![]() But after talks with the network, negotiations fell apart and Odenkirk and Cross found themselves separated again. (Odenkirk lives in Los Angeles.) A year ago they shot a pilot, "David's Situation," which was, more or less, a reunion of the "Mr. These days, they write together when they find themselves in the same city, Odenkirk said. Years later, when I was with Stiller, David worked on the last three episodes. Odenkirk agrees: "He was this friend of Janeane Garofalo from Boston and I blew him off. "Bob was a judge, and I was drunk and disorderly, but in a non-threatening way. ![]() From there, he wrote for "The Dennis Miller Show," appeared on "Seinfeld," wrote for "The Ben Stiller Show."īut Cross said they met at a beer festival in Chicago years earlier. But I would be thrilled!" Indeed, local comic Ben Hollis, who was organizing the Monday night shows at (long-defunct) Orphans comedy club on Lincoln Avenue, remembers this kid would come in with his brother (Bill, later a writer for "The Simpsons") and they would "do 'The Tonight Show, From the Indian Subcontinent.'"īy the late 1980s, Odenkirk had left Chicago for "SNL," where he formed a little "power block," Smigel said, with himself, O'Brien and Daniels. "I would get up and make fun of stand-up comedy itself, which the audience wouldn't get. Bob and David were different their influences were not especially clear."Įarly on, Odenkirk said, he was in his own head a lot. "The thing is, with a lot of stand-ups you can see their influences because they are imitating them when they start out. Cross, on the other hand, said it was a necessary evil, "a way of distinguishing a bunch of like-minded people who were not in it just to get a sitcom."īert Haas, who has run Zanies in Chicago since 1980, says the term was dumb - he points to Judy Tenuta and Emo Philips, both from the Chicago suburbs as well, as being alternative comedy at least a decade earlier. "I found it a divisive phrase," Tompkins said. In retrospect, however, the show is often cited as the pinnacle for the '90s alternative comedy movement - which, depending on whom you ask, was or wasn't a movement at all. The trouble, Tompkins said, was that their target audience - young and smart and cliche phobic - was always telling them they couldn't afford HBO. "We may have been inspired by culture," Odenkirk said, "but impressions, shots at politicians - those date." He said besides being funny, they always intended it to endure. ![]() Odenkirk says the show comes up a lot with him, and he's not really all that surprised. But during that time - with its radar for cliche and impatience with convention - the show built a reputation as the American heir to what the British had accomplished with "Monty Python's Flying Circus," down to Odenkirk and Cross' habit of meandering seamlessly from one left-field topic to the next. Show" lasted only three years, and only 30 episodes were made (as well as an ill-fated feature film, which went straight to video in 2003). Show" - in particular, his stand-up comic who reads from the newspaper but never makes a point - Armisen said: "Absolutely. "Still, it helped get me 'Saturday Night Live.'" Asked if his "SNL" characters are inspired by "Mr. Show" to cast him in a Fox pilot, which the network dropped at the last minute. Indeed, Armisen said by the time they met, in 2000, Odenkirk had enough clout from "Mr. You meet a comedian and if they talk about it then you know you are on common ground." "Bob is so respected in comedy circles, and that show is so important, really you cannot encounter any decent group of comedians without talking at length about how great 'Mr. Show" as a writer and performer (and is currently the host of the VH-1 series "Best Week Ever").įred Armisen from "Saturday Night Live" was even more effusive. "Well, it's been 10 years since it was on, and those guys are so rarely together on stage anymore - it's like managing to get a ticket to see the Loch Ness monster, don't you think?" said Paul F. "Instantly," said Chris Ritter, co-owner of the Lakeshore. This week, the "Just for Laughs" festival runs across four days in Chicago, encompassing Ellen DeGeneres, Jimmy Fallon, Martin Short - but Odenkirk's reunion with Cross at the Lakeshore Theater on Saturday sold out faster than anything.
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