---

View Entire Post ›

Donald “Just A Threat” Glover recently released a surprise album, but that hasn’t quelled the excitement for Atlanta‘s long-awaited third and fourth seasons. In addition to being a great depiction of the music industry, the show’s filled with uncomfortably funny moments that crash into harsh depictions of reality. This subversive approach often leans into surreal scenes that viewers can rattle off by memory. Atlanta is an alternate universe where an alligator struts out of a house to The Delfonics, a Black “Justin Bieber” exists, and a celebrity runs over people in an invisible car. It’s a place where a character harvests diaper urine for a drug test after fielding pressure to prove her “Value” as a woman. It’s fired off an unexplained cutaway (now known as The Tobias GIF) of a kid wearing whiteface. The show brings its tumultuous absurdity to a frequent simmer, and most of all, Atlanta is never afraid to mine difficult truths for dark humor.

A dazzling series, Glover’s brainchild confronts the world’s harshness by finding humor in it. From the very first episode, the show knew exactly how to interweave the surreal within the real. And it tried to warn us, repeatedly, of what was to come in terms of those blurred lines between reality and the absurd, which somehow helps the show feel more authentic and hyper-real. It’d be impossible to adequately pay tribute to all examples of this brilliant (and frequently blatant) toeing of that line, but some notable instances do invite discussion.

Take Nutella sandwich man, for example, who introduced us to the Atlanta version of surreal-reality right out of the gate. We didn’t know what was coming when we first met Ahmad White (and didn’t even know his name). Through Ahmad, the show told us to question what we see before confirming that, in fact, sh*t is real. At first, yes, it only seemed trippy when Donald Glover’s Earn encountered Ahmad, who evaporated in a dreamlike way, though his sandwich lingered in the bus as evidence of his presence. However, Ahmad re-surfaced (as a probable snake-oil salesman with a revealing 1-800 number) weeks later in the groundbreaking “B.A.N.” episode while popping into a commercial to declare, “You may know me from your dreams.”

This moment gives pause, as if to further blur the lines between dreams and waking life, but Atlanta viewers learned that surreal sh*t is merely a part of life for Earn, Paper Boi, and Darius. On any given day, the trio might bear witness to a disturbingly casual instance of jail-based violence against the mentally ill, or worse (as we’ll discuss soon). Well, the rest of the experimental “B.A.N” kept rolling with the concept, with a faux-talk show spiraling into fake commercials laced with razor-sharp commentary. It culminated with a taped segment (about a man who’s undergoing a “full racial transition”) that oozed shades of Rachel Dolezal from our own world. Like many Atlanta episodes, this one was largely devoid of plot but still managed to push the show forth into new territory.

The Seinfeld-esque abandonment of plot works well in Atlanta, but this will never be a show about nothing. It’s often really about trying to tread water — a substantial quest, especially when it comes to Glover’s Earn. After all, “Jacket” wasn’t simply about the superficial chase for an unspectacular item of clothing but revealed a sad truth about Earn’s desperation. The jacket, we learn, might contain the key to his living quarters — a storage unit — a brutal underscoring that that mirrors our fear of homelessness and hunger. One surreal image after another plagued this episode, including a real doozy.

I’m not talking about the cows, man, although the cows were definitely a thing. As Earn troubled over his situation, folks did assemble for a certain fast-food chain’s Free Chicken Sandwich Day. But that’s not even the most insane thing coming down this path. Rather, we watched SWAT team members act utterly oblivious after riddling a man to death with bullets for no apparent reason. And they could. not. believe. that Earn would want to check the man’s jacket pocket (the nerve!) after they’d coldly taken him out. In the aftermath, the trio couldn’t even muster up shock at what they witnessed, which Paper Boi offhandedly labels as “crazy” but Darius admits, was kind of “cool.”

Their weary reaction to a messed-up situation is perhaps the best way that they could process the brutality they had witnessed. Yet as we often see during Atlanta, the guys witness these things all the time. Their muted reactions point toward reality, and that’s part of the genius of Atlanta. It manages to throw down loads of harsh truths without the characters breaking out trumpets about them. These people know the toughness of life, where there’s no room for dreams or make-believe. That’s why labeling Season 2 as “Robbin’ Season” (after the pre-holiday time in real-life Atlanta where folks increasingly turn to crime) made perfect sense. The show’s sophomore year rightfully stands as one of the best seasons of TV from the past decade. There are so many genuine nuggets of humor cloaked in scary truths, all tiredly regarded by the characters, that the results can take one’s breath away.

