DeVito's balls and the dangers of fingering poop on television.
SF Weekly: What's it like performing "Nightman" for a live audience?
Glenn Howerton: It's so fun. Audiences are flipping out. It's palpable. People seem to really take ownership of the show because it started so small and spread by word of mouth. People are going over to their friends' houses, bringing the DVDs, and sitting them down and saying "You have to watch this fucking show."
SFW: How do you guys strike a balance between being funny and disturbing without just putting people off?
GH: We spend a lot of time talking about that. I guess it all comes down to you have to justify the characters' actions. The audience has to believe that the character believes that what he's doing is going to work.
I think it's a major, major failing in a lot of different TV shows and movies that the writer and the people involved think they can get away with the character just doing something silly or funny and by virtue of the fact they're doing it, it's supposed to be funny. One of the funniest things about the show to me is watching the characters justify their actions. They're trying to basically do the most selfish and horrible things but somehow finding a way to say, "Hey, this is OK because it serves purpose A, purpose B or purpose C."
SFW: Do you think believing in the character's motivation makes it easier to enjoy watching terrible people do terrible things to each other?
GH: I think everything these characters do people can relate to on some twisted level...You take a guy like Danny
DeVito, who is an actor that people universally love. And the truth of
the matter is that if you look back, most of the characters that people
love Danny playing are these despicable people. I think Danny
himself is such a lovable guy that it weirdly comes across. Maybe
that's what it is. We're all nice guys in real life and that comes
across and makes our characters more likable.
SFW:
Do the characters like each other?
GH: I think so. I do. We like to say that the characters are friends
with each other because no one else will be friends with them. For as
disloyal as they often are in any given moment, I think they're also
weirdly loyal to each other.
SFW What's the weirdest thing you know about Danny DeVito?
GH: Well I saw a little bit too much of his balls one day. We were doing a
scene, the extreme home makeover episode, and that house that the
Mexican family lived in that we're supposed to be renovating and end up
burning down -- that was a set...There's these stairs and the stairs
didn't actually go anywhere. So there's a scene where I'm supposed to
leave and he enters, and we're both just sitting at the top of the
stairs. I don't know what the fuck he was wearing, some little short
shorts under this robe or something, but I could see his balls hanging
out. And then this season, we shot a Christmas DVD that's coming out in
November and I saw his balls again. So I totally know what that guy's
balls look like.
SFW: What do they look like?
GH: I can't do that. I won't go so far as to describe them. But he's a
sixty-something year-old man. You can only imagine what his balls look
like.
SFW: How did you guys get hooked up with Fred Savage?
GH: Savage knew one of our executive producer/writers, David Hornsby, who
actually plays Rickety Cricket on the show, and he was a big fan of
Sunny. We were losing our second season director and we were looking
for three directors. He was one of the guys that came in and
interviewed and we really liked his energy. And on top of that we're like, "Hey, he's fucking Kevin
Arnold. That's gotta count for something, right? "
SFW: Is he ever going to be on the show?
GH: We've talked to him about it. I don't know why it hasn't happened
yet, I think there just hasn't been the right character yet. The thing
about Fred is most people still remember him from the Wonder Years and
Princess Bride but...I've seen him in other stuff where he surprised me.
I saw him do some pretty dark stuff...He's a
dark twisted human being; I can tell you that from experience. He's
willing to take it as far as us, if not further.
SFW: Has FX ever told you can't do something or to tone something down?
GH: I'll give you two examples. One was from the first season, and it was
a big thing. In the very first season of the show, the original episode
"Charlie Got Molested" was about him getting molested by a Catholic
priest. It was kind of at the height of that whole controversy. And at
the very last minute they said, "Hey guys, we can't do the priest
thing." We fought back and they fought back and we were ready to walk. We were like, "That's the essence of the episode, and that's
the essence of this show." At that point we were all younger, our rent
was pretty cheap, none of us were married, and we were like, "Fuck you
man, we don't need this shit." But before we did that, we thought,
"We've got a good thing going here and let's at least explore what it
would be like to do it with a gym teacher and if it's just as funny, we
should do it." And in the end we looked at it and said, "This is just
as funny, let's not throw this opportunity away." It's incredible,
because they haven't done it since. And we've done some pretty crazy
shit since then. I think part of it is that they get it, and they get
that the audience gets it. We haven't had many complaints. I think
people get that the joke is on us.
Here's an example of something really stupid they asked us to take out.
We did this whole episode about poop. Some people gave us, pardon the
expression, shit for it because they were like, "Oh, the guys from It's
Always Sunny resorting to poop humor. That's too bad. I thought they
were smarter than that." And of course I wanted to say, "Are you
fucking kidding me? The whole episode is about how it's stupid to think
poop is funny." We were trying to have it both ways: Both making poop
jokes and making fun of people who make poop jokes. I think poop is
funny. But I digress.
At one point, when Artemis is doing the whole
wrap-up at the end, she had a part where she very casually put her
finger on the poop that was on the paper plate and kind of rolls it
while saying a line. And for whatever reason, FX was like, no. It
wasn't even FX, actually. It was their legal department. They were
like, "It's too much poop. You can't have Artemis' character finger the
poop." And we were like, "You've got to be kidding me. That is so
stupid. You can have people's heads exploding and on The Shield people
being tortured to a bloody pulp, but you can't have a character just
lightly finger a piece of dry poop on a paper plate? That's
ridiculous."
