The Believer sat down for an interview with Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim recently for a sensible conversation, which is actually uncommon for the Philadelphia ex-pats, who rarely take themselves seriously long enough to provide a critical look at their absurdist style of comedy. It’s about time; as their influence slowly trickles into mainstream comedy, some credit might be due. Prior to the Tim and Eric era, for example, never would you see an uncomfortably long blank stare into the camera just for the sake of making the viewer squirm. They even admit to seeing their influence reflected in SNL (That being said, T&E need to host SNL.) The interview delves into their Philly roots; of how they came from humping around the Parkway to their work with Bob Odenkirk on their first show for Cartoon Network, Tom Goes To The Mayor. Apparently, the pair took a lot of influence from “Philly-area cable TV” and it shows; they often go out of their way to create a shoddy look to their production by running their digital footage through a VCR. As season five of their show (their supposed final one), fast approaches, we realize that this may be one of the last times that we’re going to hear from “logical” Tim and Eric for some time. From the looks of what’s to come, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 10:57 am.