Consider also how “Robbin’ Season” began, with the “Alligator Man” episode, wherein Katt Williams embodies Earn’s Uncle Willy to pile surreal touches upon a fictionalized embodiment of the Florida Man meme. The shot of the alligator strutting out of the home both boils down and mythologizes a real-life construction, which is already, in and of itself, a hyper-surreal version of humanity. Is Florida Man or Alligator Man more bizarre? It’s unclear, and that’s to Atlanta‘s credit. The show manages to nimbly glide between the real and the dream-and-nightmare-like, while suggesting commentary upon objective reality. Again, Earn and Darius are still not too shocked by what transpires.

The show’s so adept at making these turns that the second season’s final half felt almost natural with its jarring nature. By the time the “North Of The Border” episode rolled around, the Atlanta audience had been prepared to absorb the stark juxtaposition of what happened in the racist frat house. So when Earn, Darius, and Paper Boi found themselves sitting in front of a Confederate flag (an unquestionably horrible development) in front of a bunch of naked, kneeling frat pledges (an undeniably hilarious one), we knew this scenario was a joke, but one that’s grounded in reality. The sheer absurdity of this situation is underscored by the fraternity president waxing rhapsodic about his love for Southern rap, as Atlanta continued to pull no punches.

Part of the preparation for this straight-up bonkers display took place with “Teddy Perkins.” Through that painstakingly carved, gothic-horror-filled bottle episode — which was as majestic in its execution (with a haunting performance by Donald Glover in prosthetic whiteface) as it was tragic — the show fully committed to its mission. And like much of what transpires in Atlanta, it was an unsettling episode, chock full of sensually grotesque, layered humor, and Glover’s portrayal of a Michael Jackson-esque figure was counterbalanced by the laid-back Lakeith Stanfield gently guiding us through the eeriest moments.

The Atlanta audience, while waiting for more of the show, is now much like Darius during his encounter with Teddy Perkins. We, through these characters, have seen a lot of sh*t, and we damn well realize that more awful things will unfold. These things are often potentially deadly, and they might not seem real, especially when laced with surreal visuals, but Atlanta isn’t about to let us forget about reality. Season three, when it arrives, faces an almost insurmountable task of measuring up to what the show’s accomplished already, but whatever happens, it’s sure to be bleakly funny as hell.

The first two seasons of FX’s ‘Atlanta’ can be streamed on Hulu.

---

View Entire Post ›

This past week I received a press release informing me that 1983’s Valley Girl would be available on digital platforms for the first time ever! It was a move I’m sure had nothing to do with 2020’s musical Valley Girl remake opening May 8th. Synergy aside, Valley Girl was one of those cult pseudo-classics I’d always meant to revisit.

Some Valley Girl points of interest, in brief:

– It was Nicolas Cage’s first big role (after a supporting role as “Brad’s Bud” in Fast Times At Ridgemont High). He played, improbably, a teen heartthrob.

– It seemed to spawn, or at least was part of, the peculiar eighties phenomenon of the “Valley Girl,” despite itself being much less well-remembered than the aforementioned Fast Times. Frank Zappa’s song, “Valley Girl” featuring his daughter Moon Unit doing a nearly unlistenably obnoxious Valspeak monologue, had been released a year early. Zappa actually sued to stop production, that’s how hot the concept was at the time.

– A clip from Valley Girl famously (at least to me) opened The Bouncing Souls’ aptly-titled song, “These Are The Quotes From Our Favorite 80s Movies.”

This was a bit like my generation’s conception of “punk” (The Bouncing Souls) shouting out the previous ones (The Plimsouls, Modern English, The Psychedelic Furs).

One of the things that piqued my interest about Valley Girl is that almost everything in it feels almost impenetrably strange to anyone too young to remember the early 80s. Valspeak. Mall culture. “Punk” music as represented by Modern English’s “Melt With You.” Nic Cage as a sex symbol. High school as a time of freewheeling sexual permissiveness. The entire concept of the “valley girl.” Valley Girl exists almost entirely as a time capsule of extinct and aborted cultural trends.

On top of all that, there was, intrinsic to its plot, the idea that the girl who was from Valley was the cool one. The suburbs being cooler than the city is, again, a bizarro world concept to anyone too young for Valley Girl. But apparently, that was acknowledged as a trope reversal even then. As director Martha Coolidge said in an interview in 2011, “I knew the un-hip image the Valley had for both Hollywood dudes and movie people.”

Was the suburbs-as-setting such an irresistibly novel concept in the eighties that it actually became cool? Between Fast Times, Valley Girl, Back To The Future, Karate Kid, Bill and Ted and basically every John Hughes movie, the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley and Chicago were to eighties teen movies what Seattle was to grunge music. This was the pop culture era produced by the descendants of white flight. These days everything seems to be set in a gentrifying Brooklyn/LA/San Francisco/Oakland.

