HBO Interview - 2005

INTERVIEW WITH FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS



Flight of the Conchords (Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie), a folk parody duo from New Zealand, earned rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Melbourne Comedy Festival. They won the Bass Ale Award-Best Alternative Act at this year's US Comedy Arts Festival.

HBO: First you have to explain where you guys are from, because you're accents can throw people a little.

Flight of the Conchords:
JERMAINE
We're from Wellington in New Zealand.

BRETT
You understand that?

HBO: Barely, I'm grasping. When did you first start touring outside of New Zealand?

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
We did the Edinburgh Comedy Festival and then went to the Montreal and Aspen Comedy Festivals - and then here.

HBO: Wow. So was there a show in Edinburgh that just blew open the door, got your name out?

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
Yeah, we did a show called 'High on Folk,' and that got a bit of attention. We're a band, so we sing our act.

HBO: Did you start off doing songs that were comical?

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
Yeah, they were kind of weird, funny songs. We didn't really intend for them to be comedy songs, but they just veered that way.

HBO: So how did you meet, how did Flight of the Conchords come together?

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
We grew up in the same town.

JERMAINE
Brett had a guitar but didn't know how to play guitar. And I knew how to play guitar, but I didn't have a guitar. So -

BRETT
We heard about each other.

JERMAINE
Brett came over to my place with his guitar and I told him how to play it.

HBO: What did you guys do before you formed your band? What jobs did you have, if you had jobs?

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
The worst job that I ever had was when I was 11. We had a bowling alley in my town, but it didn't have the machines that picked up the pins. So I was one of the boys who picked up the pins. That was the worst job I've ever had.

JERMAINE
I was a corporate CEO for Shell Oil but, um, I was a kid. At first we tried acting, and then we said no, let's be a band.

BRETT
Yeah, there was no work in New Zealand for actors.

HBO: Is there a big comedy scene in New Zealand?

Flight of the Conchords:
JERMAINE
Not really. There's one club in the whole country.

BRETT
Thursday nights- that's the big comedy night. So if you're in New Zealand on Thursday night -go to Wellington. There'll be a hundred people there. So you can go and check that out.

HBO: Is there any connection between the New Zealand comedy style and the stuff you've seen here in the states?

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
There does seem to be quite a cool, small club scene in New York, with lots of weird little shows. That reminds me of Wellington a bit. More experimental, theater-y shows rather than just stand up.

HBO: Right. How did you start playing professionally? What were your first gigs like?

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
Our first gig was at a comedy night, but we were meant to be the band that was just opening the show - while the audience came in. But it just ended up being more of a comedy act than we expected. Then we got booked doing spots at comedy night.

HBO: Did you do quite a bit of shows in New Zealand before Edinburgh happened?

Flight of the Conchords:
JERMAINE
Sort of. The first time we ever did the whole show was in Canada. We didn't really do it in New Zealand. We did the casual pub gig at the Calgary Fringe Festival.

BRETT
We hit Calgary hard.

JERMAINE
Yeah. They're still reeling.

HBO: So you went from Wellington, New Zealand to Calgary.

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
We did the classic trail.

JERMAINE
Yeah. We tried to hit the main agricultural and pastoral centers of the world.

HBO: That's great. Sheep and Chardonnay? There is a kind of New Zealand feel to your act.

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
We don't really talk about sheep. In fact there's no sheep. I can't remember a sheep there, there's no sheep in our show.

JERMAINE
We used to have one sheep reference but it was a tight stereotype so we cut that.

HBO: Did you have any influences - musical or comedic influences - when you were first starting?

Flight of the Conchords:
JERMAINE
John Lennon meets Gary Shandling sort of thing.

BRETT
Mick Jagger. A Weird Al Yankovic - Bowie fusion. If those two were to meld together, that'd be a hero of ours.

HBO: Nice. We heard about a 'Lord of the Rings' song you did, which is a natural for a New Zealand-based group. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
We're not doing it in the show tonight, but we wrote it for the Lord of the Rings. We tried to get the gig writing the theme song for the film. It didn't happen.

HBO: I'm sorry. But there will be another one - a 'Lord of the Rings IV.'

