The host of "Comedy Bang! Bang!" (pictured) didn't get an Emmy nomination for the show, but he and his staff will write jokes for Emmy host Andy Samberg; Grantland's Andy Greenwald on the Emmy nods; Kyle Patrick Alvarez revisits an infamous episode in "The Stanford Prison Experiment."
Scott Aukerman will get on the Emmys, one way or another
When the Emmy nominations were released this morning, "Between Two Ferns" — everyone's favorite irreverent interview show — was recognized for the third consecutive year. This year, the series was nominated for its impeccably cringeworthy episode with Brad Pitt.
Scott Aukerman, who you may know as the host of the IFC show "Comedy Bang! Bang!," is an executive producer on "Between Two Ferns," which makes him an Emmy winner as well — the immensely popular episode with President Obama won a statuette last year.
Aukerman was instrumental in the creation this year of an Emmy category just for sketch comedy shows, and this year's nominees include hits like "Inside Amy Schumer," "Key and Peele," and "Drunk History."
While Aukerman's "Bang! Bang!" wasn't nominated, he and staff will write this year's ceremony for host Andy Samberg.
When Aukerman joined us on The Frame, he talked about his involvement in the creation of the new sketch category, the pitfalls of making TV for a niche audience, and the culture of diversity and creativity being fostered in sketch comedy right now.
Interview Highlights:
This is the question that I think is on the top of everyone's mind in America right now: Who, or what, I guess, is Scott Aukerman going to wear to the Emmys? Or, does the executive producer of an "Outstanding Short Format Live Action Entertainment Program" even get a ticket?
[laughs] Boy, that is the longest, most boring-sounding category. Yeah, this is actually my third nominee in this category. We won last year, and yeah, so we get a ticket! When you say, "Who am I wearing?," it sounds like I'm going to be wearing a human pelt, like Hannibal is going to be skinning someone alive and flaying someone. But I'll probably wear some sort of tuxedo that I can hopefully fit into.
About a year ago you wrote an open letter to the Television Academy, and I'm quoting a part where you ask, "Why don't we create a new sketch comedy category and spread around some of the love? If there can be what seems like 12 categories honoring incredibly specific types of makeup, surely we can be a little more precise with how we honor comedy." You got your wish, right?
I did! It was pretty interesting, because that letter came out and pretty soon afterwards the Television Academy wrote to me and said they were considering it. And then they included me in the discussion about it.
I had a phone conversation with them about why I thought this way. They wanted to make sure that there would be enough nominees or potential nominees in each category, were they to split it up, and once I started rattling off all the potential sketch shows, they realized that there's a whole bunch of shows out there that never, never get nominations. I think "Saturday Night Live" is the only true sketch show that's been included in the [variety series] category in the last decade.
Why did you think this was necessary? Was it as much an issue of the category becoming a little fuzzy as it was, or that there was a monopoly of winners?
There are two reasons. Number one: the types of comedy that you see on sketch shows were never winning; it was a talk show every year, and that's been the case for at least a decade, if not more. It was always "The Daily Show," "Colbert Report," and occasionally Letterman or something [else] would win. So sketch shows were just not even being nominated, let alone winning.
Secondly, I think there's not a lot of diversity in terms of nominees in that category. Every single year, it's another collection of five white, straight males, but now, with the sketch nominees this year, you have women, people of color, people of different sexual orientation. Even drunk people! [laughs] Suddenly there's a lot more diversity in what's being recognized, and I think it's very exciting.
I wonder if there's a part of you that feels like you won the war but lost the battle? After all, "Comedy Bang! Bang!" wasn't nominated. Is this a little bittersweet for you?
I didn't really expect to be nominated in the category. My show is a tiny sketch comedy show that not a lot of people have heard of. It's very well-respected and it actually was on a lot of critics' lists for nominations, which sort of psyched me out for a minute, [thinking], Wait a minute, is this even possible? I think the fact that not a lot of people have heard of it always hinders it being nominated. Maybe next year.
So you actually get a lot of love from the community for which you went to bat, even if the community didn't return the favor?
