'Time Out' Magazine Brings Mel's Fantasy To Life.

Posted on 11. Jan, 2009 by CSS in Comedy, Entertainment, Magazine, TV

Flight of the Conchords is a hilarious show that debuted last year on HBO- if you didn’t catch the first season, watch the episodes here.

Check out the Interview Bret Mckenzie (Bret) and Jemaine Clement (Jemaine)gave to Time Out New York:

Time Out New York: The new season debuts just two days before the presidential inauguration. How have you changed to pander to the Obama generation?
Bret McKenzie: The second season’s more optimistic.

TONY: Is that because of Obama, or is it because your album went to No. 3?
McKenzie: Well, it was No. 1 in New Zealand.

TONY: That changes everything. How many copies need to sell to earn that honor?
Jemaine Clement: Two.
McKenzie: There are only 4 million people in New Zealand.

TONY: Well, that’s bigger than Brooklyn.
McKenzie: So by that measure, our album was No. 1 in Brooklyn.

TONY: A lot of your fans are female. How many hearts have you broken?
McKenzie: Seven hearts. That’s combined.
Clement: It’s sad.
McKenzie: Jemaine’s more the heartbreaker. He’s broken four.
Clement: Bret’s trying to catch up.

TONY: You used to be so much chunkier when you were performing under the name Tenacious D. How hard was it to lose all that weight?
Clement: HBO insisted on liposuction.
McKenzie: That’s funny. We met [Tenacious D’s] Kyle Gass in L.A. and he said, “You guys are like a skinny version of us.”

TONY: How often do you hear the comparison?
McKenzie: Not as often as we expected when we first started over here.
Clement: Yeah. When the previews started, everyone said it. There were lots of “Tenacious D Light” comments. But it disappeared after the show debuted.

TONY: Like the D, you guys bill yourself as a duo. But you’re more of a quartet, if you count Jemaine’s sideburns.
Clement: Are you saying that my sideburns are two extras? I haven’t really thought about that. I’m so used to them that I don’t think of them as people, I suppose.

TONY: Bret, you appear as an elf in the first Lord of the Rings movie for, like, four seconds.
Clement: If that.
McKenzie: Well, five.
Clement: Have you really timed it?
McKenzie: No.

TONY: There’s a fan site describing your character, Figwit, as “perfect, pouty and gorgeous.” Wow.
McKenzie: Yeah. A group of fans from all around the world flew to Edinburgh to meet me and to watch us play at the Fringe Festival.
Clement: It was a little creepy because they’d get so nervous. They would be quivering. Jealous much, Jemaine?
Clement: Nah, I wasn’t jealous.
McKenzie: Yeah, he was jealous. He just got over it, like, five years ago.

TONY: How did the Concorde plane crash in Paris in 2000 affect the band?
McKenzie: We had the name before the terrible Concorde crash. But we were worried that people would think it was a joke based on the tragedy. Which it had nothing to do with.
Clement: I think some people did think that. But we soldiered on with it.
McKenzie: We just didn’t play in Paris.

TONY: Are you bummed that the Concorde is no longer in service?
McKenzie: It’s a shame. I always wanted to do a photo shoot with us in the Concorde. We’ll have to do that on Photoshop now.

TONY: Do you ever miss the days when no one knew who you were?
Clement: We shot a scene yesterday, a gig at a bar, where there was only this one guy and his shopping bags. At the end, they turn the lights on and there’s no one there. That was based on a real gig that we did in Canada.

TONY: That must have been painful.
Clement: Yeah. We don’t even know when that person left.