The Whitest Kids U'Know
By Jay Hathaway
Feb 8, 2008
Despite their name, The Whitest Kids U'Know are still getting used to the idea that, in fact, people really do know them. They've already scored millions of views on YouTube and produced one season of hilarious sketch comedy on Fuse Network, but they've never had the kind of exposure they're getting in their second season on IFC. That's exposure in every sense of the word: for the first time, the Whitest Kids U'Know will be completely uncensored in front of a huge TV audience. The “Slow Jerk” and the “Hitler Rap” were just the beginning. SuicideGirls talked to Darren Trumeter and Trevor Moore about being on TV, writing whatever you want, and being really, really white.
The Whitest Kids U’Know season premiere is this Sunday, February 10, at 11p.m. on IFC.
Jay Hathaway: Where did you and Trevor first meet?
Darren Trumeter: Well, the group started when Trevor met Sam at a comedy club while they were still in college, and they decided they wanted to start a comedy troupe. Then they met Zach in college, and they started a comedy club called Whitest Kids U'Know. And basically SVA, the school they went to, gave them money every semester to make videos and put on shows. I think they used that money for beer, instead of doing a lot of work. Then on 9/11, they met Timmy because they all lived in the same building, a spillover dorm. If you didn't register soon enough to get a dorm, they put you all in this place called St. George in Brooklyn. So they had the comedy club, then they graduated from college and started to get serious. There were 13 and 14 people in the troupe, and then they cut everybody out who they didn't think was funny. I did a small film with Zach and then he invited me to a show, and I was immediately like, "How can I be a part of this?" And I wrote all these sketches and ideas and I was like, "Here, please let me be in, let me be in!" So that's how I got involved, and that's how we became Whitest Kids U'Know.
JH:
What did they think of you at first?
DT:
I don't know. I definitely brought a more absurd type of comedy. I wanted to be more original, not so much a formula. I definitely have always been pushing for something that doesn't make sense, that's so absurd. That's hilarious to me. We all bring our different aspects of comedy to the table, but that's mine, basically. And I guess they liked me in the beginning, I can't remember. It was the second time of us hanging out and getting drunk together that it clicked. It clicked; it just worked.
JH:
What's the writing process like for you guys?
DT:
Usually we'll all meet up and take 10, 15 minutes and go off by ourselves in total silence and just write down ideas. No matter how funny you think they are, you just keep writing down ideas. Then we'll come back, go around the room and everyone will throw out ideas. You throw out an idea and someone adds to it, they riff on it, and some of them will just go on forever about it. And then it's like, “Wow, ok, we have a great sketch.” Then some it's like, "Yeah, that's a stupid idea. Well, moving on ... " That's generally how we do it. Another way is we'll just sit there and point to each other and yell out a crazy stupid idea and see if it makes us laugh or not.
JH:
Which of you is, in fact, the whitest of The Whitest Kids U'Know?
DT:
Oh, I don't know! That's a really good question, I don't know if I can answer that. We're all pretty white, for whatever reason.
JH:
If you weren't called The Whitest Kids U'Know, what would you be called?
DT:
I have always liked the name "Dwayne”. I always thought that would just be a funny name for a sketch comedy troupe. Just Dwayne. That's it. There was one point where we were talking about maybe changing the name. I think that Trevor's fans definitely weren't having it. Zach and I were talking about it. But yeah, that's the other name that I would choose. Dwayne.
JH:
Is Trevor really the leader of the group, or is it more of a balanced thing?
DT:
I am the luckiest guy in the world because I get to work with someone like Trevor. He's remarkable. Just hang out with him for five minutes and he'll have your sides splitting. He can make you laugh constantly, non-stop, all day, any time of the day, even if he's in a bad mood. It's really crazy. He's going to go on and do amazing, amazing things. He's a genius. I don't get it; it's incredible. I mean, we don't say he's the leader. He's our head writer and he helps direct. Zach is also a really important part of the troop. He helps direct, he's really smart, has amazing vocabulary. They're both great.
JH:
You guys do everything from fart jokes to jokes about grammar, history, so much different stuff. What's your favorite kind of subject matter?
DT:
I love it all. I love that we're historical. If you watch season one, we have two Abraham Lincoln sketches. I think those sketches were written around the same time that book Manhunt came out, written by James L. Swanson. It's basically about the 12-day hunt for John Wilkes Booth, all about how John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln and escaped. So we wrote two Abe Lincoln sketches, 'cause we were just fascinated with it. Season Two, we have a JFK sketch, which is really great. I love the history stuff, but again, I love the toilet humor too. My dad has always made me laugh with toilet humor ever since I was a little kid.
