Author Archives: Jonathan Williams

Matt Morgan looks to regain TNA Tag Team Championship at Victory Road

Since his Total Nonstop Action Wrestling debut in 2007, “The Blueprint” Matt Morgan has been one of the company’s most dominant forces in the ring. Often referring to himself as “the DNA of TNA,” Morgan has been on the verge of title contention a few times, but only recently tasted singles success by becoming the first Heavyweight Champion for Ring Ka King, TNA’s Indian promotion. But it’s been his tag team success with the equally dominant Crimson that has kept American audiences watching as the duo has battled the unlikely pairing of Samoa Joe and Magnus for the TNA World Tag Team Championship. Having lost the belts to Joe and Magnus last month at Against All Odds (and failing to regain them a couple of weeks later in an Impact Wrestling rematch), Morgan and Crimson look to get back on the same page this Sunday at Victory Road and regain the title belts. As he prepares for this pay-per-view event, Morgan takes a moment to talk to Wrestling with Pop Culture about his recent successes.

You and Crimson have made a formidable tag team despite your differences as of late. What do you think it will take for the two of you to get back on the same page and get your titles back this Sunday?

That’s a very good question, and you hit the nail on the head as far as the differences going on between the two of us. I think our Achilles’ heel is not so much miscommunication. The way we started, we tried to outshine one another. But I’ve been in other tag teams where that just doesn’t work. Sting put us together for a reason and that was to go get the Tag Team Championships and hold those damn things for a very long time, not to lose them to Joe and his boyfriend Magnus. So we just need to put our competitive natures aside and put them in the right direction, which is Joe and Magnus, do what we do best and go out there and dominate. There’s no reason in hell why the two of us should not be the most dominant tag team in pro wrestling today, other than pure ego. I’ve got a hell of an ego, I can admit that. But I put that thing in check for the greater good of the team and he needs to do the same damn thing.

You’re obviously focused on this big tag team match this weekend, but is the tag team scene where your heart is? You’ve been on the verge of title contention a few times and some people think you’re long overdue for a singles reign.

I couldn’t agree any more with that. Winning the Tag Team Championships is ultra important and one should take pride in wearing them. But at the same time, I got into pro wrestling for one reason and that’s to be the top dog and be the World Champion. I know it sounds like a catch phrase, but that’s what I truly believe. I came out of my mom’s womb a future World Champion and I’m sick of waiting.

TNA recently had success in India with Ring Ka King and also drew some large and enthusiastic crowds in England. Do you think TNA has the potential to grow in other international markets?

When we did the Ring Ka King thing in India, I’ll be the first to tell you I had no idea what was in store. I had never been there before. I know we get a lot of Indian fans tweeting and saying, “Why doesn’t TNA come to India?” Lo and behold, we launched Ring Ka King. I haven’t been to enough other markets to answer that properly, but I would imagine with the success of Ring Ka King there’s got to be some places out there that are just dying to have a wrestling show of their own. That’s what Ring Ka King is. The Indian fans have something they feel is their own and when they’re energetic about something they come out in droves. I’m talking about when you’re leaving the show they stop your car and they’re shaking it. They treat you like you’re a Beatle down there, no exaggeration. I would want to be a part of it if there is a project in store to go to another market and do another company under the TNA umbrella. I think Ring Ka King’s been a great blueprint, pardon the pun. So why not try it in other markets?

It’s funny that you refer to Magnus as Joe’s girlfriend considering that they’ve gotten the better of you and Crimson more than once, including matches for the tag team title. It was also Magnus who defeated you for the Ring Ka King Championship. What makes you think you and Crimson can get back on the same page and win the title back this Sunday?

Would you rather me refer to him as his girlfriend? Magnus has gotten a lot better, and in my opinion this is nothing he hasn’t been capable of doing since he started. I wrestled Magnus in his very first match with our company at a house show in England – Gladiator vs. Gladiator I believe was the billing. He’s very young, he has great aptitude, he’s very intelligent and he’s a good promo. In the meantime, I think he’s also stepped up his in-ring ability. I think that happens with every wrestler. When you get an opportunity to be put into a spotlit angle and the attention is on you, it’s easier for you to get more confidence out of that. You’ve got to be really bad to blow that opportunity, but Magnus is the opposite. He’s stepped up and really has improved in the ring.

