Michael Ian Black Is Controlling Your Future: An Interview

Michael Ian Black has made a career out of sarcasm, and so it makes sense that an interview with him would be sarcastic. So there’s that to look forward to. For those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Black, his face may be familiar from any number of things, including VH1’s I Love the… series and the film Wet Hot American Summer, or television shows like The State, Stella, or Michael and Michael Have Issues. Those last three shows, in which Black was a pivotal character, have the following in common: they were funny; they were ridiculous; they didn’t last long. Michael Ian Black is well aware of that fact, and capitalizes on it—as well as his unquestioned ability to make smugness laugh-worthy—in his Comedy Central special and accompanying album, Very Famous. He’ll surely be putting it all on display this Friday night at Mohawk, so in preparation for that we chatted with Michael about his twitter war with LeVar Burton, his upcoming book with Meghan McCain, and his eventual winning of the Pritzker Prize for Architecture, among other major prizes.

I'll start with something of terrible importance: Words with Friends. Are you good?

Well, I don't know how to rank myself, but yes.

Yes? You're going to go with yes?

I'm going to go with yes. Not amazing, but I'm good.

So what's your best word?

Oh, I don't know. I mean, the thing is I play huge words with such frequency that it's impossible to identify one time when I really just killed it.

So it's just a constant series of 100 point words?

It's a never-ending stream of 100+ point words.

When you're playing a lot of games at once, do you just feel like the years of your life just slipping away from you?

No, because if anything I'm adding years to my life because I'm staving off Alzheimer's by activating all the neurons in my brain.

So you're buying into the whole neurology thing, huh?

I don't know, I think I’m just looking for an excuse to play Words with Friends.

Did you know that your Wikipedia page actually says "Michael Ian Black is Jewish, so he has one cat and one dog."

I had heard that. I don't really know what to say about that other than both statements are true, but they're not related. My Judaism has almost nothing to do with my choice of pets.

Almost nothing?

Well, I didn't get a pig. Because I didn't want to have to not slaughter it and then eat it.

I was just wondering if there was part of the Jewish contract that you have to have pets in a particular ratio.

Not that I'm aware of. But I'm not an observing Jew so maybe there is something in the Torah of which I am unaware that says "You shall have pets in such and such ratio." But I haven't read that particular section.

So in fact you could be getting closer to some sort of religious awakening, but you just don't know?

Yeah, it's possible. I think it's unlikely, but it's possible.

On twitter, you have a shitload of followers. Do you feel an obligation to be more or less truthful just because there are so many people looking in on your mind?

Speaking of the mind, the human brain can only hold about 7 objects in place at one time, so after that, numbers sort of become meaningless. So I'm really just trying to entertain those 7 people that I can hold in my mind at any one time.

Okay, so the other 1.6 million of those people, it’s as if they were purely illusory?

In my mind they are illusory. They don't exist as far as I'm concerned, just as you didn't exist before we started this interview.

I certainly wasn't aware of my own existence until I began speaking to you.

That’s right, I activated you into existence.

So what am I going to do next?

Well, I can’t predict it, I don’t know. But I know as soon as this conversation is over, you will cease to exist.

That’s not bad, but it would have been something if you actually had the ability to manifest my actions.

Oh no, no, no. I’m not god. I just control everything else.

So fine lines then, fine lines.

Very fine lines. I’m not omnipotent, just very powerful. Very powerful without being all knowing. Do you understand?

Yes. And one of the things that led to your substantial twitter following was your twitter war with a blind man from the future. Why Mr. La Forge of all people?

Well, he was certainly vulnerable, being blind and from the future. I could control his entire destiny, you know, if he didn’t play by my rules. I had the advantage of being in the past. People think it’s people in the future who have the power, but it’s people in the past that have the advantage because you can control their destinies.

So you were able to control or determine the life of Geordi La Forge, but were you able to go back and have any engagement with the Reading Rainbow experience of LeVar Burton?

No—that I couldn’t control. I could only control Geordi La Forge, because Reading Rainbow had already been in existence.

Because it had already occurred, it was outside your jurisdiction?

It had already occurred, but it only occurred once I was made aware of it. And I had been aware of it prior to our twitter war, so it was already in existence.

So has LeVar Burton, regardless of his manifestation across the spacetime continuum, ever engaged you with regards to this twitter battle?

Yes, we’ve had emails back and forth, and he’s a lovely man.

How does he feel about the battle?

Well, I think he considers himself to have won [Ed. Note: Burton leads Black by roughly 1,677,000 to 1,667,000 in total followers]. But you know, I don’t think it’s about who won or who lost. It was a mutually beneficial war.

I don’t know…whenever anybody says “I don’t think it’s about who won or who lost,” that sounds like the talk of someone who lost.

Well, I don’t know, because I don’t know how you measure it. But I know that I started at zero followers when I started the twitter war, then I ended with a lot followers afterwards. And that was the goal. So my goals were achieved and I think his goals were achieved, so I think that sounds like a mutually beneficial war to me.

So it’s like all wars: everybody wins.

Yeah. Like all wars, it was mutually beneficial.

Speaking of war, you’re working on a book with the daughter of John McCain?

Yes. It’s coming along alright. We’re well into the book now, and we’re continuing to write it. So yeah, it’s going well.

Who’s creating most of the content? What’s the process, I suppose?

The book is based on a road trip that we took together in July, so we’re each writing about our experiences on the road trip, separately. Then we’ll combine it into a manuscript when we’ve figured all that out.

Have you had the opportunity to meet her father?

I did. Him and her together.

How was that?

It was good, if you like steak, which I do. We had steak dinner.

Steak dinner, that’s lovely. Very American.

If you’re going to eat dinner with a Republican scion, you want to have it be at a steakhouse, and it was.

It does make sense, it does make sense. So, one thing I thought interesting is that you seem to be entering a different stage in your career. On Very Famous, there’s more domestic commentary, kids, suburbs, stuff like that. Do you feel yourself moving away from your historical audience and into a different type of audience?

Hmm, I mean, the people, they're sort of different people who comprise my somewhat limited audience. Some of them have known me for years through The State and other projects, and then some of them know me more recently from things like VH1 or twitter. Hopefully, the younger people will keep coming along, but the older people have stayed with me and that's been great. But I can't worry about it too much. I can only do what's interesting to me and that just means being truthful to whatever's going on in my life.

I was wondering about your future in television. Do you have anything brewing right now?

No. Nothing. Nobody wants me on their television shows. And I don't blame them, if you look at my track record. I wouldn't want me on a television show either.

Oh, whatever! You've shown a very excellent ability to have a show on television for some time.

Yes, for some very short amount of time.

There are people, such as Louie C.K.’s case, where somebody had shows that didn't work out, but then, now, one did. Do you think there might be something like that in your future?

Oh, I think I'll have tremendous success in the future.

Are massive Emmy Awards inevitable?

Yeah, I think whatever awards there are, I will probably win them. Like Emmys and Pulitzers and Nobel Peace Prizes…the Pritzker Prize for Architecture…all kinds of awards.

You didn't mention McArthur Genius, so you think that one's out of the question?

No, I just wasn't thinking about that one, since it’s something that’s just bestowed upon you. You just get a phone call one day for the McArthur—you’re not even aware you’re in the running for it. So, yes I'm assuming I will get that phone call, probably multiple times.

So you're just waiting, like every time the phone rings, you’re like, "oh shit, it might be the Mac."

Yeah, I mean it feels like an historical inevitability.