—

The movie opens (where else?) in a mall — specifically the Sherman Oaks Galleria. The girls are talking about sex and boys and saying words like “grody” and “gnarly” and “totally,” and it all feels very stylized and try-hard. Yet both Coolidge and screenwriters Andrew Lane and Wayne Crawford claim it was meticulously researched. Lane and Crawford said they “hid behind palm trees” at the Galleria to eavesdrop on real teens, and Coolidge said they hung out at Valley schools to get it just right, to the point that Coolidge could argue that the phrase “gag me with a spoon” from the Zappa song was actually an elaboration and that “gag me” was the phrase teens were actually using.

Watching the film, it’s wild to believe that the dialogue was accurate in 1983. The overuse of “like” seems to be the only part of it retained in broader California vernacular, but even there the Valley Girl version seems off. “Like” survives as a bridge word, like “uh” or “um,” but in Valley Girl, characters constantly use it at the beginning of sentences (“Like I’m totally not in love with you anymore, Tommy. It’s so boring!”). Even as a born-and-bred Californian who has been chastised more than once for saying “like” too much, this usage makes no sense to me.

Valley Girl‘s second scene introduces us to Nic Cage and his bizarre chest hair. Cage as the love interest actually makes more sense than you’d think, especially considering the actor cast as his love rival here is best known for playing Buck the rapist in Kill Bill. It’s Cage’s bizarrely well-defined chest patch that’s jarring, much more so than the girls gushing about how cute he looks (Nic Cage actually was reasonably cute in 1983, albeit in an odd, alien baby kind of way). Apparently Coolidge thought Cage’s chest hair made him look too old to play a high schooler, and wanted Cage, who actually was 18 during filming, to shave his chest. This Y-shaped hair island was their bizarre compromise.

It was not especially successful. The reaction it produces is less “yep, that’s a teenager” than “was manicured chest hair a thing in 1983?” Cage, meanwhile, apparently went method for this role, choosing to live in his car in Hollywood at the time, despite how dangerous that was for an 18-year-old Coppola heir in the pre-cell phone era.

In general, the male actors in Valley Girl all look kind of old (Buck was 29) and the moms very young. The actress playing Julie’s mom was only four years older than her screen daughter, and the one playing Beth Brent was only 15 years older than the one playing her daughter, Suzi. Was the “young mom who parties with the kids” another lost cultural comment? See also: “Missy, I mean mom,” from Bill and Ted.

The beach scene leads to the fateful house party, where the actors are dressed in a way that you imagine must’ve been highly stylized. Honestly, if characters showed up looking like this in an 80s-themed period piece in 2020, you’d think the costume designer was overdoing it.

No one even addresses the fact that this guy appears to be wearing a neon ski jacket to a Summer house party:

Yet this was, again, apparently accurate. Many of the actors allegedly even wore their own clothes.

Cage and his “punk” buddy (complete with Teddy Boy haircut) get thrown out of the Valley party before Cage sneaks back in and hides in the shower — the first of many examples of Randy’s stalker-ish behavior. Unable to deny their raw sexual attraction, Julie and Randy eventually kiss, and he takes her to a Hollywood party. They fall in love and share a few more kisses in which Randy creepily cradles Julie’s face with both hands. Influenced by her “shallow” friends (everyone in this is actually pretty shallow), eventually Julie dumps Randy in order to remain popular and goes back to her ex.

Coolidge described the story as a funny take on Romeo and Juliette (which also gave the love interests their names, Julie and Randy). But then, isn’t every teen love story movie basically a take on Romeo and Juliette? Much more noticeable are Valley Girl‘s homages to The Graduate. “I’ve got a little tip for you, Skip,” hot mom Beth Brent says to her daughter’s crush. “Plastics?”

This was either Beth’s veiled reference to condoms or to The Graduate itself — “get it? I’m trying to seduce you just like in that movie.”

Speeches about the emptiness of fashion and the fleeting nature of popularity inevitably ensue, and when Randy kidnaps Julie from the prom at the end of the film, their last shot together in the limo is an obvious homage to Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross fleeing their wedding in The Graduate.

It’s one of the film’s repeated attempts to draw parallels between Julie’s Summer of Love hippie parents and her own generation. At such a remove it’s hard to appreciate this much as cultural commentary. But with another step back there is a timelessness to Valley Girl‘s unabashed melodrama. Why bored ’80s mall teens would so identify with bored ’60s bridge party youths seems less important than the simple fact of teens tendency to see themselves as the protagonists of classic love stories. The clothes and music don’t translate, but thinking the question of whether to go out with a punk or a jock is a life-or-death decision does.

Valley Girl, which was intended as a boobs and sun B-movie (Coolidge once said she even had a handshake agreement with the producers that it would include at least four scenes of exposed breasts), ends up being slightly more, thanks to the humanity it affords its characters (who at first glance don’t seem like they warrant it). As Roger Ebert put it in his review at the time, “The teenagers in all those Porky‘s rip-offs seem to be the fantasies of Dirty Old Men, but the kids in Valley Girl could plausibly exist in the San Fernando Valley — or even, I suppose, in the Land Beyond O’Hare.”

