The Point Radio: Scotty Auckerman Writes Funny

Chances are something that made you laugh in the past year was probably written by Scott Auckerman. From The Emmys to COMEDY BANG BANG and BETWEEN TWO FERNS, Scott is on the edge of creating comedy that generates buzz. We talk about how he got started, what The Emmys were really like and how it was writing for The President. Plus CRIME WATCH DAILY is a new show that explores cases that are at the top off the headlines. We talk to the show’s hosts on how they find the right cases to tackle.

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Transcript

The Point Radio. Hey, it's Mike Raub. There's a good chance that something Scott Ackerman has written over the past few months has made you laugh. We'll talk to him about comedy bang bang and writing for President Obama.

Plus investigating serious crime is now a daily job. We'll talk to the guys behind Crime Watch Daily and investigate the investigators. Let's get to The Point. This is The Point. The Point Radio.

Get The Point Radio. Scott Ackerman. Get The Point Radio. Get The Point Radio. Scott Ackerman is in the business of creating the funny.

From comedy bang bang on IFC to writing for the Emmys to so many other projects that you might not even know about yet. Scott began his career on public access. But before that. You know, I really was interested in radio when I was growing up.

I think about 10 years old. I really fell in love with the radio. And I would make fake radio shows where I would take songs off the radio and then do my own DJ stuff with, you know, kind of my own sketches and, you know, crazy voices and stuff like that.

So, and then I also would call into the radio and do sort of sketches and character voices when I was 12 on Kiz FM here locally. So, so it was a lot of that. It was really just like liking to be silly and trying to just being fascinated with show business.

So what was the first writing job you got paid for? First thing I got paid for was something called the Second City Naked News, which was, was back. It was on the MSN network when, you know, kind of computers were newer that this was in 1996, I believe, maybe 97.

And it was, it was like a daily sort of audio show where we wrote daily topical jokes. And so it was interesting. I'd never done anything like it before. Writing daily topical jokes. It was a cool skill to sort of learn how to, how to do.

And it was something that I kind of like when I was working on the Emmy over the past month, I was like, wow, I haven't really done daily topical jokes in a long time. And it was cool to kind of get back in touch with that. Scott was behind the writing team for this year's Emmy broadcast, which is no small fee considering the fact they had to keep the jokes current almost right up until airtime.

How tough was that? You know, it wasn't really a very high pressure filled job to be quite frank. And that's all due to Andy Samberg, who hosted. He's not really a pressure guy. He has a lot of confidence and he likes a calm environment and a fun environment.

And, you know, I mean, that's one reason why I think he wanted to hire us is he is a big fan of comedy bang bang. He's, you know, my friend and Neil Campbell's friend, and he's been on the set and he knows it's not a pressure environment. And, you know, we deliver while still having fun.

But that said, you know, it is a little bit of pressure. We, you know, like you said, we were writing even that afternoon and, you know, right up until showtime, we were fixing and tweaking jokes. And so it's, you know, it's definitely an interesting experience. It's not what we do on my show, which I think is why it was fun for my staff to do.

You know, so it's cool. I mean, it's definitely like cool to stretch different muscles. That's why, you know, I like my show comedy bang bang to be different than Between Two Ferns. You know, Between Two Ferns is like kind of nasty and we do slams and, you know, comedy

bang bang is more fun. It's just fun as a as an artist to kind of like write and perform two different things. So what are the concepts for comedy bang bang come from? Well, the podcast, the basic premise of the podcast is the same as the TV show, which is it's a talk show.

I'm the host and I interview celebrities and I also interview comedians who are portraying fake celebrities or weird people. They're in character. So that's what they both share. I think the differences are the podcast is like a 90 minute free form, totally improvised

conversation and we just kind of see where it all goes. And the television show is a little more scripted and it's definitely it's still improvised, we have a lot of sketches and there's a narrative and almost sitcom story around it. So I like that they're different because, you know, if I was just doing the podcast, but with cameras on it, you know, there'd be kind of no point to it because I already

do the podcast. So they're a little bit different, but they're they're thematically linked and they're linked by the fact that I'm the host. As far as how did it come to be? It was just a really weird experience where the heads of IFC, I got to know them and they

were fans of the podcast and they just asked if I wanted to make it a pilot for a talk show and I did and they liked it. Scott's had some pretty great guests so far. Anybody he'd really like to get on the show? Yeah, I, you know, I mean, I've had one of my all time idols on the show.

