Interview: Michael Hitchcock (Pt. 2)
WARNING: If you haven’t yet read Pt. 1 of this piece, then you’re going to want to do that. I’m not saying you can’t read Pt. 2 first, but you’re only ruining the experience for yourself.
Here's another reader request for you: what was it like working on On the Spot?
On the Spot! That was a TV show that was half-improvised, half-scripted, and had a really fun cast, including Tim Conway. One of the last shows he ever did as a regular. But it had, like, Dweezil Zappa as the musical director, so at every taping, Dweezil and his band would be playing. It had Jeff Davis, who was in a bunch of the Whose Line Is It, Anyway? episodes; Erinn Hayes, who everyone knows now from Children's Hospital; Mindy Sterling from the Austin Powers movies; Arden Myrin, a very, very funny comedian who's in everything; Lance Barber, who right now is the dad on Young Sheldon... Oh, and Chip Esten! People know him as Charles Esten, from the series Nashville. He was the host of the whole thing. And it was on the WB, but unfortunately it premiered on the night the Iraq War started. [Laughs.] So everyone was watching that! No one watched our show. It lasted, I think, five episodes.
How do you recover from being scheduled against the Iraq War? The answer, apparently, is that you don't.
You don't! But we had fun doing it. It was also sort of weird for a half-hour comedy, because part of it was scripted and part of it was improvised, and one of the problems when it aired was that they'd ring a bell, and you'd have to start improvising, and you never knew when that was going to happen. But when they edited all of the footage down, it was, like, maybe 20 minutes, and then you had to keep a lot of the scripted stuff in just so it made sense, so then there wasn't much improv. Had it been an hour or something, I think it probably would've worked...maybe? But it was fun to do, and we had a good time. That's another one I'd like to see if it's out there! It was fun just to hang out and be goofy.
There's little in life that's more fun than just hanging out and being goofy.
Right? And thinking about it, I think I was also writing on MAD TV at the time, so I would have to go tape the show and then go back to work at MAD! So it was a strange back-and-forth thing. But a fun one. And just to see Dweezil play every night... He'd play between the sets, and everyone would rock out.
That's amazing. By the way, just to throw this in, Tim Conway is responsible for delivering one of the most off-putting and hilarious interview openers of my career: he called me for the interview, I said, "Hello?" and he replied, "Will Harris's office."
Wow. [Laughs.] And you were, like, "Uh... What?"
Exactly.
That's outstanding. Oh, my goodness, that's great...
Well, since you brought up MAD TV, I was actually going to ask you how you found your way onto that show as a writer, since you'd predominantly been acting at that point?
That happened... Well, basically, I have Michael McDonald to thank for that, because he had gotten hired in, I think, season two of MAD TV...or maybe season three. I don't remember. I think I came on season four. But he was one of the Groundlings, and Phil LaMarr was also a Groundling, and they had met Mary Scheer. So Michael McDonald recommended me to Dick Blasucci, who was the showrunner, to be a writer on it, and...that's how I became a writer on it!
Yeah, they hired a lot of sketch writers... Well, which makes sense, because it was a sketch show! [Laughs.] But a lot of people came from either the Groundlings or Second City to write on it. And then some people had done double duty. Like, Steven Cragg, he came from SNL, and then he went over to MAD TV. So we had a few people who worked on both shows.
Was there a sense of competition at all between the two shows?
Well, we always knew we were second place. I mean, we were always the underdog. Always. So we knew our place. And we kind of liked that, in some weird way. It was one of those shows that it seemed like Fox was just trying to get rid of us from the start, and literally the guy that gave us notes - he was a Fox executive, I don't remember his name - he was developing a late-night show. Which we knew! So the guy giving us notes was trying to get us off the air so his show could get on the air! [Laughs.] But it took them 14 years to kill it off, and they've never really had a late-night show since. Not one that worked, anyway. So maybe they should've kept it on!