I noticed his confidence rise when we were over in India. It was a good opportunity for all of us to go over there and I was the first champion. We established who our babyfaces were and now there’s a heel group RDX led by Jeff Jarrett with Abyss, Scott Steiner, Sonjay Dutt and Magnus. Once you put the title in the hands of that group, it’s that much more dominant. So now the fans are just dying to see a group of babyfaces, or one babyface, come out there and serve those bad guys their comeuppance. That’s what this business has been built upon for years and that’s what I think has been so successful in Ring Ka King.

What makes us think we can beat those two? We’ve done it before and to be perfectly honest, we’re bigger, stronger and way more athletic. If we are on the same page, I like us being on the same page better than those two being on the same page. That’s why I think we can beat them.

Your partnership with Crimson has kind of outlasted many people’s expectations. Going into Victory Road, do you think this match will show what each of you guys can bring to the table individually?

The four of us have been working together for a long time, especially me and Joe. We were working together for a little while and developed some really good chemistry. We threw Crimson into that mix in a three way on one of the pay-per-views and we stepped up putting together better matches with the three of us. Now throw Magnus in, who I have been working with previously for months in India, and worked earlier on with with the British Invasion when I tagged with Hernandez, so I knew what all four guys could do. And so does Joe. When we’ve teamed together in these matches, we’ve tried the best we could to showcase each of our talents, hide our weaknesses, play to our strengths and go out there and put on the best matches possible. I can’t stand how I keep hearing that tag team wrestling is dead, it’s not what it used to be. To a degree, there are certain truths to that. So it was up to us to check our egos at the door, go out there and put the match first. When you have four guys like us who don’t put ourselves first, but put the match and the story first, the result will be the match we had at the last pay-per-view. And I’m hoping we can go out there and do even better this next pay-per-view.

As a wrestling fan, are there any other matches you’re looking forward to seeing?

I’m a huge wrestling fan at heart. I wouldn’t be staying away from my wife four days a week if this wasn’t something I had crazy fandom over. I like Austin Aries a lot. He goes out and performs his job as a villain and makes those fans boo him. I’ve got respect for a guy who does that. No matter how many times the fans might cheer for him and might be impressed with the moves he can do, at the end of the day the guy still goes out there and makes sure he performs his job. No matter who he’s wrestling against, they’ll end up getting cheered as a result. That’s a heel’s job at the end of the day, so I respect Austin for that alone. But his in-ring ability is just ridiculous. I like his storytelling, I like everything about his promos and I’m very much looking forward to his match.

For more information, go to www.impactwrestling.com.

If you think you’ve seen “John Carter” before, it’s because you have (sort of)

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Even before you sit down to watch the new Disney film John Carter, there’s something awfully familiar about pretty much anything you’ve seen about the movie leading up to its release. But once the interplanetary action begins to unfold, the déjà vu really starts to set in. The weird thing is, that familiarity comes from many different sources.

These are not the, um, Tharks you're looking for.

In much the same way that the recent Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (read my review here) blurs the lines between fantasy and reality by presenting the works of Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson and Jonathan Swift as non-fiction, John Carter is told from the perspective of author Edgar Rice Burroughs as if he is reading the memoirs of his uncle, the real Carter (Taylor Kitsch). Carter’s abrupt jump from post-Civil War adventures in the American Wild West to the similar terrain of Barsoom plays out in much the same way as 1984’s The NeverEnding Story, with the viewer seeing the action as Burroughs reads it.

