Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a pretty awesome interview I conducted just a couple days ago with two-thirds of the Lonenly Island group. In the roll call for Awesometown, they shout out “Akiva!” and “Jorma!”

I even thought of starting the interview out going, “Roll call! Quint! ….” But I figured that would end badly, so I ditched the idea.

Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone are rounded out by Andy Samberg, who Capone interviewed last week… in fact, we talk about that interview…

And speaking of “talk,” this interview popped the cherry on my brand new Edirol R-09 Digital Audio Recorder. Even though it was a phoner, I figured I’d give it a test run before the insanity of Comic-Con next week and it turned out pretty good, at least good enough to include some clips for you folks.

So, you’ll also see the first inclusion of audio clips from this interview in MP3 format. I’ll have three links below. One of the clips is 2 minutes long and the other two are much shorter, but fun funny moments. Expect to see more audio in the near future as the waters are tested.

Enjoy the interview!

Akiva: Hello.

Quint: Hey!

Akiva: Hey man.

Quint: Hey, what’s up?

Akiva: This is Akiva. How’s it going, dude?

Quint: It is good to speak to you guys.

Akiva: Where are you?

Quint: I’m in Austin, Texas. Home base of AICN.

Akiva: Man, we really wanted to go to that “brew n’ view” place. What’s it called? I never got to go and now it’s closed.

Quint: Oh, the Alamo Drafthouse, yeah.

Akiva: Yeah, I was talking to Edgar about that place, Edgar Wright, and he was talking about how awesome it is and then it closed right before we could have gone and went in there.

Quint: Yeah, it would have been great. I think, even at the closing, they were talking about setting up a HOT ROD screening, but I don’t know if it ever was more than just talk.

Jorma: Why did it close? This is Jorma. Hi…

Quint: Hey, how’s it going?

Jorma: What happened?

Akiva: Why did they close the whole place?

Quint: Their lease went up. They had a ten year lease and the lease went out and everybody downtown now is just trying to buy up whole blocks to build condos and shit up. So the landlords raised their rent to the point where they couldn’t…

Akiva: So what you’re saying is that “the Man” came and…

Jorma: It’s the whole CBGB all over again…

Quint: “The Man” totally “effed em’ in the A.”

Akiva: Just another effin case of that…

Quint: Well, Ain’t It Cool can use curse words, so we can drop F-bombs if you want.

Akiva: Well, we don’t; we are gentlemen… all three of us, so we prefer “eff em’ in the A.”

Quint: Well I’m not, so I’ll probably get filthy by the end of this thing.

Akiva: Well, work your way up to it.

[Quint laughs]

Akiva: Give us something to look forward to.

Quint: Yeah, I don’t want to blow my load at the beginning… I understand.

Akiva: If you start with the real deal, you’ve got nowhere to go…

Quint: Alright, well I saw the flick and I really liked it. I’m a big fan of random humor and so the movie was right up my alley.

Akiva: Awesome.

Jorma: There’s certainly enough of that in there…

Quint: But yeah, I really dug it. How did…I guess the basic question is how it got to you, because you guys aren’t credited with the screenplay, so…

Jorma: Go ahead “Kives.”

Akiva: I’ll take this one. We’ve done interviews all day, so we divide up who takes it.

Quint: Alright, well hopefully I’ll shoot you some questions that aren’t the standard “down the line” stuff.

Akiva: You know, it’s alright… whatever you’ve got going…

[Get ready for the first audio ear-blaster! Hit play and read along, like we used to do with those old STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES cassette & books!]

Akiva: Now, I’m going to curse a lot in this answer.

Quint: Do it.

Akiva: The script was written by fucking Pam Brady. She’s fucking awesome.

Quint: Mmhmm.

Akiva: She… you know, you might already know this, but I’ll just say it anyways. She wrote for the SOUTH PARK series and then she co-wrote the movie and the TEAM AMERICA movie with those dudes, so she’s a funny lady.

Quint: Yup.

Akiva: And it was written, you know, like Lorne (Michaels) owned it with Paramount, you know, and so he had it for a while and when we got there I guess they started thinking maybe Andy can play that dude, and then after we did LAZY SUNDAY, they started thinking of us as a group and thinking maybe the three of us could go and take it over and we read it and it was super, as you put it, random and kind of quirky, absurd, and weird… kind of our style to begin with. So, we were like “alright, yeah. If you’ll let us make it, who are we to say no? Sounds sweet.” So we... yeah… we just started working on it and…

Jorma: Then we got our grubby paws all over it.

