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anymore because you've done so many leads, but when you play a side character, you don't bark much. You don't go out on a limb; you're reacting to the leads, and the leads make choices that come more from their psychology and can be kind of impetuous and feel very surprising. I got to, as this lead, do things that were real choices on the part of the character instead of just a reaction to a situation. BS: Did you talk about that a lot with Vince? BO: No, I didn't talk to him at all. People always ask me if I improvise the character, if I write any of my lines—I don't write anything, and I don't impro- vise. I do it as scripted. I try to hit every word exactly as written. It's a challenge, but in the end I feel like I discover more interesting stuff than I would have come up with on my own, so that's what I've done in this part. Hey, should I recommend some places in Chicago? BS: Please do! [Laughs] BO: Well, you've got to go to Second City—you've got to see the e.t.c. show—but there's a bunch of improv and sketch comedy in Chicago that's really kind of off the map. The Annoyance Theatre, ImprovOlympic has got a new space of four theaters in it—TJ and Dave are there. Have you ever seen TJ & Dave in New York? BS: No. BO: Oh my god. Pasquesi and— BS: I met Dave Pasquesi because the first time I went to Chicago was in 1988 after I left Saturday Night Live, and I did this movie called Next of Kin there with Patrick Swayze, and I had, like, five lines in the movie— I got killed off in the first 20 minutes —but I was there for three months, and that' s when I reached out and met Andy Dick for the first time . You know that movie Elvis Stories? Pasquesi was in that. We went to Kingston Mines, the great blues club. But tell me about the Pasquesi show. BO: Well, it's called TJ & Dave. They've been working together for years, and it's really amazing, and they have their own theater now in Chicago. BS: Oh, cool. Pasquesi's one of the funniest people ever, too, and he's an amazing improviser. BO: Yeah, and these two guys together—it's the best improv can be. What else? It's freezing in Chicago. BS: That is one of the things I could never get over in Chicago—how friggin' cold it gets, and that wind comes in from the lake. BO: Me, too. Every year, there'd be a couple days where you'd go, "Well, human beings should never live here." When the city burned down—what do they call it, a "learning" moment? A teachable moment! [Laughs] BS: [Laughs] So, how often do you go back? BO: Well, my mom still lives there, and two of my sisters live there. I go back a couple of times a year. I'll do stuff at Second City. I haven't seen the new Annoyance, but I can't wait—it's supposed to be a great space—and I'll eat at Al's Italian Beef, and get to a place called That's-A-Burger on the South Side. I still eat meat. And I go see a Cubs game. BS: They just signed a new manager. BO: Good. Well, as long as they're playing at Wrigley Field, I don't care who's on the team—I don't care if anybody's on the team. BS: [Laughs] Are you going to write any more comedy books? BO: You know, Ben, that book I wrote last year is just a bunch of stuff that was in my drawer, and I was going to put it out, but not for a couple of years. But I'm glad it came out, A Load of Hooey. I was thinking about [writing] A Child's Load of Hooey, because I could write a bunch of really silly stuff that you could read to your kids. BS: [Laughs] That would be great, actually—as parents, you're always looking for fun stuff that you like to read to your kids. Do you have any idea in your lifetime how many sketches you think you've written? BO: Well, I don't know how many I've written, but I know I've written seven good ones. [Laughs] BS: Only seven? Really? BO: [Laughs] Oh, I don't know. I mean, I've contributed to so many… It's just what I do when I'm free to do anything. David Cross and I are working on hopefully a new miniseries of sketch shows. BS: Yeah, I saw a picture that was tweeted by [Paul F.] Tompkins and it looked like everybody was in a room— BO: We had so much fun, but Ben, when The Ben Stiller Show ended, I thought to myself, My goal in my career would be to one day have as much fun as we had making that show, waking up and getting in my car and picking up Andy Dick, picking up Janeane [Garofalo], driving down to whatever set we were on… It was the greatest; it was so amazing—that feeling of "When are they going to tell us no? Isn't someone going to come out here and see us doing this and say, 'You can't have that much fun for a living'?" BS: We've got a lot of great memories. I'm very excited—really, Bob— about this show. BO: I've only seen the first episode, but it made me smile the whole way, which was great. [Laughs] I'm excited to see it myself, and I can barely remember what we did. MA "the Ben Stiller Show was the greatest—that feeling of isn't someone going to say, 'you can't have that much fun for a living'?" —bob odenkirk michiganavemag.com 105