Upon his mysterious arrival on this unfamiliar planet, Carter soon learns that there are some big differences between the deserts he was just traversing on Earth and the arid landscape of what we soon learn to be Mars, which is in a Mad Max-like state of unrest as its inhabitants are at odds and its natural resources are dwindling. After some clumsy trial and error, Carter discovers that he has almost Superman-like strength on Mars, and he can leap tall buildings in a single bound. These special powers soon attract plenty of attention from the natives. Though he is unable to fly, the red-skinned humans of Helium (who unfortunately do not talk like munchkins as you might expect of people who live in Helium) have mastered that technique with their floating ships, years before the inhabitants of Carter’s home planet have ever seen such things. (You see what they did there, with the people from Helium being able to fly? Clever.)

Thanks in large part to the beauty and spunk of Helium’s Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins), Carter quickly falls in with her people in their fight against the Zodangans (also human) and the Tharks (tall green creatures that look like a cross between the creatures from Avatar and Star Wars‘ General Grievous, with

Should I pet you or run for my life?

Predator-like tusks on their faces). And from the pod race-like scenes to the premise of an unlikely leader and his rag-tag group of allies (including a dog-like creature that is clearly a giant salamander/Boston terrier mix with six legs) trying to unite opposing factions against a common enemy, John Carter has George Lucas written all over it. Or is it the other way around?

The reason so many things in John Carter seem so familiar is because the Burroughs book on which it is based (A Princess of Mars) was a huge influence on Lucas, James Cameron and many other sci-fi and fantasy writers and directors. So its not that this film borrows heavily from other stories, but that those stories have been borrowing heavily from this and other Burroughs works for decades (he’s also responsible for the Tarzan books). Though the movie is an accurate adaptation of Burroughs’ original adventure, and it’s a rare combination of visual accomplishment (in 3-D no less) and an intriguing story, it’s doubtful most moviegoers will realize that movies like Star Wars, Flash Gordon and Avatar likely wouldn’t exist had the John Carter books not been written.

Regardless of that potentially inevitable setback, the movie has a lot going for it. Director Andrew Stanton has proven himself with the animated features Finding Nemo and WALL-E, and John Carter is definitely a great introduction to what he can do in a live action setting. And like so many other live action Disney movies (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea comes to mind), John Carter is sure to become one of those movies that ingrains itself into the minds of children and other adventurous spirits.

Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) is about find out what happens when an Earth guy asks you to pull his finger.

The only weak link in the story comes when a Carter-sympathizing Thark gives him some sort of potion that connects him to Barsoom, allowing him to suddenly understand the planet’s inhabitants, regardless of what language they speak. In turn, they can also understand him despite his Virginian dialect. Though this magical potion and its abilities seem a bit far fetched, at least this movie offers some sort of explanation as to why people from different planets are able to understand each other, unlike many sci-fi and fantasy stories.

But with all the unifying monster-fighting action, the developing love story and visually stunning 3-D effects, John Carter is sure to please most moviegoers, even if many of them think its ripping off all the movies it has inspired. And with ten sequels in Burroughs’ Barsoom series, Disney has plenty of opportunity to create a new sci-fi film franchise.

John Carter. Directed by Andrew Stanton. Starring Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Willem Dafoe, Thomas Haden Church, Samantha Morton, Ciarán Hinds, Mark Strong and Dominic West. Rated PG-13. www.disney.go.com/johncarter/.

Take a rock ‘n’ roll puppet journey into “Space!”

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Space. It may be the final frontier in some universes, but in the Center for Puppetry Arts production of Space!, it’s an extraterrestrial journey through history and our own solar system. Led by the rotund green Ot (puppeteered by Tim Sweeney) and the slender blue Eema (puppeteered by Julie Scarborough, wife of Platinum Championship Wrestling‘s Stephen Platinum) and their band of intergalactic rock ‘n’ rollers, Space! is rife with pop cultural references such as the cleverly named Guitarth Vader (an alien guitarist puppeteered by PCW music composer Dolph Amick) and Ramones-like riffs. The show blasted off for its educational excursion in January and continues through March 11.

