Trevor Moore and his colleagues in the raunchy sketch comedy group Whitest Kids U’Know were early viral sensations, posting videos of their offbeat bits online during the baby days of YouTube. They got a lot of media coverage last year when a Budweiser ad featured a slapping joke that seemed heavily derived from their own work, but that was hardly a hindrance. The group has developed a steady group of fans that allowed their upstart stature to solidify into a career. Now they’re minor television stars, with a movie project that just wrapped and the televised version of their performance beginning its second season on IFC tonight at 11 p.m. Trevor spoke with New York Press about the experiences of then and now. You started out doing weekly sketch comedy at Pianos in Soho. That’s still a part of your schedule, but now you’ve got the television show and a movie project. How much shameless self-promotion did it take to get to this point?
We weren’t very good at the self-promotion thing. At one point, we spent like fifty bucks to have some cards made that said where our show was. We never handed them out. Everyone still has a pack of cards. We did the Pianos show for three or four years. We wrote a new show every week so we got a lot of repeat people coming back. After we built a crowd that way, TimeOut New York came out and liked the show. They did a really nice piece on us. From there, we started getting really packed crowds.
How did you manage the transition to television?
The first season is a lot of our live sketches from our shows. We had 300-odd sketches on backlog. The one weird thing was working with a crew, instead of just the five of us. We had this really stupid idea for a submarine sketch—it was like a ten second sketch. But we showed up at the set and it was built like a submarine. Somebody spent a long time on this really stupid idea.
Your writing sessions must be pretty wack.
We write in different ways. We’ll sit around, people come in with ideas and we see if they make everybody laugh. IFC has been really awesome about basically making no content notes whatsoever. It’s a big First Amendment channel. They were just like, “Go crazy.” We can do whatever we want. I don’t think they’ve even read all the scripts this season.
The show started out on Fuze, which censored you a little more.
We didn’t have the same freedom. More people watch IFC, so it’s a double bonus. It wasn’t like we were complete idiots. We knew when we would get bleeped [on Fuze]. We’re not going to curb how these characters talk. In some situations, it actually made stuff funnier.
You’ve been away from Pianos for the last four months.
[Fellow Whitest Kids member] Zack [Cregger] and I have been in California doing a movie [called Playboys] for Fox Atomic. We’re almost done with it. We’ll start doing live shows again in March or April.
What’s the deal with your movie?
It’s about two guys in high school. One of them is obsessed with Playboy and girls, and the other one is an abstinence kid. He has a long-term girlfriend who keeps pressuring him to have sex, but he’s not ready. He agrees to have sex with her on prom night, but he’s nervous, so his friend gets him really drunk. He opens the wrong door and falls down a flight of steps and goes into a coma for four years. When he wakes up, all of his friends are gone from his hometown and his girlfriend is now a Playboy playmate. So he takes a roadtrip across the country with his friend to reconnect with the girl. It’s a hard R movie, but it’s innocent at the same time. Since Zack and I wrote and directed it, we had complete control. We’re going through the first round of editing now, so we’ll see how much control we end up having through it. They’re thinking it’ll be a fall release.
Sounds similar to the upcoming Anna Faris movie, I Know What Boys Like.
I don’t that’ll matter. The tones of the two movies will be night and day.
IMDb users are surely dying to know the identity of Horsedick.MPEG.
That’s the name of the gangster rapper in the movie.
Do you want to stay in the movie business?
We want to get a Whitest Kids movie off the ground. We’ve written a script for that. Once the WGA strike is over, we’ll probably see who’s interested in doing it. We’d like to follow the Monty Python formula, where you do a TV show and a movie every couple of years.
Interesting. I had you pegged as Jackass guys.
I think the Jackass movies are really funny, but that’s not sketch comedy.
What’s your take on the state of sketch comedy? Most people think Saturday Night Live is a lost cause.
Personally, I try not to watch other sketch comedy because I don’t want to be influenced by it. As for SNL, people have been saying it’s not good anymore for as long as I can remember, but I don’t know if that’s true. I think it’s aimed for a young group. I loved it when I was fourteen, fifteen—basically before you can drive, because that’s when you’re home on weekends. When you get older, you’re not as attached to it. I think the Adam Sandler/Chris Farley years were way better, but there are kids now who love this cast. In five or six years, they’ll say the same thing. It’s all about what you grow up with.
