Paul Scheer is a hilarious actor/comedian who’s simultaneously starring in both The League on FX and NTSF:SD:SUV:: for Adult Swim. On the other hand, I ask hard-hitting interview questions about time travel, fighting Arsenio Hall, and post-apocalyptic motorcycle punks. These are 7 hypothetical questions for Paul Scheer:
1. You’re starring in two funny TV series at the same time: The League and NTSF:SD:SUV::. If you could insert yourself into the regular cast of any other TV show, making it a hat-trick, which show would you want to be on and who would your character be?
Okay, this is a great question. It’s an easy question for me, because… I feel like… No, now I’m thinking it’s tough.
I’m gonna go with my gut. I’m gonna say Breaking Bad and I’ll be a new assistant to Saul Goodman’s character. Someone who he’s brought in. He’s not well-liked by that big bodyguard, the guy who poisoned the child, I don’t know his name. [I looked it up and it’s Huell.]
I would be a new protégé brought into the show to help him, as he is less able to show his face around New Mexico, because he’s gotten more and more mired in the muck.
I think America would like to see that.
Look, you know what? From your blog to God’s ears, let’s do this. For the Saul Goodman spin-off, we’re gonna do this.
2. You’re walking down the street at night and a man is following you… it’s the deadly Secret Agent Trent Hauser and he’s taking out his gun! He’s running… oh god, he’s gonna kill you, Paul! Quick: How would you evade or trick him, in order to save your life?
Oh man, this is a tough situation, because when Trent Hauser is coming after you, he’s gonna get you. He does shoot first. Very much like George Zimmerman, he will shoot before he gets the right information.
I think the only thing that I could do, and luckily I have this at my disposal, is I’d have to throw on a wig, and some lipstick, and quickly disguise myself as a woman – and I hope I could somehow seduce him, because that’d be the only way I could lower down the Trent reflexes. It seems Trent is very susceptible to falling in love with people, so I feel like I’d have to do some Don’t Tell Her It’s Me kinda stuff. A switch where he would think I was a woman, and then I could sneak away, leaving him heartbroken, obviously.
The Bugs Bunny method.
Exactly the Bugs Bunny method. Way better reference than my 1990 Steve Guttenberg flop reference.
3. I think that depends on who you ask. Speaking of flops, on your hilarious podcast How Did This Get Made, you and your fellow hosts make fun of terrible movies. Let’s say you acquired a time machine and a Time Sherpa, who will guide you to help turn any bad movie into a great movie, which you could then watch upon your return to the present. Which movie would you pick and how would it be different?
Well, sometimes the best movies – the reason why they’re so good is because they’re so bad. That being said, the movie I’m really dying to go back and fix, and I think America will agree with me on this one: Spider-Man 3.
Yeah.
So much potential. Spider-Man 1 – Good. Spider-Man 2 – Great! And then Spider-Man 3 – What happened? We have dance sequences, too many villains and none of them are interesting, but great actors. Everyone wanted to see a better version of that movie. It killed the Toby Maguire Spider-Man franchise. It made a ton of money, but everyone was bummed out.
It’s like X-Men 3. Again, another movie with an amazing cast, just all went downhill. But I’d rather work with Sam Raimi and those guys. And I also hear Sam Raimi had a better version of the Venom script and [the studio] forced him into doing Sandman at the same time. So I’d say Spider-Man 3 is the movie I’d want to go back and change. Then you could complete the franchise, it’d be a perfect trilogy and everyone would be psyched.
There’s nothing worse than when there’s a trilogy and the third movie ruins the good will of the first two.
Now meanwhile, Fast and Furious has the opposite problem. They just keep on getting better and better! I don’t know where they’re gonna go from here.
4. You were at this year’s Comic-Con, and you did a number of panels. Let’s say you and the Time Sherpa team up again, this time picking up famous historical figures, dead celebrities or currently living people from their prime eras to be on a Comic-Con panel. It’s a nerdy Bill and Ted’s. You’re the panel host – who do you want as your guests?
You want Irving Kushner, the director of Empire Strikes Back, right after Empire Strikes Back has come out.
I think you want to get… Oh man, why am I forgetting his name? Give me one second to Google it…
No worries. If you’re going back through time, it makes sense to Google them and make sure you’re getting the right people in the right eras.
Exactly. Alright, I think you’ve got to get H.P. Lovecraft on a panel. We’ve never had him on a panel discussion. People are gonna ask him a lot of questions. He’ll be a bit of a wildcard, but I think he’d be an interesting guy to have.
