by Mike Sacks
Was there a great pressure to succeed?
No. None. My mum would have been proud if I were a serial killer. She would've boasted that I'd murdered thirteen prostitutes and left no forensic evidence: “He's the best of the lot!” There was no pressure from my parents to achieve or to be anything. And they kept me very close. I'd go out with my parents often, and I'd spend all my time with them. I was very introspective.
But your style of humor is not inward or introspective at all.
It's weird. I was always popular and had a lot of friends, but I didn't go out with them often. I still don't go out much. But I do think it's vital to leave the house and meet people and explore life, to get inspiration for your work. The scourge of comedy is when it eats itself — when comedy writers watch sitcoms and think, Oh, you know, such and such a show is great. Let's do something a bit similar to that. I think that's wrong, really. I think the idea is to live life and take inspiration from that experience, as opposed to just getting inspiration from other artists and their work.
When did you first meet Sacha?
When I was 11-years-old, at Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, outside London.
What was the school like? Was it similar to the British school portrayed in Lindsay Anderson's 1968 movie If ….. ?
[Laughs] No, unfortunately not. There was no machine-gunning from the rooftops. But it's funny: Our school was, without a doubt, the making of my and Sacha's senses of humor. The school was full of very smart, but very cowardly, Jewish boys. If we had gone to the local school or, say, a less Jewish school, we would have spent a lot of time sharpening our instincts for fighting and avoiding fights. But we were all such nice, weak Jewish boys who were afraid to fight that we would spend most of our time honing our verbal instincts. Instead of pugilism, we'd resort to puns.
A lot of like-minded, smart, young Jews emerged from that school. Matt Lucas, the writer and actor from [BBC's] Little Britain, was there. There's a very famous British stand-up comic, David Baddiel, who went there. Basically, as far as I can work out, half of the British comedy community is made up of ex-Haberdashers'.
By the way, I have this other theory on comedy. Specifically, why so many Jews are funny. At the age of thirteen — the most awkward phase of any young man's life — we're spotty, we're ugly, we're either just pre- or post-pubescent, and we are forced to get up in front of a group of those nearest and dearest to us — people we care about most — and not only give this great performance in a foreign language but also make a speech, and be the center of attention. It's a baptism of fire, this Bar Mitzvah. And if you can face that at that age, then everything is pretty much downhill. That's the most hideous ritual and rite of passage you can possibly imagine. Forget jumping over goatherds in Mumbai.
It makes cutting off your foreskin with a bamboo stick look easy.
That's exactly it. It's just horrific. After that, everything seems like a breeze.
Did your Bar Mitzvah ceremony have a theme?
Yes, “Barely Able to Afford the Bar Mitzvah.” Around three hundred people were invited. I blanked out while it was happening. It was like Vietnam. I suffer posttraumatic stress just thinking about it. And, obviously, the photos are still on display in the Mazer household — the velvet tuxedo and all that.
The shame and the humiliation of it all was incredible. And, of course, I didn't have a girlfriend to invite, and lots of my friends did have girlfriends. I had lied to all of my friends about what my life was like outside school: “Yeah, I've got loads of glamorous girlfriends that you don't know or haven't seen, and my family is very comfortably off with a great sense of style and wit.” The trouble is, it's all laid bare there on that day. There's no hiding from anything. Everybody sees your life.
Did Sacha come to your Bar Mitzvah?
Actually, he didn't. He was a year ahead of me at school. We knew each other, but we weren't necessarily great friends yet. And I didn't go to his Bar Mitzvah either. We became friends a little later and attended the same university, Cambridge.
I read a few interviews with your former classmates from Cambridge, and in some cases you and Sacha and the rest of your friends were described as an “arrogant bunch.”
Oh, yes. I mean, if you put that combination of Jewish and middle class and Cambridge together, it's not a particularly savory thing. There are immediately three strikes against you right there.
Basically, the Haberdashers' school gave us this kind of self-assurance that we were special and destined to make our marks in life. That was just exacerbated by going to Cambridge, where we were told that we were the cream of the country's intelligentsia. Even as you arrive, they tell you, “In this room, there will be two future prime ministers, one future chancellor of the Exchequer, and two Nobel Prize winners.” You're singled out for greatness.
At that age, you have a combination of cockiness and self-assuredness anyway, where you think anything is possible. So, if people are further gilding the lily and telling you all those great things, who are you to resist?
I was in the Cambridge Footlights, which was the university's theatrical club. We produced plays and satiric sketches. Apart from being a breeding ground for comedy, I think it's also a home for the most arrogant and unpleasant kind of young people in Britain. Occasionally, television crews would come and film us for whatever reason. And my mum, as you can probably imagine, diligently videotaped me anytime I appeared on TV. To this day, I live in fear of anybody seeing those tapes. Every single time my wife goes to my mum's house, she begs to see them — but if she ever did see them, she would divorce me.
What, exactly, is on those tapes?