If Valley Girl has a legacy beyond the future stardom of Nic Cage, it’s probably that — of female directors taking male producers’ proposed teen sex romps and turning them into sneaky deep slices of teen life. My own generation’s Valley Girl was undoubtedly Clueless, an overtly loud and satirical take on vapid SoCal characters that was quietly a clever and memorable riff on Jane Austen’s Emma, directed by Amy Heckerling (who also directed Fast Times At Ridgemont High).

Valley Girl isn’t quite on Clueless‘s level, but without it Clueless probably wouldn’t exist. In the end, every generation gets the Nic Cage movie it deserves.

‘Valley Girl’ is now streaming on Amazon Prime. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. Read more retrospectives here.

Last Updated: April 22nd

The true crime genre has never been more popular, but what about the false crime genre? Sometimes there’s nothing better than a good crime flick, from rooting for that grey area anti-hero to sitting on the edge of your seat as the lovable ruffians pull off the ultimate heist. Netflix has a wide variety of flicks that deal in law, order, and justice, so here are the 10 best crime movies on Netflix right now.

Related: The Best Heist Movies On Netflix Right Now

Lethal Weapon (1987)

Run Time: 109 min | IMDb: 7.6/10

Lethal Weapon practically invented the buddy cop comedy movie and though it’s spawned plenty of copy cats – a few worthy ones land on this list – it’s still one of the best action comedies around. The humor comes thanks to the chemistry between Mel Gibson and Danny Glover who play mismatched partners (one’s crazy, the other’s aging out). They must learn to work together to stop a ring of drug smugglers but the endgame isn’t as important as their budding friendship – ridiculous hijinks and all.

Add To Netflix Queue

Good Time (2017)

Run Time: 101 min | IMDb: 7.3/10

This gritty crime drama hailing from the Safdie brothers transforms star Robert Pattinson into a bleach-blonde sh*t-stirrer from Queens who’s desperate to break his developmentally disabled brother out of prison. Pattinson plays Connie, a street hustler and bank robber with grand plans to break out of his urban hood while Benny Safdie plays his brother Nick, who gets roped into his schemes. When Nick is sent to Rikers Island for a job gone wrong, Connie goes on a downward spiral to get him back. Pattinson’s manic energy carries this thing, and there’s plenty of police run-ins, shootouts, and heists (however botched) to keep the adrenaline pumping.

Add To Netflix Queue

The Irishman (2019)

Run Time: 209 min | IMDb: 8.7/10

Martin Scorsese delivers another cinematic triumph, this time for Netflix and with the help of some familiar faces. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino team up (again) for this crime drama based on actual events. De Niro plays Frank Sheeran a World War II vet who finds work as a hitman for the mob. Pacino plays notorious Teamster Jimmy Hoffa, a man who frequently found himself on the wrong side of the law and the criminals he worked with. The film charts the pair’s partnership over the years while injecting some historical milestones for context. It’s heavy and impressively cast and everything you’d expect a Scorsese passion-project to be.

Add To Netflix Queue

Inception (2010)

Run Time: 148 min | IMDb: 8.8/10

Christopher Nolan’s imaginative sci-fi adventure will most likely be remembered as one of the best genre films in cinematic history, and for good reason. The movie — which stars everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy to Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cillian Murphy, and Michael Caine — is the ultimate heist flick, following a group of thieves who must repurpose dream-sharing technology to plant an idea into the mind of a young CEO. DiCaprio pulls focus as Cobb, a troubled architect with a tragic past who attempts to pull off the impossible so that he can return to his family.

Add To Netflix Queue

Road To Perdition (2002)

Run Time: 117 min | IMDb: 7.7/10

Tom Hanks stars in this mafia drama about a mob enforcer whose son witnesses a terrible crime. Hanks plays Michael Sullivan, a loyal employee of mob boss John Rooney. When Michael’s son witnesses a hit that Rooney had instructed his henchmen to carry out, the two go on the run, seeking redemption and revenge for the violence they’ve helped to cause.

Add To Netflix Queue

Sin City (2005)

Run Time: 124 min | IMDb: 8/10

Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez team up for this stylish crime thriller drowning in corruption, comic book references, and A-list actors playing varying degrees of anti-hero. Based on the first, third, and fourth books in Miller’s original series, the film jumps between three different stories all set in the seedy underworld of Basin City. Bruce Willis plays an aging police officer framed for crimes he didn’t commit who must protect a young woman he’s come to love. Clive Owen plays a vigilante protecting prostitutes from bad guys and preventing a war between the women and the police. And Mickey Rourke plays a man seeking revenge for the death of his lover. It’s a lot of action and bloodshed, all done in Miller’s signature tone and Rodriguez recognizable flair.