Akiva: Yeah, and we fucking wiped our bodies on it and wait, don’t take that last one. That one went nowhere… It went nowhere!

Jorma: I liked it!

Quint: I thought you were going for a taint reference, but…

Akiva: Well that’s what I was trying to think of… like…

Jorma: Yeah, just wiped it all over it.

Akiva: Well it’s like “and then we wiped our asses with it.” You know how you get something you really love and then you wipe your ass with it, because you love it so much. It’s more to mark your territory in the way a dog might wipe his ass on something to get his scent on it… not in the traditional sense of using it as toilet paper, then flush it down the toilet… it would be the complete opposite of that…

Jorma: So far, this is a wonderful interview…

Akiva: …but, it still resulted with my shit being on the pages of the script, so like in a good way. That, you can totally… you know, you can use any of that.

Quint: Yeah, that one was good.

Akiva: Well, that’s just the truth. The truth always rings much better than, you know, made up stuff.

Quint: Just looking at the digital shorts and looking at The Lonely Island stuff… it seems that you guys, like you said, your shit’s all over it, so did you guys have much influence on Pam’s original script?

Jorma: Our stamp is definitely on it, so when people, as for like anything when they ask to see a script, you kind of groan a little bit, but you know, I mean obviously stuff like “cool beans” and stuff like that is in there and like the stuff like that like from the early years of Lonely Island…

It was actually originally… I think there was a scene in a preview might have had it there, but I don’t think we ever even edited that scene to the way that it was actually in the script, because we kind of didn’t think it’d work. It was going to go back and forth and me and Andy were going to say “cool beans” over and over again and that got kind of weird… that we were just saying the words “cool beans” in weirder and weirder ways. We never actually edited that version, so that was a very late kind of thing. There’s stuff like that that either happened in editing or like there were things that were sort of improved on the day, like when Andy hits a bell and we all make this bong sound. You know stuff like that that really wasn’t in the script, but…

Akiva: I don’t know Quint, are you going to put the red spoiler rectangle around this?

Quint: It will be completely spoilered.

Jorma: Oh, good.

Akiva: You know, I feel like half the fun of “cool beans,” is the surprise, so I’m really…

Jorma: Well if you said it was an editing thing, then you still wouldn’t know…

Quint: Well you would have to experience “cool beans” to really…

Akiva: I have a follow up question: Do you have a font that you can use on Ain’t It Cool, that you can reflect this kind of tone… when I talk like that. Is there a…

[Maybe not a font... but I can hit you with the audio for the next exchange!]

Quint: A serious font?

Jorma: You have a deep voice… well not exactly deep, but…

Akiva: Yeah, but a deep voice would make it seem like it’s too playful though and that’ll be kind of like… kind of lame…

Jorma: Or something with like a parenthetical where it says “professional.”

Akiva: Yeah, professional. Kind of like unlike an adult man… full grown…

[Everybody laughs]

Jorma: “Said like an adult man…”

Akiva: Yeah! Like somebody who…

Quint: Somebody smoking a pipe…

Akiva: Yeah, someone to be reckoned with. Someone who’s opinion counts.

[Quint laughs]

Akiva: Yeah, use that button.

Quint: We have a whole editorial where we have different buttons and fonts and some…

Akiva: I know you guys are supposed to be the big shit on the internet… yeah I would expect you guys to just html up that shit. I know the deal, we’re from the internet. Anytime I want some shit like that, I just html it up.

Quint: That’s it, you got it.

Jorma: Said like a real adult man…

Akiva: Thank you; I’d do that shit from my blackberry at this point. I’d fucking C++ it and then just send and boom it’s an internet phenomenon. C++ *boop* send.

Quint: Well see, I’m pretty technically retarded, but they try to make it as user friendly as possible so…

Akiva: Well I could teach you some stuff. I’m pretty great with programming. I’m lying right now, just in case you’re curious...

Quint: Hey, I know my image links… I can do that. I can do different fonts… different sizes…

Akiva: Oh, now you’re getting me kind of worked up.

Quint: Let’s see, what else can I do? I can do links within images…

Akiva: Shit.