Probably. I mean, what was it going to hurt, in the long run?
Yeah, I'm sure they did it for a nickel. [Laughs.] But it was fun to do, and so many great people! I mean, the cast was crazy talent. Because we had Keegan [Michael Key] and Jordan [Peele] before they became super-famous, and so many good people. Michael McDonald's amazing, and Will Sasso, Nicole Sullivan, Ike Barinholtz, Alex Borstein, Debra Wilson... Just the whole cast is amazing sketch people. Debra's an actress I wish would be working more. She can do anything. And the same thing with Alex. Alex's sketch work was crazy. And Jordan! But almost every single one of them got that job because they're amazing. But Jordan's characters... If you go and watch, his characters were so defined. And even though they could just be anybody walking in the door, he had a specific character for every one of those people. It's fascinating to watch him. But it's just a crazy talented cast, and they're in everything...and I'm glad, because they deserve it!
I had a chance to interview Key and Peele just before their series was premiering, and I remember telling them that it struck me as having some of the same sensibilities as Mr. Show. They were just both glowing, saying, like, "You could not have given us a greater compliment, thank you so much!"
You know, it's so funny: I was in L.A. and I went to the dentist not too long ago...and there was Jordan! And I'd forgotten, but I went, "Oh, God, back in the Mad TV days, I recommended my dentist to a bunch of the cast, and they all still go there!" So it was very weird to run into him at the dentist, but...that's what I did!
I hope your dentist sends you a Christmas card every year for all of that business.
He should, right? [Laughs.] They said, "Oh, he's so funny! Whenever he comes in, he makes us all laugh!" I don't. I don't make 'em laugh. I just want to get in and get out!
For this next one, I'll just observe that I actually have the complete-series set of Grosse Pointe.
Oh, do you? That's so great!
Now that was a show that really upset me when it got its walking papers.
Me, too! I think that show was ahead of its time. Because, you know, it's loosely based on Darren Starr's experiences on 90210, and it's certainly a takeoff on that world, but I think at the time the WB didn't really have anything like it. And we had replaced a show - and I don't remember what that show was, unfortunately - but the fans of that show hatedGrosse Pointe, because they thought somehow the cast got together and kicked that show off the air. [Laughs.] So they just went to town on it! But, yeah, I wish it would've lasted. And my character, I played, like, the father on the show, and then behind the scenes I sort of had a crush on one of the actors on the show.
But in real life, I was also working on Mad TV at the time, and it got very hard for me to get over there and do the show, and Mad was not all that happy that I was acting. And you can't blame them if you're getting paid to write, and then all of a sudden you say, "No, I'm gonna be gone the whole day." And that was happening a lot. So at some point they said, "Well, we just can't work with your schedule," and I slowly was phased out. Which is too bad, because I loved playing that part. It was really fun.
I had a couple of things where I would, like, shoot my part at 6 a.m. in the morning and pretend that I was at a party, but none of the cast was really there, because they shot on a different day, so they'd shoot me in the corner, looking and reacting to people who weren't really there. So they tried to make it work. But it was just too hard, which was too bad. I wish I could've done more with it. But it was super fun to be a part of. And that's another one that had a great cast: Joely Fisher, William Ragsdale, Nat Faxon, who's now an Academy Award winner for his writing. and Kyle Howard, who's been in all sorts of shit. Yeah, good times...
[Just as an FYI, if you click on the above video of episode one of Grosse Pointe, you’ll find that some kind soul has actually uploaded all of the episodes, so get to watching post-haste!]
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was such a wonderful show, and to be honest, what sold me on the show in the first place was the involvement of Adam Schlesinger, may he rest in peace. Just having his name attached to it... I was such a huge Fountains of Wayne fan that, as soon as I heard he was part of the musical team, I said, "I'm in."