Blade Runner (1982)

Run Time: 117 min | IMDb: 8.1/10

Harrison Ford’s lived long enough to see quite a few of his sci-fi franchises get the reboot treatment but this futuristic 80s flick still ranks as one of his best genre outings. Ford plays Rick Deckard, a blade runner charged with terminating four replicants — synthetic humans — who have escaped captivity and are plotting rebellion. Deckard treks across a dystopian Los Angeles, confronting ideas about humanity and morality while fighting off bioengineered humanoids and his fellow man.

Add To Netflix Queue

Drive (2014)

Run Time: 100 min | IMDb: 7.8/10

A stone-faced Ryan Gosling steers us through the criminal underworld created by director Nicolas Winding Refn in this high-speed thriller. Gosling plays a near-silent stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway man. When he gets involved with his next-door neighbor and her young son, his carefully cultivated life is thrown into chaos, forcing him to align with criminals and take on risky jobs to protect the pair and keep a firm grip on the wheel.

Add To Netflix Queue

Goodfellas (1990)

Run Time: 146 min | IMDb: 8.7/10

Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta star in this crime drama from the always reliable Martin Scorcese. Liotta plays Henry Hill, a young kid enamored with the life of crime who eventually works his way up the ranks to become a certified bad guy. He reaps the rewards: money, cars, women, a ton of nose candy, but his life soon spirals out of control when his friends turn on him, the authorities close in on his business, and his drug addiction begins to feed his paranoia.

Hell or High Water (2016)

Run Time: 102 min | IMDb: 7.6/10

Chris Pine, Ben Foster, and Jeff Bridges star in this neo-Western crime thriller about a pair of brothers who go on a bank-robbing spree to save their family’s ranch. Pine plays Toby, a down-on-his-luck father struggling to live right under mountains of inherited debt while Foster plays Tanner, his ex-con brother who has a wild streak that often endangers the two men on their jobs. Bridges is the aging sheriff tasked with bringing them to justice, but his job is made harder by the locals, who have no love for the bank chain the boys are stealing from. It’s a gritty, unapologetic tale of a forgotten America brought to life by some brilliant performances and an impressive script from Taylor Sheridan.

---

View Entire Post ›

Reclusive TDE rapper Isaiah Rashad hasn’t released new music in four years, since his 2016 full-length The Sun’s Tirade was met with near-universal acclaim. Fans were beginning to despair of ever hearing another new song from Rashad, even despite him promising that new music was on the way as recently as November of last year. However, those fans can finally breathe a sigh of relief: Isaiah Rashad has returned. His new song, the reassuring “Why Worry,” hit streaming platforms at midnight ET, with little fanfare but plenty of praise.

The song came amid a rush of new tracks from the Los Angeles-based label which included two new tracks from Zacari and Ab-Soul’s return track, “Dangerookipawaa Freestyle.” Soul’s track, which pays homage to Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith, the label’s founder, kicked off the deluge of new songs, which fans are declaring part of TDE Appreciation Week.

Isaiah Rashad was the one fans specifically wanted to see, though, as it’s been the longest since he released a new project as he wrote for other artists and made cryptic moves like deleting his social media. When he revealed the title of his new project, The House Is Burning, during a livestream last year, fans were finally given signs of life. With the arrival of “Why Worry,” it seems the wait is nearly over.

Listen to “Why Worry” above.

Bow Wow found himself in the unfamiliar position of having the rap internet defend him today after a fan account proposed a battle between the former child rap star and his former counterpart, Romeo Miller. The two rappers’ careers started at around the same time, and they were both fixtures on video countdown shows like Total Request Live and 106 & Park, so it seemed like a smart comparison on the surface. But within hours it was quite evident: Bow Wow can get roasted for his social media antics all day, but don’t dare sell his catalog short.

In the tweet that kicked off the debate, a fan called their suggestion “an innocent battle,” playing off the recent trend of Instagram Live “hit battles” that has entertained fans for the past several weeks. While a number of potential matchups have been suggested by everyone from former rivals to modern stars to Uproxx writers, one thing that seems to be in agreement is the need for at least a semi-even matchup.

That’s exactly what fans say they wouldn’t get from a Romeo/Bow Wow battle. Tweet after tweet pointed out just how many hits Bow Wow has extending back to his pre-teens. While recent hits have been in short supply, he’s got more than enough saved up to — as one fan put it — “spot Romeo 10 songs and STILL win.”

Check out the tweets above.

French Montana wants to battle Kendrick Lamar hit-for-hit on Instagram and doesn’t know why fans don’t think it’s a good idea. After making the offhand declaration that he would “outshine” Kendrick at a festival due to an overwhelming preponderance of hits, Twitter lit up with its usual array of skepticism, opposition, and ridicule. French was apparently taken aback, but doubled down, pointing out that as a rapper, he’s supposed to believe in himself — even in the face of what seems like insurmountable odds.

During an video interview with Complex, French was asked about possible matchups for him in a hypothetical Verzuz battle after his back-and-forth with Tory Lanez and responded: “I mean, honestly, you could put somebody like Kendrick Lamar next to me on the same stage at a festival. I might outshine him — not because I’m a better rapper or whatever it is. It’s just that I got more hits. Kendrick Lamar got albums. He got masterpieces. But if you were to put us on the festival stage I would outshine him because I have more hits than Kendrick Lamar.” The moment sparked a backlash on Twitter, prompting French to defend his comments.

“If we just talking about anthems,” he wrote. “Believe i can go neck to neck. I believe i can go neck to neck!! I been making hits for a long time!” He also scoffed at the idea that he should be intimidated, saying, “It ain’t my fault I believe in myself.” He wondered, “How was I supposed to answer that question?” before questioning his followers, “How many times I gotta prove myself before I get mine?”

French was, however, quick to clarify that he wasn’t trying to diss the Pulitzer Prize winner. “I love Kendrick!” he wrote in a follow-up tweet. “That’s not just for kendrick that’s to anybody they put in front of me, and ask me that same question. What u want me to say? It should be your attitude too. If u think any less of yourself don’t blame it on the next person who don’t!”

While it’s true that French has plenty of years in the rap game, with hits like “Pop That,” “Don’t Panic,” “Unforgettable,” and “All The Way Up” under hit belt, he seems to be discounting the whole Pulitzer Prize thing — when it comes to mainstream exposure, Kendrick Lamar is one of the best-known rappers of all time, which isn’t something that happens without hits. From “Poetic Justice” to “Alright” to “Humble,” Kendrick’s had at least one culture-shifting single on each of his albums, not including the sheer number of features he can pull out, including the dreaded “Control” verse.

On second thought, this is a battle I personally want to see. Do what French says: Set it up.

The controlled chaos of an improv show gets expanded to a full hour in Middleditch and Schwartz, a Netflix special/collection of three distinct taped performances showcasing actors Thomas Middleditch and Ben Schwartz’s command of a form that they’ve been practicing for years. Silly and inventive, the task at hand is grand with both posting up as a reliable scene partner for the other while jumping between multiple characters, carrying the thread of a story, and occasionally breaking the fourth wall to comment on what’s happening. Middleditch and Schwartz is, quite frankly, like nothing else currently on Netflix (it’s available to stream now).

Uproxx spoke with both recently about leaning on each other in a scene, the allure of longform improv, hitting the stage post-fear, and why they’re never going to be on Cameo.
So tell me a little bit about your background performing with each other.

Ben Schwartz: We were rivals for many years.

Thomas Middleditch: I poisoned many of his pets and he said, “What’s it going to take for you to stop poisoning my pets?” And I said, “Do two-person improv with me.”

Schwartz: And the crazy thing is I started doing two-person improv with him and then he kept killing my pets and I was like, “Why?” And he goes, “Just to show you, I still have the power.” It was so fucked up, I respected him so much that I was like, “Let’s go on tour together.”

Middleditch: You love a good power play. I think the true story goes…

We can do the whole interview like this.

Middleditch: Yeah, that’s what people need, right?

Schwartz: [Laughs] Oy Gevalt.

Middleditch: Now listen up to me! I moved to New York from Chicago, and I didn’t have very many friends and Ben was kind enough to go get pizza with me! So we got some pizza, and we talked about doing some improv and then we did two-person improv at a night called School Night at UCB where we’d do like five or eight minutes, a real short set, and then we just kind of hit it off and then it was just something that we did here and there until I demanded that we start taking it more seriously. And Ben, after years, finally relented.

Schwartz: When Thomas came from Chicago, I saw him on stage and he was clearly so fucking good and so funny. And he’s exactly right. Two-person, five-minute shows and then a little bit longer, then I moved to LA, and then he moved to LA, and we started doing it there and some people started coming, and then we started doing a 30-minute show.

How do you deal with the challenge of extending way out beyond a five-minute thing and keeping track of all these characters — I imagine fear plays into it at some point.

Middleditch: It’s just entirely exciting. Fear isn’t even a part of it. The closest thing is maybe a little bit of anxiety. Like, when we first played Carnegie Hall because it was like such a milestone for us, so we just wanted the show to go well. And the extreme is Netflix, there was so much pressure. Improv is like, you just want it to be free. But here’s this high thing… “this is what you’ve been waiting for, I hope it’s good.” But even when we’re trying to do a scene, and it happens from time to time, we’re in the scene, or if there’s just like 15 minutes in the show and we’re kind of like, “Huh, not sure where this is going to go here.” Our little writer brains are maybe struggling to latch on to something. It’s not fear. It’s kind of problem-solving as opposed to panic.