Quint: Yeah, that’s some pretty advance shit right there.

Akiva: It’s 2007, uh oh. It’s millennium, right? Is that what they say?

Quint: Yeah yeah. Did the Mayan calendar end already?

Akiva: In 2000, there was no way people where putting links on images, that shit is new.

Quint: Yup, brand new!

Akiva: Brand new!

Quint: Actually, I invented it.

Akiva: Wow, shit that’s awesome.

Jorma: Dude, we’re all learning!

Quint: Can we talk a little bit about the cast in the movie, because I love that you have people like Will Arnett and Danny McBride and Sissy Spacek and…

Jorma: You’ve seen THE FOOT FIST WAY obviously?

Quint: Of course, yeah.

Jorma: Yeah yeah, dangerous… dangerous…

Quint: He’s just so good in this movie too. It’s like when you watch FOOT FIST WAY, you’re like “man this guy’s either going to have this one brilliant thing that kind of slowly leaks out there and he’s going to disappear or this is going to be the launching pad for…

Jorma: My guess is that’s his launching pad. It’s just so charming and awesome and I think everything he does is super funny.

Akiva: Yeah. We saw that movie, because it was brought to us by one of the producers of the movie and like she knew from the beginning that… she played the movie for us and we were like “holy shit, this guy’s great!”

Quint: And Danny McBride’s just so good in the flick. He’s just as great here. The movie has so many different attention grabbing characters and actors when you have a movie filled with people like Ian McShane… Will Arnett… you know you have all these people and he can still just effortlessly stand out.

Akiva: Yeah, we got really lucky, because yeah, as you were saying that I was like “yeah, holy shit.” All of those people are just so amazing.

Quint: Yeah, well I met Sissy Spacek, only once, because she’s a Texan…

Akiva: Oh yeah yeah yeah.

Quint: She was at some Austin event like…

Akiva: Because her husband was working on Paul [Thomas Anderson]’s movie, right? THERE WILL BE BLOOD… was she out there for that?

Quint: Oh no, she was either accepting or giving some award at the Texas Hall of Fame thing that’s tied in with the film festival here.

Akiva: Right right right.

Quint: I couldn’t resist, being the nerd that I am. I took my original CARRIE one sheet and I asked her to sign it.

[Akiva laughs]

Akiva: That’s awesome, she’s into it!

Quint: She was super nice and just the sweetest person, but the one memory of Sissy was that she had a bottle of hand sanitizer that she carried around with her that she insisted any body who touched her took some…

Akiva: She likes Texas, but not…

Quint: Yeah, well she didn’t want to catch anything.

Akiva: She didn’t want that Texas stank all on her… can’t blame her.

[Quint laughs]

Akiva: She has that nice Virginia scent. It’s called “scent” in Virginia and and stank… Actually, I’ve never been to Texas, so that should have a footnote on that comment on there…

Jorma: My grandmother lives in Irving and yeah, you’re right, there’s a stank.

Quint: Well… not as much as Louisiana though…

Jorma: No, not as much. We were in Shreveport for a second there and that place… whew… talk about stank…

Quint: It’s funny because I’ve made a drive to Shreveport/Bossier City and all that and it’s like all of a sudden you realize they didn’t just arbitrarily draw the lines states, because it’s right at that state line that the swamp smell just hits you.

Jorma: Amazing. We just assumed it had to be Shreveport. Andy and I got to do a small part… very little, in HAROLD AND KUMAR 2 and our friend Kal [Penn] as we were going down there was like “just be prepared – Shreveport smells like ass” and as soon as we got off the plane at the airport… immediately it was like “holy shit.”

Akiva: Dude, what about the next time you have to go do some press in Shreveport and…

Jorma: No one lives in Shreveport, dude. They all come down there for a second, so everyone knows it smells like ass.

Akiva: It’s such a…so they’re going to be like “welcome to Shreveport, thanks for…” it’ll be someone from the Shreveport Enquirer.

Jorma: They should put that on the sign, “Welcome to Shreveport it smells like ass here.” You’d think it’s their town slogan and they’re proud of it.

Quint: Well, you know something I noticed…

Akiva: And you’ve gone and incriminated Kal as well. You couldn’t even just burn down your own house, you had to go over and light his on fire too?

[Everyone laughing]

Jorma: Absolutely.