That's right. [laughs] But I do just think it's an exciting time to be looking at this category. We're writing the Emmys this year, my staff and I, and we were in the planning stages in a meeting, and just seeing the diversity that's going to be out there on the telecast is really exciting. Once we started realizing that Amy Schumer and Key and Peele would be there, that's really exciting for the broadcast, instead of just having Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. They're great, but it's the same people every year.
But there is sort of a reward for you, in that the entire staff of "Comedy Bang! Bang!" is working on the Emmys.
Yes, the entire staff, so this is their brush with Emmy gold -- to be backstage in a small room, watching other people win things.
How did that come about? And can you write yourself in as the winner of your category?
It came about because Andy Samberg is hosting the Emmys this year and I've known Andy for a while, ever since I was his head writer on the MTV Movie Awards. He's a huge fan of ["Comedy Bang! Bang!"], so he approached me and head writer Neil Campbell about being on it, and I said, "If you can take our entire writing staff, then we can all do it."
He's such a big fan of the show that he said yes. So we're all going to be writing the Emmys this year, which is crazy. And as for your second question, yes, I can.
That's part of the deal?
That's part of the deal, you're allowed to win one Emmy, so yeah, we're bringing home the gold this year.
'The Stanford Prison Experiment' revisits a 1971 psychology trial gone wrong
Kyle Patrick Alvarez is the director of "The Stanford Prison Experiment," a new feature film about the notorious experiment regarding the relationships between prison guards and prisoners conducted by psychology professor, Philip Zimbardo.
The original 1971 experiment took place in a fake prison set up in the basement hallway of the Stanford University Psychology Department building. Zimbardo's subjects were 24 students assigned to either act as guards or prisoners for the 14-day duration of the experiment. Zimabrdo assigned himself the role as superintendent.
After only six days, the study spiraled out of control. Ethical concerns involving psychological and physical abuse from the prison guards and Zimbardo himself prompted a graduate student, Christina Malsh, to tell Zimbardo to terminate the experiment.
Almost half-a-century later, the experiment maintains its notoriety. Zimbardo has since used his work to continue discourse on the subject, and he even contributed to defense cases in court trials related to Abu Ghraib.
The film, which was 13 years in the making, premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. During production, Alvarez worked closely with Zimbardo and studied video footage from the actual experiment to maintain authenticity.
"Meeting Dr. Zimbardo, meeting Phil, was one of the first things that I did," Alvarex recalled. "I went up to Stanford and spent time there in that hallway. You go down to the basement of Jordan Hall and there is a plaque that says, This is the site of the Stanford Prison Experiment. The production designer came up with me and we measured out the space. We measured out the walls, took color samples, measured each of the rooms, and we rebuilt it.
"We made some minor changes, but in terms of the video footage I was given access to everything. It amounts to less than four or five hours. Video was really expensive in the '70s. There is quite a bit of audio. I listened to a lot of that. The [film's] writer, Tim Talbott, 13 years ago had done a lot of the heavy lifting — really listening through everything and building the story. So when I was paying attention to those things, I was really looking more for the feel of it or things that might have slipped through the cracks in the process — certain lines of dialogue ... that had to be included. We used that to build the costumes, to build the sets — it is very very accurate."
Alvarez recently came to The Frame's studio to chat with host John Horn.
We should explain who John Wayne is. The veteran western actor does not make a cameo. There is a prison guard who is especially sadistic and creates a John Wayne, or almost "Cool Hand Luke" prison guard, demeanor. Tell us a little bit about that character and his role in the experiment.
Yeah, it was a real situation. He put on that uniform and it kind of made him think of Strother Martin in "Cool Hand Luke." He just started putting on this accent. When I read the script I thought, Oh this must be exaggerated. Then you look it up and you're like, No, this guy did this. He put on this awful Southern accent and took on a character. The experiment is a lot about the power of role playing — how easy it is to fall into a character. In a lot of ways he did that. He took on what he thought would be the persona of an intimidating guard and therefore became an intimidating guard.
