The hilarious, improvised fake cop show "Reno 911!" has followed the cartoonishly absurd escapades of police officers in the fictional Reno Sheriff's Department since its 2003 debut, gaining millions of demented little fans in the process. It's cop-reality satire through and through, with unfathomable levels of absurdity thrown in for good measure.
"Reno" creators Ben Garant, Kerri Kenny, and Tom Lennon made their first mark on MTV's mid-'90s sketch-comedy show "The State," and later on Comedy Central's "Viva Variety," a short-lived variety sketch show. But they truly hit their stride with "Reno 911!," an ensemble show relying very heavily on the improvisational chemistry between the players. With a big-screen spinoff (Reno 911!: Miami) under its belt, the show is currently heading full-steam into season six.
Garant and Lennon (Deputy Travis Junior and Lt. Jim Dangle on the show, respectively) have also established themselves as a screenwriting power-duo in Hollywood, penning both Night at the Museum movies, as well as gems such as Balls of Fury and Herbie: Fully Loaded. We recently caught up with the both of them to talk about their Hollywood exploits, as well as to discuss wearing pantyhose for the first time, a sex ed moose, and why season six is going to be the craziest yet for "Reno 911!"
CraveOnline: A very happy Thursday to you, gentlemen.
Lennon: Jiggalize it!
Lennon: Jiggalize it!
Garant: Hey Man.
CraveOnline: I'll just say this right off before it becomes too obvious - I'm way too big a fan of the show.
Garant: Thanks.
Lennon: Sweet. So I can assume you've got the Halloween costume?
CraveOnline: No, actually, I'm looking forward to getting it.
Lennon: You've gotta, it's a good on that shows your balls off to the ladies.
CraveOnline: That's the goal. The mustache shouldn't be a problem, but I'd have to shave the beard first.
Lennon: Yeah that's gotta go. You've got to get into character. Having just a mustache is like trying on pantyhose for the first time. At first it feels weird, and then it feels weird but you like it. And I'm not sure exactly what I meant by that, but I think I meant exactly what I meant.
CraveOnline: Sure. And I'll take it as it is. Speaking of trying things on, could you guys ever see yourselves doing political comedy? It's hard to keep up with all the maverick moose hunting stories and teaching sex ed to kindergartners and so on.
Lennon: Someone's teaching sex ed to mooses? What the fuck's going on? That shit is out there, man. Those people are fucking crazy.
Garant: I always thought it was more performance art than actually sex ed. There was something called sex ed in our kindergarten, but that guy was arrested. He might've been in a moose costume, but he wasn't affiliated with any sort of program.
Lennon: Like McGruff. Or like a McGruff who comes in and shows you how to teabag somebody.
CraveOnline: But not exactly credentialed.
Garant: (laughing like crazy)
Lennon: I think we're doing that now, by the way. We're putting that idea on the front burner.
Garant: It's going up on our board for season six: Sex Ed Moose.
Lennon: Really though, one of the best things about the show is that you never know when the fuck it is in Reno, and it never matters. Because as soon as you start doing political stuff, you really specifically date yourself.
Garant: Yeah, you can't really rerun Jon Stewart.
Lennon: Don't get political. Your shelf life gets really short.
CraveOnline: Sketch shows don't always make for the best movie material. As for the Reno 911 Miami film, how did you avoid the Monty Python Holy Grail lull at the 40 minute mark?
Lennon: Thanks, you're the only critic in America who seems to agree with that. But we're really proud of the movie. We cut the movie real fucking short. The first cut of the Reno movie was something like 2 hours and 20 minutes. It included all the stuff that's now on the DVD. It had all the stuff with the Bush twins, there was a whole scene with us going to Patton's (Oswalt, comedian and recurring guest on "Reno 911!") house with his mom that was absurd.
Garant: Oh my God it was so funny. We did a long scene where we all sat around and had cookies and milk while they argued, and apparently Patton crawls into bed with her every once in a while. Some interesting stuff came out in that one.
CraveOnline: HOw much material do you shoot for each show?
