An Interview With Paul F. Tompkins: Podcast King And Hero Of The Cult Comedy Nerds

When reading the credits of Paul F Tompkins’ comedy and voice work career, one might think he was some lost relic of the vaudeville, variety and Hanna-Barbera cartoon era. Tompkins has played an urbane alcoholic ghost catcher, a time travelling H.G. Wells, a nihilistic German film director, a baker with supernatural powers, and a naïve talking show-biz pooch. The image of Tompkins himself — a pinstriped comedic sartorialist with an ear for the verbally absurd — does nothing to dissuade the idea of a man out of time. And yet, in the digital age of podcast networks and an audience hungry for callback comedy that takes risks, Tompkins is a figurehead of a certain section of today’s comedy scene.

You might know Tompkins from Netflix’s BoJack Horseman, where he plays the titular character’s career arch nemesis: an unflappably optimistic golden retriever-human hybrid. With a long enough memory, you might remember him from the highly influential ‘90s sketch comedy show Mr Show, which launched Bob Odenkirk and David Cross into the world. Maybe you’ve seen him interview everyone from Zach Galifianakis to Sarah Silverman to Alison Brie on his web series Speakeasy.

Or perhaps you’ve heard him on podcasts, from Earwolf’s Comedy Bang Bang (on which he plays oddball versions of famous people like Werner Herzog, Happy Days creator Garry Marshal, Andrey Lloyd Webber, and Ice T; now also a TV show), to Superego, to his own Spontaneanation and the Dead Authors Podcast.

Or you know him from The Thrilling Adventure Hour. TAH is an olde timey radio play, often performed live, within which he plays half of a delightfully tipsy married couple that dispose of paranormal phenomena between drinks. It’s in this iteration that you’ll have access to PFT next week, as the entire Thrilling Adventure Hour team (17 members) comes to Sydney for a couple of live shows. Although, when you’re talking about a modern day stage revival of a retro audio throwback, what exactly a ‘live show’ entails might not be so obvious.

“You’re seeing half a dozen people standing in front of microphones holding scripts,” Tompkins says. “They’re dressed nicely. And they are probably trying to break each other, and succeeding to various degrees. Some people are cast iron on that show, and cannot be broken, and some people are ready to go as soon as there’s blood in the water. I shouldn’t make it seem like that’s the thrust of the show. It’s really about telling a bunch of stories that are set in these totally different worlds, put together by people with impeccable timing.

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Junkee: The whole olde-timey-ness of the Thrilling Adventure Hour seems pretty on-brand for you. Do you think there’s something inherently funny about the past?

PFT: I suppose it is only natural for us to look back and say, “Oh quaint peasants, they didn’t know.” They were so dumb! And the things that they worried about and the things that were important to them seem so ridiculous now … I look back on history as this adorable thing. Look at these cute fools! They have no idea that we would have telephones and hybrid cars!

I [particularly] like the turn of the twentieth century, when the patent office was going to close, because they thought everything had been invented. “We did it! We’re all done. We might as well just close up shop here.” I think after the car they just thought, what else was there left to invent?

Between Thrilling Adventure Hour, Superego and Comedy Bang Bang, there’s a lot of invention going on in your work. A certain outlandish amount of fantasy and world building.

I really enjoy it. With the Thrilling Adventure Hour especially, those guys really have built a world, and you really do get the satisfaction as that world continues to unfold. You also get to just make a bunch of silly jokes. With Comedy Bang Bang it’s more of a burden, because I’m given a much more active role in creating that canon. Whatever path Scott Aukerman [host of CBB] leads me down, I have to follow — it’s a lot different from having two people write it for me, and saying what’s on this page is how it’s going to be. [When it’s scripted,] there’s no danger in someone saying, “How come you’ve grown an extra head since the last time I’ve seen you?” And then I guess you have two heads now, which is always the danger in improv.

I’ve always been drawn to this kind of thing, since I was a kid. There’s a lot of inherent comedy in fantasy and science fiction, and I get to play with those things, and be involved in the mythos of them. It has nothing to do with the actual people who exist on Earth, but for someone like Cake Boss, it amuses me to layer supernatural abilities onto this person.

Comedy Bang Bang is hosted on the Earwolf network, alongside other podcasts hosted by yourself, Paul Scheer, Tig Notaro, Andy Daly, Lauren Lapkus and others. It feels like the L.A. comedy scene is some lovely village where you all wander around and cheerfully bump into each other and do each others’ podcasts. Like Smurf village.