JH:
Did you bring back any older sketches once you moved to IFC, that you couldn't do on TV before? Stuff you can show now that you're uncensored?
DT:
No, not necessarily. But the whole thing about moving to IFC is that we just knew before we even shot or wrote a lot of Season Two, IFC sat us down and talked to us about the complete freedom that we have with the show. No bleeps, completely uncensored. There's going to be no commercial breaks, it's not going to interrupt the flow of the show. So you can write really long sketches, or however you want to do it. Their whole thing is they're all about freedom of expression. So if you have something to say, they're going to let you say it, whatever that might be. I remember after that meeting, we were like, "Are they challenging us?" It's really great, but there weren't any sketches, per se, that we didn't do because we were on Fuse.
JH:
Did you take that as a challenge and try to write more controversial stuff?
DT:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. There are some sketches that I don't think would have worked on the other channel at all. We really pushed it this time. Hey, if we get a Season Three, we'll push it even more, hopefully.
JH:
Which of your sketches has turned out to be the most controversial? Have you gotten any really interesting reactions to your stuff?
DT:
You know, not really. I think there've been not many complaints. I thought there would be more, but I haven't heard much of anything. There've been one or two from people who are misunderstanding a sketch, you know? When somebody thinks that a sketch is racist, or something like that, that's not really what it's about. It's more making fun of white fear than being a racist, and that's the joke of it. But that's only happened once or twice that I know of, of mail or e-mail that we've gotten.
JH:
Since you brought up the race thing, and how you kind of turn that on it's head, I noticed you do that in the second season with homophobia. Is that something you had thought about doing before?
DT:
Well, in Season One, I play a girl a lot. I play a girl like nine times. There was one sketch where I was playing a girl, the dating spoof sketch, and some people online who saw it didn't know I was a guy. When they found out or were told that it was a guy, even some of our friends, they're like, "That's Darren. Aw, man!" They're like disturbed by it! We thought that was really interesting. It kind of messed with their heads, and they didn't like that. We've gone even further with it in Season Two, where I play a stripper. I had real boobs put on me, like boobs for breast cancer patients, and they looked kind of real. So any homophobic frat guy watching that sketch, it's gonna really mess with them. And that makes us laugh. We like that, for some reason. And anyone going through puberty who sees that sketch, it's going to mess with their head a little bit. I'm sorry, but that's a little bit funny to us.
JH:
There's also a running theme of broken marriages, and kind of fucked-up relationships in your sketches. Where does that come from?
DT:
I know! There is a lot of that, isn't there? You know, man, I don't know where it comes from. I've been with my girlfriend for three years. We all have long relationships, except for Sam and Timmy. I have a great relationship. My parents are divorced, but I don't know if that has anything to do with it. I don't know where comes from, but you're right. Definitely in Season Two, there are a lot of broken-down marriages and bad dates and stuff like that. I cannot answer that question.
JH:
Has being in Whitest Kids gotten you guys a lot of attention from the ladies?
DT:
I think Timmy and Sam would like to see more attention from the ladies. When we were just doing shows at Piano's before I met my girlfriend, it definitely brought a lot of ladies in. I think I dated three or four girls before I was with this girlfriend. That's a weird question, I feel kind of weird answering that.
JH:
Well, you always hear that girls love funny guys. So once you become a professional comedian, does that kind of shake things up a bit?
DT:
It's not like rock star stuff. Girls don't throw themselves at us, not at all.
JH:
Is being on TV anything like you expected it was going to be?
DT:
It hasn't really sunk in yet. The show's been out for a year, we have a new season coming out, but it hasn't sunk in. I don't fully understand. Sometimes it sinks in if I'm stoned or something like, "This is really great, what we're doing. I actually think what I'm doing is hilarious, and it's on television and it's being exposed to a huge public audience, and that's amazing." But then most of the time, it's like work-work-work, let's keep writing, let's keep working, and we don't think about it. It's great, man. It's wonderful. I'm doing what I've always wanted to do, and it's fantastic.
JH:
Have you thought about doing anything outside of Whitest Kids?
DT:
I think we all have our own things we want to do, we all have our own writing projects. Timmy's doing a lot of standup; we’re all doing a lot of auditions and stuff like that. When the show's over, we're going to go our ways and then we'll come back and do a movie every two or three years.
JH:
So you guys have thought about moving from the sketch format to something longer?
DT:
Well, as a troupe we already have three movie ideas, one of them we've worked on very hard. Individually, what will be more interesting with what we go on to do is how dramatic or dark it'll be, as opposed to being funny or comedic. We're all huge film nuts. We love film, and I personally cannot wait to do my first dramatic narrative film. I want to do some dramatic short films and hopefully get those running in festivals, and then go ahead and work on my dramatic feature.
