All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
Tim Heidecker (left) and Eric Wareheim of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! yuk it up during a panel at Comic-Con International.
*Photo courtesy Tim and Eric *It took two successful television series for Eric Wareheim to realize he's not Gwyneth Paltrow.
Wareheim and Tim Heidecker are the writers and stars of *Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! *on Adult Swim. They are currently making stops in major cities to meet fans and sign copies of their latest DVD release, the second season of their character-driven sketch comedy show, which hit stores last month.
The promo swing is giving Wareheim and Heidecker a rare chance to interact with the public -- an experience that led Wareheim to realize their brand of comedy leads to an unusual kind of fame.
"I'll be in a bar having a drink with friends," Wareheim told Wired.com before a recent signing at the Virgin Megastore Hollywood, "and a fan will just wander up and start talking to me like he's my best friend. I don't mind that, and it's great that people like our show. But, at the same time I realized, 'Fans wouldn't come up and talk to Gwyneth Paltrow like that.'"
"Our show is one that people either love or hate," Heidecker added.
"So, I think those who get it and like it feel a connection to us. I read the online forums, and I get a sense that fans of the show view us as, 'Hey, they're just like us. They just have a TV show.'"
*Awesome Show, Great *Job! can be an acquired taste. It's a mix of deadpan sketches with offbeat characters that Wareheim and Heidecker sometimes play so straight -- the comedy so dark -- that first-time viewers might miss the joke.
For example, Wareheim and Heidecker portray The Breadheads -- pregnant, single-mom groupies of a swarthy children's song performer. In another sketch, theirsqueaky-voiced boy band duo The Beaver Boys are known for their love of shrimp, bouncing and unprotected sex.
Before working on four seasons of *Awesome Show, Great *Job!, Wareheim and Heidecker jumped into Adult Swim with Tom Goes to the Mayor. That show's mix of photography and animation was part of Adult Swim's expansion following the success of the network's first wave of success with *Sealab 2012, Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law * and Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
"With Tom Goes to the Mayor, we did pretty much the same thing we do with our current show," Heidecker said. "The reaction was the same for Tom, as the early comments that came in either showed the audience loving us or asking why they put this (stuff) on the air.
"Basically, we write what makes us laugh, so our first audience is ourselves. We're glad people out there get it, too."
Wareheim added: "And we're grateful that Adult Swim gives us the freedom to do that. We get very little interference from the network, and that lets us put something out there that we enjoy."
In between live shows and appearances, Wareheim and Heidecker are prepping a fifth season of *Awesome Show, Great *Job! and planning future projects.
"We'd like to do a movie," Heidecker said. "There's nothing definite that it would happen, but it's something we'd like to try -- to see how what we're doing on TV translates."
"But, whatever happens," Wareheim said, "we're happy doing our show and putting stuff out there that we think is funny."
Images courtesy TimandEric.com, Adult Swim
See also:
