Paramount Comedy Interview - 2004

An Exclusive Interview with Flight of the Conchords

By Matt Brito

At first it was the lamb. Then Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. And now, completing the trilogy of reasons for putting New Zealand on the map is Flight Of The Conchords.

Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement are FOTC, the award winning 'fourth most popular folk parody' duo, currently wowing sell-out audiences at the Edinburgh Festival.

Their debut show at the 2003 Fringe earned them a prestigious Perrier Award nomination and they have also received critical acclaim at the Melbourne and Montreal Comedy Festivals.

Music and comedy have long been uneasy bedfellows appearing as mismatched as the words 'Al Fayed' and 'passport'. Bret himself admits "when you describe it as musical comedy? I wouldn't go to it!"

Yet, the Conchords delicious mix of "songs and banter"transcends the pitfalls of this genre, creating a show unlike any to have gone before. With their finely honed deadpan delivery between songs and the fact that they're both incredibly accomplished musicians, it's no wonder that on rare occasions people haven't got the joke.

"Especially old people." explains Jemaine. "In New Zealand, we've played Arts Festivals and you get old people?"

"They just don't get the talking bits" interjects Bret.

"I think it's the tone of our voice," concludes Jemaine, "because we say it so seriously and they just think 'What are they on about?' They don't even listen. They just think we're really failing"
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In the flesh, listening to the duo chat is reminiscent of the show "banter" that the OAPs just can't understand. Perhaps due to the amount of time the pair spends on the road together - "At the moment it's 'ucking ridiculous, don't mention it" - they often speak as a homogenous comedic mass, finishing each others sentences. When spending so much time together how do they keep from falling out?

Bret: "I've just started listening to music"
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Jemaine: "And closing his eyes"
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Bret: "No, it's not that bad, we're quite mellow people. For chaps"
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The Conchords new show 'Lonely Knights' - currently at the Edinburgh Fringe before touring the country - is a title "totally irrelevant to the show. We had to come up with that name ages ago," admits Bret. "One reason it's called that," offers Jemaine, "is because of this Bee Gees album when one of the Bee Gees left, and it was just two of them. It's called Cucumber Castle and they're dressed in Armour. It's rather funny so we thought we'd do something like that"
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Sure enough, in the promotional material for the show, Bret and Jemaine can be seen dressed in full body armour brandishing their weapons of choice - guitars. Beyond coming up with prospective names for the show, how do the Conchords go about writing the songs?

"Occasionally one of us writes the whole thing, but usually we write them together." explains Jemaine. "Sometimes it comes from a tune and sometimes just from a sketch idea or a concept. There is no reliable system, or we'd have a lot more songs if we knew the system"
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"The secret system!" chimes Bret mysteriously.

Whatever their system, it clearly works. Already a hot tip for this year's Perrier Award, the Conchords currently have one nomination under their belts. "You get a really cool trophy. The nominees trophy is always cooler than the actual trophy I think." says Bret "It's this glass statue with a Perrier bottle inside that looks like it's exploding. In New Zealand no-one's even heard of it"

"Demetri Martin," adds Jemaine "who won it [in 2003], gets teased by Americans because he's just a local comic over there"
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Over here, to us Brits, Bret and Jemaine are known purely for their incarnation as the Conchords, yet this is simply one string to their individual bows. Jemaine is also part of a comedy duo (with New Zealander Taika Cohen) called Humorbeasts that spend half the year touring down under.

Bret is the keyboard player for a New Zealand based band called The Black Seeds. "It's more of a serious band. A ten-piece reggae dub kind of band."

"Reggae parody!" quips Jemaine.

They will spend the first quarter of next year back in New Zealand performing with their respective groups at the Summer Festivals. Do they speak much when they're apart?

Jemaine: "No!"

Bret: "The city's so small we see each other"
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Bret has also achieved another kind of notoriety through the wonder that is the world wide web. Following his non-speaking, brief appearance in Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring, almost 2,000 websites have arisen devoted to his Elvish character. Although given no name in the credits, Bret's character has since been christened Figwit - an acronym for 'Frodo is great?who is that?' - by the film's legions of fans.

