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<p>« New Video Wednesday! | Main| The Gag Reel By: Mo Diggs » Tuesday Dec 04 2007  Jason Sudeikis: The Ultimate Interview | Part 2 - The Beginning Before The BeginningBy: Billy Nord</p>
<p>Tuesday, December 4, 2007 at 9:01AM</p>
<p>Photo: Lisa Ackerman</p>

<p>So, let's start at the beginning. We'll try to hit every cool, important point of your life in chronological order.</p>
<p>Jason Sudeikis: Sounds good. Ok, I was born in Fairfax, Virginia. Before I turned one, we moved to Overland Park, Kansas. I lived my first two-three years in a duplex with my folks, then we moved into the house where they live to this day. It's my two sisters, my folks and me. You know, still together, still alive. Everybody's good. My folks are from Chicago. South side, south shore. Although they met in Denver, at college. Overland Park, Kansas, which is a suburb of Kansas City, is definitely home for me, although my parents say otherwise. Fairfax, which I've never been to. I've never even been to D.C.</p>

<p>Well, you're not missing anything.</p>
<p>I just wanna see the stairs from The Exorcist.</p>

<p>Are they in D.C.?</p>
<p>Yep, Georgetown. I want to take a gag picture flying down to the bottom of those stairs.</p>

<p>So, do you remember when you first gained an interest in comedy?</p>
<p>I don't have a defining moment, like THE moment, but I just remember while growing up, joking around a lot. I made some radio shows with friends. I had a karaoke machine called "The Star Studio" which my dad bought on QVC. There was a tremendous amount of creative friends with all different types of humor throughout my life. In grade school, Rich Ridlen was one of my most creative friends. He had a little brother named Michael; we'd created a persona for him called "Murray." He was like our boss, our "Tony Soprano"... and for no reason. I wasn't into mafia movies; it was just this crazy shit we used to do. I used to make up stories all the time, you know, lie creatively. Then eventually in the sixth grade, my family got a video camera. My friend Ryan Landry--who's a political cartoonist now, super-creative guy--he and I began making videos together. We were always making something. But I mainly played sports, so that was where my primary focus was. Regardless, I would just joke around a lot. I never tried out for any plays or anything like that at this point. My sisters were into singing and dancing, so I was always exposed to it, but I'd never really aspired to do it. I watched SNL like everybody else, because we were around on Saturdays. I remember early on my dad was pretty cool about taking me to movies I thought were funny. He took me to see Beverly Hills Cop when I was nine years old. I remember seeing it in the theater and loving Eddie Murphy. Three Amigos, all of that stuff everybody around our age loves.</p>

<p>Was your dad supportive of your sense of humor, taking you to these films at your request, or was he a fan as well?</p>
<p>Yeah, he liked the films to begin with. Both of my folks have a really good sense of humor. You know, they're both very funny, outgoing people. The major encouragement they'd given me was their laughter. They came to every show. My first show at Second City in Chicago, they came to that, when I did my first show in Las Vegas they came to that, when I did my last show there, they came. My mom is a theatergoer, that's why I love going out to the theater. My dad's not a huge fan of musicals, but a huge fan of my mom.</p>

<p>Do they come to New York to see you perform now?</p>
<p>Yeah, they came to the Alec Baldwin show this last year. I didn't have anything to do in the show so I was in a little bit of a... not a bad mood, but, you know. You just like to be busy. But my dad got to meet Alec Baldwin and Alec was like, "Your dad reminds me of the Marlboro Man," which he used to moreso when he had a mustache; he's a big dude. That was the show when Paul McCartney showed up, Martin Short, Steve Martin. So, they enjoyed that.</p>

<p>Were your parents backstage?</p>
<p>No, I usually give them seats in the audience. My mom's a travel agent so they move around quite a bit. Travel-wise, at least. They just pop in if there's some other event in New York. My sister, Kristin lives here and my little sister, Lindsay lives in Connecticut. So, we're all East Coast now.</p>

<p>So, while in high school you toyed a bit with comedy but you were really focused on sports?</p>
<p>Yeah, basketball.</p>

