LAist Interview: John Lehr, Co-Creator & Star of '10 Items or Less'

John Lehr is the co-creator and star of TBS' "10 Items or Less" which airs at 11:00pm on TBS (tonight!). Lehr has been a comedian, improv actor, a writer for several TV shows, a regular on Christina Applegate's "Jesse", and one of the original GEICO cavemen (see his transformation to caveman on his website). "10 Items or Less" was first broadcast as a five-episode "demo" last year but was picked up for a full season this year. We had a chance to talk to Lehr as he traversed the country promoting the show.

Listen to the entire interview with John Lehr:

LAist: Did you have a viewing party for the start of the new season of "10 Items or Less"?

John Lehr: No, I was on a plane to do a promotional tour for the show, but you know, when I had my first gig on TV, I thought it would be fun to watch it with all my friends, and you know.... it just isn't what you think it would be. As self-obsessed as I am, it was a little too much for me. to watch people watch me watching people watch me. I just worry about how the show is doing and so far [this season] it does appear to be doing well.

LAist: The show is on a really interesting time at night. Past the prime time and on during the 11 o'clock news. Other than "The Daily Show" there really nothing else on during that slot, at least original comedy on at that time.

John Lehr: When TBS first told us when they were thinking of putting it on, I wasn't so sure about it but over time I have since seen their wisdom in placing it then because there is an audience looking for something at that hour. You have "The Daily Show" I guess, but that's a different thing, and not really an escape. The good news is that people are checking our "10 Items or Less" and our audience is growing. Season 1 we only did 5 episodes, TBS wasn't sure how it would play but we did increase by double digits during that demo period. We weren't sure we would get the pickup but things worked out and here we are.

LAist: How do you feel about what's happening with comedy on cable?

John Lehr: It's clear to everyone that the game has changed and it will be interesting to see what the [big] networks will do. It's a level playing field out there now and on the business side you keep track of the money and cable is keeping on the tails of the networks.

My experience as a writer working in the networks is that there are so many middle men, such a large infrastructire, you have such a large group of people that you have to convince about your work - and all of them feel like they should contribute their opinion. The problem is that comedy is so subjective, out of a large group of people, there will be those who just don't get the joke or they just don't think it's funny and yet they all think that their sense of humor is _the_ sense of humor. But at TBS I only have to convince 3 people that a joke is funny. It's so much less taxing and I can focus on the work instead of the process and that makes a world of difference.

At a network, when you go to a table read, there can be 20 people there and each one of them can say something about the work. I think when people are looking at comedy critically, they are thinking about it rationally and trying to deconstruct it, they focus on logic issues when a big part of comedy is irrationality. So we end up defending the work by saying "Yes, it's illogical, but it's really funny!"

As long as the characters are playing these unreal moments as if they were totally real, that's all that matters.

LAist: You had your start in improv, how do you bring that to "10 Items or Less"?

John Lehr: On "10 Items or Less" we have a writing staff of 2, just myself and co-creator Nancy Hower (which also makes the show really inexpensive for TBS), and we create a loose outline. We shoot each show in 3 days on location, in a real, working grocery store that is open for business. We end up with a ton of material that never makes it to the show. It's a great set to be on as there are real customers walking around the store as we are shooting. Nancy tries to direct the show according to the outline that we wrote, but if it goes in another direction it can be OK. It's a crazy, free-wheeling experience. We do 15-minute takes and those takes can go anywhere - we never do the same take twice.

LAist: What if a real customer needs to get into the Dairy section?

John Lehr: They can either wait until we are done with the take or they just walk in and they very often do and if I play the scene with them and we use the take we pay them the extra fee. You can't really tell when we are shooting because there are no lights, and there is no boom mic becaUse we are all wired since we just don't know when somebody is going to talk.

"10 Items or Less" airs Tuesdays @ 11:00pm on TBS