Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer are L.A.-based comedians who form two-thirds of MTV’s “Human Giant,” a sketch comedy show which also stars Aziz Ansari from NBC’s “Parks and Recreation.” Variety magazine named Scheer on of the top 10 comics of 2006, and Huebel has starred in films such as “I Love You, Man” and “The Love Guru,” and he’s also guest starred on season five of NBC’s “The Office.” Huebel and Scheer met 10 years ago while doing improv comedy at the iconic New York institution the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. The duo will be speaking on campus today at 7:30 p.m. in Moore 100. The Daily Bruin’s Frank Shyong sat down with them to learn more about their unique and profane brand of comedy.
Daily Bruin: You’ve been friends for a couple years now, and you always do interview together. How did you meet?
Paul Scheer: Rob and I met at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York about 10 years ago. We were doing improv and sketch over there, and then we did “Human Giant,” and then Rob gave me a kidney. It was so weird, because I didn’t even need a kidney.
Rob Huebel: I wanted you to have that luxury of having an extra kidney.
DB: Are you guys best friends?
RH: I think that Paul think that’s I’m his best friend in comedy, but my best friend in the world is one of the puppets I use in my one-man show. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Jeff Dunham show was canceled, and I feel like there’s a really good opportunity there to take over the puppet comedy world. I haven’t told Paul this, but in the show we’re doing at UCLA, I’m planning on introducing a significant portion of my one-man puppet show.
PS: That wasn’t the deal at all, because I was going to introduce a significant portion of my new routine, which is a hip-hop tribute to Sarah Palin. … There’ll be a little interaction and some bits we’ve done before. It’s going to be a lot of puppets, hip hop and Sarah Palin. It’s a comedy explosion.
RH: The cool thing about UCLA is that they’re going to let us release live cougars into the audience. That’s our big finale, we’ll release the last cougar from it’s cage.
PS: Yeah, that’s the interactive part we were talking about. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun, sort of a survival of the fittest, see who your real friends are’ kind of thing.
DB: How would you describe your comedy?
PS: A lot of it is really weird and sort of aggressive. What we usually tell people about it is, if you are pregnant and come to the show, you will get double pregnant. If you are not pregnant, you will immediately become pregnant.
DB: What’s different about working in Los Angeles?
RH: You see people that are a little bit more tan and have highlights in their hair. There’s more Ed Hardy out here, which we really like, and I think people out here are a lot more down for group sex. A lot of times you’re performing and you’re just wondering, are they going to be down for that? And you definitely get that vibe, I always feel like I’m getting some sort of sexual energy coming off the audience.
DB: What’s a typical day in the life?
RH: Wake up, cocaine, lunch, cocaine, crash a car over a speed bump, call my roommate, panic.
PS: Wake up early, then wake up my wife, Miley Cyrus, and get her out of bed. Then we take guns down to the local 7-11, we get money for the day and we’ll just go on a crazy shopping spree, a little cocaine, and then we come back home and then we make these videos for YouTube.
RS: I also spend a lot of time on the Internet ““ I have a web site taylorlautnerwhydon’tyoureturnmyemails.com. It’s mainly a photo blog.
PS: Yeah Rob is Team Jacob, and that causes a lot of issues between us. I’m Team Edward.
DB: How did you get into comedy?
RH: Paul had a baby and it was stolen ““ have you seen the movie “Taken” with Liam Neeson, where he goes into the underground criminal world to get his daughter back? It was like that ““ Paul had to go into the underground comedy world and threaten people and get his daughter back.
PS: I’ve actually totally forgotten about her. Time has really flown by. She’s probably older and cooler now, I’d love to meet her and have dinner or something.
RH: As for me, my body was severely burned in a fire about 10 years ago and I was so horrible to look at ““ I was a melted person basically ““ a lot like Freddy Krueger. I got into performing mainly as a way to get over that. It’s been a long hard road.
PS: I think you looked more like that melting guy at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” But yeah we were very lucky that the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York provided an outlet for his burned body and my stolen daughter.
DB: What are you most proud of doing?
RH: I think we’re both proud of “Human Giant” because it was something that we wrote and we produced and it was sort of all our voices.
DB: How did “Human Giant” come about?
PS: Rob, Aziz and I started making some short films on our own. MTV saw them and offered us a show based on that. It was one of those insane circumstances that you never hear of.
RH: You hope for stuff like that, but it takes forever for stuff to come together in the Film and TV world. But then MTV came aboard and they were always letting us do whatever we wanted. The guy that ran MTV was just a big fan of ours, and it was very creatively satisfying. The more control you have over your own stuff the better. The best situation for any performer if you can write and produce your own stuff.
E-mail Shyong at fshyong@media.ucla.edu.