I kind of view comedy bang bang as a combination between Pee Wee's Playhouse and the early David Letterman show and I had Pee Wee on the show. He was he guessed it in the second season and did all new Pee Wee Herman bits on the show. And so, you know, I would love to follow that up by having David Letterman.

He's retired and you know, if he'd love to make the trip out to LA, I'd love to have another one of Scott's projects is between two ferns with Zach Gallifinakis, who made a lot of buzz this year by having a President Obama as a guest. I asked him what that was like. It was interesting.

I mean, you know, yeah, I wrote it with Zach and some other people and I directed it and you know, it was it was definitely a little more of a high pressure gig than normally doing it. When we normally do the between two ferns videos, it's just kind of us in a room, a very small room with the celebrity and we have more time and we're just sort of feeling

it out and testing stuff out. And weirdly, the last two that we've done, President Obama and Brad Pitt, we had less time than we normally do. I think we had about a half hour apiece with both of them. And so it was really, you know, kind of a more high pressure.

All right, let's get this done. And let's really try to deliver, which weirdly then led to two of our bigger, more popular episodes and they both won Emmys. So maybe we should do them in less time. But yeah, it was it was definitely an interesting situation.

I mean, I had to just put on my director hat and not be intimidated and just get the work done and make sure the video came out all right. And that was what Zach and I were really focused on was, you know, make sure the video comes out well, make sure we do a good job and, you know, not be intimidated like we normally would be.

So what's the biggest challenge writing for himself or for other people? I love writing for other people. I love doing the Zach thing and the Emmys with Andy Sandberg. Those were both great because so many people watch them and they're so popular. You know, when I write comedy bang bang for myself, when I'm just doing it for myself,

it is more of a niche cult show. You know, I mean, Andy Sandberg and Zach Galifianakis are stars and I am not a star. So it's definitely more fulfilling to write comedy bang bang, which is a which is a passion project in which, you know, I feel like every part of me goes into. But it's also a lot of fun to do something like the Emmys are between two firms when

you know, tens of millions of people are watching them. Check out all Scott's latest projects right now. Easy to find at comedy bang bang dot com. No more Fantastic Four from Fox. All that and more as we look at what's going on in pop culture.

Boom Studios through their kids line. Boom have a couple of new additions coming from the Cardu Network. There's a new Steven Universe miniseries and a Clarence Chicken Phantom graphic novel both to be in stores early in 2016. More positive things happening in the TV universe.

CBS has given five more episodes to the new Code Black series that will bring it to a total of 18 for them. And there have been five more episodes given to both I zombie and Crazy Ex girlfriend over on the CW network, bringing both those to around 18 episodes for the season so far. Mockingbird gets her own series this time again written by New York Times bestselling

author Chelsea Kane, who did the 50th anniversary one shot for the character. The first issue will be in stores early in the new year following a course or appearance on Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. every week. And I'm a Mockingbird pilot that ABC ordered last summer that should get underway sometime

in time for pilot season. Tell me you're not surprised that this Fox has pulled the plug on a second Fantastic Four movie. Originally they'd earmarked July 14th, 2017 as a date for the sequel. However, that's not going to happen.

In the meantime, a lot of speculation as to what Fox will do next with the Fantastic Four or if the property will revert back to Marvel. Looks like Kevin Bacon is set to star in and produce a new reboot of Tremors for television. It's the cult film from 1990 that he starred in. It's in development right now from Universal Cable.

And we should hear more on that soon after the first of the year. Bruce Wayne will tell you that crime rarely takes a day off. And now investigating those crimes is also a daily thing with a new show called Crime Watch Daily. Host Matt Duran and Andre Eisim are on the case.

And Andre you told me what the show is all about. It is different. It is edgy. It is informative. We are tackling crime from every single aspect.

And it's one of those things that people have told me. So it's not just me saying it. People have told me viewers that they intended on watching and checking it out and now it's must see. They cannot not catch an episode of Crime Watch Daily.

They're addicted to it and they're addicted to it because they want to help us fight crime. And I can tell that is legitimate and these people are really invested on making a difference. So we've got a team out there across the country trying to help us make a difference and get some justice for a lot of people. So I asked Matt where they find the cases they investigated.

