by Today on Funny Or Die, NYC comedy duo Pete & Brian unveiled their latest short film, FCU: Fact Checkers Unit with Bill Murray. Let’s play the clip, then talk with Pete and Brian about it.
Directed by Dan Beers. Written by Dan Beers, Peter Karinen and Brian Sacca
OK, boys. Explain yourselves.
Pete: "The three of us wanted to work together in some capacity so we decided to make a short together. Brian had the idea to make a CSI spoof…I think it was Brian’s idea originally to do something about fact-checkers."
How did they rope Murray into it? Dan Beers had worked on "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" with him. "We faxed Bill a question asking if he wanted to be in it," Beers said. Apparently, that’s how you get in touch with Bill Murray. As he added, "Bill doesn’t have an agent or a manager or a publicist, which makes it difficult to get a hold of him." Wow.
Of all the comedy video sites out there, why Funny Or Die?
Pete said they’ve hosted Pete & Brian shorts in the past.
Brian: "One of the great things about Funny Or Die, because it’s a selective site, the content is…good quality. The stuff there is generally pretty funny. And we respect what they post."
Bill Murray wasn’t originally part of the concept, though.
Brian: "It was literally while we were writing it…Dan said wouldn’t it be funny if we got bill murray in this…"
Pete: "Brian and I started nodding our heads vigorously…No, he was not part of the original concept at all."
Brian: "It was about Pete and I being fact checkers. Fact checkers taking their jobs way too seriously."
At nine minutes, it’s awful long for an online comedy video. But they said it’s more of a short film — or even a pilot. Pete said the idea is to break out the FCU guys as a series, "whether that’s a Web series or a TV series. We’re also looking into developing it for commercial uses."
But no film festivals or comedy festivals, Pete said. "I don’t think the short exactly has Sundance written all over it. And Brian and I had a different short that went to festivals already…from what I gather, the business has really changed a lot. When studios are going to film festivals, they’re not going to the shorts programs and they’re not making deals off of shorts…It is an experiment to deal with viewers’ attention spans…We’re not calling this a viral video. We’re calling this a short film that we’re debuting online. We think the production value is a lot better than a lot of these videos…We didn’t just pick up a camera and make funny faces."
Related: As far as I can tell, here are the lyrics to Bill Murray’s Chopsticks song…"Chopsticks I used when I got ’em at the takeout store when I went out for chop suey, They were chopsticks I used, they’re the chopsticks I chose to choose all my chopsuey, Chinese style! Chopsticks….that I chose to chew at the…"