Right! Plus, like, That Thing You Do! I mean, if he had stayed alive, he probably would've been an EGOT winner, I would think. He was a pleasure to work with. He and Jack Dolgen and Rachel Bloom wrote every... Well, almost every song. There were maybe two that they had outside writers do. But there were at least 150 songs over the four seasons. And they're so funny! And every one of them could be their own music video. That's what I loved about it. They were just funny, funny songs. And some people never gave the show a chance. They were, like, "Ugh, no, I don't want to see a musical." But it's, like, yeah, it's a "musical," but the songs...are just music-video parodies, almost. I mean, they'll stand the test of time. They're very, very funny. And smart! Yeah, that was a great show. Aline Brosh McKenna, who comes from the film world, she wrote The Devil Wears Prada and 27 Dresses and all these movies, she became a fan of Rachel Bloom's from seeing Rachel's videos online that she had done and just posted to YouTube. So she wanted to meet her, and they met, and they clicked, and they came up with concept and sold it to Showtime...and Showtime filmed it, and then Showtime rejected it. And then it somehow ended up over at the CW. Isn't that crazy?
It's ridiculous, if you're talking about Showtime rejecting it.
Yeah! And I don't know if the original Showtime pilot is out there anywhere, but Michael McDonald was the original boss, and then Pete Gardner took over when it got rebooted for the CW because Michael had lined up all these jobs directing and couldn't get the schedule to work. So Pete took over, and he was fantastic as the boss. It was just a different energy, but a very, very loving energy that he brought to it that I really liked. But it's cool to see Michael's interpretation, too, you know. It's just... This stuff happens!
[Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the original Showtime pilot, but I did find Rachel Bloom’s original announcement about the casting of the Showtime pilot, which is pretty entertaining in its own right.]
Did you have an active desire to work on both sides of the camera - because you were doing that on Glee as well, obviously - or was it just a case of people offering you the opportunity, so you took it?
A little bit. I like doing both. Usually when I do acting, I do it when I'm not writing, because it's very hard to take time off and run across town or something like that. Like I said, if you're getting paid for one thing, they're not all that excited when you're off doing the other. So I'd try to do the acting jobs when I wasn't physically working, so maybe the three months off. Like Trial & Error, weirdly, was shot during the time off from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Sometimes they overlap. Like, Aline Brosh McKenna allowed me to leave to go shoot Mascots, which was a Chris Guest film, during Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. So that does happen, too.
And then when I was doing Glee, Ryan Murphy had another show called The New Normal, it only lasted one season, but I recurred on that. And that was easy, because he was my boss on both shows. [Laughs.] And they were both filmed on the same lot over at Paramount, so it was easy to go do the acting thing and then go back and put on the writing hat for the rest of the day. That was the easiest one to go back and forth on. But some of the other ones... It just wouldn't work out, scheduling-wise.
But, yeah, I like doing both. It's fun to do both. And they're both very different challenges. The nice thing about acting, though, is that you're, like, "Okay, I don't have to worry about all these problems that pop up when I'm writing." [Laughs.] A lot of things are happening that actors have no idea about, and you can just kind of sit in your chair and go, "Oh, that's not my problem today, so I don't have to worry about it!"
You got an opportunity to direct an episode of Glee, didn't you?
I did, yeah. In the last season, I directed an episode called "Child Star," and that starred J.J. Totah as a very obnoxious kid. And J.J. is now Josie, and she's on the new Saved by the Bell reboot. Yeah, that was very cool of Ryan to let me do that.
Is that something you want to do more of?
Yeah, I think so. As time goes on. It's a lot of work, and it's a lot of challenges, but it's definitely fun to do. And I have newfound respect for TV directors, because my GOD, it is a drain of your brain, because you have every part of it working at the same time - the creative side, but also the practical side - and you only have so many hours in the day. I've never had time go by faster than when I was directing, because it was, like, "Oh, my God, 12 hours went by, and we're not finished!" [Laughs.] It would happen, that sort of thing. Meanwhile, everyone else, it's just sort of a normal day for them, but for me it was, like, "No, no, no! We've got to get it done! We've got to get it done!" But it was fun to do.
