The Peak

Not just a pretty Picnicface (extended edition)

By Mike Hingston

In just under a year, the members of Halifax’s Picnicface have solidified their reputation as creators of some of the most brutal and hilarious sketch comedy around. Now they’re beginning to reap the rewards of oats well sown: their energy drink ad “Powerthirst” has been seen over five million times and was a finalist in this year’s YouTube comedy awards, Will Ferrell has sung their praises multiple times on his FunnyOrDie website, and their bi-weekly live show, which combines improv, stand-up, and sketches, has become a genuine maritime phenomenon. I had a chance to ask a few of their members — including former Peak humour editor Mark Little — about the peaks and valleys that come with the responsibilities of mild internet celebrity.

The Peak: Picnicface has eight members. How did you guys meet?

Cheryl Hann: Marvelous coincidence. Essentially we were all doing stand-up around the city. I think Mark [Little], Kyle [Dooley], and Evany [Rosen] did improv before the group (as it is today) was formed, but the rest of us met up through the amateur stand-up scene. We all saw a lot of bad acts together, which made us really want to form a group that didn’t suck.

Mark Little: True, Kyle and I started an improv duo called Picnicface Improv when I moved out here in 2005. That became the Pumpkinface trio when Evany joined, and then it became just Picnicface when we added more members and realized we’re much better at sketch than at improv. Andrew [Bush] was making movies in Toronto, but had grown up out here (where he was a host on CBC’s Street Cents, oh yes). Scott [Vrooman] joined last. We saw him at the stand-up amateur night, doing really weird jokes that mashed pretty hilariously with his appearance. Imagine Mitch Hedberg material being delivered by an accountant.

P: What kind of experience did you have before joining the group?

CH: Doing stand-up in Halifax is a pretty pleasurable experience. The crowds are always really accepting and willing to go with you if you want to try something new. It’s a good feeling. I think Picnicface really benefits from that openness in the crowd.

ML: I think maybe Cheryl is answering a different question here, but I can’t figure out which one.

Brian Macquarrie: Brian is a classically trained actor with a background in busking, vaudeville, and improv. Scott is currently working for the finance department of the federal government and has been a writer all his life.

ML: Brian apparently exists only in the third person. My experience before Picnicface was limited to a bunch of improv in Vancouver. Even then I should have known sketch was a better fit. My problem with improv has always been a George Castanza-like desire to have said something other than what I said in the moment. That makes for horrible improv, but it helps with sketch, where you can always improve on lines. We might traffic in dick jokes, but they’re refined dick jokes.

P: With so many members, there must be a lot of different influences and ideas floating around. How do you decide what will be a ‘Picnicface’ sketch?

BM: The logical answer would be a fight to the death, which just isn’t practical, or legal, for that matter.

CH: Whatever makes us laugh. Sometimes we disagree as to what’s funny, but with eight people we can weed out the subpar sketches by passing them down through the ranks.

ML: This doesn’t always work. We’ve got some sketches up on our YouTube site right now that aren’t exactly masterpieces. Or ‘good sketches.’ But that’s my opinion, and that’s the nature of an eight-person group. On the one hand, you’re able to help one another and weed out a lot of crap, but on the other hand, everyone’s always making compromises on what they find funny. Since we’re doing live shows every two weeks, almost anything anyone wants to write will get onstage; the harder part is figuring out what to film. We’ve filmed a lot of sketches recently that aren’t our best ones, but are relatively easy to film. In the near future, I’m hoping we’ll start committing more of the monsters to film. The blockbusters. The huge.

P: Do you have any kind of official mandate as a group?

CH: “Up with mini-skirts!”

ML: “They called that sketch racist? I’ll show them racist.”

P: Mark, you worked at The Peak for a few years as humour editor. Did that experience in any way help you with your now-flourishing career in comedy?

ML: I would put a heavy disclaimer on “now-flourishing.” Mild internet buzz does not make you successful, as much as I wish it did. But yeah, I think working at The Peak helped, if only because it allowed me to spend two years thinking about comedy, two years trying to crank out mildly funny material on a weekly basis. That work ethic is pretty important if you actually want to do comedy. I have friends that are a lot funnier than me but aren’t doing comedy. They want to, but it’s hard to keep a group together, and it’s really hard, when you’re two months in and drawing no crowds to your shows, to keep doing what you’re doing under the belief that things might turn around. As much as I hate thinking of myself as the Dennis Rodman of comedy — not extraordinary, but boy, such hustle — there is a little bit of truth to that. I’m the Rudy of this shit. I put my nose to the grindstone and went from rags to marginally less-tattered rags. Internet rags.

P: Do you have any words of wisdom or advice for your alma mater?

ML: The only wisdom I’ve ever gained was after a period of heavy embarrassment. Here’s my advice: contribute to your student newspaper. If you think you might want a career of writing or making comedy or anything like that, start getting the embarrassing stuff out of your system while you’re still an undergrad and nobody cares. It’s with great pleasure that I can look back on how pompous I was when I started and cringe until my cheeks burn.

P: How long does it take you to move from initial concept to finished product?

ML: It depends. For a live show, usually two weeks. Before things get filmed, we spend more time refining them, and then they change when we’re actually filming them as well. But like I said, lately, it hasn’t taken long enough.

P: Picnicface performs both live improv shows as well as filmed sketches, and many of your members are also stand-up comedians. Do you prefer one form to the others?