Sketches on British morning TV, or interviews. The Footlights have this great legacy at Cambridge, so people assumed that some of us would go on to become famous, and they wanted to be the first to interview the next generation of Germaine Greers, Peter Cooks, Eric Idles, and John Cleeses, all of whom graduated from the Footlights.
You know, we were given this legacy and we just assumed that it's the most natural thing in the world following in these footsteps. Why wouldn't you think that? And it's just horrible. I was the most arrogant, unpleasant young man.
Don't you need a bit of arrogance in life? Especially in show business?
I think you need it to a degree. And I think that's the reason why people from Cambridge are successes. It's not because they're funnier than anybody else; it's just that they've been given the belief that they're funnier. Therefore, they're more unshakable on their way up. And in a kind of natural selection, they're less likely to fall by the wayside.
Can you remember any of the sketches you wrote and performed at Footlights?
Most of my sketches were dreadful and involved me getting naked or wearing few clothes — possibly just a Speedo. But I do remember one good sketch: a friend and I played alternative-therapy paramedics. We'd deliver holistic medicine but in a very aggressive way, almost as if we were performing an EKG on a heart-attack victim. In this case, we rubbed juniper onto a pimple. I can't remember the end of the sketch, but I'm pretty sure I got naked or wore a Speedo.
Your original major was law, wasn't it? When did you plan to switch majors from law to acting?
Originally, my interest in law came about because I liked the TV show L.A. Law. This isn't an exaggeration. I thought I could be a dashing Harry Hamlin — esque lawyer out to save the day. But then, within about two hours of my sitting down in my first law lecture and learning phrases like “bona fide purchases,” “thirdparty equities,” and all the rest of it, it occurred to me that the law wasn't quite as sexy as the creator of L.A. Law, Steven Bochco, was making it out to be. I realized, Well, hold on. I don't like law. I like television, and I've made a terrible mistake.
At the end of my second year — it's a three-year course — I told my parents, “Look, I'm not going to be a lawyer. I'm going to try and make a career in comedy.” I think my parents just ignored it and pretended it wasn't happening, because it was just too t
raumatic for them. They already pictured me in a barrister's wig and had probably already told their friends that I was a lawyer.
Did Sacha ever make it into Footlights?
He never actually did. That's the terrible, terrible thing. And that just shows you the weird, arrogant, cloistered world of Footlights. It was such a horrible clique that Sacha was considered too outrageous for it.
Did he try out?
Yes, he did — a couple of times.
What were his sketches like?
Loud, shocking, and vulgar. They just completely pushed the envelope. And the thing about Footlights is that it's quite sedate and chucklesome and always clever and satirical and smart. And always self-mocking. Of course, Sacha would come in and just be massive and larger than life. And that just wasn't done.
I remember one sketch Sacha wrote that was set in a suit shop, and it ended with someone ejaculating. I think we've probably since done that for the Borat character. There's an old adage about humor writers and comedians: no idea is never not used somewhere at some time.
What was your first writing job after you graduated from Cambridge?
I did stand-up comedy for about a year. I realized that I was fine, but I was never going to be great. I would watch stand-ups who were exceptional, and I'd think, okay, they've just got the stand-up funny bone, and they can do it. Meanwhile, I'm just workmanlike. So, I gave up performing and haven't done it since. That whole performing gene immediately went away, and now I'm petrified of it. It's just horrible — that constant pressure to be funny.
So, a year after college, I became a TV researcher on a show called The Big Breakfast, which was a British morning show. I started writing for two puppets called Zig and Zag. They were like Muppets, but they had a saucy wit to them. They were aliens from the Planet Zog, whose spaceship had landed in The Big Breakfast studios, and they would interview celebrities. One morning, they interviewed the rappers Ol' Dirty Bastard and Method Man.
How did that go over?
It was amazing. Ol' Dirty Bastard and Method Man both couldn't speak, because they were so freaked out by these two puppets and a spaceship; they genuinely thought they'd gone into space.
I did that show for about a year, and then I worked on one show called The 11 O'Clock Show, which was a British version of The Daily Show, except that we wrote a lot more jokes about cocks.
When I got the job at The 11 O'Clock Show, I brought Sacha in and we began working together. One of the characters he performed was Ali G.
How was the Ali G character created?
Sacha already had a rough version of this character, but we really honed Ali G on The 11 O'Clock Show.
Initially, the character of Ali G was a sort of upper-class guy who of himself as a gangster rapper. The direct inspiration for that character were these preposterous people who were rich but pretended that they were very street. Similar to the sons of bishops in Britain who pretend to be from the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles. It was all slightly ludicrous.
So, that was the basis of the character, but he was very cartoonish and not very believable. The key change came about when we put Sacha on television with real people — political figures, academics, people in the news. That made him more real.
Do you remember the first time you witnessed this change?
Yes, it was amazing. Ali G was interviewing an economist, Dr. Madsen Pirie. The interview actually never aired, because we didn't yet have the legal expertise and our release wouldn't hold up. But it was an amazing eureka moment. We thought, Holy shit! It's funny, it's different, it's satirical. And it's intelligent, and it's stupid at the same time. It was just this incredible mixture of Candid Camera meets brilliant sketch comedy meets stand-up comedy meets political entity. It was an amazing thing, and the idea that this trick, this kind of jukery, could work was a complete revelation.