How do they choose the ones that they want to get on the air? Yeah Mike that's a great question. It's a whole gamut of crimes and unfortunately there's no shortage of it across America at the moment. So it's murder mysteries.

It's undercover investigations. It's justice and safety awareness campaigns a lot of the time. We're breathing life into cold cases and speaking up for victims rights and busting scammers as well. It's a whole range of things but in terms of to your point how we actually select the

stories well there needs to be a reason for doing them rather than to just try and instill fear into people in their lounge rooms across America. It's more so okay is there an offender still on the run or is there someone that needs to be brought to justice? And if so can we help in some way by sort of trying to mobilize these armchair detectives

across America that might have seen something because a lot of the time the criminals the offender will cross state lines and you know that's the beauty of having a national daily one hour show is that we can get tips from people in one state where the crime may well have happened somewhere else. So being able to shine that national spotlight on these crimes we're finding to be really

really effective when it comes to trying to elicit information that might help police. With a show like this it's tough to walk the line with the audience between information and fear. How do they handle that? Well you know you're going to have some of that.

I mean there are stories that we have to do because if we don't who will there are people out there who just want some answers. I mean you know Matt and I all the correspondents across from families who the grief is unthinkable and all they want is simple justice. So those are tough stories and what's happened behind what those people face every day is

scary and it is fearful. But knowing those things we hope is that people walk away from those stories maybe making some different decisions maybe incorporating some different guidelines or things inside their home and things that make them and their families safer. And it's not just about those stories that maybe may raise fear but it's also awareness.

So when we do social experiments one we did where we put some people in a room to see just how easy it would be to have someone go in there and spike their drinks. And the alarming the alarming outcry of it was unreal. People just were kind of upset at themselves that they let their guards down and that they aren't as vigilant as they thought they were.

So those people walked away with an incredible takeaway that we all need to be smarter and we all need to make better choices. So those things are informative for people and it's not fear based but it's also walking into your society a different person armed with more knowledge. And also for the holidays coming up you know that we all just have to be safer.

The criminals feed on this time for you know we're all being festive they're trying to up out. And so we have to make better decisions. Our website has a host of information on what happens when people are out shopping and they you know dive in front of one another and the stampies that happen and you've seen that

on videos across the country that people are just outrageous when it comes to Black Friday. But we also have some really good tips for men and women alike and what to do when you're out shopping as far as where to keep your purse, where to keep that wallet, how to hide your credit card information so the bad guys don't get a handle on it. So yes there are things that are going to scare people but sometimes that fear makes

you be a little smarter the next day and that's what we're hoping for. So what are some cases that are coming up? What we've got but to be honest to get to the heart of it Mike I think is that we've assembled one of the best investigative crime teams in the country from the producers and onwards and what that means is that we're actually tracking down victims that sometimes

the police don't know about and as a result of that too we're starting to piece together some links to some crimes that may not have been made previously. So in answer to your question we've got for example a story coming up which looks at a prolific terrifying serial killer who was active in Phoenix in Arizona. I've had some extensive interviews with that serial killer's ex-wife who's given us some

really intriguing albeit terrifying and terrific detail about the sorts of things that he was telling her behind the scenes which we've then relayed to police and I can tell you it's resulted in police moving forward on some new charges linking this guy to cold cases in the past which we are really really hopeful may help to bring some answers to some families of the victims in a lot of these cases too.

So you'll see those sorts of things, you'll see social awareness campaigns like Andrea Isom has touched on in terms of these demonstrations, the safety awareness demonstrations, how people can protect themselves at an ATM should they ever be robbed or held at night point, the same with carjackings. So you can expect a whole range of things it's not just the same formulaic sort of crime

TV show that people might be used to in the past where you have to invest a full hour just to see who did it. I mean we're giving you four or five of those stories sometimes more in the hour and each episode we think and we hope is really educational. There are new episodes of Crime Watch daily every Monday through Friday.

Check your local listings for the time and channel in your area. That does it for right now we'll cook up a brand new podcast for you and have it ready on websites like ComicMix.com also on get the point radio dot com and trek tv news dot com as well plus in the iTunes podcast directory. It'll be ready in just a few days.

In the meantime follow everything going on with the pop culture upload on great radio stations all over the world if you're not hearing it find out why and follow us on Twitter under PC upload on Facebook under the point radio and on Instagram under pop culture upload. Enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend see you back here in a few days.