Courtesy Center for Puppetry Arts

The music (composed and performed by John Cerreta and Joey Bargsten) runs the rock gamut, with each planet getting its own punk, metal, techno or industrial-sounding tune (though I’m not sure why Neptune seems to get the shaft just for being an ocean planet). In much the same way They Might Be Giants make science fun with songs like “Why Does The Sun Shine? (The Sun Is a Mass of Incandescent Gas)” and the 2009 album Here Comes Science, Space! covers celestial subjects like the sun, moon and stars, as well as the gravitational theories of Sir Isaac Newton (who appears as a shadow puppet), through witty songs and dialogue.

Space! is a great way for children to learn about the universe, as well as Earth’s pop cultural landscape. But even if you don’t have kids and already know all there is to know about the heavens, Space! is a comedic puppet romp sure to please your inner child.

For more information, go to www.puppet.org.

WWE DVD chronicles “The Epic Journey” of The Rock

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Finally The Rock HAS COME BACK to DVD! Well, OK. It really hasn’t been that long since WWE‘s last Rock DVD set (2008’s The Rock: The Most Electrifying Man in Sports Entertainment) was released. But given the year-plus build to his return to singles competition at WrestleMania XXVIII in his hometown of Miami, there are many electrifying reasons to release another set of highlights from The Rock’s wrestling career.

From his childhood days watching his father, Rocky Johnson, and grandfather, Peter Maivia, set standards in the ring, through his time playing for the University of Miami’s national championship football team up to his recent return as host of WrestleMania XXVII, The Rock: The Epic Journey of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson recounts The Rock’s rise to becoming not only the most electrifying man in sports entertainment, but one of the biggest success stories in all of show business. Using family photos, footage that dates back to his 1996 debut at the Survivor Series and commentary from the likes of Triple H, Chris Jericho, The Rock’s WrestleMania XXVIII opponent John Cena and former Miami Hurricanes teammate Warren Sapp (The Rock himself naturally has plenty to say as well), The Epic Journey covers Johnson’s career in and out of the squared circle.

Whether they’re friends, foes or completely unbiased, no one can deny The Rock’s charisma, determination and natural talents, whether they be athletic, comedic or musical. But what is interesting to note (and might be easy to forget, given his aforementioned talents) is that The Rock was not always adored by the fans. Sure, most of us remember his lackluster attempts to endear himself to the fans early in his career as Rocky Maivia. But even after he dropped that gimmick, he was still greeted in much the same way his fans greet Cena today – with chants of “Rocky sucks.” But after joining the Nation of Domination, The Rock began to embrace his arrogant side, which allowed him to talk the kind of smack people, oddly enough, wanted to hear. (Mick Foley even acknowledges on The Epic Journey that The Rock all but invented the term “smackdown.”) But it wasn’t so much that fans wanted to hear him eloquently talking trash to just about anyone he encountered, then backing it up with his in-ring abilities. It’s just that fans can sense when someone is being genuine and, in much the same way they embraced “Stone Cold” Steve Austin‘s antihero behavior, they also took to The Rock’s innate ability to sincerely say what was on his mind and make it wildly entertaining.

But even after he dethroned Farooq as the leader of the Nation, formed an unlikely alliance with Foley as the popular Rock & Sock Connection and became a pop cultural icon, The Rock still fell out of favor with the fans for a while as his rivalry with the previous generation’s icon, Hulk Hogan, came to a boil, as well as when fans began to label him as a Hollywood sellout. We all know The Rock was able to recover from that, but with the back-and-forth between The Rock and Cena over the past year or so, seeing The Rock being treated the way many fans treat Cena now puts everything into new perspective.

Courtesy WWE

Another thing that helps put things into perspective is the matches that are included on this three-disc set. With the things people like Razor Ramon, Shawn Michaels, the Hardy Boyz and others have done in ladder matches, re-watching The Rock and Triple H do battle for the Intercontinental Championship at SummerSlam in 1998 is a reminder of how these two big guys redefined what a ladder match could be. And the “I quit” match against Mankind at the ’99 Royal Rumble shows us a vicious side of The Rock not often revealed.