And that was strange, because on Glee you'd have weird problems that were just Glee problems. We were shooting something, a performance number, and all of a sudden, where we were set up to watch it was in the high school auditorium, supposedly, which was a big set. But our little video village was in a hallway somewhere. And all of a sudden I hear this massive explosion, and all the actors onstage screamed and kind of covered their heads. And I thought, "Oh, my God, a light fell and someone died!" [Laughs.] Because, you know, you think the worst. But then all of a sudden all of this confetti starts falling, and you realize that they shot off the confetti cannons too quickly...and in the middle of dialogue! And they make this massive explosion sound, and it looks beautiful, but then you have to take 20 minutes to get everything cleaned up and do it again. But, yeah, only on Glee do you have to deal with a confetti cannon going off at the wrong time...
Not to bring up another series that should've lasted longer, but you popped up in a couple of episodes of TNT's Men of a Certain Age.
Oh, yeah. The weirdest thing about that show is that, as far as reading scripts, because those were by far the best well-written, it was so easy to memorize that dialogue. It was like real people talking. And that's not to say that other shows aren't really impressive in their writing, but that was just so easy to memorize that it still stands out. And what a great cast. It lasted two seasons, and, man, I wish it would've done at least one more. It should've won all the awards back in the day. The cast, the writers... I want to work with everybody again at some point.
That core trio of Scott Bakula, Andre Braugher, and Ray Romano... At first glance, I was, like, "That seems like a really odd trio of guys to star in a show together," yet the chemistry between them was just fantastic from the get-go.
You know, the weird thing about that show for me was watching Ray Romano being a producer. Because you think of Ray Romano as being Ray Romano, and of course he still is even when he's producing, and it's not like he was mean or anything, but it was just, like, "Oh, okay, he's also a real human being." [Laughs.] That was just kind of strange to see and fascinating to watch. I played Scott Bakula's boss, for anyone who hasn't seen it.
That's another one I need to revisit. And I think that's one of the rare shows where I actually kept every screener disc that TNT ever sent me, because I just loved it so much.
Oh, yeah. That was great, the whole show. I loved it very much. [Laughs.] All I keep saying is, "I enjoyed it!" But honestly, I haven't really had any bad experiences. They've all been good experiences!
Well, I did an interview the other day with Colm Feore, who effectively said, "I hate to disappoint you, but I don't think I've ever worked with anyone who I can legitimately say was a complete asshole."
I don't think I have, either. I mean, actors can be crazy, but...I can be crazy! And writers can be crazy. And so can waiters! I mean, I went to Northwestern University, and I worked at a restaurant. One waiter got into a fist fight with a customer! [Laughs.] Weird shit happened all the time! Every profession has strange things happening. There's always something going on.
I feel like we've probably covered most of the contenders for this question, but I traditionally ask everyone if there's a favorite project they've worked on over the years that didn't get the love they thought it deserved.
Ooh... [Long pause.] Gosh, yeah, a lot of what you've mentioned, I feel that way about. Hmmm... I'm trying to think! I will say that I wish more people had seen Where the Day Takes You at the time. It was released by New Line Cinema, and it got good reviews. I just wish more people had seen it. But it was an indie movie. I also wrote a movie called House Arrest, but...I think it got what it deserved. [Laughs.] It was a bit...problematic. Fun to do, but problematic.
Looking back, I thought, "Why in the world would I write something about two parents getting divorced? It's too sad! I should've changed the whole concept!" But as it was written, I wanted to make an R-rated movie, but then I thought, "Well, maybe it should be a family movie..." And then... Yeah, we should've stuck with the R-rated movie. It was just more biting, you know? But it was one of those things where parents didn't want to take their kids to see it, because half the country's divorced! So that was stupid of me...