<p>So you graduated high school.</p>
<p>Eventually, yeah. I didn't do much homework. For my senior year I went to night school to pass first semester English, then I had to go to summer school to pass my second semester of English. It was around that time, I remember in night school--you know everything happens for a reason, right? In night school, our teacher, this guy Brett Zinger, who was a young dude, you know, teaching "vagrants"--people who have failed English. He showed Citizen Kane during class. Most kids fell asleep and I was kind of like, "This movie is really cool." I liked the film's structure. It was really interesting seeing that many sides of one guy. Black and white movies, you know, I liked them, but I'd never put one into a VCR. There are people who truly, truly love film. I began to appreciate it. I can't say it made me love film where I dove in completely, but I dove in for me, for my "diving in" capabilities. Then you cut to 1994, I went to college on a basketball scholarship when Pulp Fiction came out. I saw that and it was the first screenplay I ever bought and I was like, "Well this is kind of interesting." So then, I was playing basketball, not doing homework, and eventually I became ineligible. Well, I can go back actually to freshman year of high school, I sat next to this guy named Cam Lynch, who was from North Kansas City. I went to this all-boys, Jesuit high school in Kansas City. People on the North side of Kansas City had this thing called Comedy Sportz; it's like this "Who's Line is it, Anyway?" kind of thing--competitive, quote unquote, improv. So, I'd heard he'd gotten involved with it. He'd auditioned freshman year of high school. He'd been going to the shows for a couple of years and he got in, actually hired to perform there. So, we went to watch him and I was like, "This is a blast! These are people doing everything I had done in my basement with a video camera and microphone."</p>

<p>Did you think what they were doing had a certain formula or did you believe they were actually making it up blindly on stage as they went along? Did you have a formula originally?</p>
<p>No, you'd just do it. I didn't know what was going on. I have a two hour video from 6th grade of me and my friend Terry Maher, who's now an emergency room doctor in Kansas City, dressed in our gym uniforms, holding a paddle, for paddle ball, and just talking about as if we're these paddle ball experts and the "game of the scene" was how expensive everything was. "We'd tell you about this game, but you're really not going to be able to afford it" (laughter)... it still makes me laugh, just the idea of it. It was probably us just goofing around for two hours, describing how the game is played. How this wristband cost $350,000--the tape is just rolling the entire time, just sitting on a tripod. We were improvising, we just didn't know it. So now, back to freshmen year, he (Cam Lynch) goes to do this thing (Comedy Sportz) and I see it, thought it would be a blast, not thinking much of it, but I always would mention to Cam, "Hey, tell me if there's ever an audition again, I'll go down there"--because they were letting young dudes play. He was the youngest by far, at least by four years. They knew him from coming to the shows. I think he may have done a workshop, but he was in. Then I'd transferred high schools--for multiple reasons, you know, money, a girl, basketball. I transferred between my sophomore and junior year, to this school Shawnee Mission West. I take a radio and TV class, where they produce a weekly show and then a show they would air on cable. It was just news about the school, but it looked like fun. It was something you could watch on public access at home. I knew I wanted to take this class simply because I thought it would be neat. I had one of those teachers, kind of like in Mr. Holland's Opus. A teacher who would sort of change your life, inspire you, make you laugh and doesn't talk down to you. Her name's Sally Shipley, she's great. Really self-deprecating, you know, just one of those teachers.</p>