Quint: Well, when you’re in Shreveport for any length of time it’s like after day four or five, you start to realize that you can’t smell it and you wonder if it’s just you or if it’s just a clean day…

Akiva: Uh oh. I’m familiar with that sort of a scent.

Jorma: Yeah, you get used to it, that’s for sure… I don’t know what that is.

Quint: I was down there for THE MIST and I think that was shooting the same time HAROLD AND KUMAR 2 was…

Akiva: You guys might’ve smelled actually the same stank…

Quint: We could have.

Akiva: It’s possible one of you created the stank and the other smelled it.

Jorma: I feel pretty connected to you right now. Just that we shared that stank.

Quint: Well… you know… it’s a bond.

Akiva: An unbreakable bond.

[Quint laughs]

Quint: Yeah, unbreakable…

Akiva: Seriously though, Andy talked to Capone and we’re talking to you, so…

Quint: I know, everybody is represented.

Akiva: Hopefully we fucking blow them out of the water. If their thing already printed, fuck those dudes, if you know what I mean.

Quint: Yeah, yeah. Capone got one; I get two… a threesome.

Akiva: Nope, it makes it seem like it takes two of us to add up to one Andy. I’m going to go sock him in the mouth. I’m going to walk next door knock him in the mouth just to kind of even it. He won’t even know why it happened, I’m just going to go do it…

Quint: Just to say “look on the internet bitch…”

Akiva: Yes, check it out “QUINT.”

Quint: “Quint says hello.”!

Akiva: Exactly!

[Everyone laughs]

Akiva: Ugh, Capone… always trying to steal Quint’s thunder…

Jorma: You kind of just need a “Quint” ring. That way you could just punch them and leave an imprint on the forehead and they’d be like “oh, I get it.”

Akiva: Yeah, just a “Q.”

Quint: That’s a good idea. I might just have to start wearing my “Quint” ring.

Jorma: I think you should.

Akiva: I’m sure in Texas, you could go down to your neighborhood blacksmith and have him just make you one.

Quint: Yeah, well I mean they’re kind of busy shoeing horses.

[Akiva laughs]

Akiva: Well, naturally…

[Quint laughs]

Quint: So what’s next for you guys? What are you… where the jump off? I assume that if HOT ROD does really well then you’ll be all over.

Akiva: Then we’ll tell everybody, our friends and family, to go fuck off we’re famous now.

Quint: Yeah totally.

Jorma: Yeah, we’ve just been counting the days.

Akiva: We’re going back to SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. The season starts at the end of September, so…

Jorma: But we haven’t stopped working for like two or three years pretty much, so Iat least got to have a honeymoon just now. So maybe Akiva will have the weekend off, but when the season starts… He’s not interested in the…

Akiva: This interview just got so romantic, but yeah we’re going back to SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, which is actually… surprisingly, I’m actually looking forward to getting back to the grind, because it’s like when you’re working on a movie for so long, it’s actually kind of refreshing to get to go make things that are sort of throw away that you do in 48 hours and then you’re done rather than things that take a year and then they’re done.

Quint: Yeah, yeah, yeah. A quicker turnaround, that’s cool, but I take it that you enjoyed the directing process and would like to go and make another feature.

Akiva: Well, I had a great time doing it. I’m not by any means… maybe in a week I’ll rest and then go “dude, we’re making this movie,” but as of right now I’m just trying to get through this first one and see how it goes.

Jorma: I want to go see TRANSFORMERS. I haven’t gotten a chance to see that yet, so that’s something I want to check out.

Akiva: I do have plans to see RATATOUILLE actually… well it’s not a firm plan so far. I haven’t checked the screenings per se, I don’t know which time it’s showing, but…

Jorma: Is it playing yet?

Quint: RATATOUILLE is awesome.

Akiva: It’s been out for like two weeks. This dude’s been out of the country.

Jorma: Yeah dude, let’s just go.

Quint: Do it, RATATOUILLE is great.

Akiva: I guess we do have some plans with some big movies

Jorma: Quint, get on a plane.

Quint: I’ll be there in three and a half hours. We’ll meet at the El Capitan.

Jorma: Oh yeah, they have a stage show. That’s definitely worth seeing. See, you’ve already solved my problems. My plans are getting more and more solid by the second. I’ll film it off the screen and that will be my next movie that comes out on Limewire in about three hours.

