly known as the most gregarious of individuals.
Yeah, I remember when I interviewed for the movie. He's just a quiet man, but you think, "Am I boring him?" You don't quite know! I remember Eugene Levy walked through the offices at one point, and I said, "Oh, wow, there's Eugene Levy!" And he goes [Deadpan.] "Yes. And Bob Hope is also here." And I didn't know if he was joking or not! He was joking. [Laughs.] But he's so dry that you're, like, "Well, Bob Hope could be there, I don't know!" Because he never says he's joking! So that was kind of crazy.
I remember getting to Austin and thinking, like, "Please, please, please, I hope Catherine O'Hara is nice!" Because I loved her so much. And then she couldn't have been nicer. She was, like, the coolest person ever. So you're, like, "Thank God!" [Laughs.] And I remember Parker Posey just intimidated me because, you know, it was Parker Posey! I could barely get a word out without stumbling over all of my words.
But it turned out to be so much fun, because during the day we would film the movie, and then at night they'd usually order some kind of takeout food and we'd get to watch the dailies from a couple of days before, and everybody just hung out and had a great time. We all stayed at a Sheraton in downtown Austin. The movie was shot in this little town called Lockhart, which was about 20 miles away, maybe, which is also in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? So if you've ever seen that movie, you can see some of the same buildings. It's kind of cool. It gets used a lot for small-town America.
When it comes to Christopher Guest's films, everyone wants to believe that they're 100% improvised from top to bottom, but I know you have at least certain beats that are required of you.
Yeah, there's an outline that we all get, and for something like, let's say, Waiting for Guffman or A Mighty Wind, obviously the play was written for Waiting for Guffman ahead of time, and the songs were written for A Mighty Wind. For For Your Consideration, there was a movie within the movie that was written ahead of time. But, yeah, everything else - the dialogue - is all improvised. We do meet with him ahead of time and talk about our characters and all that, but with him, you don't even rehearse dialogue ahead of time. He may go, like, "Okay, you're going to walk in, and you're going to go over to this thing here, and then you'll have a talk." But you don't rehearse until the cameras roll, which I really like. It's weird. [Laughs.] But it's fun!
Is there a line or moment that you came up with that you're particularly proud of?
[Long pause.] Well, for Best in Show, I'm proud of "Go get Busy Bee." And I did name Busy Bee "Busy Bee," so that makes me happy. Probably in Waiting for Guffman, it's that I compared Corky St. Clair to Barbra Streisand, that they're both triple threats, basically, which makes me happy. [Laughs.] Those are kind of fun to remember and to know that I thought of them or what have you. We get to come up with our professions and stuff, too.
Well, for Best in Show, I knew I was a lawyer. But in Waiting for Guffman, I chose to be a pharmacist, because when I was a kid, I worked in a pharmacy, so I knew the ins and outs of that thing, so I thought, "Well, I'll just pick something I know about, so I can talk about it." And I have a line in there... I don't like a character called Johnny Savage, I'm kind of jealous of him, if perhaps subconsciously, and I remark that he stole my stamp machine, or that he tried to. But that came from when I was a kid - I was, like, 16 years old, working in this little mom-and-pop pharmacy - and someone stole a stamp machine when I was on duty. And the pharmacist was just, like, "How could you let that happen? How did you not see someone carrying out a stamp machine?!" They were these big metal things that were at least three feet tall that had stamps in them. And to this day, I don't know how they got of the store without me seeing them. But they did. And to his credit, I didn't get fired. [Laughs.] So you use what you know, basically!
I remember looking at Christopher's jacket in Best in Show to see what label he was wearing, and that's because that happened to me in college! Somebody came up to me at some fraternity function and looked at my jacket to see the brand name, and I thought, "That's so snotty and weird!" [Laughs.] So several years later I used it! It's crazy, but it hit me in the moment. It's funny what hits you like that.
So here's a question that's purely to satisfy my own curiosity, as evidenced by the fact that no one else would take the time to ask about it: how did you end up writing the script for a remake of Satan's School for Girls?
Oh! Well, that was an Aaron Spelling production. I got a call that they were going to redo it, and would I be interested? And at that time, I thought it was going to be kind of a spoof, that it was going to be kind of a funny take-off of the original. So I thought, "Okay, I'll take the meeting!" And I did, and then it turned out that they didn't want to make it funny. [Laughs.] But I thought about it and went, "Well, it could be interesting. It might be fun to tell this story again and update it." And I wrote it...and then it kind of went away for awhile...and then it came back again. Like, it wasn't going to happen, and then it did happen, and it sort of had a weird mind of its own.
I remember at the time, we had meetings about that movie, and his show, the one with all the witches... Charmed! That was on the air, so we had a meeting with Mr. Spelling - you had to call him Mister Spelling - and he had a butler who would be serving him, like, Coca-Colas and stuff the whole time. But he said something like, "In Satan's School for Girls, nobody can have any of the powers that the girls have on Charmed." [Laughs.] And I remember thinking, "Well, they have all the powers! There's none left!" I thought, "Oh, boy, I'm in trouble..."
