"Try to Minimize the Assholishness": An Interview with Reggie Watts

Comedian, beatboxer, performance artist, singer, pop culture encyclopedia: Reggie Watts is all of these things at once, which probably explains how he's managed to be a hit with the mainstream comedy crowd and NPR audiences and the experimental art world. Last week, he caught up on the phone with Austinist about his love of John Hughes movies and strong female singers, and he shared his thoughts on the Occupy Wall Street movement, and his dream production space.

You might be the only person who has had a Comedy Central special and gotten a MAP Fund grant for experimental theater (in a collaboration with Tommy Smith). You were here in Austin for the experimental performance art festival Fusebox this spring, and now you're headlining the comedy stage at Fun Fun Fun Fest. What's it like having such diverse reach as a performer?

It's what I've always wanted to do. I just enjoy all the different facets of life, and in performance, I love so many different things - from classical to jazz, experimental music to electronic stuff to theater and various forms of performance art, and also more static art forms like sculpture and painting. I just like to be influenced by as many things as possible.

So, in all that, what artists inspire and inform your work?

I find great interest in all sorts of stuff. My friends hate it, but I have a great interest in mainstream comedies - especially adolescent coming-of-age movies. By the way, Easy A is a great comedy. It throws in a lot of John Hughes references, and I think they could close the book on teen comedies now. I mean, I saw Sixteen Candles when I was in junior high. It was perfect timing for me. John Hughes had a huge effect on me. His whole overall message was that everybody is imperfect, everybody has their problems. And I like the underdog.

I really love sci-fi adventure action movies if they're well done. I'm a big fan of Japanime: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell. At the same time, I'm a big fan of period pieces. I like weird comedies and I like art films.

Basically my rule is I like anything that's good. It could be country, it could be a top ten single. But my heart with music definitely comes from - what got me thinking about my voice - definitely bands from the 80s. I love strong female vocalists like Elizabeth Fraser from Cocteau Twins, Harriet Wheeler from The Sundays, Siouxsie Sioux - Siouxsie and the Banshees are one of the best bands of the 80s...And then industrial music, really aggressive stuff. I really like stuff like Skinny Puppy, Ministry.

Definitely, growing up, I was a top 40 kid, stuff like Chaka Khan. Then really in high school is when I discovered Depeche Mode and The Cure, The Lilac Time, Crowded House, The Go-Betweens. But I still had a love of soul music, R & B.

I love finding the core of something and why it's good. Country, like Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn. I grew up in Montana, so there was a lot of country music around.

I'm a big Beach House fan. They're what I'd classify as a perfect band. They're like Stereolab: there's not one Stereolab song I don't like, and Beach House is the same thing. They're incredibly well produced, amazing vocals. Very languid, atmospheric. For Baltimore to have produced something so innovative, it's inspirational.

Recently, you tweeted that you were interested in stopping by the Occupy Wall Street protests. You called it "an important time." Have you gone yet?

I haven't gone yet. I just need to go. It's an interesting phenomenon, it would be nice to understand it a little bit better. Obviously people are angry and upset about things and understandably so. I was near the WTO (protests in 1999) in Seattle and that was really insane. The good thing that isn't happening with Occupy Wall Street is, a lot of times when there's a march or a protest, there are always these assholes who just wanna fuck shit up, and they just use that as an opportunity to hide among the masses and cause damage. But that really hasn't happened too much at all (with OWS) - it's been really stable. And the responding movements in others cities - it's been really interesting to see.

I was just at this conference called PopTech. The theme was, people are rising up and expressing their concerns and governments need to be able to react more quickly to the will of the people. They need to start working with the people instead of basically insulating corporations and big business for business as usual.

People have just been fed up. They're using social networking...There's the unfortunate link of politicians and their reelection concerns - which have nothing to do with making a country better. Now, they have to get on the ball, because they're not gonna get their votes. People are getting smarter based on that collective intelligence, and PopTech is saying that the U.S. has to get with the program or fail. The United States needs a reboot. The good thing about people in the United States is they're just human beings with arbitrary lines drawn - eventually the human race is gonna have to decide, “Let's do something fun together and try to minimize the assholishness.”

The thing is, if evil people who are dicks to other people, oppressors, if they were really good at being evil they'd make the people around them happy, because they get more when the people are in that state. Better control. But they're failing at being bad people. They wouldn't win an award for being evil and power hungry. Warlords and stuff - it's just boring.

If your mass appeal fame, the Comedy Central stuff, the NPR attention, went away, what would you want to do next? What haven't you done yet?

In my ideal world, I would just have a workshop that I'd be able to do videos in, try out technological inventions, have people over and talk about things. Just a space to try out and make things and be able to distribute those things. So, in a perfect world I would like to just do that because then I'm in control and working with people and collaborating and making things together.

I'm appreciative of the people who have supported me in television and the entertainment industry, but I don't want to have to win the approval of a corporation, "Here's a mockup, can we get your permission?" It's kind of boring, it's old. I've done lots of stuff, people have liked what I do for the most part, don't give me a lot of money, just trust me. I want to get to a point where I don't have to ask permission to do something anymore.

I have an informal relationship with J.J. Abrams, and I'll go to (Abrams' production company) Bad Robot and it's like that: people are just trying things out and I like that idea.

[In a nervous voice] "Well, I sure hope NBC picks this up!" It's a weird feeling because ultimately, I don't really care where it goes, I just want to get it out there. IFC is friendly, open, great. That's the spirit of people I want to work with. Good gatekeepers I call them. Not beholden to large budgets or risks. I think those are the worst things that can happen on the funding side of an art project, and that's bullshit. Either believe in what you've curated or shut up. It's like, "Oh boy, I hope this is cool." If you don't know, why are you doing it? I could call up a system of people and say, "I want a multi-camera system, and I want to shoot a mid-90s sitcom, and we're gonna take three days and shoot two episodes of this program. Between episodes 5 and 6 of this show that never existed." And just release it, and if somebody's interested in it, they'll pick it up.