JH:
What are some of your favorite sketches that you've written?
DT:
Well, there's Slow Jerkin'. Look up Whitest Kids on YouTube; it's the first, top one. I think it has over two million hits now. I wrote that one with Trevor. And then the period sketch, where we're all girls. That was mine. My favorite sketch of Season One is the first Abe Lincoln sketch. Where it starts off doing Hamlet -- they're doing a performance that's obviously not Hamlet -- in front of Abe Lincoln. It's brilliant because it's just 180, after 180, after 180. It just keeps turning. It's a sketch about this. No it's not, the sketch is about this! No it's not, it's about John Wilkes Booth assassinating the president! I love writing sketches that do that, it's always more interesting to me.
JH:
You guys have been able to do more sight gags and special effects in Season Two. Is that something you wanted to do before, and now you have the budget?
DT:
We definitely pushed the envelope as far as what we wanted in production. We got a little bit more budget. We sat down with our executive producer, and we said, "We wanna do this, and we wanna do this, and we wanna do this." He's like, "Oh God, guys, you can't do all that." We had this one sketch we really wanted to do called "Cat Congress." It's basically a mini scaled-down congress, so it's like congress, but it's just a bunch of cats running around.
JH:
What should I ask Trevor if I want to mess with him?
DT:
Uh, yeah. First question, just ask him how big is his penis.
JH:
Sure, ok.
(A few minutes later, on the phone with Trevor Moore):
Jay Hathaway: First question. How large is your penis?
Trevor Moore: Uh ... it's fine.
JH:
Darren told me to say that.
TM:
Ha, that's pretty good. I was like, "Huh, so this is the interview."
JH:
In all seriousness, though, which of you is the whitest of the Whitest Kids?
TM:
Well, Timmy's from South Dakota, so that's pretty white.
JH:
Darren couldn't make the call. He said you were all so white that he couldn't answer it.
TM:
I will make that call. It's Timmy.
JH:
Did you have any old material that you couldn't show on Fuse, that you brought back now that you're on IFC?
TM:
It wasn't a situation where we had something that we weren't able to do. When we found out we were going to be on IFC, we just wrote with that in mind. Now we can do whatever we want. There's no limit, there's no cap on how far you can go with something. Let's just throw all that out the door and basically write whatever we want. That was pretty cool.
JH:
Which of your sketches so far has turned out to be the most controversial, or has gotten the most unexpected reaction?
TM:
Well, the “Hitler Rap” was probably the most controversial. That and the “Get a New Daddy” song. People were like, "Oh, you're making light of child molestation" or "You're making light of Hitler." But the most unexpected hit has been the “Slow Jerk” sketch. That was just one we did live for years and never thought much of it. We put it in the show, we thought it was a funny sketch, but we didn't think it was anything special. But for some reason that hit the Internet and skyrocketed up and it's our most viewed sketch. So that was kind of an unexpected hit.
JH:
I guess you'd kind of expect a bit of that when you do a Hitler sketch.
TM:
Well, we thought, "That could be taken this way, but whatever." People still kind of argue about those sketches on the YouTube comments and stuff like that.
JH:
Obviously YouTube commentators are some of the greatest orators of our generation, and are to be taken extremely seriously.
TM:
They're pretty fascinating.
JH:
I would just do whatever they say if I were you.
TM:
My favorite is when a sketch goes up on YouTube and somebody writes in and goes, "Fake!" Well yeah. It's supposed to be, you know? It's not a documentary.
JH:
Where's the line between being funny and being edgy for the sake of doing it?
TM:
You just kind of feel it. It might be different with every person, but you're like, "Eh, it feels like it's just shock value." If you're just out there being like, "I wanna do something where we show a cock, or we show balls," or something like that, then you're just doing shock humor. But if it naturally goes with the concept and the line of thought that you're traveling, I think that makes the difference.
JH:
If you're going with something like race jokes, or gay jokes, how do you make that funny?
TM:
What's an example? Like which jokes are you talking about?
JH:
Well, you've got the gay doctor. Or the guy who's pitching all those race-themed TV shows.
TM:
Well, with that one, we were just hanging around talking about a show that's subtly racist. A lot of times you'll watch TV or a movie and it's just subtly racist, the idea this show is promoting. So, like with the “Yuppie Indentured Servant” show that he pitches first, you could probably see that show on television. You could probably sell that to a network. Well, maybe not, because it's not a good idea for a show. But a show like that could be on a network, and there's a subtle racism to it and no one would probably pick up on it. So we just ran with that. But all the times that we do make fun of homosexuality or race, it's always making fun of the homophobic guy, or the racist guy. It's always the character that is homophobic or is racist that the joke is on. You can do whatever you want as long as you're making sure that the buffoon is the person that's wrong.