Lennon: We shoot a lot. Our bacis policy is we'd rather shoot something than discuss it. If there's going to be an argument over whether something's gonna be funny or not, fuck it, just shoot it. What do you lose, shooting it? Nothing. You just saved us having to have another conversation about it.
CraveOnline: What do you do with all the extra material?
Garant: Last year on the show, we were contracted to do 13 episodes, and we turned in 16. Now that we've done the show for a few years, we kinda realize that if you've got Patton Oswalt in a suit of armor, and you're shooting me and Dangle arresting him for something, you might as well let me and Jones go up there and do one, and then Weigel can do one. You've got him there, he's in a suit of armor, you know he's not gonna run out of funny, so you might as well shoot a bunch. So now, by season 5, we'd shoot intentional extra plots so we can use the extra material that we end up getting. We did that for the movie too.
Lennon: While we were doing the movie, we realized that there would be an entire other movie just for the DVD.
Garant: Honestly, there's a lot of stuff that, looking back, I kinda wish was in the movie.
CraveOnline: Sounds a bit like what they did with Anchorman. They shot hours and hours of extra footage -
Lennon: Exactly. That's what the Reno Lost version is. It's basically our Wake Up, Ron Burgundy. It's all stuff that wasn't in the movie.
CraveOnline: You've got a guest list a mile long, from Michael Ian Black and Patton Oswalt and Nick Swardson... but could Nick even be considered a guest anymore? He's such a staple of the show now.
Lennon: He's really part of the inner circle family. He's still a guest, but sometimes we're the guests in his weird little rumpus room too.
CraveOnline: As a maniac day one fan of the show, I implore you, I beseech you, please, get Terry on screen more.
Lennon: Oh, Terry's got some stuff coming.
Garant: Yeah, a loooot of stuff coming in season 6.
CraveOnline: Now about "Reno 911!," I have to ask it, even though I'm sure you can't tell me: who's in the casket at the end of season 5?
Lennon: Nope, we can't tell you that. At least... somebody.
Garant: It's a pretty good guess that the two people on the phone right now will be coming back. To be honest with you, we haven't even told the cast -
Lennon: The cast doesn't even know yet. There's gonna be some changes in the officers in the force.
CraveOnline: Sounds exciting. There's already something for everyone on the show - you've got evangelical rednecks, tranny hookers...
Lennon: Yeah, it's a melting pot. We could use some kinda toothless weirdo or something.
CraveOnline: Well Jackie qualifies for that, I'd imagine.
Lennon: Yeah, she's pretty close. She hits the toothless meth head demographic.
Garant: Big voting block, the toothless meth heads.
CraveOnline: How do you keep a straight face when you're talking about jacking off with grape jelly in a cop car?
Lennon: We're really fighting it. Particularly on that scene.
Garant: We're laughing all the time. There's a scene in the movie... Toby Huss, man. He gets me more than everybody. I can't not laugh with him. There's a scene where he's in the middle of a tour and some real seagulls start flying right at him, and he's like "Look out, it's the fahking buuuurd." It was just fantastic. We couldn't cut around it, you could see me and Tom just turn away from the camera, just laughing.
Lennon: The mustaches help.
Garant: Yeah, cause if your top lip is going, if you look down, the mustache will cover your laughing a little bit. We laugh quite a bit on camera.
CraveOnline: What's up with Night at the Museum 2?
Lennon: We're very excited for that. It's got a bunch of wonderful people in it. It's a lot bigger than the first one, and I think it has a lot of potential to be a lot funnier than the first one. We've got Christopher Guest and Jonah Hill, Ricky Gervais... just a stunning cast of funny people.
Garant: We're about to take off on this next season of Reno, too. But it's funny, we've written a couple sequels, and all these people come out of the woodwork with what they think the sequel should be. But what Ben Stiller said is that he just wants it to be funnier. He liked the first one, and he wants this one to be even funnier.
Lennon: That was kind of the mandate from on high. Wasn't more complicated or this or that. Just funnier.
CraveOnline: What's on Jr. and Dangle's iPods?
Lennon: Lot of Morrissey for Dangle, and probably "Sweet Charity."
Garant: What's an iPod?
