It's something we do every week. Every week kind of has bigger name headliners. It's all just our taste. There's a lot of people like Ian Edwards or Dan Mintz who a lot of people haven't heard of yet, but we know are really great. When we started the show five years ago it wasn't because Patton Oswalt needs another place to play. It was because we had a lot of new friends like BJ Novak or Morgan Murphy, who didn't have any club to play.
B. J. PorterI think one reason why our show is popular too is that we have relationships with all these people. They are our actual friends. We're not like show promoters where we're like, (sleazy) "Hey, come on over and do a show."
B. J. PorterScott and I had just worked with Jimmy Pardo doing a live show over the summer. And it was a lot of fun and we wanted to keep doing a live show. And as Scott said, we knew a lot of funny young people who needed a place to do stand-up. And we were in a place, where we were writing so much that we weren't around live comedy so much, so we kind of missed it.
B. J. PorterAnd with this show we're trying to be a little sillier. We can do a piece like one we wrote the other day called "Ghost Busters Busters". Where would never do that in a million years on Mr. Show, but somehow on this show it's silly and stupid and a little more disposable, so we can do something like that.
B. J. PorterThere's so many variables in comedy. Comedy is not this thing that's a performance like a play. It's really an interaction with every single person in the room. And if there's a weirdness in the room for any people, be it something the comedians did at the top of the set or be it the mixture of the people isn't right, something can go awry. So it's really great to see you proven wrong about someone.
B. J. PorterFor a long time networks just wanted to buy imitations of other shows - i.e. Curb (the Enthusiasm or the Office). The word gets out that "Hey, we want to buy something like that" and every comedy producer just starts dreaming up ideas like that.
B. J. PorterWhen Scott and I started, every time we performed we wrote a whole new bit. We didn't know this wasn't the way things were done because we were just starting. But we needed the new material anyway. And it's nice, every time that Matt Besser does the show he does a whole new bit. And it's nice to offer up a place where people can be that experimental while offering some solid, proven comedy as well.
B. J. Porter