But you covered a lot of them. Grosse Pointe, for sure, I wish we'd had more of it. And I think Mad TV qualifies as underrated. It certainly has its cult following, but I think it deserved a little more love than it got at times. It could be a bit juvenile, so I understand why people thought that about that part of it. But it also had some pretty funny sketches if you go back and look at them.
Do you have a favorite sketch that you wrote?
We wrote a parody of The Wizard of Oz that turned out pretty good that I still like a lot. And we did a whole takeoff on Abercrombie and Fitch workers that I still think is pretty funny. It was just a big fuck-you to the company. [Laughs.]
In regards to the underrated question, I think Crazy Ex-Girlfriend got good critical recognition, but I hope more people will watch it. It's on Netflix, and it definitely deserves to be watched. It's funny, I think the actors on it are brilliant, and the songs are great. But the people who saw it, they liked it. I just wish it'd had a bigger audience. But that's kind of the cool thing about the time we're living in now: you can have these shows that have a niche audience, and that's cool. Not everything's going to be this massive hit, but...there really aren't massive hits anymore, really. Or if there are, they don't come along too often. And what was considered disastrous ratings 10 years ago would be a hit today! So it's crazy how all that works.
But I do like that there's something for everybody today. And sometimes when someone recommends a really good show, I won't watch it for a year, because I just get stubborn. Do you ever get that way? It's, like, "No, I'm not going to watch what everybody loves! I'm going to watch Flip or Flop on HGTV!" [Laughs.]
My wife still has not watched WandaVision because I hyped it so much. She's, like, "I'll watch it when I want to watch it, and I won't watch it with you, because you're just going to point out stuff while I'm watching it to make sure I don't miss it!"
Right! But I did that with Mad Men. I waited forever to watch Mad Men. Everyone said, "You'll love it, you'll love it, you'll love it!" And it was, like, "I know I'll love it! But I'm not ready!" And then I watched it, and of course I loved every second of it, and I couldn't get enough." So it was, like, "You're right!" But I just postponed joy for five years to... I don't know, get back at people? [Laughs.] I did that with Breaking Bad, too! I didn't watch that when everybody else did. But that's the beauty of this stuff: that we can stream it and discover it a couple of years later, and it's still cool then, too. There's so much good TV right now that it's not even TV anymore. It's on demand. Movies, TV, all of it.
I did a movie in 2019 called Barb & Star Go to Vista del Mar, and it premiered on VOD this year, but it was supposed to be released last year, but because of the pandemic it couldn't be. And then I think Lionsgate finally just thought, "Well, we don't know when everything's going to reopen, so we'll just release it to VOD." But I think it sort of worked in that venue, too, because people needed a comedy while they were stuck at home, so it weirdly sort of came out at the right time.
A lot of people have told me that I need to watch that, actually. And at least one person made a specific point of telling me how great you were in it.
Oh, thanks! Well, it was just so silly! It was just sort of a silly movie that's pure joy, basically. Kind of innocent, but... Well, it's certainly not a dirty movie, but it's not entirely innocent! It's just fun. Plus, you get to see Jamie Dornan being funny, which...who knew? [Laughs.] But he was really funny. He was great! The best thing I learned about Jamie Dornan, who was, you know, the star of Fifty Shades of Grey and The Fall, and he does all this dramatic stuff, but if you ever have a chance to interview him, in real life, he became really good friends with Don Rickles at the end of Don Rickles' life. And it all started because his mom was a big Don Rickles fan.
Because they grew up in Ireland, you know, so she listened to his comedy albums. And then Jamie met him at some point, and they became fast friends. He'd fly to where Don was performing, and they'd have dinner with him and Don and maybe one other person. So it wasn't, like, 12 people at a table. And Jamie was telling me this story when we were filming Barb & Star, and he started crying. That's how much he missed him and respected him. It was so cool to hear about that happening. It was sort of like with me and Catherine O'Hara, where you meet someone who you really, really respect, and they turn out to be so cool, and you're so thankful that they're cool, and that they're a lovely person.