Reddit AMA Recap: Robert Smigel talks ‘Jack and Triumph Show’

The great Rob Smigel had a chance to stop by Reddit to do an AMA session, and of course it was hysterical and filled with storied tales of being in the business for almost three decades with stops on NBC (SNL), NBC (Conan), and now on Adult Swim (The Jack and Triumph Show).

Rob had a chance to work with some of the biggest people in television today, such as Louis CK, Bob Odenkirk, Dino Stamatopolous, and a litany of others, so it’s no surprise that he had a lot to say. Not only that, but he was a big part of the recent Night of Too Many Stars benefit which helps raise money for autism charities which is a close and personal deal to my heart due to the fact that my mother works for a school that cares for special needs children and I personally have three cousins whom are all autistic.

Rob’s Reddit AMA proved to be entertaining with a number of excellent anecdotes, and we have some highlights below:

How  Conspiracy Theory Rock about “Mediaopoly” made it on NBC

Hey! Real quick – it’s in the SNL book but short answer – NBC was shockingly cool with it before it aired. It went a few extra steps up the chain – to Don Ohlmeyer – but they let it on. I added one line about “the voices in my head” to imply that maybe the narrator was crazy – after all it was a conspiracy theory. but all was fine until it aired, the network president, Bob Wright, didn’t think it was cool and it was dumped from reruns. It got more attention from being dumped than from airing, and I still hear about it all the time. Years later, I called Bob Wright personally and he gave me permission to put it on the Best of Saturday TV Funhouse DVD. Nobody likes that part of the story. I should learn to stop before the network-nice part.

How many Triumph heads have been created:

The first head melted on my windowsill one summer. I’ve gone through a bunch of heads. Now we’re making a mold and making our own, because we’re running out of originals (they don’t make them anymore). Got an old one? We’ll overpay!

THERE WAS AN AMBIGUOUSLY GAY DUO SCREENPLAY!!!!

There is a full AGD screenplay written by Colbert and myself. It was the last thing he worked on before the Colbert Report. I pulled some of my favorite jokes from it when we did the live action SNL Ace and Gary with Hamm and Fallon.

Smigel’s inspirations for TV Funhouse:

The cartoons or the animal puppets..? Cartoons – I loved the cheesy animated cartoons of the 60s and 70s. Especially the theme songs. I’d watch Spiderman for the theme song then switch back to a funny cartoon. Puppets – I always loved the way people anthropomorphize animals. Did I spell it right? It’s half my career and I can never spell it. I’m a huge animal lover but the gap between what people like to believe animals to be feeling and thinking and the reality has cracked me up forever. So I always played around with stuff like that. Wrote a sketch for SNL once about a cat and it was just a peppy theme song with a live cat laying around. Kind of funny, but not enough. Years later, Jack Handey, the SNL writer we all worshipped, wrote Toonces, the Cat Who Could Drive a Car. I laughed so hard at the pretaped part..where the live cat version of Toonces appears to be driving with two fake paws. I actually ran up to my office just to tape the actual attempts they were making to get this cat to look like he was driving – it took like 40 minutes. Meanwhile, the cat has no idea he’s gonna be on SNL and that Don Pardo will say his name – he couldn’t give a shit. It was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen and obviously influenced me.

Check out more of the AMA here and remember to catch The Jack and Triumph Show Friday Nights on Adult Swim @ 11:30 pm ET/PT, check your local listings.