The Epic Journey also includes his no holds barred match for the World Wrestling Federation Championship against Austin at Backlash in ’99, the triple threat match between The Rock, Triple H and Kurt Angle for that same title at SummerSlam 2000 and his match against Brock Lesnar for the Undisputed Championship at SummerSlam in 2002. Other classic encounters include a 2002 Raw match against Ric Flair, the No Way Out match against Hulk Hogan in 2003 and his recent return to Raw and WrestleMania in 2011. In much the same way the recent Stone Cold DVD set duplicated very little from the previous Stone Cold set, none of the matches on The Epic Journey are featured on The Most Electrifying Man. And that fact not only gives fans plenty of reason to check out this new DVD (even if they’ve already seen the other one), but it’s also a testament to just how electrifying The Rock’s journey in wrestling and beyond has been.

For more information, go to www.wweshop.com.

Go over the rainbow with Alliance’s folk art take on “Oz”

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When it comes to Americana, even a tornado would have a hard time uncovering a story as ingrained in American pop culture as The Wizard of Oz. Though this tale has been told in multiple ways since the 1900 publication of the L. Frank Baum-penned The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, it’s the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film starring Judy Garland that has taught most of us that it’s fun to follow the proverbial yellow brick road, but there is ultimately no place like home. Through March 11, the Alliance Theatre will be taking theatergoers over the rainbow in a production that is loyal to the film while also putting its own folk art twist on the tale. From the patchwork pattern that covers the stage floor to the Altoids-tin abdomen of the Tin Woodsman, this version definitely borrows heavily from its surroundings while paying homage to what has become one of Hollywood’s most memorable films. Director Rosemary Newcott (the Alliance’s Sally G. Tomlinson Artistic Director of Theatre for Youth) takes a moment to talk to Wrestling with Pop Culture about the folk art influences of the play and more.

Your interpretation of The Wizard of Oz is very loyal to the 1939 movie, but it also puts a folk art visual spin on things. That actually seems like a natural fit, but why did you choose to incorporate folk art into the production? Were there any challenges in doing that?

I’m married to a folk artist, so it’s all over my house and I look at it all the time. When you’re looking to design a show you’re always looking at what possible ways you can go, especially when you’re taking an iconic movie like that. You can’t put the film on the stage. So between looking at my husband’s art and basically playing off the Tin Man, who is a piece of folk art as he originally existed – and even if you look at Baum’s drawings there’s some kind of folk art sensibility to his original illustrations – that connection was what inspired this show.

He was about Americana and sought to create this American fairy tale when he wrote The Wizard of Oz. One of my earliest memories is seeing that MGM movie with my family. Talk about pop culture, that film’s images and lines and characters are so integrated into who we all are, certainly on a national level but even internationally, that particular movie and story has just been so constant. In the long run, it’s about how a family and how relationships work, where you find your home and what’s important to you. From that perspective, it’s very connected to the way that a folk artist uses the elements around his or her home to create. When we looked at that, which is just taking out of the earth and creating from wherever you live, it seemed to be such a perfect connection to what that story is.

The Wrestling with Pop culture logo by KRK Ryden has a yellow brick road-like path leading into a giant luchador’s mouth. So I definitely understand how much this story is part of pop culture.

I get it! And it’s so funny, I directed a show in La Jolla, California called Frida Libre. It’s supposed to be Frida Kahlo as a young girl and this other character is aspiring to be one of those Mexican wrestlers. So we played around with that imagery a lot. Of course, out there every other child was Mexican so they really loved it.

You mentioned that your husband is a folk artist. What’s his name?

His name is Tom Marquardt, but he’s got an art name which is TMarq.

You mean like a wrestling gimmick?

Yes! It’s his other persona. He used to do a lot of folk art festivals, but he’s not doing so much of that anymore because the market’s so bad. We did get up to Paradise Garden and got to meet Howard Finster. His persona actually greatly inspired Brandon O’Dell’s Wizard. He watched a lot of videos of Finster and rather than going for the guy in the movie, we just went for more of a Finster-looking gentleman, which is where the costume designer went.