In the making of the movie — in casting actors who are playing guards and playing prisoners and putting them in this physically confined space that replicates where the experiment itself took place — were you at all interested in whether or not the actors would start buying into the characters just as the students did 40 years ago?
This sort of disappointing answer to that is that I was interested in avoiding that. I didn't want it to get out of control. I think a lot of these younger actors have that kind of energy and tenacity to say, Oh I want to throw everything into this and maybe take a method-y approach. But I've always been sort of a realist in terms of what it really takes to get through a day of production. We were shooting 12-15 pages a day and moving really fast. There wasn't going to be time for that level of experimentation.
A weird thing actually is when I sat down with the actors ahead of time, I said to them, Look you're a professional role player playing someone who is an unprofessional role player. Let's keep that separation. You guys are actors. Yes, you're young, but I'm going to trust you to take this in a professional route. Everyone sort of showed up everyday excited about what they were going to do. Whatever it might be, they were sort of thrilled because they could be very open with each other, talk about it between takes, and make sure everybody was comfortable.
(L-R) James Wolk (as Mike Penny), Kyle Alvarez (director) and Billy Crudup (as Dr. Philip Zimbardo) in Alvarez’s "The Stanford Prison Experiment.".Photo courtesy of Steve Dietl.
One of the amazing things in your film are re-creations of exit interviews that were done following the actual experiment. One in particular, that involves John Wayne, is probably as chilling as anything that he actually does during the experiment itself. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Those exit interviews — especially the one you're referring to, which is the final beat of the movie — were re-created almost verbatim. You know, it is one of those instances where the material in real life is so strong. They put one of the prisoners and this John Wayne guard opposite each other and they had this really fascinating conversation that really we just abridged a little bit.
Michael [Angarano] and Ezra [Miller], the two actors in the scene, were listening to it, trying to absorb it. I never wanted them to mimic it. I think that is the wrong thing to ask of an actor — you're just asking them to be a robot. They loved the material so much that whenever there was something of the real thing to hold on to, I think that was actually really invigorating for them.
How involved was Phil Zimbardo in the making of the movie?
Very much so. He read every draft of the script. He was on set, [but] not everyday. He is a really busy guy, actually. I spent a lot of time with him, a lot of time on Skype with him, and a lot of time in person with him. He saw cuts of the film. It's one of those relationships where you want to do everything justice, you want to stay true, and you don't want to make a movie in opposition with someone because you don't have to. Phil is actually one of those guys who is very self-aware of what happened those days. He takes a lot of responsibility for it. You know, when I first started the script I thought, If he's involved — is he okay? I don't want to put any of this through a rose tint. That wasn't the case at all.
Did you have any disagreements? because there are certainly psychologists and social scientists who think that whatever lessons were learned by the experiment, Zimbardo's conduct within the experiment was unethical.
I was very clear early on I was not interested in making a movie about ethics. Inherently it is about ethics, but I wanted it to be very objective. I wanted to sort of say, This is what happened these six days and you can choose to judge the actions or not. So there is not a lot of conversation in the film about, Oh, is this experiment ok? Is it not okay? Should we have ever done it in the first place? I think people are still arguing it today. 
(L-R) Billy Crudup as Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Nelsan Ellis as Jesse Fletcher, James Wolk as Mike Penny and Matt Bennett as Kyle Parker in Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s "The Stanford Prison Experiment." Photo courtesy of Steve Dietl.
But do you have a conversation that you think the film should stimulate?
Yeah, what is really interesting to me is that I think there is a lot to be said about looking at situations where there are power issues — whether we're talking about police brutality, we're talking about incarcerations, or we're talking about war. I'm using some of Dr. Zimbardo's words here, it's really easy to say, Oh, it is one bad apple. It's really easy to look at Abu Ghraib and say it was that one person who did bad.
What is really the more compelling, and I think more compassionate, point of view is to say, Well, maybe it is more the barrel that is bad. That is his primary thesis about all of this. In order to not accept the fact that we as human beings are capable of bad, we want to blame the individuals as opposed to looking at us as an entire species, looking at the entire institution, or looking at the situation and saying, Well, maybe we set that person up for that kind of behavior. Maybe we need to have a broader window of compassion or empathy when people do bad.