That’s exactly what it’s like because none of us wear shirts. It really feels like a community. You’re getting together and pretending, and all the riffing that’s done, all the tightening of ridiculous scenarios and challenging each other — it’s really wonderful.

We just did the new Bob Odenkirk and David Cross show — it’s all the people from Mr Show in the ’90s, and we just did this new series of shows for Netflix. What was great for me was to look out into the audience and to see people who were fans of Mr Show, who were fans of comedy, and one or two generations behind me, and to see all these people — it really touched me.

Most big-time comedy fans are hugely excited for the Mr Show reunion. Has the dynamic changed at all? You and Scott Aukerman and Brian Posehn have pretty distinct comedy personalities now, whereas that was your first paid comedy gig back then, right?

It was crazy [back then]. We were already fans. To get to work on this thing, that you already loved, was a really heady situation. It’s still Bob and David’s show, for sure — the only big difference for me and Scott and Brian is that [this time around] it wasn’t terrifying anymore. There wasn’t a thick blanket of anxiety covering everything.

The regular terrors of that job were to pitch ideas and risk having them shut down. The hardest part was saying, “Here’s my little idea, please don’t hate me.” Everything after that was easy. Everyone’s a grown-up now and is married and had kids, and a lot of us have our own shows. It was great to do this and not feel like it was life and death, and that we might be fired at any moment.

Between podcasts like Nerdist and WTF, and reunions like Mr Show and the upcoming Wet Hot American Summer, comedy seems to be at peak nerd. Does it feel different creating in this environment?

The thing that’s changed is that you now, as a creator, have access to opinions that you didn’t have access to before. In the past you might see something a TV critic had written, but you would still have to go and seek that out — you might even have to go to a news stand and buy a magazine. And now it’s very easy to find out if someone despises you. Or, worse, if someone is a fan and is kind of disappointed and wishes that this thing had been different…

Especially with podcasting, because 90% of the time, it’s free. Scott Aukerman has this idea that it’s meant to be ephemeral, it’s meant to be disposable. It’s not written down, it’s not workshopped; it’s spontaneous, the end. For people to judge it with such a microscopic focus – this moment was good, this moment was not so good — it’s like, what are you doing?

BoJack Horseman seems to have won a fan base very quickly. The world of the show offers a strange parallel universe Hollywood, and the industry assholes we might expect are all there, but these characters seem more likable — maybe because they’re portrayed by walking, talking animals?

That’s what it took to see Hollywood as real people.

Lisa [Hanawalt]’s character designs are amazing; you really do like them as soon as you see them. They’re just human enough and just animal enough to make your heart go out to them. I’m not a big fan of Hollywood navel-gazing and insider jokes, but BoJack, they really made the heart the most important thing. I didn’t know, when I was offered that job, that that’s what I was getting into. It starts off and you think it’s going to be your typical cartoon for adults, and then it goes off into a place that’s really satisfying.

You play Mr Peanutbutter, who’s BoJack’s career arch nemesis. Have you ever had one of your own?

What’s so great about those two is that they’ve had the exact same opportunities, but BoJack just looks at it completely differently. And that’s a fantastic lesson in life. It’s very easy to assign blame, and it’s our natural instinct. It’s certainly mine. Every time something goes terrible in my life I try to figure out whose fault can this be — other than mine. There must be someone responsible, because I do not want it to be me. And then eventually I come around to the idea that, “Oh yeah, I really fucked that up.”

At any given moment there have been so many people who have fulfilled that role for me. But I’m very happy to say I don’t have that right now.

When you think about what type of dog you would be if you were a dog-man, is it a golden retriever?

There’s something that’s very noble about a golden retriever that I don’t think is very me at all. If I was to be transformed into some kind of man-dog, it would probably be a dachshund/beagle mix. It’s laughable. It’s this little weird mixture of things. It takes two ridiculous things and puts them together to make an even more ridiculous thing. It’s how I always will see myself.

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Sydney Comedy Festival Presents: The Thrilling Adventure Hour 

Chatswood: Friday May 15, 9pm @ The Concourse — tickets here

Enmore: Saturday May 16, 9.30pm @ The Enmore Theatre — tickets here

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Matt Roden works at the Sydney Story Factory, and co-hosts both Sydney storytelling night Confession Booth and FBi Radio’s Saturday morning film & TV show, Short Cuts. His illustration and design work is here.