Better Call Saul In Conversation - Bob Odenkirk & Michael McKean Part 1 | Better Call Saul Extras

i uh there was one of those ads in a boy's life can you act as good as this actor and then there was who was the actor of uh the neighbor from the jeffersons yeah and then the english guy yes the other guy paul benedict paul bennett i was i was uh just doing a sketch comedy as a kid at home for my family that's how i started and his mom was a big agent i love doing sketches i love writing comedy sketches and um and at a certain point i listened to uh the credibility gap which was a group that michael uh was a founding member of and did a lot of great comedy with them and that group was to go over it again you and david david lander harry shearer and richard beebe for bb yeah for most of the record it's all the recorded stuff yeah there's a comedy sketch group uh they did a radio show and i guess live performance i had never seen any like oh you never did no because you were you were in chicago yeah yes and uh so that was a big inspiration to me i've always mentioned it monty python credibility gap bob and ray uh and woody allen kind of steve martin for sure um and then there's a hard line and nothing else oh wait a second um yeah i mean i liked sc tv and i liked snl and i liked the goodies yeah but i was very young bill ott and the goodies do you ever hear a radio show called i'm sorry i'll read that again no that's where it was cleese is in it bill oddie uh graham garden yeah you know and uh pretty funny a lot of puns oh yeah a lot of silly stuff yeah yeah but so i like that stuff and that's what i did and then through that acted i i didn't act in school i wasn't in the thespian club i i did do a play in chicago i don't know why i did this i helped pay for it uh you know israel horowitz line okay we did line at the prop theater and i was doing sketch comedy and i thought i want to do a straight play and that's kind of an absurdist play it's very strange but uh i did that for a couple weeks but outside of that i i didn't act in anything dramatic and uh yeah um and then just i had a career for a while and then slowly did a few dramatic things and then for some reason i can't figure vince gilligan made me the lawyer on breaking bad which was like i really thought because this happened to me once before i thought there's a chance i'll show up on set and they will go you're bob i had that i had that not i had oh you're not michael o'keefe oh yeah exactly that's i thought too late you hired me yeah cash the check i mean and then they just tell me to go home and i go all right i get it but you know make an effort next time you know make sure you got the right guy because they thought you were steve odecker oh why would he get that role no i think he wouldn't get the role either some guy i don't know phyllis kirk bourb orphan dick who's a stage actor he's wonderful robert goulet yeah but you know i went and did it and i didn't ask didn't look the gift horse in the mouth and i did my best and uh and then eventually i did ask vince why he hired me and he said because of mr joe all right that doesn't explain anything but again i'm not gonna ask in the mr show sketches that kind of where you were kind of playing the same one well there were a few no it was there was something about your earnestness that made every that made all the other lunacy work do you know what i'm saying yeah yeah so yes i think i can get a hold of a point of view and commit to it crazy and mean it you were a guest actor on mr show which was a crazy honor for us and oh my god super fun i remember sucking up to you to get that job it was what it was memorable yeah i'm sure that didn't happen well no i i ran into you at something at paramount like a star trek thing was there a screening of a stone oh yeah yeah yeah there was a screening of uh was it the new movie it was the newest one yeah yeah and um yeah and i was there with fletcher my son yes and uh and i said uh i said wow we on our place we worship at the shrine of mr show is what i said because it was just i was like oh god imagine this because hbo had been looking for something for comedy other than stand up you know they kind of rolled and stand up but they didn't really have the sketch show and then it was like oh well they didn't they weren't very happy about it um well that was wonderful to have you involved in that that was great and you were great and i got to play john houseman yes so it's win-win do you want to tell your story that is my story because you you actually were an actor you didn't just do sketch comedy when you were young no no like me you you did yeah singing acting you did everything no i i grew up in long island and my thought was that i was going to get jobs on broadway and just live either live in the city or just commute from my house in seacliff so uh you know i i thought i had a real good shot at either one so i went to uh carnegie mellon at the time was known as carnegie tech for the melon money i went to carnegie before the melon money i went to nyu before the tisch money geez yeah got in there poverty road yeah maybe that's why i got good we got rid of mccann where's the grant mckeon's gone send us that money pay window opened um no i thought i thought that's what i was going to do i thought it was going to be a drama well i don't know anything no i wanted to be i had a really cool teacher in high school who was a drama coach and he really knew a lot of stuff and and uh but one at one point he said you know you might have to come to a decision about whether you're going to be a a good actor or a funny actor because you could be either one and i said well what's alan arkin yeah and he went yeah that's you know kind of what i wanted to be a guy who could do kind of anything right because you know once you really boil it down acting is finding out your intent right and and pursuing your goals and all that so believing it and pursuing your goals and that's the same whether it's i know and i've said the same thing and people are like so surprising somebody from comedy and did a drama and of course every year somebody from comedy does a great dramatic turn yeah and everyone goes how did you do that that's not possible yeah uh and and there's this there is a uh i agree with you that you know in comedy and drama there's a there's just a need for commitment and an ability to surrender yourself to the characters desires and wants and just to commit on the other hand i think that the challenge is um it's the modulation can be hard for i think some people sure i think that's where maybe um