<p>Did she allow you free reign over the public access show?</p>
<p>On the weekly show, she did. The weekly show you would just do for the school, they'd show it during homeroom. And early on, Sally Shipley took a shine to me, once saying, "You know, you should have fun with this class," and then popped in this tape. "Here's a guy you should check out who really did some interesting stuff, you should do stuff like this." And I didn't know it then, but I know it now, it was Paul Rudd. He was running around school, taking some subject people were being very serious about, almost Evening News-style, and then just having fun with it, turning it on its ear. I can't remember the exact bit, but I remember him doing genuinely funny stuff, you know, at 17-18 years old. So then it was a combination of that Radio/TV class and this teacher encouraging me. Then one afternoon I go to hand in some late homework for Radio/TV class into this other class she was teaching, which was called Forensics, which is like Speech and Debate. I walked in and they were playing Comedy Sportz games, which I had yet to work with, I'd only seen it. I was like, "Well, I gotta take this class!" I didn't even know what it was, all I knew was it was a regular-sized classroom and there were trophies everywhere on the walls. Apparently, which I didn't know at the time, Shawnee Mission West were the New York Yankees of Forensics, Speech and Debate. They'd won state the last 10 out of 11 years, Sally Shipley was like, this genius, and it was a badass group of high school actors and extemporaneous speakers--people I'd rarely talked to. You know, in a school of over 3000 kids, you mostly hang out with whomever you're with after school, and for me, that was the basketball guys. Not that we were jock-y or dick-y or anything. I mean, not intentionally.</p>

<p>That's just how high school works.</p>
<p>Right, that's how it works. So, I go into this class and I see they're playing this improv game--I don't know, like "Word at a Time" or "Conducted Story," whatever the case may be. So I signed up for that class second semester of junior year, and just start going on these tournaments, you know, on Saturdays. You wake up at 9am, you go to school, you get on the bus and you go to some other school and you perform. I'd do IDA, which is Improvised Duet Acting and then DA, which is Duet Acting. It was heaven, man. You'd go on these high school things, you'd improvise and it's competitive. The basic form was--it was a little bit different from UCB and Improv Olympic improv, as you'll notice--you'd reach into a fish bowl with slips of paper, each piece would have three suggestions on it, you know "The last time you saw your dad...." the whatever or whatever. And then you get thirty minutes to prepare something; you have to come up with a 5-7 minute sketch or scene to perform. IDA was the most popular event for people to watch because improv is infectious so the room would always be filled. It would take place in a classroom and there would be judges.</p>

<p>Who were the judges?</p>
<p>Just like, faculty, parents or people from the community.</p>

<p>You would tour around the state?</p>
<p>It was just like basketball. You'd hop in a van and go. You could literally letter in this, you could get a jacket, the whole deal. It was a sport.</p>

<p>And the scenes were mostly comedy?</p>
<p>It didn't have to be. It was improv. At Shawnee Mission South, where Rob Riggle went, I didn't know him then either, he graduated a few years before me, but they would do a lot of dramatic improvisation. You know, Improv involving moments. We were all giving it one hundred percent. Me and my friend Ryan Ellis--you'd sort of dance around with different partners and try different people out--but Ryan and I hit it off. He and I also did Duet Acting. We did the courtroom scene; you know the "You can't handle the truth" scene from A Few Good Men, which was a blast. You'd go, "Alright, we have our IDA at 10:30am, let's go do that, and at 11:30 we get to do this serious piece of drama." We were two 18-year-old kids trying to, you know, move every single word. My big thing was, my basketball coach was bummed I was doing speech, he was kind of jock-y and was like (sarcastically) "Go do your theater-thing, Sudeikis." And then my speech teacher, Sally Shipley, didn't think I cared about Forensics because I was an athlete. So, over the summer, before my Senior year, I'd seen A Few Good Men, and I loved that scene and thought it would be really fun to do, I thought Ryan and I could do that. I watched it and transcribed the whole thing. I brought in ten pages of my handwriting, in different color ink for each character, for Ryan and I to memorize. At that point she knew I really liked Forensics. That I was truly committed to it. We did the scene and, I think maybe won third place in state. And we weren't the only ones doing that scene by the time we'd gotten to state. There were a couple of kids from Wichita doing the same scene, so it was on. It was this nice combination of art and competitiveness, which was inside me from my basketball days and kind of drove me to want to do it. The classes were fun, you know, it was one hour a day when you got to play around like a kid. So it was from that that then I eventually took workshops at Comedy Sportz. This is during my summer going into my senior year as well.</p>