There are some obvious differences between the cast of the movie and the cast of your play. Was that done intentionally to stay with the folk art theme or was it just a matter of who had the best audition?

My mind is always somewhat partial to multicultural casting because I feel like probably 80 percent of my school audiences are African American. We all want to see ourselves up there, but because folk art reflects home, I felt like that needed to be there because that diversity is so reflected in our culture. I would have been even more diverse if I could. There are certain conditions of singing, dancing and acting that you need to have in there, too. But I’m grateful for the amount of talent this city is providing, especially with a lot of actors who are also talented musically. The amount of young people who are triple threats is growing, which is outstanding.

The entire cast is very good, but Brad Raymond as the Cowardly Lion stands out quite a bit.

He’s quite wonderful, and he’s not Bert Lahr. When I first got into that audition process, almost everyone was coming in and trying to do Bert Lahr imitations. You can’t do that! So it was great when Brad came in with something that was uniquely his own twist on it, even though it sort of honors Bert Lahr in some respects.

There are certain parts of the movie that you obviously can’t recreate in this setting, such as when the Wicked Witch of the West catches the Scarecrow on fire, or the Witch having an entire army of green guys. But you captured the feel of the movie without having little people in the cast. Did you have the idea to have puppets and other tricks from the beginning?

It was abosolutely part of the plan, but very tricky. I’m grateful to have Reay Kaplan and Patrick McColery, who have both puppeteered extensively. And Michael Haverty, who did this amazing piece based on Alice in Wonderland that was about his mother at 7 Stages last year, helped us with conceptualizing the puppets. We started brainstorming for this a little less than a year ago. We’d just gather at my house, look at folk art and talk about how to invent this in a way that honors the movie and can still represent that populous. Munchkinland was the trickiest one because it’s a whole culture of little people. If I could cast children, I would. But I can’t, so this was the only way to go. The invention happens because of your limitations, so it reminds me of folk art in that we were taking what little we had and creating from it. The resources at the Alliance obviously helped, too. I’m grateful for the artists and they take such pride in it. It really took a while to evolve Toto because he is handled so much in the show, but I love what they came up with.

The show wraps up this weekend. What do you have planned after that?

We’re taking it on tour to LaGrange and that will be fun for the kids and families out there. It’s at a school that can accommodate some of our scenic elements, but we can’t bring all of them. Hopefully it will be something we can pack up and revive. It’s so connected to everybody I hope it’s something we can bring back.

Right now I’m developing a new piece for our Theatre for the Very Young component, which serves 18-month-old to 5-year-old children. It will play in the Black Box Theatre on the third floor of the Alliance. It’s amazing for me because how do you entertain 18-month-old kids? It’s very installation based and very hands on. They wander right into the space and they’re part of the show. I’m partnering with Lauri Stallings from gloATL for The Tranquil Tortoise and the Hoppity Hare. It’s kind of a dance piece created specifically for younger kids.

Right after that I’m off to The Kennedy Center to remount a production called Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems, which is a piece about a baby and her Knuffle Bunny. Then who knows what’s next? There’s always something cooking up.

For more information, go to www.alliancetheatre.org.

Wrestling with Pop Culture Anniversary Party

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It’s been a whole year since Wrestling with Pop Culture was born, and we’re going to celebrate the way people who like monsters, wrestling and rock ‘n’ roll should. Following the Atlanta Film Festival screening of the Platinum Championship Wrestling documentary The Booker at the Midtown Art Cinema on March 28, head over to the Masquerade to see creatures of the night do battle in Monstrosity Championship Wrestling, featuring Prof. Morte from the Silver Scream SpookShow! Hear the hard-hitting sounds of NeeDeep! Marvel at the pop punk pummel of Death is a Dialogue!

As heard on the March 12 edition of Georgia Wrestling Now, Stephen Platinum has also declared that he and PCW will be there to challenge MCW! The WPC Anniversary Party is also now an official Atlanta Film Festival afterparty, which means anyone who goes here to purchase passes to the festival will also be admitted to the party for FREE!

