With The Season Finale Hours Away, Brian Sack And Head Writer Jack Helmuth Talk The B.S. Of A.

Jon BershadJun 28th, 2012, 3:52 pm

You guys (and Fisher) went on the Unelectable 2 tour with the big bossman. What was that like? Any crazy road stories?

BRIAN: I love every minute of the tour. Fisher and Jack play debate moderators. Very funny, a lot of improv. I play an amalgam of every asshole politician from the left and right, desperately pandering to the audience and spewing unadulterated bullshit. Glenn plays Glenn and maintains that he’s unelectable because he tells it like it is. The audience absolutely loves it. As performers we love it. We get a standing ovation from two-to-three thousand folks. Very nice. Then we clear the stage and Glenn tells the audience how god helped George Washington cross the Potomac by throwing some fog down. A little weird, but he signs the checks so we let it slide. Then he talks about his son and Spiderman and god telling him to build an amusement park or something. Then he cries, of course. And there’s a story about a man drowning in a puddle and Mexican drug lords sledgehammering people to death in the mix. From a comedic performer’s standpoint it’s totally insane and the worst possible way you can imagine to end a comedy show, but if you’re Glenn Beck then it’s completely normal. He makes much more than we do so I guess he’s doing something right.

My favorite road story is more of a life lesson. The lesson: If you have the chance to sit across from Glenn Beck on his plane, don’t do that. Poor Matt Fisher picked the wrong seat and for two hours had to listen to Armageddon McDoomsday go on and on and on. No commercial breaks. And no talking back to the TV, because it’s not a TV. It’s the Glenn Beck Show in human form and it’s talking to you and you alone. By the end of the flight Fisher wanted to die. I don’t think he even got to eat. It was awesome in-flight entertainment. The best part was watching Fisher, your average New Englander who doesn’t necessarily agree with everything that Glenn believes, deftly evade answering Glenn’s questions.

JACK: The tour is the greatest feeling in the world. We’re on stage performing a really funny show in front of packed houses and it’s more fun than almost anything I’ve ever done. All three of my fellow performers are so damn talented that it’s an honor to be up there playing with them, and also, as a fan of all three of them (Brian, Matt, and Glenn), it’s a pleasure just to watch them do their things. We have room to improvise during the shows, so no show is the same as the last, and that brings an exciting, challenging energy to every minute we’re out there. And to be honest, Brian steals the show and is a great showcase for his talents. It’s crazy how good he is.

We were all surprised at how much the audience feels the need to talk back to the stage during the show. I think that might be due to the fact that Glenn has such great energy on stage which can make his sections of the show feel like a sermon.

BRIAN: The talking back is mainly in theaters where you can drink booze. Phoenix and Charleston, if memory serves. During my final remarks in Charleston some people were shouting “Go home!” at me. I realize they were referring to my sleazeball politician character, but it was somewhat disconcerting. I think I prefer a sober house – which is something I never say in any other circumstance.

In addition to meeting them in person, how was the fan reaction this past year?

BRIAN: The feedback has been great. People are very engaged with the show, they reference things we never imagined they’d notice. And they absolutely love Pumpernickel Boulevard, our take on Sesame Street. If we don’t hire those puppeteers again and produce some more segments, the fans will destroy us. They’ve been nice about it so far with the pleading, but they’ll turn and come after us. I’m sure of it.

The general sense we’re getting is that people want us on more nights a week. They’d also do not seem to want to see me in drag again. And one person thought the Secret Service/Columbian prostitute sketch was in poor taste because prostitution is sad. People have actually sent us money. Our show has sugar daddies and sugar mommies.

JACK: The one other consistent fan reaction we’ve gotten is basically this: “Oh, thank God for you guys. I need a laugh after watching Glenn!” We’re unique on the network, and I think we serve as GBTV sorbet, cleansing the audience’s palates of the Nazi imagery that Glenn just showed them over and over again.

BRIAN: I had a guy approach me at the airport in Raleigh, NC. He said he loved my show. I assumed he meant Glenn’s stage show that we’d just done the previous night in town but it turns out he meant The B.S. of A. So, that was really nice. He was a regular guy from Tampa who traveled a lot and really, really loved coming home and putting our show on. And he was very nice and took a photo with me for his wife and constantly worried that he was invading my space. Then he left. Then I approached him because I wanted to have a Bloody Mary and chat. It’s nice to actually meet the people who are watching. I’m lucky. I haven’t had a weird person freak me out yet. When that happens I will become a recluse.

JACK: Our fans are extremely loyal and they pay attention to every little detail. Our Facebook page, where we post exclusive content, is filled with fans who make incredibly specific references to past sketches and jokes. We feel very connected with them, and I think they feel the same about us. I think that’s due, in part, to the fact that our fans feel underserved comedically, and they are starving for jokes that don’t fly in the face of their beliefs. We’ll do jokes about a dirtbag like Charlie Rangel that you just don’t find elsewhere. On the flip side of that, I think they respect the fact that we are very clearly non-partisan and are fair in our observations and humor (despite what people widely assume based on who our boss is). During the primary season we made fun of Republicans way more than Democrats because we had 8 dynamic candidates (well, 7 and Jon Huntsman) who were generating big headlines every day, and they deserved to be made fun of. Our audience knew that, and was comfortable with it. Glenn’s one rule for our show is that we’re to have no sacred cows, so absolutely everyone is fair game.