|
VIDEO: Bret and Jemaine run through their favorite (mustachioed) guitar faces.
Just because I’m in a two-man novelty band / Doesn’t mean it’s all about poontang.
—From Flight of the Conchords’ “A Kiss Is Not a Contract”
* * *
 It’s a Thursday night in January, and Le Petit Bistro, a pleasant, low-wattage French restaurant in West Hollywood is quietly emptying out when a hearty cheer erupts from the large party in the dining room. The group is there to celebrate the 34th birthday of Jemaine Clement, the bespectacled and heavily sideburned half of the HBO musical-comedy duo Flight of the Conchords, who are in town to promote their self-titled new CD. When Clement’s order of profiteroles comes out (with 15 spoons), the assembled—including director Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) and screenwriter-actor Mike White (School of Rock)—launch into a rendition of “Happy Birthday.” But the cheer isn’t for him. That comes a few seconds later, when Clement rises to offer his toast:
“To Sir Edmund Hillary!”
So what does the first man to stand on the summit of Mount Everest have to do with a pair of hipster troubadours? Plenty. The Conchords, Clement and his partner, Bret McKenzie, 31, are, like Hillary, Kiwis—meaning they hail from New Zealand, an island nation halfway between Australia and God-knows-where. As fate would have it, Sir Edmund has embarked on his last great expedition to the afterworld this very morning. Later, as Clement recounts Hillary’s exploits, it becomes clear that the explorer was beloved not so much for what he did as what he didn’t do: ever once brag about it. “Even after he climbed Everest, he always considered himself a simple beekeeper,” Clement explains. His delivery is so flat it’s hard to tell if he’s joking or not, but in this case he’s sincere.
That sort of humility is nearly a competitive sport in New Zealand, and the charm of Flight of the Conchords—Clement and McKenzie’s deadpan musical sitcom about a pair of Kiwi rockers trying and utterly failing to find fame and fortune on New York’s Lower East Side— is the tension between that low-key New Zealand approach to life and the flash American alternative. (Viewers catch glimpses of the characters’ more inflated inner selves in droll music video send-ups.) It’s become one of the funniest, most unlikely hits on TV—one of the few bright spots in a bleak HBO landscape—but the show’s success threatens to test the actors’ Kiwi sense of modesty.
“People from New Zealand have a reputation for being boring, which we definitely play up on the show,” says Clement. “But really, everyone just watches rugby and drinks beer and beats their wives.” On-screen the Conchords are aided in their quest for success by band manager Murray Hewitt (fellow Kiwi Rhys Darby), who rarely lets a day job as a deputy cultural attaché for the New Zealand consulate interfere with his attempts to book gigs (though generally not after dark, because, as Murray puts it, “You could be murdered. Or even just ridiculed.”) Despite his best efforts, the band has just one fan, the mousy if sexually turbo-charged Mel, played by New York comedian Kristen Schaal.
Though Clement and McKenzie were until recently best known, respectively, as the sardonic pitchman for Outback Steakhouse and a mopey elf extra in the Lord of the Rings series, they’ve been performing comedy together since 1996: two slightly nerdy guitar-strumming buddies who seamlessly morph into Daft Punk–style techno-bots, Barry White–like lover men, or Dylanesque folkies. “They’ve raised the bar for musical parodies,” raves Daryl Hall, who made a cameo on one episode. “The songs are really intelligent, really advanced. It’s not like ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic. What he does is bullshit. What they do is music.”
The series, set to return this fall for a second season, aired Sunday nights after Entourage, providing a hilariously sobering comedown after that show’s weekly bump of bad-boy euphoria. Basically, it’s the anti-Entourage: Whereas Vinnie Chase & Co. take on Hollywood with inflated self-regard and roguish swagger, Clement and McKenzie favor the defensive crouch. Wide-eyed, hapless, and utterly lost in a downtown New York full of strivers, they disarm our assumptions with a sort of comedic jujitsu. The pair share a bedroom in a shabby apartment, ineptly compete for female affection, and spontaneously break into song. It’s not for nothing that they bill themselves as “formerly New Zealand’s fourth most popular folk-parody duo.”
That relentless self-deprecation belies the pair’s critical role in the HBO lineup. An unexpected cult hit among hip young viewers, the show has quickly become ground zero for the New York underground comedy circuit (Aziz Ansari, Eugene Mirman, Demetri Martin, Will Forte, Judah Friedlander, John Hodgman, and Arj Barker have all guest-starred). This kind of appeal has gone a long way toward helping the network maintain its cache now that The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and The Wire are fading into watercooler memory. While the program averages just a million viewers—a third of the Entourage audience—it is the first HBO series since The Sopranos to build its viewership with each episode. The New York Times gushingly compared it to Charlie Chaplin and This Is Spin¨al Tap, while Time called it the best new comedy of the year. That’s high praise for a show that at times looks like a DIY student movie.
Of course, amateurism is a major part of the duo’s appeal and the danger is that success may dry up their inspiration. “I don’t know what’s going to happen now, because our lives are becoming quite weird,” says McKenzie. “We probably have enough material for another season, but maybe we’ll have to make it about still being a loser, but in a world of minor celebrity.”
The Conchords has brought the pair both unexpected and unwanted recognition. With the new album released this month on indie powerhouse Sub Pop (their EP, The Distant Future, just won a Grammy) and a series of gigs in support, Clement and McKenzie get to exorcise some of their rock demons in songs that meld Prince, Ween, and Beck. The album features favorite tracks including “Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenocerous,” and the synth-pop pastiche “Inner City Pressure,” but with refined lyrics and enhanced arrangements. Of course, writing songs like rock stars is easy. Playing the part is something else entirely.
|