So you knew right away that you hit gold?
Immediately. It's such a rare thing for something like that to happen. It really is similar to gold mining. You find little bits here and there, and you toil away, and you do things you think are funny, and you make a nice living, and people might talk about something you wrote.
But occasionally you might find a nugget. You just find this thing that is completely different and special, and you have a moment when you just know. At that point, you have to trust that instinct and really go with it. Happily, the channel we were on, Channel 4 in Britain, did trust it, and here we are — years later — still chipping away at that one nugget.
You mention Candid Camera, but there seems to be a major difference: At the end of each Candid Camera bit there was always a reveal: “Smile, you're on Candid Camera!” Whereas with Ali G, there was never a reveal. The participants found out about the joke only when the show was broadcast.
We were really keen to maintain the integrity throughout. But on a personal level, none of us could bear the embarrassment of the moment when we said, “Ha-ha! It's a joke.” It comes back to the cowardly Jew. We just thought: oh, god, we've got to get out of here. We never wanted to tell them that it was a joke, for fear that they might punch us.
We also felt that if someone complained long and hard enough, the channel would then be unwilling to broadcast it. If people liked it and thought it was funny, Channel 4 would be more willing to take a risk on it.
Was there ever a satirical purpose to the character? Or was the purpose just to make people laugh?
I think it absolutely, definitely had an unrepentant satirical purpose. We chose the people Ali G interviewed for a reason. It was either because we found something pompous or objectionable about them, or we thought we could make a point about society through them. We didn't just find little old ladies on the streets or people who worked in shops. We chose everybody for distinct and definite reasons.
To play devil's advocate, what was pompous or objectionable about professors or teachers who were just average citizens? Are they as worthy of satirizing as, say, political or media figures?
The people that you talk about were prepared to believe a societal point. They were prepared to believe that someone as stupid as Ali G could exist. It says a lot about generations and people's perception of youth. Ali G is somebody who can ask self-evidently idiotic questions that a 4-year-old wouldn't ask. And yet, there are people so pompous and with such a jaded view of youth that they would believe a young man could be capable of that.
On another level, there's a whole culture of people who appear on television just to appear on television. It's like, Look how important I am.
Would this also hold true for someone like the astronaut Buzz Aldrin? Ali G asked him if he was ever jealous of Louis Armstrong being “the first man on the moon.” He also asked if man would ever “walk on the sun.” It was very funny, but where was the satire there?
I think we hold a mirror up to people. We don't edit things to make people look more stupid or ignorant. A lot of people come out of the Ali G interviews looking great.
Ali G interviewed General Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser [for Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush]. We thought Scowcroft was going to be this evil ex-military, ultra-right-wing despot. But he turned out to be the most kind, avuncular, sweet, and gentle man, even after Ali G confused “anthrax” with “Tampax.” And he came out of the whole thing wonderfully. He responded to Ali G in a not-at-all-patronizing fashion and actually tried to engage with him.
My all-time favorite Ali G interview was with a left-wing politician in Britain named Tony Benn. He just completely stood up to Ali G: “You treat women with a great deal of disrespect. You call them a ‘bitch.’ It's just like animals. You're calling them animals!” You know, he didn't take any of Ali G's rubbish, and he came out fantastically well. As a result, he had a real renaissance in popularity amongst the younger generation. He was re-introduced as a liberal hero to a whole new generation.
I think there was a satirical point in every interview, in terms of how people dealt
with these attitudes. It's such a shocking situation for people that it shakes them out of their usual persona of how they deal with interviews and how they deal with the media.
The race card has also made a lot of interview subjects incredibly nervous.
God, absolutely. We were always very evasive about what race Ali G was and what he was supposed to represent. That allows people to draw their own conclusions.
We once had Ali G do an interview at West Point military academy, in New York, and it's the only place we've ever been thrown out. We set up the equipment, and then Sacha entered the room dressed in this big yellow outfit. And they said, “Okay, who's going to do the interview?” And we said, “Right over there — Ali G.” And then a blind panic came across the room, including generals and media people. They had a confab and then came back to us and said, “No. I'm sorry, we can't do this.”
What made them so nervous?
I took one of the P.R. people aside and asked, “Why? What's the problem?” And he pointed to Ali G and said, “We don't want this man coming in here with his canary-yellow suit and his Harlem ways.” And I thought, You know, that's just so unacceptable.
Unfortunately, we didn't catch this on camera, but it just spoke volumes as to how people react to this character. There's always a great moment we fail to catch, when people realize for the first time that the character who is going to perform the interview is Ali G. And it's the very last thing they expect. I think that that speaks for peoples' perception of both race and youth.
On the other hand, race also affects people in the opposite manner. I'm thinking of the time when Ali G asked a policeman, “Why are you treating me like this? Is it 'cause I black?” The policeman, who had just been rude to him, becomes quite respectful.