<p>You continued to play basketball?</p>
<p>Still playing basketball, while going down every Sunday to take these workshops, where I met one of my best friends, Billy Brimblecom. I met lifelong friends. I did Comedy Sportz for basically three years. When I left high school, I did Comedy Sportz and played a lot of basketball, and went to community college, which was an hour and a half away. Never having a car, always bumming rides from people and borrowing my parents' car. Then I became ineligible freshmen year, so second semester I ended up doing a play. I still had to practice with the basketball team but then every Wednesday I would borrow my friend Brandon Bartel's car and drive north for an hour and a half to go to rehearsal. I'd continue to watch Comedy Sportz every single weekend. Watching my heroes at that point and eventually now friends, perform weekend after weekend after weekend. I still had a high school girlfriend and all of that stuff, we were breaking up, so Comedy Sportz was the one place that allowed me to forget about it, you know? I've made the joke, many years later, my transition from sports to comedy was called Comedy Sportz. It folded onto itself.</p>

<p>Would they practice the Harold at Comedy Sportz?</p>
<p>No, not at all. It was like Whose Line is it Anyway? You were just playing games and, you know, I did my own research. You dive in where you can dive in.</p>

<p>This was before the internet?</p>
<p>Oh, absolutely. I mean, there was Prodigy (laughter). I went into a Sam French bookstore in LA recently, you know, one of those theater/film book stores - and there were probably four books on improvisation when I first had started: Keith Johnstones's "Impro", "Improv Comedy" by this guy Andy Goldberg, maybe a couple of others.</p>

<p>Did Truth In Comedy exist then?</p>
<p>Not yet, this was like 94-95. But now there's like, 20-30 books on improvisation.</p>

<p>Why do you think that is?</p>
<p>I just think people know about it a lot more now based on Whose Line is it Anyway? and the success of Christopher Guest movies. You just hear the term "improv" a lot more often now. (Back to Comedy Sportz) So, I'm taking those classes and eventually I get into the company.</p>

<p>How did they present that to you?</p>
<p>Through an audition, you know, you get called back and you do it again.</p>

<p>Once that's completed, what happens next?</p>
<p>Then I get to do shows and I'm going to rehearsals with the pros. That's why I would drive up every Wednesday. After basketball practice I'd drive up by myself, listening to my Walkman because the car had only an AM radio--on a single lane highway. If I was ever going to die at a young age, it would've been during one of those trips. Luckily, I avoided that.</p>

<p>What would you listen to on your Walkman?</p>
<p>Back then I was still playing sports, so I was in my rap/R&B phase. But I was also all over the place at that point, you know? Harry Connick Jr., Sinatra, Nirvana. If it was in Rolling Stone, I'd probably be listening to it. So, I'm doing Comedy Sportz, and in my sophomore year I'm playing the best basketball I've ever played in my life, and I was ineligible. I had to do a play to keep my scholarship money.</p>

<p>By "ineligible" what do you mean?</p>
<p>I didn't have the grades. I had 27 credit hours of F, in community college. In fucking community college. I just would not go to class, I didn't do the homework, I failed English again... twice. I just didn't read the books. I'd stay up - the sleeping habits I now have - going to bed at four and waking up at noon, were well established then. So, I'm playing awesome basketball. September 18th, my birthday, I show up to practice, 20 years old. My coach brings me in and they red shirt me, meaning, he didn't want to kick me off the team - he liked me and I was a good player to have the other members practice with, I was playing really well And I was a good leader because I was the vocal-type, I was a point guard. So then I quit and did a musical there called The Fantasticks, just to sort of pay for the books because I didn't have a scholarship anymore. And then went home after first semester and lived in my parents basement, from January '96 to September '97. And then just sort of dove in, you know, I worked at Blockbuster to pay the bills - I didn't have many bills, so mostly it was to buy CDs, books and shit. And then I began doing Comedy Sportz all the time. My friends and I formed a long-form improv group, because we'd read "Truth In Comedy" by that point. And we were like "let's try this out" and we did it at a coffeehouse show in Lawrence, KS, where KU is. We had no idea what we were doing but still had those rare shows where it all came together and we were like "No way! No way! This is amazing!" We were rehearsing in like, dance studios on the KU campus. Eventually our group of guys wanted to do a sketch show. And so we did. Our sketch group did about six shows. Oh, and all throughout living in Fort Scott, I forgot to mention, I wrote this newsletter, probably about 10-12 issues, called "The Trout". And I'd change the title all the time. "The Lonely Trout" was the first one, "The Bald Trout" after I shaved my head, "Jagged Little Trout" you know, after Alanis Morissette.</p>