JH:
You guys aren't really above doing a fart joke, but you also do jokes about grammar and history, things that take a little more to get. What kind of material is the most fun for you?
TM:
I like all of it. We have all that stuff in there for a reason, you know? I have a big soft spot for history sketches. We do a sketch called “Guillotine Days” in this season; Darren and I play people who are operating the guillotine during the French Revolution… basically chopping off aristocrats' heads. We're making wagers on how long the heads will stay alive after we cut them off the bodies. So I like stuff like that… a super dark concept to put a sketch around, but it's also based in history. We do a sketch this season about Lyndon Johnson and Oswald hanging out the book depository before they try to shoot Kennedy. So we have a skit that basically says Lyndon Johnson was involved in the Kennedy assassination. But then the “Fart Dinner” sketch is one that I laugh at every time I watch, still. I like stuff that takes a little more thought, and stuff that's completely infantile.
JH:
I noticed another theme running through the first two seasons. You've got a lot of broken marriages and fucked-up relationships.
TM:
That was something we didn't even notice until after the first season was finished. I believe it was some sort of reviewer that pointed it out. And we were like, "Fuck yeah, you're right." All the families are broken in our sketches, more so in Season Two. Again, it wasn't a conscious thing. When we were done writing everything we said, "Ok, these are the scripts that are going to be in Season Two." You sit down and look at it like, "Oh, there's that theme again." It's our subconscious.
JH:
Darren said he was looking forward to seeing how much darker you guys can get. Is that something you had in mind with Season Two as well?
TM:
I think you're going to be writing the wrong way if you sit down and go, "Ok, this is what I want to happen to my writing this season. Now I want to write darker, now I want to shock." Season Two is on IFC, we can do whatever we want. When we pulled it all together we noticed that it is a lot darker than Season One. But it's also a little sillier at the same time, which is what we've always ended up doing -- take a really dark theme and try to bring some sort of childlike innocence to it. Have the characters be almost oblivious to how dark what's going on around them is. There's a lot of that in Season Two.
JH:
How has being on TV compared to your expectations?
TM:
Well, the first season I was thinking, "Oh, nobody really watches Fuse." I was actually surprised how many people did watch the show. Since it's been airing on IFC, we're actually getting stopped on the street pretty regularly. So that's been kind of weird.
JH:
You've got billboards up everywhere now, too.
TM:
It's pretty nuts. When it first started happening, I'd be at a bar, and somebody would start doing the “Slow Jerk” thing and looking at me. The first couple times I'd be like, "Oh, that's weird. We do a thing about that. Oh! Oh, I get it."
JH:
Is it true that funny guys get the girls?
TM:
We get a lot of comments on MySpace from girls. But as for getting the girls, I don't know. Darren and I both have been in long-term relationships with our girlfriends for years.
JH:
I guess I'll have to ask Timmy about that, then.
TM:
Ask Timmy! Although I can answer for him, “No.” [Laughs]
JH:
Does Timmy take a lot of abuse from you guys?
TM:
When we play ourselves in the show, we just play exaggerated versions of ourselves. Timmy's known to walk off in a huff because everyone'll pick on him. People will pick on Sam. Everybody gives everyone flack. We've been doing this for seven years, so we basically see each other every day. We're past the point of caring about each other's feelings at all, so everybody's pretty mean to everybody.
JH:
As the lead writer for the group, how much of a dictator are you?
TM:
I'm not a dictator. We vote on what goes in, it's pretty much a majority rules type of thing for what gets in.
JH:
What's your favorite sketch?
TM:
It's one of the sketches we shot before we had the Fuse show, one of the old sketches that we put online. That's probably my favorite sketch. And it's not even the funniest sketch, not laugh-out-loud funny. It's basically about a guy who just loves Saturday. He's this grown up suit-and-tie guy, and as soon as his alarm goes off on Saturday, he runs outside to go play. I just liked the idea of the sketch and the tone that it ends up in. I have a lot of sketches I like. The guillotine one this season, I really liked. I liked where I went and talked to kids last season, told them all the conspiracy theory stuff.
For more information go to www.whitestkids.com, www.ifc.com, and www.myspace.com/whitestkids.
For more information go to www.whitestkids.com, www.ifc.com, and www.myspace.com/whitestkids.