CH: I prefer the live show. It’s nice to get immediate feedback from an audience whose opinion you respect. Filming is great. It’s cool to see the finished product up on YouTube, where people all over the world can watch it, and either praise it or tear it apart. But nothing beats hearing a room full of people laugh. It’s more ‘real.’

ML: I prefer the live sketch. But any time I watch good improv, I feel like focusing on that; the same goes for good stand-up. Unfortunately, the same also goes for good hip-hop. Watching good hip-hop leads to at least two days of lost time spent writing my way toward remembering that I can’t rap. But as a group, we want to make movies or television or something to that effect, so filmed sketch is the priority.

P: You've been written about in the online versions of the New York Times and the Guardian UK. What would the ideal piece of journalism about Picnicface say?

ML: The New York Times piece pretty much tops all other efforts. We got a total of two sentences, one in which the reporter said that Andy’s “Anniversary” video was kind of funny, and the other in which she said that the Monster Rap was not the next “Lazy Sunday.” (A claim we never made, but one we’d certainly never disagree with.)

P: Are there any rumours about the group that you'd like to officially put to rest?

CH: We’re not “Powerthirst.”

ML: We’re not not “Powerthirst.”

BM: Brian is having a love affair with Alyssa Milano, but it’s with 1989 Alyssa Milano, so it’s a little sketchy. Scott has just started dating Estelle Getty, but it’s 2012 Estelle. According to Scott, “She’s a handful.”

ML: Contrary to reports, Brian has not given up the third person.

P: Will Ferrell has endorsed your videos more than once, and you’ve been featured on YouTube and collegehumor.com. How do you gauge your success so far, particularly in a medium where there’s very little in-person interaction with your fans?

BM: It’s weird, because at our live shows we present a party-like atmosphere. If you come to our live show, you’re going to have a good time. You’re among friends and beer and beer-friends and friends’ beer. With the internet, you find out everyone is an expert and they won’t hesitate to tell you their opinion.

ML: It’s hard to gauge our success, beyond the very basic understanding that some people love us no matter what we do, and other people want us to “Fuck off. Seriously, just fuck off.” Will Ferrell’s endorsement kicked off the honeymoon phase. Collegehumor.com was the rude awakening. We were commissioned to make four more videos in the “Powerthirst” style. Our first impulse was that this was a terrible idea, because the style would get old fast. Our second impulse was who are we to turn down paid work so early in our careers? Yeah, that first impulse was spot on. Although, in fairness to the second impulse, I think we made some pretty good stuff during that time: “Super Bingo” and “Powerthirst 2,” particularly. Anyway, in terms of ‘internet success,’ I think we’re doing alright. It’s nice to have people watching our videos, even if they don’t like them. But internet success is so fleeting. I don’t want to be the next Dancing Muskrat, or Badger on the Moon, or whatever.

P: Tell me about your proposed CBC sketch show, Guerilla Monsoon.

ML: That’s pretty much over and done with. We’re making another demo to shop around to producers in the U.S. and Canada, but the CBC thing fell through. Although who knows, I’ve heard that broadcasters can take years to get back to you about these things. Apparently Jon Dore’s pilot was flat-out rejected for two years before he got picked up last fall.

P: Do you have any further plans to move to television or film?

ML: Oh brother, do we ever.

P: Do you have any crazy stories about being internet celebrities?

ML: Well, the Funny Or Die guys invited us to watch their Semi-Pro comedy tour last month, so a bunch of our members went down to check it out. Afterwards, they went to a bar and hung out with Will Ferrell, Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, and Demetri Martin. (“Hung out with” is a bit of a stretch — but they were definitely in the same bar as them.) Anyway, as Will Ferrell was about to leave, our man at FOD told him Picnicface was there and asked if he wanted to meet us. He said yes, but as he was turning around to shake Andy’s hand, three frat boys suddenly flanked Andy and started screaming, “It’s Will fucking Ferrell! Will fucking Ferrell!” They got Andy to take their picture with Will, but they were so drunk they started falling into him and spilling beer on him. So Will took off with his security guard before Andy even got a chance to shake his hand. The funny thing is that now Will Ferrell thinks Picnicface is four screaming frat boys. That’s the funny part.

P: Several of your sketches — most notably “NFL Crunch Time” and the two “Powerthirst” videos — combine low-budget animation and a hyper-masculine narrator. Where did this aesthetic come from?

ML: Necessity. Andy’s the one with the nice camera and the editing skills. When Scott and I threw “Powerthirst” together, we used Clipart because it was the only thing we knew how to use. That bred a style that was largely encouraged by the CollegeHumor contract, as I said. As for the hyper-masculine narrator, that just comes from observing North American culture: frat boys, sports, extreme everything. Testosterone. When we decided to parody an energy drink ad, that aggressive tone was already there in the original. I mean, I saw a Gatorade commercial where a basketball player emerged from a fucking egg! Fun fact: this terrible movie came out a couple years ago called Idiocracy. For whatever reason, some respectable people like that movie, but it’s garbage. The only funny part is this brief Fox News parody where they use echo effect on one of the anchors’ voices. That’s where we got the idea for the echo effect in “Powerthirst.” Coincidentally, last year I started doing voiceover work for Brawndo Energy Drinks. They wanted to make commercials in the “Powerthirst” style, and asked me to voice them. The thing is, Brawndo is the name of the energy drink used in Idiocracy. So technically, it’s a promotional product, released a year after the movie was dead and buried. The circle of borrowing came all the way around.

P: Off the top of your head(s): what’s the funniest thing ever?

ML: Life, man. Life.