<p>After you scrumped with her.</p>
<p>Yeah, in a theater. She wrote a song about it.</p>

<p>Dave Coulier was incredibly upset about that.</p>
<p>Haa. So, I was toying a little bit with writing and I was doing improv.</p>

<p>Was "The Trout" some sort of fanzine?</p>
<p>It was just me writing about my life. I still have all of the copies. My friend Ed Goodman, who I'm still very good friends with, wrote a news letter called "The Gravy Train" which he had been writing forever, when he was living in Lawrence, Kansas. So I just sort of took the idea. I thought it would be really fun to write a newsletter.</p>

<p>So this was a blog, basically.</p>
<p>More or less, absolutely. And I would tri-fold it, mail it out. People would send me stamps.</p>

<p>How did these people find out about it?</p>
<p>I sought them out. And then people started to read it on college campuses, like in their fraternities. By no means, was it The Onion, but it was totally satirical. It was me making fun of living in this small town. My mom once sat me down and said "You should stop writing about how unhappy you are because you are going to continue to be unhappy" and I was all, "Yeah, yeah. Whatever."</p>

<p>Who wants to read about people who are happy? That's the worst thing in the world.</p>
<p>Exactly, exactly.</p>

<p>So, do you remember any specific articles you'd written?</p>
<p>Yeah, one involved - I didn't drink back then, so one involved me constantly being the designated driver for my friends. It would be recommendations too. If I saw a movie, you know like "Clerks", I'd tell people to check it out.</p>

<p>Did you have an email address or another way readers could correspond with you?</p>
<p>No email address, they'd have to write letters. I still have a box full of old letters people had written me. I would publish the letters and answer questions. It was just two panels, front and back. Occasionally, I'd have an insert in there, you know, with my face on Anna Nicole Smith's body, for no reason. This was way before Photoshop too. I'd write it in my friend Chris Sines' dorm room because I didn't have a computer. I'd write as we watched Melrose Place and Jerry Springer, you know, we would all be in this room and I would just be typing away - tck tck tck tck. I'd shit it out and then print it, get it photocopied then send it. My uncle is George Wendt and he was good friends with Robert Smigel. I remember when Smigel was writing for The Dana Carvey Show, he was the head writer, it just had started - and I remember George sending him The Trouts. From what I understand, Smigel really liked them. The writing was really young, but you know.</p>

<p>Do you think Smigel had seen anything like that before?</p>
<p>I'm sure he had. He's one of the greats, I'm sure he'd created something similar himself. It was at that point that I'd realized George was encouraging me by just merely saying, "Stick with this, stick with this. This is fun." He and his wife.</p>

<p>Was Smigel a huge figure in your eyes at that point? How familiar were you with his work?</p>
<p>Hmm, I didn't watch SNL then because my Saturdays were spent playing Comedy Sportz. But, I mean, had I been a super duper comedy aficionado, he definitely created enough material at that point for me to know him. I knew him as the guy that wrote "The Super Fans" You know, "The Bulls, the Bears" because my Uncle George was in those sketches. I knew who he was but not to the degree that I should have. So, George was reading The Trouts and, not telling me so much, but telling my mom he enjoyed them. My mom was worried about what I was going to do.</p>

