No Place Else to Sit: Austinist Interviews Maria Bamford

What can you tell me about Sit Down, Shut Up?

It’s on Fox, and it is developed by Mitch Hurwitz, who did Arrested Development. As co-producers, they have some guys that worked on The Simpsons—I know it’s Josh Weinstein and another gentleman whose name escapes me. It stars Jason Bateman and Henry Winkler and a lot of the people from Arrested Development. Cheri Oteri.

Will Forte.

Yes! Will Forte and Will Arnett. See, you know.

The most important thing, though, is this motorcycle rally I’m doing with my dad in August. My dad is going to open for me, and he’s going to do impersonations of me that he’s been working on.

He ran one past me and I was like, “Dad, that never happened.” He said, “Oh, it was supposed to have happened?” It’s going to be pretty funny. Maybe my mom will do something. But she won’t get paid—I told her there’s only a budget for one opening act.

Photo courtesy Maria Bamford

You just filmed the pilot of Sit Down, Shut Up...have you filmed any other episodes?

We just did the first episode, and they just said it was supposed to be 13 episodes that got picked up. It may be a while before we get to the rest of the 13. I don’t really know what happens with that. Whatever happens, it will be the will of God. Right?

That’s right.

But it was really neat working with so many famous and extremely talented people. And they had three different sandwich fillings: you could get tuna fish, chicken salad, or a vegetarian filling, and you had that on a roll. It was just out there like it was no big deal.

And they had fresh potato chicks that had been made—made!—that day by some guy. And that’s what I have to say about Sit Down, Shut Up. It was really funny. It’s very funny.

It’s animated—when you film that, you’re on the set with everyone? It’s not just you recording your lines?

Everyone is there, and that’s great. We did the whole day, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and we were all there together. It was exciting. So Cheri Oteri had to talk to me for an extended period of time, whether she wanted to or not. Well, she’s super nice, but it was nice because there was no place else to sit. So Jason Bateman had to talk to me.

Were you watching the cartoon as you recorded your lines?

With every animated thing I’ve done, you record the voices first and then the animators animate. But these guys were filming it to see our faces, so I guess the animation is going to be inspired by our face movements, too, which is pretty cool. Kind of neat.

And you make a lot of faces.

Exactly. And the character I play is the groovy, hipster hippy at school who has a baby she doesn’t care for very well and is oblivious to everything because the world is suffering—which she isn’t ameliorating at all. It’s very well-written and all of the characters are very funny.

Mitch Hurwitz and Will Arnett and Jason Bateman worked together on Arrested Development—was there any sort of clique you felt like you had to break into? Were they all pretty approachable?

They were all really friendly and seemed really nice. I had to stop myself from acting weird. But they were all very nice. Henry Winkler brought in an orange pound cake that he had made, and he brought some copies of his children’s books. He writes children’s books—they’re autobiographical. In one of them he talks about how he had ADD.

It would be weird to know that, when somebody meets you, they’re going to tell other people about how they met you. Like, “Okay, so he was talking to me, and then he stopped talking for a second, and then he started talking to another guy, and then he started talking to me again.”

So you come to Austin in late July for two days?

Yes, and then I’m coming in August for the improv festival. I’m going to host.

Out of Bounds.

I’m coming in for the beginning. I like to do the mid-week show. It’s fun; it’s low-pressure. No one is like, “This is my Saturday! This is my blowout! This is my weekend, I have to make something happen!”

I like a Tuesday-Wednesday vibe, which is more like, “Hmmm, what’s something fun I could do before I go to sleep?”

Well, on a Wednesday you only have to be as funny as According to Jim.

Exactly! I’m up against According to Jim in the timeslot.

You have to be Two and a Half Men funny.

I’ve never thought about it that way. I should start looking at my own Nielsen ratings. There should be performance ratings—you know, there could be four million people watching So You Think You Can Dance, but there are five people watching me at a coffee house in Los Angeles. Those people should be counted as well.

It’d be interesting to see a huge graph across the spectrum of what everyone is doing. How many people find mowing their lawn much more interesting than According to Jim.

Photo courtesy Maria Bamford

I don’t know, there’s an episode of According to Jim where Jim mows his lawn.

It’d be interesting to see, comparatively, how many people were actually mowing their lawns.

You come to Austin in late July, and then you do your Comedy Central taping in Los Angeles at the UCB, right?

Yes.

With Comedy Death Ray?

I’m going to do it two nights in a row. One night will be with Comedy Death Ray and then one night will be at the UCB, but they’ll be separate. But the same 52 minutes of jokes.

And you perform at the UCB in LA a lot, right?

As much as I can get in there. It’s good. It’s really nice. And it’s such a nice scene—you don’t have to buy drinks and it’s only five bucks to get in. And it’s all ages.

Is it tough to invest time in a political joke, to politicize your set, when you know you can only really tell it until November. I mean, you could write this really great political joke and it’s only going to last until the election.

I like to write lasting jokes—like how I feel in general about politics. I did write a joke about how I talked to George Bush last night underneath my covers with the part of George Bush being played by my 11-year-old punk Blossom. And I didn’t feel like that is a joke that will be lasting, but it was fun. And I did it for a couple of years. I just write about what I’m excited about.

But that’s the problem—it’s so satisfying for people to hear specific current references. It’s so wonderful to hear those. But it takes me a long time to write jokes so I usually stick with humor that will be generically lasting over time.