Crave Online: Olivia says you check out Crave daily. How are we doing?
Kevin Pereira: You guys are the one where it's like every day of the week, it might be from an apartment, or you guys do the thing where you give people money on the street.
Crave Online: Giving out money doesn't sound like us.
Kevin Pereira: Can we have some? You guys aren't reality kings, you don't do the porn? Oh, then I totally have no idea.
Crave Online: What was the first game that got you hooked on video games?
Kevin Pereira: Oh man, probably Wolfenstein 3D on the PC. I was a PC guy for years. I was the kid in computer class that played Oregon Trail and was the banker because you got the most money so I could buy as much ammo as possible and just hunt. They would chart the progress of the class like, "Who made it to Oregon first?" My cart, my sad little oxen would never move because I would just hunt and hunt all class long. Oregon Trail is the classic one for me. That's where I got my start, hunting 40 pounds of squirrel.
Crave Online: Now that you're doing a daily show, when do you have time to play?
Kevin Pereira: I'm at work early but the nighttime is where I game. I get home and I'm always, I'm hopping on the 360. I'm in love with so many casual games now. That to me is the biggest thing. I love what Xbox Live Arcade is doing. I love what PSN is doing. It's the greatest thing. It's the cost of a beer at a bar and you get a full gaming experience. Everyday Shooter on the PS3 is amazing.
Crave Online: I'm usually playing Guitar Hero.
Kevin Pereira: I've been involved with a lot of games and talking with developers over the years and then interviewing them and being interviewed by them. Still to this day, the coolest thing is that if you open up your Guitar Hero manual, it's me in the back. I'm in the special thanks. Because I was in touch with them every day, like, "You've got to get this song in the game. You have to fix this and make the guitar player this." To me, that's still, sadly, that's one of my happiest things that I'm in the Guitar Hero manual.
Crave Online: So you say early, what is your daily schedule?
Kevin Pereira: Sadly, I'm in at 8:45, 9:00 every morning because I like to come up with some of the stuff for the show. So we go through the media, we look at the videos, come up with silly stuff.
Crave Online: So how do you feel about Olivia coming in at 2?
Kevin Pereira: I'll give her the heads up, "Hey, this is insert stunt here or this joke is coming up, make it your own." Olivia will say, "Let's say it this way, let's do it like that" so we really just work well.
Crave Online: What are the coolest stunts you've gotten to do from this show?
Kevin Pereira: The honest answer, before I delve into some sarcastic bullsh*t, the honest answer is back in January, I was driving to my car listening to Coheed and Cambria and the song Welcome Home came on. I'm like, "God, I love this song, I love this band, I love playing it in Rock Band. I'm a drummer, I play piano, I love music." I'm like, "I wonder if I could use the show to get on stage with these guys." So I sent off an e-mail, I said, "Here's the pitch: Can Rock Band teach you how to play the drums?" I totally pulled this segment out of my ass as I'm driving to work. I write it all. Three months later, out of the blue, they're like, "Hey, by the way, next week you're going to the Jimmy Kimmel Pontiac Garage set and you're going to play the drums with Coheed and Cambria." Excuse me, what? Yeah, and I got to meet the band, go on stage, play their song with them, practice on Rock Band. It was just one of those things like wow, the show let us do that. We got to dogfight in airplanes. Laser guided airplanes and dogfight.
Crave Online: I was thinking about all the gun stuff.
Kevin Pereira: The bottom line I think, and it's not so much about stunts, but it's about the show enabling us to do things that every single day, while it's easier to get caught in the drudgery of yes, we're making television, an hour a day live, we have these big specials. No other show that I know of or in the history of television that I'm aware of, and I pride myself on paying too much attention to TV, allows their host to show up and go, "What joke are we making today? Are we making fun of line parties? We can say goatsee today?" Olivia says pie and by the end of the show there's 30 pies on set. We have Rambo flash bombs come in, 400 guys dressed as Rambo. Whatever it is, every day there's something awesome and weird and fun and we get to do it, so it's such a treat.
Crave Online: So technically you're a journalist yourself. How did you feel about greeting the press today?
Kevin Pereira: Olivia joked about them having a briefing with us and going over the questions yesterday which they sort of did. They had like, "Hey, if someone asks how'd the show get started…" questions we know the answer to but thankfully, they were worried I think that the room was not going to get who we were, what the show was and that was not an issue.
Crave Online: How do you keep the energy up on the daily grind?
Kevin Pereira: Pills mostly. It's a total give and take and if any time one of us is lagging, it just takes one line, one joke not line of cocaine, one sentence, one thing to happen that sort of triggers it and it's just inertia. Once we get going it doesn't stop and that's how we keep it up.
Crave Online: I know from interviewing celebrities that they don't always like to play along. Do you ever get interviews where they're just like deer in headlights to your line of questioning?
Kevin Pereira: Yeah, but we go with it I think. Regarding celebrities, what's great is there was a point, probably even before [Olivia] was involved, so we're talking years ago on the show where we would do a junket or we'd do an interview and people would, "G4? I'm sorry? Okay." And we'd ask some weird questions or make some weird comments or whatever, maybe they wouldn't get it. But now, especially with Comic Con, people are banging down our doors and they want in on what we're doing. That I think is just the fundamental shift. People would love to be caught deer in the headlights style by Olivia or have me grill them in an interesting way. I really think that it's turned around for us as a network and as a show specifically.
Crave Online: How nice is it to be the guy that women think is cool now?
Kevin Pereira: It is the sweetest damn thing in the world. Line up those Myspace girls and knock 'em down nightly.
Crave Online: How much does having your own show help your game?
Kevin Pereira: It's the only thing that works honestly. I have a take a number now, like a deli, right outside my apartment. It is amazing to see that come around because there were always those times, and it's not like a sports star where someone tells you you can't make it. It really isn't like I'm being carried off the field Rudy style, but there were so many times growing up where people were like, "Why are you wasting your time with that? What are you fussing with those computers? Why are you playing your games?" Now I flip the double bird off to them and be like, "Now look at what I'm doing." Now I get to talk about games for a living. Now I get to play with the coolest toys for a living.
Crave Online: How gratifying has it been to see Olivia's success come off the show?
Kevin Pereira: When Olivia first started on the show, she knew about cell phones and technology to an extent. To watch her immerse herself, that's been so impressive. To watch this girl dive in and learn about every damn console and developer and video game and technology. Now it's to the point where Olivia does a segment called Attack This where she reads off the coolest gadgets, the coolest whatever and she'll be in the read, she'll be like, "First of all, it's not a GPS, it's just GPS. Skip that. All right, is it B or G? What we need to say." To watch those notes be made is just like oh, thank you.