We’ll also have luchador-inspired body painting from Neon Armour, raffle prizes from Pabst Blue Ribbon, Criminal Records, Adrenaline Fitness and more! It’s all hosted by The Sexual Side Effect herself, Amber Taylor!

We also just added some new raffle prizes from monster artist Dave Cook, chilling chocolates from Chocolate F/X, the Silver Scream SpookShow, sideshow banner art by Zomberella, Neon Armour, Monster Joe Coffee T-shirts and more! You’ll also be able to purchase limited edition copies of The Booker, signed by Stephen Platinum!

Special thanks to Creative Loafing, Criminal Records, Ox’s Wrestling Ring Rentals, Scoutmob, Adrenaline Fitness and PBR for supporting the event.

Tickets are only $8 in advance, $10 at the door. $5 tickets are available at the Academy Theatre. Go to WrestlingwithPopCulture.com and listen to Georgia Wrestling Now at GeorgiaWrestlingHistory.com to win tickets!

Tim and Eric talk about the big-screen surrealism of “Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie”

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Anyone who has ever watched Adult Swim‘s Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! knows that Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim have a really weird sense of humor. And when I say “weird,” I mean waaay out there sketch comedy absurdity that is like a Saturday Night Live hallucination. The duo’s awkward stream-of-consciousness humor has garnered a cult following, including the likes of “Weird Al” Yankovic, John C. Reilly, Will Ferrell, Marilyn Manson, Paul Reubens, Danny Trejo and Rainn Wilson, all of whom have also appeared on the show.

Photo courtesy Magnet Releasing

With the release of Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, the duo takes its squirm-inducing sketch skills (and some of the people that have been on the show) to the big screen in a feature-length film about the duo squandering a billion dollars given to them by the Schlaaang corporation to make a feature-length film. Sound confusing? Well it is, sort of. Since Heidecker and Wareheim play themselves, and Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie is like a movie within a movie (within a movie, if you count the short film starring Johnny Depp (played by Ronnie Rodriguez) that starts the film), it can be a bit hard to follow. And that’s not even factoring in the part about them buying a dilapidated shopping mall filled with vagrants and oddball shops in order to make the billion back. Trying to make sense of it all is making me sleepy, so here’s an interview the guys did with Wrestling with Pop Culture to further confuse you.

Talk a little bit about the writing process for this movie in comparison to the work you’ve done in the past.

Heidecker: Well, we tried to take our time with it. We knew we didn’t want to make a sketch movie and we didn’t want to make a long episode of the Awesome Show, so we focused on trying to come up with a story that would fit our sensibility and not clog it up with too much plot. We wanted to make a movie where we could do all of our little tricks and stuff. We went back and forth working on it for quite a while and getting into a good position where we had something we could use to shoot the movie with.

Did you have an trouble adapting to a feature film?

Heidecker: There was no trouble, it was just a challenge. We didn’t really consider it to be adapting, it was just doing something different.

Wareheim: We can do anything, really.

A lot of sacrifices were obviously made to make this movie – Will Forte, a young boy and others. Looking back on all that, is there anything you would have done differently or anyone else you might have sacrificed in the process?

Heidecker: No regrets. All those people were obviously fake. No one was really killed or anything.

When you were deciding how you were going to make this movie, how did you decide how far you would go with some things and how much you would hold back with others?

Photo courtresy Magnet Releasing

Wareheim: We definitely knew it wasn’t going to be cut as fast as the Awesome Show or have that kind of look. We wanted it to look like a movie so people going into a movie theater have somewhat of a cinematic experience. So some parts, like the Johnny Depp movie, have a more heightened Hollywood look. For the rest of the movie, we wanted to have a higher production value but at the same time we have some of the commercials that have the Tim and Eric style.

