#documentary now!

This marks only the second time (I hope not the last) that I have had the chance to interview an SNL alum (the first was Siobhan Fallon Hogan). Mr. Fred Armisen joined SNL in 2002 and ended his run in 2013, but he's made a number of appearances since then and even hosted in 2016. He has had a very unique career in that he began as a musician, drumming for the Chicago punk band Trenchmouth, and then got into comedy, which lead to SNL. As a cast member he brought musical elements to many sketches he was in. He garnered a lot of attention by becoming a cast member doing an impression of a sitting president when he played President Obama during the first Obama term. Beyond SNL, he has appeared in a number of films and TV shows both big and small, notably Wednesday, Eurotrip, Band Aid, and a number of Kevin Smith films (including Clerks III). He made a big swing as an actor on the limited series Forever, where he and Maya Rudolph play a married couple in the afterlife. He's also made Comedy Gold with TV's Portlandia (IFC 2011-2018) and Documentary Now! (IFC 2015-2022). In addition to his acting, he is the musical director and sometimes band leader on Late Night with Seth Meyers. Mr. Armisen still does comedy tours and he is going to be in Boston at the Wilbur Theatre on August 15. I recently spoke to him via zoom and he was just as cool and nice as I hoped.

promo poster for Fred Armisen's current comedy tour

Me: You have had such a fascinating career, unlike anyone else in SNL history. You began as a musician and then evolved into comedy and acting. At this point in your career, do you consider yourself to be a musician who does comedy? Or a comedian who does music? Or basically both?

FA: I feel like I'm a comedian who does music. Because comedian is where I really found my footing. Even when I do music, it's in the comedy genre. It's all parody and impressions and stuff like that. So there's not enough music in my artistic life to really call myself a musician first. Although music is a gigantic part of my comedy, I'd say comedian is my vocation.

Me: You have this show coming up at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston. You're no stranger to Boston. Just last year you were here to host the Zildjian 400th Anniversary Concert. Do you enjoy playing Boston?

FA: I love playing Boston! It's been a part of my touring life since I was in a band. When I was in Trenchmouth we used to play The Middle East. Always had a great time there! And then doing stand-up, I played Boston Calling [in 2019] and I really loved that show. I can't think of a show I did here that was less than spectacular. It's always been really really fun! You know, Boston looks so cool. Even though it's a little hard for me to find parking and stuff, I do like that it looks a little like England. It's set up like London a little bit. That's always exciting to me.

Me: At this point and time in your career, do you enjoy mixing it up by filming a TV show or movie and then going out on the road and doing some live shows?

FA: Oh I love it. I really give me an eclectic lifestyle. Like I'll do a fancy TV show for Netflix, and then I'll do a record store show where I do punk rock covers for like 100 people or a stand-up show at a theater. Then some weird movie. I love jumping around, it really makes me feel like I'm in many different aspects of show business. I love show business! I love performing, I love comedy, I love music. It's a weird thing. I've been doing it for a while now and I'm way into it. Like even a soundcheck is fun and thrilling for me. I'm just into it, I love doing it.

Armisen and some of his many SNL characters

Me: Looking at SNL history, there's always been musical sketches, i.e. Wayne's World performing with Aerosmith, The Blues Brothers, the list goes on and on. But looking at your run at SNL so many of the characters you played were musicians, i.e. Fericito, part of Garth and Kat, and Ian Rubbish to name a few. Do you feel like your style of comedy which included music was really embraced and supported when you started on SNL?

FA: Oh, in a big way. Right down to my audition, which was Fericito, who's like a Tito Puente kind of character. All throughout my run there I used music as a framework around the characters that I did. The show was really supportive of that. Some of the sketches were abstract like The Blue Jean Committee, these really weird ideas that the show was very supportive of. And we played the music live so they really wanted to make sure the sound was good. They - the show - put a lot of work into it.

The other thing I want to say about it is, it's what I grew up on. I grew up on SNL. I always loved SNL, I worshipped SNL. All of the stuff I did was because of the stuff I watched on SNL. I knew it would fit somehow, because of Candy Slice (Gilda Radner's character that was kind of like a version of Patti Smith), and I was a little kid, but I understood and wanted to be whatever that was. She just sang a song, there was really no joke to it. Eddie Murphy did one where he was this reggae singer [Tyrone Green] at an Elks Club and that idea of a performer somewhere that isn't the right place to play. Then, of course, Wayne's World. Even Sprockets had it to a certain degree, like when they're all dancing and stuff, that had a big effect on me. I didn't even know Mike Myers personally or anything but I could tell that it was influenced by Kraftwerk. And then it turned out it was influenced by Kraftwerk. So all the way though I really lived for what SNL was all about when it came to fake bands.

Me: Let's talk about Portlandia, the comedy you co-created and starred in for IFC. I actually worked for AMC Networks (the entertainment company that owns AMC, IFC, We and Sundance Channel) when Portlandia premiered in 2011. You could really tell early on that the show was catching on. I have to ask, did you have a favorite sketch you did on Portlandia?