<p>Was she supportive?</p>
<p>She was supportive in the sense that, again, my parents would always laugh, and they'd come to all of the shows. But she was just worried about what her son was going to do for a living, when he grew up. But I think George kept her at bay, assuring her, "He could do this, he's good. He's funny" Then he'd come to see me do Comedy Sportz in LA - if you were from Kansas City, you could perform in LA if your Comedy Sportz manager called and requested it. So he'd seen me perform and was encouraging me via my mother, you know? I would be out in LA just visiting my Uncle George and just hit up Comedy Sportz. I got to perform there; I got to perform at the Comedy Sportz in New York. It was sort of like how you would play basketball in one city. You get to a certain level in that city and then get to play somewhere else. You get to do the exact same thing, same rules, same hoops, same basket, same way, somewhere else. So, back to the sketch show, our show was five guys who had done Comedy Sportz and were trying to fuck with our boss, who's a very nice guy, super proud of all of us - now. Back then we were the guys who were trying to fuck with his theater, you know, doing too much of this or doing too much of that - and he was trying to reign us in, you know, like a producer does. He was a producer as well as a player coach, so it gets messy when they're also performing with you and giving you notes. We weren't like, "Shut up old man!" We weren't dickheads like that, we weren't punk rock. We'd just try to push him as far as we could. We eventually started a sketch group; he would let us perform in the theater, which we would pack 130-150, sometimes 170 people, and just jam them in. Just by papering, you know, having friends - again, this was before the internet. There was no real community for that in Kansas City. But it was a great ride, we probably did 5-6 shows. Jeremy Carter moved to Pasadena, to go to AMDA, I think it was called. American Dramatic...something like that. He does a podcast now called "Superego", which is really, really funny. Everybody still works in some capacity, within the arts. Ed Goodman moved to Chicago in July of '97. We all just sort of disbanded. Eric Davis now works for Cirque De Soleil, he's one of their lead clowns and is on tour with them now in North Korea... or South Korea. I don't know, probably not North Korea.</p>

<p>You never know.</p>
<p>You never know, they get down with that over there. And Corey Rittmaster is doing improv in Chicago. Around the time of May of '97, when everybody was talking about leaving, we were like "Let's take this show on the road! Let's move to Chicago!" Some people couldn't do it, some people didn't want to do it, and some people didn't like being pressured into it. I went to Kilkenny, Ireland to stage-manage the Second City show, through my aunt and uncle. George said to my mom "Hey Kath, have Jason come out, he can run lights." You know, for the Second City show.</p>

<p>Sounds great! And you got paid for it?</p>
<p>I didn't get paid; I just got a free trip, board and everything. You know, room and board.</p>

<p>It was an internship?</p>
<p>Yeah, definitely. And it was a week in Ireland, you know? It was great, I met Dan Castellaneta, Colin Mochrie and most importantly, Kevin Dorff who was on The Second City main stage, he now writes for Conan. And Scott Allman, Ian Gomez. Now, it sort of happens really quickly here, but it's THE moment when it all sort of changes. So I'm sort of messing around with this, knowing that going to Chicago is something that has to happen eventually, but I do everything very slowly in my life, you know? And once I make that turn, then we go. So, I'm in LA around May of '97, and I go to this show called "The Armando Diaz Show" and this was the show that they had created in Chicago and a bunch of IO alumni had moved to LA to continue to the show.</p>

<p>Was it sketch or improv?</p>
<p>It was improv. Just like Asssscat, a monologue and then scenes based on the monologue.</p>