Largely due to this on-line Rings phenomenon, Bret was invited back to cameo in Return of the King, in a speaking role. "They had to replace the Elf who was doing it [the line of dialogue] and they thought 'Oh well, why don't we get him to do it?' It was a mixture of they needed someone to do it and a bit of an in-joke"
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"I auditioned for a Hobbit." adds Jemaine. "And after the audition, I stood up and she [the casting director] said 'How tall are you?'. 'Six two' I replied. 'You're too tall'"
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"You were two feet too tall" deadpans Bret.

The Conchords have come a long way in a very short time. Their first gig was in 1998 under the name Moustache. "It was just one gig" admits Jemaine. The evolution towards FOTC continued with their next performance, this time with Bret on drums and under the guise of Vested interest.

Bret: "We wanted to learn how to play guitar and we were learning together and started writing songs and we started doing gigs but only very occasionally"
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Jemaine: "It's only been in the last couple of years that we've been doing it more often"
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Bret: "We were going to be the band at a comedy night"
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Jemaine: "A new comedy night was starting in Wellington"
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Bret: "We were the band while the audience came in"
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Jemaine: "We got up there and started playing in the background. The songs were quite weird and funny and?you just can't stop people from listening! Well, sometimes you can"
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Anyone who has seen FOTC will find it hard to believe that they could have a bad gig, but Jemaine insists they've had "lots of them"
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"We've had more good that bad." insists Bret. "We played a rural Christmas party [in New Zealand] and they?"

Jemaine: "We weren't even known in Wellington at this stage. Even when we were finished, they still didn't know we were joking"
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Bret: "The audience started singing by themselves. It was really horrible. It felt like it could turn into a fight. It was like, 'Are you supposed to be funny or what?' A really terrible gig"
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The nature of the show must surely make it difficult for hecklers to interject?

Bret: "We don't encourage heckling but we do get a bit of it"
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Jemaine: "In Ireland we got sheep baas"
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Bret: "Yeah, sheep noises"
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Jemaine: "Ireland and New Zealand. They mostly look exactly the same, there's sheep all over both of the countries and they're hassling us about having sheep. It's really weird. We get a little bit of that in Australia"
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The nearest to heckling welcomed by the duo in their shows is during the encore where fans are invited to suggest songs from the Conchords 'back catalogue' they wish to hear. The most commonly requested of which is "Probably Bowie," says Bret, "I think it's just one song where people can remember the name of it"
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Is there a song they wish they had written?

Bret: "Deborah by Beck on the Midnight Vultures album"
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Jemaine: "It's about working with a girl in a JC Penney's. It's a pretty funny song. And Let it be"
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Do the guys name their guitars like some people name their appendage?

Jemaine: "No. But I name my appendage. I call it Fender Stratocaster. My girlfriend names my guitars"
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Bret: "I didn't know that!"
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Jemaine: "Yeah, if I'm giving them too much attention, if I'm playing my guitar more than I'm playing my lady"
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Bret: "What are they called?"

Jemaine: "One was Maria and one was Gretchen. My current one's Gretchen"
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Who's the first person they try new material on?

Bret: "It's lucky that there's two of us, so if both of us find it funny we know we're on the right track"
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Jemaine: "There are sometimes things that one of us doesn't find funny but we try anyway"
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Bret: "Yeah, we'll be like, 'That's not funny' and then you do it and you're like 'OK, it is!'"

Has the opposite ever happened, where something believed to be funny falls flat?

Bret: "We've had times where people think [a song] is funny, but not as funny as we did!"

How would you describe yourselves to someone who's never seen you before?

Bret: "That's hard. We get asked that so many times. We don't know how to describe it really"
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Jemaine: "It's something we've never been very good at"
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Jemaine: "People say to us, they try to tell their friends about the show and halfway through the sentence 'Parody Folk Music' they realise it sounds really awful. But that's what we find funny about it really. It sounds terrible and a lot of our humour this year [the new show] is things that we think will be really awful"
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Bret: "It's gonna be really awful"
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Jemaine: "That's funny Bret!"

Bret: "The new show features the Conchords latest R&B folk jams and dance hall booty shake"
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Jemaine: "Yes"
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Bret: "And a new song entitled 'Boom She's So Hot comma Boom exclamation mark'."

As the boys get up to prepare for another show, I throw one last question their way. What would be their last meal on Death Row?

"Cocopops." replies Bret, before adding "Or maybe one of those cakes with a saw in it".

Is there a song they wish they had written?

Bret: "Deborah by Beck on the Midnight Vultures album"
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Jemaine: "It's about working with a girl in a JC Penney's. It's a pretty funny song.