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
See, no, we tried three times and they still didn't use it.

HBO: So what's it about? What's your take on the epic saga?

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
Well, we just try to catch all those things that a movie soundtrack has to have, the heavy rock-out bit and...

JERMAINE
The Will Smith style rap. You know, 'Yo, Frodo, what you doing with the ring, is that your new thing? It's hard when you're a little more than three-foot four, a little less, so close to the floor. Trying to leave the fellows to the gates of Modor.' That sort of thing.

HBO: That did have a kind of Middle Earth vibe to it. Do you guys have a favorite comedy movie?

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
'The Bedazzled' maybe with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. That might be one.

JERMAINE
Napoleon Dynamite, I saw that the other day. It's really good.

HBO: That was very cool. Was that big in New Zealand?

Flight of the Conchords:
JERMAINE
No. [LAUGHS]

HBO: Because I thought it might have that kind of agricultural spin to it.

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
Pastoral.

HBO: How about TV shows?

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
'The A Team' maybe.

JERMAINE
That's old here, but back in New Zealand that's the new one. Stay in school fool.

BRETT
Yeah, I'd like to meet Mister T.

HBO: What's been the most challenging part of the Flight of the Conchords experience so far?

Flight of the Conchords:
JERMAINE
Learning chords is probably the hardest thing we've had to do.

BRETT
Harmonies. [SINGING]

BRETT
Blowjobs.

HBO: [LAUGHS]

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
Behind camera there's a lot of that. There's a lot of ladies involved in this comedy music scene.

HBO: Ladies are tough. So where does the name come from? I was hoping it had an erotic reference?

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
An erotic reference. [LAUGHS] Not really. I had this dream about this V formation of flying V guitars that kind of looked like Concordes, and I was just telling Jermaine about it, and we just ended up with Flight of the Conchords.

HBO: But then you spell it with the chord.

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
Yeah, like a guitar chord.

JERMAINE
It's kind of like the Beatles, how they put the 'Beat' with the 'les.' We put 'con' with 'chord.' So, we're up there with some pretty big bands who have also used pun names.

HBO: Do you have any backstage ritual? What do you guys do before a show, when you get off the tour bus?

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
The tour bus? We don't have a tour bus, but we walk and then -

JERMAINE
We tune our guitars, and tune them again. Then I say, are we gonna do the bit about that? And we just practice our harmonies. [SINGING] It's pretty rock and roll.

HBO: Do you guys tape down a list of the songs you're gonna play, the way the big bands do?

Flight of the Conchords:
JERMAINE
We don't usually, but we're going to do it so we look like a big band.

BRETT
Yeah and throw it out into the crowd afterwards.

HBO: How many total gigs have you guys done?

Flight of the Conchords:
JERMAINE
Hundreds.

BRETT
Maybe a thousand, I don't know.

JERMAINE
Maybe tonight's a thousand.

BRETT
Yeah it's our thousandth.

HBO: That's a special thing. So any anecdotes about crazy sh** that's happened during you're acts?

Flight of the Conchords:
BRETT
I went [crowd] surfing, in a quite small venue. The audience wasn't very excited.

JERMAINE
It's more group surfing than crowd surfing, lately.

BRETT
Yeah, small groups, if that.

HBO: So tell us as succinctly as you can what tonight's show is gonna be about.

Flight of the Conchords:
JERMAINE
Um, funk.

HBO: That was one word.

Flight of the Conchords:
JERMAINE
Mad beats.

BRETT
Crazy stars fish.

JERMAINE
Freestyling.

BRETT
Freestyling. It's gonna be freestyling.

JERMAINE
Harmonies.

BRETT
We're gonna harmonize. What else...the lettuce.

JERMAINE
Dancing. The lettuce.

BRETT
The lettuce. It's gonna be-

JERMAINE
Issues, we're gonna write some issues.

BRETT
We're gonna take it to the people. Do it for the children.

JERMAINE
We're gonna make love in your ears. In your ear holes.

BRETT
Uh um, maybe.

JERMAINE
Maybe.

BRETT
And that's quite succinct.