Schwartz: I think a lot of that fear occurs at the beginning while you’re failing and failing and nobody’s seen you perform and you can’t get laughs. You’re making too many jokes. You’re not connecting with the team. I think, for me at least, a lot of that happened. We’ve been very fortunate in that we’ve been playing together pretty well for a while now, so there won’t be a show that totally bombs. But if there’s a moment that feels like, “We’ve got to get some laughs.” It feels like that moment exactly that Thomas mentioned. “Okay, we’ve got to figure this out. Let’s get into this, let’s push a little harder.” Because the best improv is always when you don’t see us working hard at all. Yes, there are some shows where we literally play ten characters each and you never know what’s going to happen. That’s hard work. That’s mental sweat. If we get into a corner or we can’t figure out a way out. But I think it’s just that we’ve been doing it for so long that we’re able to navigate, and also with each other, I’m able to trust Thomas that if we’re in this situation and I don’t have anything that he probably has something or vice versa.

Are there non-verbal cues or signs? How do you let him know, “Okay, this isn’t going well”?

Schwartz: There are no baseball signs that we’re throwing each other to do things. It’s literally just a matter of once you’ve been working with someone for quite some time — and the same with writing or acting or other jobs, — where you get a feel while they’re doing something, where you know where it’s going to go, where you can kind of join in, and where you can create it together. But very rarely will someone be like, “What the fuck is going on?” You know what I mean?

Middleditch: This is a show that’s a little different, where Ben and I break the fourth wall all the time. So if we’re in a scene and just don’t know what’s going on, it’s happened before where one of us was like, “I don’t really know what’s going on with this, but we can figure this out.” And we keep it loose because I think we slide in and out of, “okay, in this particular moment we’re really 100% from the point of view of the characters” and it’s like a very sincere thing. And then we’ll flip off the switch, we’ll sidebar and make fun of each other on a personal level or comment about “What the hell are you doing?” We dart in and out, which I think is super freeing.

Is that the difference between good improv and bad improv: not taking it too seriously?

Schwartz: That’s not the case. There are very strong, very serious and great improv groups. But also, the inverse of that, if nothing has any meaning, there’s no space to anything, then you get bored watching what’s going on on the stage. I think that you have to have a looseness with your partner, or whatever that means. And I think that Thomas and I, we kind of developed this version of a form that we have where we do a show for an hour and, you kind of pace yourself. You know exactly how long you have and stuff like that. Right Thomas? I wouldn’t say there’s…

Middleditch: You wouldn’t say there’s a what?

Schwartz: I don’t know. What was the question? What is this interview?

We’re talking about House Of Lies season 2…

Schwartz: I didn’t understand why Cheadle had to that…

Exactly, yeah. No, I’m trying to figure out what the difference is between good improv and bad improv and Ben was basically telling me that I’m a moron. And then Thomas, you were going to redeem my thought.

Middleditch: [Laughs] I’m actually going to piggyback on Ben. I think it’s a mix because, just as Ben was saying, TJ and Dave out of Chicago are legendary. They do a show that is honestly a big inspiration for us, but they don’t really break the fourth wall. They’re in it and they act the hell out of that and it’s really great. But it’s a different pace, it’s a different style. But you can’t say, “Oh, they’re not having enough fun. They’re not good.” They’re legendary, they’re masters of that. And I would actually argue, and I’ve seen very silly, like “I don’t give a fuck” improv where it’s like nonsense after nonsense, but it’s a good time. It feels a bit like you’ve had popcorn for dinner, but it’s a good time. And I would actually say that, because that feels so alluring as a new, young improviser, where you see a group that’s just shooting from the hip and they bail on scenes and characters, that there’s often a wave of almost unaffected improv that I see a lot. And I think that’s kind of boring. I think if you just have a couple of people quote, unquote “playing” characters in a scene and they’re not really in it, it’s just sort of two people standing and delivering dumb stuff to say. I need a little bit more investment. Even if I’m going to totally negate that, and two seconds later break the fourth wall and talk to Ben as Ben, I still want to snap back in and play that part. I think it makes for a more engaging show, at least how we’re doing it. Again, we’re doing a show where there’s a narrative, characters, and story unfolding. Right? There’s plenty of shows that are just, the scene resets, and it’s new people, new premise, do whatever, and that’s going to be its own little thing. And those can be fun too.

Yeah, of course.

Middleditch: But the key to it is definitely not like whatever the fuck you said.

Schwartz: I can’t even remember what stupid, fucking, idiotic thing you said.

Middleditch: Oh my God!

[Laughs] This is amazing. You guys could put this on Cameo, and people who want self-abuse could just pay you guys 200 or 300 bucks.