<p>At that time, were there celebrities involved with the monologues?</p>
<p>There may have been. I can't remember who'd done them that night. The person I do remember, me and my friend Jeff Davis, who was on Whose Line is it Anyway? - We'd done Comedy Sportz together. So we went to go see this thing, this long-form show, based on the suggestion of George's friend Pat Finn, who's in every fifth commercial on TV. He's like, "You guys should come see this show!" We go and this one dude, who plays one character the whole show, just blows me away. I was like "What is going on? How is he doing that? Where did he learn to do that?" and they're like "That's Dave, he's an IO guy." That dude was Dave Koechner. So then, that's in my brain "IO, Chicago, Dave Koechner." Jeff and I would always talk about improv incessantly, and we were just amazed by him. Then I go to Kilkenny, and this guy who was a stand-up didn't show, and he was supposed to do improv with these guys. So, there would be The Second City show, the main stage show, in this 300 seat place and I would run lights for that. They were doing old scenes and black outs, mostly games. Then, at various pubs about half the size of UCB here in town, they would do shows in the back of these pubs. That would be Dan Castellaneta, Colin Mochrie, Kevin Dorff, all of those guys. So, this stand-up comedian didn't show so they asked if I wanted to sit in and I said, "Yeah, sure!" They were playing Comedy Sportz games and I was like "Absolutely!" I'd been playing those hardcore for the last three years. I go in there, I was 21 at the time, and I was completely comfortable. Tim Krazurinsky was there too. And people were like "wow" and it gives you a certain amount of confidence when people, who have been doing it for so long, are like, "You should move to Chicago." Very effusive. And I probably did like, 5-6 shows with these guys and it was specifically Ian Gomez and Nia Vardalos - Ian, who you'd recognize from a million things, and Nia, of course, from My Big Fat Greek Wedding - told me to move to Chicago. Basketball was completely out of my life by this point; I'm playing it maybe once a week or something like that. I moved to Chicago September 1st of '97. So, from then, that was the decision to be like "Now I want to do this, this is what I'm doing." And then I enrolled at Second City, ImprovOlympic, The Annoyance Theater, went to shows every day. I lived on the Southside with my grandma, so it was an easy transition. I borrowed my Uncle George's car, which was this kind of beat up Montero that he would drive to Michigan to this lake house. Every single day, I would leave at around noon, drive down to work at my shitty job at Banana Republic for a couple of hours, and then every single night I'd be at ImprovOlympic, just absorbing it. Watching shows, picking out people I wanted to learn from and liked, taking classes. Every single night was dedicated to that, Second City, The Annoyance, and I just dove into the deep end, 100 percent.</p>

<p>While you were taking the classes, did you also network?</p>
<p>Unintentionally. Not really at that point. You're sort of just this guy. I mean, I would pay for every show until October when the classes would start. Once you began the classes the shows were free as long as there was room. I was paying eight bucks a ticket, I had this "big" $900 check that I'd just gotten from comedy sports before I moved. And I was living at my Grandma's so I didn't have to worry about rent; all I'd have to worry about was gasoline.</p>

<p>And you were also making money with your job at Banana Republic.</p>
<p>Yeah, like seven bucks an hour. But that was not my focus, that was just to placate my folks, you know? I would call in sick all the time. I remember calling in sick the day Farley died, just because, I don't want to go in to work when something so sad had happened, I don't want to sell fucking khakis to some asshole. So, class started, the first day of class - I mean, it was weird, surreal, because, the first day of class - I had a very, very fortunate Chicago-experience. I mean, I went up there to work at Second City. That's where I wanted to work, you know? We'd started going up there when I was a kid and watch the improv sets.</p>

<p>How old were you?</p>
<p>When I first began going up there, I was probably about thirteen or something like that. But my folks used to go up there all the time and watch my Uncle George and Aunt Bernadette. So, Second City was in their wheelhouse. Again, my mom's a theatergoer and my dad, for what he doesn't like about musicals he loves about comedy. So, I knew about Second City and made that decision "This is what I want to do." I loved sketch comedy; I just wanted to work there. It's like playing basketball for KU or playing football for Notre Dame. My first class was with Charna Halpern, and literally, the first class she has everyone do a scene. And I went 4th or 5th, me and my scene partner, and I remember she was like "I'm gonna give you scenes that are originally supposed to be conflict-driven, and I don’t want it to be about the conflict, alright? You are two roommates and you're ordering a pizza, and I don't want you to argue about the toppings or what kind of pizza you want." So I remember the scene going, I was like "Hey, we should order from this new place Pizzas & Chicks, you get the pizza, that's not the big deal, but a girl comes with it." It's still conflict, but not conflict about the toppings. I was like "A girl comes with it" I just remember saying that a lot, "But dude, are you listening to what I'm saying? It doesn't matter what kind of pizza we get, a girl comes with it!" basically implying it was a hooker or something like that. So the scene ends, the class applauds, like they do at the end of every scene, Charna says, "What's your deal? Who are you?" She wanted to know my story. Eventually I was put on a team before starting level two of the I.O. training center. I auditioned for Second City in February of '98, and got in on my first audition. Very lucky. Very fortunate.</p>

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