This one is going a little out of the nerd sphere, but going more into the Comic-Con world of it all – I think you want to have Lorne Michaels right after he was fired from SNL.
Let’s see, we have a director, a writer, a producer… we need a good actor. My gut pick would be the fat kid from Goonies, right after Goonies. Have him talk about his Goonies experience.
And the ultimate person you’d want on a panel: Bill Murray circa Ghostbusters. You’ve never seen Bill Murray on a panel.
So you’ve got Irving Kushner, Lorne Michaels, Bill Murray (an interesting connection between those two), HP Lovecraft (who’ll feel a little left out, but he gets the absurd realism of what’s going on), and you throw in child star Chunk, who’s totally in the mix. This is a pretty badass panel. I would show up to this panel.
If you could get in! You’d have to wait, like, 8 days to get into it.
That’s definitely a sleepover panel.
5. Let’s talk about your new web series The Arscheerio Paul Show. Say you crawled through a tiny door in a weird office building, and you end up inside Arsenio Hall’s head circa 1992, controlling his body like a puppeteer. You’ll be able to do anything you want as Arsenio for 24 hours. What’s your itinerary?
What’s on the agenda in ’92? Definitely the China Club, hanging out with Steven Seagal. I think there’s cocaine involved. I’m not saying Arsenio is doing the cocaine, but I think he’s gonna be around it. There’d be a heavy, heavy make-out session with Paula Abdul. Paula Abdul’s in her prime, her peak years, so I definitely want to get some of that action going on.
I would host the show. Who would be my guests for that night? Corey Feldman, Luther Vandross, and the comedy of Richard Jeni.
And I think it would all end with me in a hot tub, at the end of the night, overlooking the Hollywood Hills, on the phone with MC Hammer, who’s watching the show and critiquing me.
6. It’s 2 am, you’re fast asleep, and then you hear the doorbell. You sleepily walk to the front door and open it to reveal a piss drunk Arsenio Hall, and he wants to fight you. He hates The Arscheerio Paul Show, he calls you a bunch of names, some of which are racist, and he says he won’t leave until you fight him. What do you do? Oh, and because of some shady business dealings you’re involved with, you don’t want to involve the police.
I’m gonna get to the root of why he got so drunk. I’m gonna guess it’s not about The Archeerio Paul Show. What I’m gonna guess is that The Archeerio Paul Show brought back memories of moments he wanted to forget. I think the real root of his issues is that MC Skat Kat, the cartoon cat in the Paula Abdul video, did something with Paula Abdul. Paula Abdul cheated on him with MC Skat Kat, and I think that is the root of it.
I’m gonna get him to talk about it. I’m gonna get him to open up about MC Skat Kat and he’s gonna go from being really angry to starting to cry. Then I’m gonna sit him down on the couch and give him an Arsenio-style interview. He’s gonna come out of this refreshed, reborn, and ready to host a brand new talk show.
7. The apocalypse happens. Most of civilization is wiped out. You manage to survive in an underground bunker, and when you re-emerge, you’re greeted by a group of post-apocalyptic motorcycle punks who worship you. The one thing that survived the apocalypse is The Arscheerio Paul Show, which they love, but they don’t know it’s a parody, because there’s no record of Arsenio Hall. Do you try to explain the true meaning of the show to the punks, or let them think you were – at one time – basically Arsenio Hall?
If I know one thing about leading a group of people, it’s that you need to keep them in the dark for their own good. You always need to keep morale up, especially when you’re in a post-apocalyptic society.
They need leadership and I’m not gonna take the piss out of them. I am Arscheerio Paul, that’s not a lie. Yeah, sure, they don’t know where it’s based in, and I’m sure they’re upset the Arscheerio they knew had a nice afro wig and the Paul they’re seeing now has less hair. I think that shows some age on me, but I think that I’m gonna lead them. I’m gonna teach them how to do interviews that are pretty hard hitting, but at the same time really friendly.
So I’m gonna start a race of people that are constantly either getting interviewed or conducting interviews. It’s gonna be a talk show planet, so when they make first contact, and the Star Trek people come down (that’s what I call them), they’ll be like, “Oh my god, this is a talk show planet!”
That would be a great episode of Next Generation. I’m gonna write that spec script.
Geoffrey Golden is the Editor in Chief of The Devastator: The Quarterly Comedy Magazine For Humans!