you had a talent and an ability that not everybody has and it's heart and maybe alan arkin has it too you know like i i do think that not everybody in comedy can can do that modulation that you need to do yeah that's but most can and most can do the commitment for sure yeah but it doesn't work without the commitment you know i i you've seen a lot of comedy that you didn't buy because nobody believed it on this they they were just going joke to joke or they were going you know oh here's that thing i do and i'm going to do it here if you know it happens all the time and then it's like you know it's like taking a bunch of acts and shuffling together rather than creating a scene about what the scene's really about um you know i i've seen very broad comedy that i completely believed and i've seen and i've seen comedy that was very broad that was just broad comedy and right and what time is it yeah you know so and you've always done this your whole career too you you kind of i've always kept these balls in the air right i mean with a few years where you did more comedy but it seems like you know when i look at see movies that you've done and there's kind of you that that's the other thing that's hard for uh people in hollywood you do kind of have to pick oftentimes a sort of avenue like this is what i do exactly yeah because the business is like we're very confused by you yeah please help us what do you want to do let's do that well it part of it is one thing that really helps is going to do theater sometimes because you can do a lot on the stage that you can you can get away with in close-up yeah you know i played luther villas in in uh south pacific when i was 60 years old you're not supposed to be in the navy when you're 60 years old but it was at the hollywood bowl nobody could see me the closest patron is 40 feet away i'm fine you know uh but it's not just that but it's also people kind of there's a a direct a producer named jeffrey richards i worked with a lot on on broadway and uh we would work together in pajama game it was a very goofy musical and i was being a very goofy guy and he's and they were going to do a revival of the homecoming by pinter and they needed this kind of lumbering quiet terribly tortured soul right to play sam the chauffeur and so they cast me in it and i i don't i didn't know why they chose me right but it was kind of a wonderful thing i got to be in this strange dark kind of yeah damp weird world and from that uh tracy latz uh saw me in that and cast me in in superior doughnuts so it was like it's you stay out of one avenue like you said right by trying all these alleyways right you know right and you know a zillion people didn't see me do superior doughnuts but it really changed my whole life in a lot of ways as far as what i can do and right after that i did our town a revival uh the barra street theater in new york which was very wonderful and i did it for two months i did the stage manager for two months and that taught me another lesson then when i went back to shooting something i just felt a little bit more invested in the material no matter what the material was right you know because yeah get a chance to work with really really great words yeah as much as i have a lot of fun and variety in my life because i still am doing some sketch comedy it seems to me like every day you must wake up and go okay i gotta recalibrate everything because i'm doing a broadway show i'm singing now and that's so different from from the kind of scenes we're doing yeah i mean it's just it's just so wildly uh different physically your everything your projection your well i mean it's fun right to have that much variety it's a lot of fun yeah uh but still do you ever get tripped up do you ever go what the am i doing now oh right the people are far away okay what was i doing i was doing the film thing because that's no because you you what you do is you step into a company you know if i'm gonna do a play you i meet a whole bunch of people some of them i know already and then we settle down and we're like a little we're like a small town i've moved to a small town for for you know between a month and six months and you know it's everyone's kind of like getting to know each other and we're you know we all i mean while we were doing this show you were going to new york to prepare i believe or no i was i was doing you were doing all the way oh you're still doing all the way yeah but then you also yet another piece that didn't start that was after we were that was in november october you were still doing all the way that's right yeah yeah that was the first show where you had to miss days well no it was the first show that i volunteered to missed it that i live i missed days without being in the hospital because i got i was hit by a car when i was doing uh best man so uh that i missed that curtain that night and all the rest of their currency for that run yeah see this i'm not gonna get into that it's an ego uh hairspray right and he had missed one half of one performance in two years and it's like yeah where would you rather be well this is my job is to be up there tonight at seven and then as hard as it can be life is simpler in the in the character uh in the performance even though that can be a complicated life too yeah and a complicated person um real life uh you know you get a phone call and uh your kid needs something your wife needs you know your car breaks down yeah it doesn't happen to you as a character no and it doesn't always have and the stuff that happens in your real life isn't always a well-pitched story right right you know sometimes it's really kind of mostly it's just kind of sloppy and everything yeah the mark twain quote well of course truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense that's a great one that's absolutely true

Channel: Movies Breaker

Views: 72,599

Rating: 4.967649 out of 5

Keywords: In Conversation, Vince Gilligan, Better Call Saul, Better Call Saul Extras, Saul Goodman, jimmy mcgill, Bob Odenkirk, Michael McKean, Chuck McGill, chuck&jimmy, Better Call Saul In Conversation

Id: sctiTNJyizM

Length: 14min 51sec (891 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 15 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/NCSUGrad2012]

They both seem like such great guys. I actually wish they would have kept chuck around for another season just because of how much I love his acting.

[u/ruger_roo]

Not too much info on BCS but still interesting

[u/ackchanticleer]

Last night Michael McKean answered my question when he did an 'Inside The Gilliverse' interview!!! :-)