FA: I loved doing Portlandia, which was also an extension of band stuff. Carrie [Brownstein] is from the band Sleater-Kinney, who are my favorite band so to do a show with Carrie is the best! My favorite sketch - we had these characters who were like these goth characters. Not even goth, more like death metal / goth mix of the two. Where our faces were painted with dark circles around our eyes. It was kind of scary. One time we did one where we were going to the beach, but no one's aware because we had these flowy robes and we see Glenn Danzig who says "sometimes in order to have fun you have to look a little lame". So the sketch had a real point to it and I liked doing those characters.

early TV ad for Portlandia

Me: I got to cover Sleater-Kinney's concert in Boston earlier this year. I said in my review and I'll say this now, that it is so ironic that the masses know Carrie Brownstein for her acting and Portlandia versus Sleater-Kinney.

FA: Yeah, it's such a funny thing. I guess there's a few people who know both. But I feel like over the last ten or fifteen years, it seems like there are a lot of people who do multiple types of entertainment. Like something just happened where you would see Jane Lynch hosting a game show and then also in a well-reviewed movie or TV show. A good example is Questlove is like that, where he's a bandleader, but at the same time he's an Academy Award winning director. So it fits that Carrie is known for Sleater-Kinney and Portlandia. She's a director too by the way!

Me: I, myself, am a documentarian. We both have a mutual friend in Scott Crawford, who directed Salad Days, which you were interviewed for. That doc and my doc Life on the V: The Story of V66 were on the festival circuit at the same time playing similar festivals and we both have the same distributor as well. Do you think the experience you've had being interviewed for documentaries was something you brought to Documentary Now!, where you were lampooning not just popular documentaries but the tropes of documentary filmmakers as well?

FA: Wow, that's an interesting question. [pauses] I never thought about it, but now that you mention it, it does feel very separate. Because when I'm interviewed for documentaries, I just try to help the documentary itself. What can I say in an interview that's on the subject matter. Where can I contribute to it without trying to make it into too much of a big deal. Like one thing I do is I always try to keep it concise. Just so I'm not lingering and talking about a band forever, keep it quick. With Documentary Now! it's almost like we're making fun of something that already exists. So they haven't crossed over yet, but they are very separate things. I feel like "let me do a good job being interviewed for this documentary" and the other is "okay, how can we parody this documentary that already exists".

Going back to what you said about working for AMC, that was an exciting time. I remember things were starting to happen on cable. Shows are starting to happen. A whole new world of shows. I remember The Walking Dead was so gigantic on AMC. To me, that felt like the first big show that really made networks re-think what they were doing. They had serious numbers, it was like there was a real pull audience out there.

Armisen in Documentary Now!'s "Final Transmission" parody of Stop Making Sense

Me: Absolutely. I was there during the run of The Walking Dead and Mad Men on AMC and then IFC making a name for themselves with alt-comedy with Portlandia. It was really an exciting time when I was there. But, I think it's very cool that with IFC's Portlandia and Documentary Now! they are very different, but your voice is very much there in both. I do need to ask one quick question about Documentary Now!: I am a lifelong Jonathan Demme fanatic and I was curious if you ever heard from Demme or the Talking Heads about the Stop Making Sense parody?

FA: Oh yeah. I've talked to David Byrne about it. Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth helped do a promo for our version of Stop Making Sense, the Test Pattern. So we've mixed our worlds together. David [Bryne] knows about it, he's very familiar with Test Pattern. I have some friends who worked on American Utopia, David Byrne's Broadway show, and just as a joke he said he didn't have anyone as an understudy, so he was like "well, Fred can do it" as a joke. We're very much in touch about that. With Jonathan Demme, I never spoke to him but I would think he would know that we did it out of love. We just wanted to re-create what that was.

I remember when that movie came out. Boy, I loved that movie so much. That movie also used to keep re-coming out. It was always playing at the artsy movie theaters. So you'd go to the movies and there'd be some Terry Gilliam or Monty Python movie playing and then Stop Making Sense. But I went to that original tour for Speaking in Tongues, I remember seeing that show live. Talking Heads and David Byrne will always be a huge influence on me!

Me: In 2015, I was at a film festival, actually Salad Days was at that same festival as well. And they had a big anniversary screening of Stop Making Sense. It was an amazing sound system, a great venue. The entire audience was on their feet dancing and singing along the whole time. I later read that that was what their intention was for the documentary.

FA: Yeah and it worked. The screenings they've had this year, same thing. People dancing all the way through. We're so used to, I grew up later on MTV so we're so used to everything being so edited down. It's pretty wild to sit through Stop Making Sense and it's a full song, then another full song - you can't help but dance. It actually does become a concert.

Armisen's Ian Rubbish sits down with members of The Clash in this LOL short The Clash: The Last Gang in Town

During our interview, Mr. Armisen took notice of my CD collection in the background behind me and asked about my collection and he briefly talked about his love of physical media. As our interview was ending, I thanked him and joked that next time he should check out my CD collection. He said "I'm glad you have it on your screen. Because there's a lot happening in politics and none of the candidates are talking about how we should be proud of our CD collections. We need to come to a time in our lives where we're displaying them. We all have CDs somewhere." I laughed and said "I think they need to court the CD vote". He laughed and I said "Wow - I just made you laugh, I'm so proud of myself" and he replied "That was a real laugh too by the way". I've had some cool celebrity encounters, but knowing I got to make Fred Armisen laugh is definitely pretty high on my list of coolest celebrity encounters ever!

For info on Fred Armisen

Stop. Have you watched Original Cast Album: Co-Op?

Will you watch Original Cast Album: Co-Op?