Middleditch: Do people want to get put down on Cameo? Is that a thing?

I don’t know. I’ve only done Cameo one time. I did it for a friend of mine and I asked them to leave a specific inside joke about Hitchhiker’s Guide and they ignored the ask and I left them a good review anyway because I’m not going to give someone notes in the end times.

Schwartz: No! But they gave a message to your friend, how fun is that? I’m sure he flipped out.

Yeah, he lost his mind. But it seems to be a growing thing. I imagine if this thing continues a few more months, more people will be on there.

Middleditch: Not me.

Stay strong. I’m sure it’s not exactly a joyful task.

Middleditch: You can put that in the article, I’m not doing Cameo, so will the representatives from Cameo please stop DMing me on Instagram? Every other week, there’s some guy like, “Hi, we’re from Cameo, we would love to have you on our platform.” Not happening, quit bugging me!

[Laughs] I can’t tell if you’re being truthful or not. I hope you are. So I’m going to keep it in.

Middleditch: I’m being 100% truthful.

That’s awesome. Ben, you gonna do Cameo?

Schwartz: No, I’m okay for now.

How much would it cost for you to do Jean Ralphio for people, for birthday party greetings? How much money? What’s your price?

Middleditch: It’s $50k.

Schwartz: The only thing I would do is like a charity thing, but even then, I’d be like, “Hey, if you want something for charity, I’ll just make you a video or something else.” My friend bought the exact same thing you did to try to get an NBA player for her friend’s birthday and they flipped out. So I understand why it exists. But Thomas is not going to play Richard Hendricks to tell your daughter to have a happy quinceañera. He refuses to.

Middleditch: I don’t care about your daughter. I don’t even know her!

Again, I think that’s the right attitude to have.

Middleditch: Thank you.

So, with the special, how different is the mindset going into something where you’re recording it versus having it live only that night? Are you setting any kind of limitations on yourselves?

Schwartz: We tried not to put restraints on ourselves, but there are obvious restraints. One is that we can’t sing copyrighted songs, stuff that you don’t even think about. But, you’re told beforehand, “If you sing this, it’s going to cost blank amount of money, and we don’t have any money for the special, so we can’t pay for that.” These rules for television that we never have to think about when we’re on stage. You can’t talk about a celebrity and stuff. Even if you’re playing them in a fictitious way, you can’t do it in a disparaging way, blah, blah, blah. So, that’s the first time, for me at least, performing where you have to stop your brain if it’s going to go in that direction, or if we did do something like that, we couldn’t use it. I think that was the biggest thing.

Middleditch: Yeah, we got used to it. I think the goal was to just, as accurately as we could, capture what we do on any given night that we’re out on the road or at some nice theater and we’re doing what we do. Just capture that, translate that, put it on a TV screen, or a laptop, computer, or whatever the hell.

Schwartz: The other thing to keep in mind, is that when a standup puts out a special, they’ve worked on that specific work for six months or a year, and then they make the special. For this, it’s whatever we film is what our specials are, and I think you can feel the excitement of that in the special. Hopefully, people feel that, that it’s like, “Oh, it’s all being made up on the spot.”

Is the goal to do this as a somewhat regular thing?

Schwartz: Yeah, I would love that.

Middleditch: That’s up to Netflix. And in return, it’s up to the people who watch it. Just hopefully, they watch it, and whatever crazy Netflix algorithm happens, they can go, “Oh wow, this is successful. Let’s see more,” because it’s possible. You just rent out a theater for a couple of nights and bada boom.

Schwartz: We love improv. We’ve been doing it for so long, and the fact that we get to do these shows and maybe people who’ve never seen improv before are going to see it for the first time, and they’ll buy “Truth in Comedy” or go take a class. That’s really exciting for us. In the end, that’s the reason why we do longform improv and it’s something we did for free for 18 or 20 years. It’s just that we love it. We love it so much. So, our hope is that people will get to see that we love it and stuff like that.

How do you take it to the next level?

Schwartz: You talking about taking it to the max!?

How do you take it to the max!?

Schwartz: Thomas and I want to go out of the country, and if these Netflix shows do well and all these people in different countries get to see us and enjoy the show, that would be a trip, man. To go to the UK, to go to Australia. That stuff would be pretty cool. And because I’m from New York, if there are bigger and bigger venues we play in New York, it’s just a trip for me because I grew up looking at those venues and watching shows. So, that’s always like … There are all these little things that we don’t even know are on our bucket list. Then, we do them. We’re like, “Oh my God.” Like Carnegie Hall was crazy. For a two-person improv troupe to play Carnegie Hall for an hour and 25 minutes, it was really, really special. So, I guess we just keep doing it until people don’t want us to.

‘Middleditch And Schwartz’ specials are available to stream on Netflix right now.