Netflix and Amazon snag 46 Emmy noms — more than any major TV network
As you know by now, the nominations for the 67th Annual Emmy Awards were announced this morning by Uzo Aduba of "Orange is the New Black" and Cat Deely of "So You Think You Can Dance."
Of course, Emmy darlings like "Modern Family," "Downton Abbey" and "Game of Thrones" snagged a healthy number of noms, but it's the upstarts from streaming services that are gaining significant critical ground this year.
Together, Netflix and Amazon garnered 46 nominations in many of the more noteworthy categories, like Best Actor, Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Comedy Series. That's more than any of the major networks, with ABC as the frontrunner with 42 nominations. (NBC and CBS have 41 and Fox has 35.)
Unlike Netflix, however, Amazon's success lies mainly on the shoulders of one hit show, Jill Soloway's "Transparent," starring Jeffrey Tambor as the patriarch of a family who comes out as trans.
Warning: The video below contains harsh language
Andy Greenwald, staff writer for Grantland and co-host of the Hollywood Prospectus podcast, joined The Frame to talk about the increased recognition for streaming services and their shows, some of the more frustrating aspects of this year's Emmy nominations, and the curious case of Acorn TV.
Interview Highlights:
What frustrated you most about this year's Emmy nominations?
I think that, for the umpteenth straight year, the Emmys have had a very hard time figuring out how to parse the drama categories. Personally, and I know I'm not alone in this, I think the finest drama on TV at the moment is an FX show called "The Americans." And for the third straight year the Emmys have almost completely ignored that show and maintained a bizarre — and in fact, worrying — addiction to things like "Downton Abbey," which really are not worthy of that sort of consideration.
And then there are other smaller things, like when you see the Emmys recognize Netflix's "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," which is a terrific show, but then neglect to nominate its star, Ellie Kemper? There's just some dot-connecting that they always seem to fail to do, but by and large I think that the nominations this year were fairly reasonable.
People who have paid attention to the Emmys historically remember when HBO dipped their toe in the water, and then before you knew it they were blasting everybody out. Now we have Netflix and Amazon with a respective 34 and 12 nominations. What do you think that says, and were they well-deserved picks in their categories?
I think it speaks quite well of the Emmys and of the TV industry in general that they've been relatively quick to embrace the upstarts, and instead of viewing Netflix and Amazon as threats to the industry, they're seeing them as potential saviors of the industry and recognizing excellence, no matter where it may originate.
That said, "House of Cards" being nominated for best series is another reason to slap yourself on the forehead on a day like this. But Amazon's brilliant "Transparent" was nominated, and I'm impressed, because I don't think the Grammys are going to be nominating an exclusive on Jay-Z's Tidal service any time soon, so I think the Emmys are in front of a lot of other media in this regard.
There was a nomination for a streaming service I've never heard of, and maybe you've never heard of it either. What is Acorn TV?
Acorn TV is something that appears to be on my Apple TV when I turn it on and I flip past it on the way to Hulu Plus, and that's about as much as I can tell you.
It's not all about acorns; they did get a nomination for "Agatha Christie's Poirot: Curtain, Poirot's Last Case."
So it's not just squirrels that watch it, but elderly squirrels.
I want to talk a little bit more about "Transparent," which did incredibly well, receiving 11 of Amazon's 12 nominations.
"Transparent" is unquestionably one of the best shows on television on any service, any screen you could possibly watch. It was a surprise winner at the Golden Globes last fall, and I think that momentum helped Emmy voters notice it.
It's really a shining example of what these new entrants into the marketplace can do, which is take a script and subject matter — in this case a transgender parent and the fallout in a family, things that generally would have been pushed aside or not embraced — and suddenly give it the full force of their marketing and budget and allow it to be the best artistically that it could be. It's really a triumph for Amazon, it's a triumph for Jill Soloway, Jeffrey Tambor — and it's a really good thing for TV that shows like that are getting made and recognized.