Quint: Perfect! I have to say that I was introduced to the wonders of AWESOMETOWN only recently and I’m really depressed that that never happened.

Akiva: Well, thank you.

Quint: I just wanted to let you know and I don’t know if it was intentional, but I really appreciate the very FRAGLE ROCKish theme song.

Jorma: Oh yes, that was very intentional. We made a very similar sounding song for CHANNEL 101, called THE BOO. When we weren’t actually able to do it…

Akiva: Well it was because we working on AWESOMETOWN at the time, so we had worked on the beat already. Then we had to quickly throw together BOO, so we were trying to kill two birds with one stone.

Quint: It’s the double-clap.

Akiva: And you know what’s funny, is I was definitely listening to FRAGILE ROCK when I made that actually. I’m glad you picked up on that.

Quint: I don’t know, I guess it’s just my “Child of the Eighties” thing going on, but every time I hear that double-clap, that’s the only thing I can think of.

Akiva: Exactly, it was that and the bass line. I was like listening to it over and over again, trying to figure out something that wouldn’t get us sued, but at the same time have that sort of…

Quint: Cool, well this is just as random and unstructured as I was hoping it would be.

Akiva: Oh, glad to deliver.

Quint: You guys lived up to my expectations.

Akiva: Fantastic. Alright, well maybe we’ll see you sometime in Austin if we ever…

Quint: Yeah, come on down to Austin, there’s some awesome BBQ.

Akiva: Exactly.

Jorma: Yeah absolutely, we would love to go out there, so yeah, that would be awesome.

Akiva: Are you going to COMIC-CON?

Quint: I will be there. I’ve been dealing with COMIC-CON for the last three days and it’s already trying to make my brain crawl out of my skull.

Akiva: We’ve never been before, but we’re excited. We’re going to go on Wednesday, I think, afternoon. If you’re around, look around for us.

Quint: Oh yeah, you going to preview night?

Akiva: I guess so. I don’t know if we’re actually… I don’t know what any of it is.

Quint: Are you going to the BEOWULF presentation? Because that’s Paramount…

Akiva: You know I’ll certainly try. Here’s how it works: every time they’re like “you’re going to Seattle, it’s like ‘awesome, I’ve always wanted to explore Seattle’,” then you get there and they shepherd us around to interviews and then they’re like “now, you’re leaving Seattle…” I’m hoping COMIC-CON has a little bit of free time to actually go and see some cool shit.

Quint: Well if you’re there on Wednesday, I think your panel; the Paramount panel is Thursday isn’t it?

Akiva: You know, I guarantee you know more than I do.

Quint: So if you’re there early enough on Wednesday, then you will get chance to look around…

Akiva: That would be super cool.

Quint: …and that floor is incredible. I mean just as a… if you count yourselves as geeks in any sense of the word… you’re brain’s going to explode at COMIC-CON.

Akiva: That’s what I keep hearing.

Jorma: Yeah, sounds awesome.

Quint: So yeah and preview night’s the best time to go, because it’s not as crowded, but you still get to see all the cool shit, so…

Akiva: That’s awesome.

Jorma: That’s awesome.

Akiva: Alright, well if you see us, stop and tell us it’s you.

Quint: Well if I see you, I’ll have the blacksmith make up my ring and I’ll pass it along.

Jorma: Yeah man, sock us in the face.

Akiva: And that’s a perfect way to end it.

Quint: Alright, thanks cool man.

Akiva: Thanks dude.

Quint: Bye.

I almost wish I hadn’t tried asking any straight forward questions at all. This was definitely a group to just have a bizarre and funny conversation with.

Hope you dug the interview and that you like the audio clips. We’ll work on having an audio player built into the page so you don’t have to download them, but that probably won’t happen until after Comic-Con.

I won’t give up the transcribed interviews, though. There’s something about reading a conversation that is just more interesting than listening to raw audio. I find that a lot of audio and video content on the web is just too long and when I read an interview, I like being able to skip over questions if I want to, so even if audio content in these interviews (and video content down the line) becomes a regular thing, I’ll still try to have it written out and the audio in clips pertaining to each question.

Thanks to Akiva and Jorma for inspiring me to get a big, cast-iron Q ring… well, I don’t have it yet and haven’t investigated, but I think it must happen now. Then I can Rick James people. That’ll be awesome.

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com