Comedian and actor Fred Armisen; documentary filmmaker Ezra Edelman

The Watts riot was one of the first major events in the city of L.A. that was caught on TV. People who grew up looking at those kinds of activities in the South, they thought that's where all of the racial divide was. The only thing that was missing in L.A. is there weren't dogs.

That was an event that I remember engaging with, but it wasn't necessarily what the conversation was at home that I remember. But where I went to high school — I went to a quaker school in Washington. So every week we have something called meeting for worship. The entire student body sits in the gym and you sit in silence unless you are moved to speak. There are many of these weeks where you sit in meeting for worship for what is 45 minutes, a duration of a class period, and no one speaks. I was someone who would never be moved to speak because what's so important for me to get up in front of four hundred people. That's never going to happen. But that meeting for worship after Rodney King was beaten by the cops and after that video came out was by far the most memorable event that I remember in that room. All of the sudden there were kids who were engaging with the truth and this reality of what's happening in our world and expressing themselves in a way that you just didn't hear teenagers talking about. That was a little bit of an awakening because I grew up in a sheltered sort of environment. So despite of whatever would happen at home there are plenty of things that I had heard and talked about with my parents about the world, but that was a different thing because it was actually happening as a discussion amongst peers and not with parents who can say, this is what I once did. So that had a different affect on me than something honestly that if I were sitting at a dinner table and my parents were droning on about, I would just go, yeah, la la la la. 

It's just interesting when you have a question that is posed to both candidates and to Hillary about race in America and what she would say. And honestly, did I love her answer? No. But when you flip to Trump and again, his response is well, there are two words: law and order. And you just sort of go to this place of, oh right, he's speaking to his base. That's fine. But just these words and the idea of how police officers over the course of decades have been trained, especially in Los Angeles. It just immediately goes to a place if you are a person of color of listening to how these incidents come to be. And you're like, how could this actually come out of your mouth? This is exactly the problem. It's exactly the sort of lack of empathy when it comes to, don't you understand how millions of people are absorbing police forces across America and you're saying the exact wrong three words? 

There's a sense from older viewers of an appreciation for weaving together these events in a way that makes the specific events of '94 and '95 more understood and clarified. There is a sense from the younger viewers of, I didn't know any of this. I didn't know anything about who O.J. was. I was sort of ignorant of this entire history. And there is, in that way, a sort of gratitude that I feel. Frankly, there's been a lot of — and I can't really speak to who in a theater versus people talking to me who have seen it on television — white people who go, I never understood this. 

It's kind of fun to see things fall apart and not work. You bond with the person you're with, and also — as corny as it sounds — you learn from it.

They're a little different in that "Portlandia" — the references are to real-life relationships, pop culture, food and art. And then "Documentary Now!" — the genesis or the catalyst for those episodes is style. We purposefully say, Okay, we need a black-and-white documentary from the '50s. We need one from the '20s. We need a music one. So it's a slight difference, but one is more based on the methods of doing things and "Portlandia" is more about interpersonal relationships. 

It had a huge impact on my life. She's an immigrant. I learned to speak Spanish because of her and her family. I got to go to Venezuela numerous times. We lived in Brazil for a little while, so I got to have a South American experience growing up, which ... did help me learn about accents and different cultures — just to have in my arsenal of things to do.

I try to find new talent. And to go and see another comedian — that is just the best. I want to feel like there's a future. I want to feel like there are people I can work with who I've never met. I still want to be ...  I hate the word inspired. I wish there was another word we can invent ... Change-spired! 

Our training at [Saturday Night Live] is one where we trust ourselves that we never really make fun of anybody. It's so clear that it's done out of love. And it was so easy to do this one because, if there's anyone that I ever emulated in my life — you know, I've always wanted to be David Byrne. I really did used to live for Talking Heads.  

So, every season with "Documentary Now!," we try to do a music episode. Bill Hader [said], Why don't we do "Stop Making Sense," but where the band grows so much that you can't even keep track of who's in the band anymore? Instant pitch. It was like, Oh, that's exactly what we're going to do. We bring Indonesian musicians out and they're out there playing bells and there's a million of them. We wanted it to look really crowded. And we did it. We did it as a real concert.