Heidecker: The basic rule is, “What makes sense?” So if you’re making a shitty commercial, it makes sense for it to be a shitty commercial. But in a narrative, when you’re just telling a story, it doesn’t make sense for it to be all shitty and weird. We want you to forget about the form of watching a movie until it makes sense for the scene.

You guys have a very niche audience. Not everyone is familiar with Tim and Eric and the movie itself is kind of extreme. How do you want this movie to be taken by people who may not be familiar with the show?

Heidecker: The only thing we’re doing differently is we’re doing a lot of press. We’re talking to as mainstream press as you can get. It’s different than your normal film, I guess, but it should be treated like anything else. It’s not a remake of something, it’s not an animated CGI thing…

Wareheim: At the same time, though, our objective is not for it to do well in the mainstream. We want lots of people to see it, but our objective was to make our movie.

When you started the process of making the movie, was there ever any temptation to make it as crazy and bizarro as possible, which would make it much less accessible to a mainstream audience?

Heidecker: From a superfan’s perspective, they might be like, “Hey, you made this traditional movie!” In that sense, we kind of found a middle ground. We knew we couldn’t get the movie made if it was just going to be completely out-the-window bonkers. And that’s probably not a movie we’d really want to make anyway. We wouldn’t want to spend all that money and all that time and all that opportunity to kind of wank off.

Photo courtesy Magnet Releasing

A lot of the people in the movie have also been part of the show, but there were also people who have been part of the show who weren’t in the movie. How did you go about choosing which of your regulars would be part of this project?

Wareheim: We sort of wrote the characters, then kind of assigned people to those characters. It was just whoever fit. There was a lot of people who didn’t get in there and a lot of people who wanted to get in there.

Heidecker: There was just too many people we wanted to have in the movie, but there just weren’t enough places for them. We didn’t want it just to be a parade of cameos necessarily. So it was just striking a balance and we hope if we get to make another movie we’ll include other people. This isn’t meant to be a time capsule of all the things we care about.

If you got an opportunity to do other films, would you want to keep this continuity or would you want to collaborate on something that went in a different direction?

Wareheim: We’d love to make another Tim and Eric movie or something in the style of this.

Heidecker: It’s kind of weird because the way this movie ends, I’m not sure how you’d continue because there’s the ending of the movie within the movie and there’s this other ending. So I don’t know if it would continue from the screening room or from the mall. So we can kind of do whatever we want.

If you actually had a billion dollars to make a movie, what would you do with the money?

Heidecker: We’d give probably 99 percent of it away. The problem with having lots and lots of money for a movie is that’s somebody else’s money. So they’re going to want it back and they’re going to try to fuck with it to make it as successful to the most people as possible.

This movie is obviously still grounded in your aesthetic, but how big of an adjustment was it to be using different kinds of equipment and a different tool set from your Adult Swim process?

Heidecker: We had made these two short films, Father and Son and The Terrys, for Funny or Die. The process isn’t that different when you’re doing short stuff versus long stuff. It’s just more days. The general fundamentals of filmmaking still apply. So that was pretty much it. We had great producers, a great cinematographer… That’s what ended up mattering was having a great team. We had a couple of people who had made a movie before, so they knew some of the workings arounds of all the technical stuff. So it was just trusting your instincts, working with good people, making sure things were in focus.

Is there anyone you haven’t already had on the show or otherwise collaborated with that you think has a similar aesthetic or that you’d like to work with?

Heidecker: We’ve talked about doing stuff with Peter Serafinowicz and Robert Popper from England who do the Look Around You show. But everybody’s stuff is so personal that it’s hard to even consider working with other people. As far as talent, we’ve worked with everybody we wanted to work with. There are a couple of people like Christopher Guest that I think would be too intimidating and nerve racking.

Wareheim: Tosh. I’ve been tweeting with Tosh.

You just need a viral video.

Wareheim: I’ve submitted tons. Trust me.

Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie. Written and directed by Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim. Starring Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim, Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Will Forte, Robert Loggia, Zach Galifianakis and Jeff Goldblum. Rated R. www.magnetreleasing.com/timandericmovie.