And I remember one executive said something like, "Well, what if Shannen Doherty" - and I don't even know if Shannen had been cast as that character - "puts her finger in a light socket, and she gets electric powers?" And I remember having to go politely, "Well, I think that people will laugh at that...and I don't think you want them to laugh at her." But she did end up having electric powers at some point. She did. So they did get their way. But at least she didn't have to stick her finger in the socket to get them.
So that's sort of how that went: I thought it was going to be a comedy, but it turned out to not be a comedy, and…there you go.
All things being equal, I think it would've been better as a comedy.
I think it would've been, too. I haven't seen it in ages - I don't have a copy of it, and they never air it, so I don't remember much about what it looked like - but I remember they added stuff in there after I wrote it that... Well, it wasn't in the script, but it was more witchy stuff, like people floating or flying around or whatever. And I just went [Deadpan.] "Well, okay. Sure, why not?"
I'll have to search for it online and see if I can find it. Everything turns up online eventually, you know.
Yeah, you're right. I'm sure it's out there somewhere. Oh, and that was filmed in...I think Montreal? And I think at some point they invited me to come up, but I wouldn't get paid to be there, and I was, like, "No, I don't think I want to go up there for 90 days and not get paid for it!" So I didn't go. So I never met any of the cast or anything like that. I just wrote it and turned it in and saw it when it aired.
You’re welcome, Michael Hitchcock!
I had a few folks online who wanted me to ask you about the experience of doing Heartbreakers, and invariably anyone who mentioned it described it as an underrated film.
Yeah! It was really fun, and - weirdly - it was shot all over the place. There were a couple of scenes that I was in that I think got cut or shortened, but we filmed it in Miami, we shot it in Key Largo - that's where it looks like I'm going to pick up Jennifer Love Hewitt's character but instead I'm going to hug my mother, and Jennifer takes an olive and hits me in the eye with it and all that business - and some of it was shot in Pasadena.
But the thing that I remember the most about the outdoor restaurant scene with that was that it was this beautiful, beautiful set, but it was right on the edge of a river or a stream, and the mosquitoes were so bad that everyone got sprayed with mosquito repellent all up and down our costumes and in our hair and on our face, and one of the assistant directors got hospitalized because she got bit by so many mosquitoes. So it looked beautiful, but it just stunk like the worst insect repellent you can think of, and...that's sort of all you can think about it: it was really hot, and it stunk of insect repellent. But it looked great on film! And it was fun to do. I loved Jennifer Love Hewitt. We had a good time together. And Sigourney Weaver was cool. Yeah, it had a lot of fun people in it. Sarah Silverman was in it!
I need to revisit that. It's been way too long since I've seen it.
Yeah, it's... [Hesitates.] It's a weird film, because most films have three acts, but that film, it almost seems like it has a fourth act. But it's clever, and it's kind of cool. And I think they're trying to revive it, maybe, as a TV series.
[In 2019, Hewitt was talking about doing a sequel to Heartbreakers as a TV series, but in a 2021 interview with Vulture, she seemed to have cooled on the idea somewhat, sounded less than enthused about revisiting that sort of wardrobe in her 40s. Dammit.]
Okay, time to ask about another complete cult classic film, but this is one of my all-time favorites: Dill Scallion.
Oh, yeah, Dill Scallion! Boy, you've done your research!
Well, that one I actually own on DVD - thank you, Jordan Brady - so it was pretty easy to research.
I've got it here, too, somewhere. I haven't seen that one in a long time, either. But I believe my character's name is Rusty Bob.
It is!
[Laughs.] Yeah, that was fun to do. Most of those projects where you do it for, like, a day or two, you have a good time, and then a year later it comes out and everyone goes, "Oh, yeah, that was fun!" But it was fun!
Weirdly, Best in Show wasn't my first mockumentary. In fact, the first movie I ever shot was a very low-budget but very funny mockumentary called And God Spoke..., although it's also known as The Making of 'And God Spoke...'
You know, I saw that on your IMDb page and thought, "I recognize that cover," but I don't think I've ever actually seen it.
It's a funny movie. It's about these two guys who are going to film the whole Bible, and it's going to be this massive, epic movie, and then they run out of movie, basically, at the very beginning, in the Garden of Eden. [Laughs.] So the rest of it has to be done on this little low-rent budget, and it's, like, everything that can go wrong with moviemaking, and it was really clever and funny. It's a good movie! And I remember lying to my mom about it, because I said, "Mom, I'm gonna be in an actual movie!" And said, "You're gonna be in a movie?! How much are you getting paid?" And we were getting paid $50 a day, and I lied and told her a hundred dollars a day...and then she got mad and goes, "Why would you go that for a hundred dollars a day?" [Laughs.] And I never, ever told her that I really got $50 a day.
But it was a funny film, and it has some crazy cameos, too. Andy Dick is in it, Lou Ferrigno... Just some strange, fun, odd pop-ups. It's really funny.
Enjoyed the conversation! Look forward to part 2!