CraveOnline: Do you draw at all and were you doing any of the art in the film?
Jemaine Clement: Yeah, I draw a little and I did the graffiti when he graffitis his love rival’s posters. And the kites, I drew on the kites.
There were about eight or 10 pictures to deface, so how long did it take to do that scene?
It was a lot. It was my main stress of the whole movie was drawing all those pictures, and then when we put them up, I didn’t like them. I was like, “Oh, this isn’t realistic. This guy’s supposed to be much better” because Greg Williams who does the graphic novel art is very precise and his art is really beautiful. I actually quite liked it when I saw it. I was pleasantly surprised.
Were you filmed the whole time drawing those?
No, I did it at home. You know how I was supposed to live in this depressing department? In real life I was in a much, much more depressing apartment with the stuff all over the floor. The first one I tried to do was Hitler and it just wasn’t working. Michael [Chernus] has his part on the other side, and for some reason it doesn’t look right. It took me five goes. I think it wasn’t until I used whiteout, because in the script he just uses a black pen and I couldn’t get it to work. Then when I started using other things, I’m like I’m just going to do it how I want. Then it was okay.
You’re doing a new show for HBO with Bret McKenzie?
Writing, yeah. It may never come on screen but we are writing it at the moment.
I remember the reason you stopped doing “Flight of the Conchords” was the difficulty of writing songs, writing scripts and then performing them. Is this a show that will be easier to maintain?
Hopefully. We’re hoping to have more of a writing team, but so far it’s just me and one other person. It’s me and Taika Waititi so it’s just the same again. But yeah, writing songs, we always had to put two songs in a show so there’s a lot to do. This, we might put music in it if it feels appropriate. A song is a lot of work in itself, recording, going in a studio, doing each track.
There’ve been so many more musical shows since “Flight of the Conchords.” There’s been “Glee,” “Smash,” “Galavant.” Do you wonder how they do it?
I know how they do it. They don’t have the same people doing all the jobs.
Do you feel like you paved the way there?
Well, before us was High School Musical.
Are you working on any new Conchords music?
We’re going to tour the States. The plan is to tour the States later on in the year so every time we tour we write a couple new songs.
When might there be enough for an album?
We have been avoiding recording everything. Even our last tour, we said, “Don’t film it because then we’ll have to advertise it.” The most fun part is just playing to a large audience.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
