“The first scene I shot with him was on the front lawn, when he’s like slapping the shit out of me and stuff, and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m doing a scene with Ben Stiller. Don’t fuck up. Don’t laugh at him. Don’t break.’ Because what if you screw up a scene?”
The story is coming from Lenny Jacobson, the star of Comedy Central’s new series Big Time in Hollywood, FL, which airs Wednesdays at 10:30pm. It’s late morning now, and we are sitting at Lulu’s Cafe on Beverly Blvd, just a few doors down from Quentin Tarantino’s famous movie theater, The New Beverly. The waiting staff at Lulu’s knows Jacobson well, and he knows them too. Our waitress didn’t see him last Sunday, but he knows her sister did.
“After the second or third take I think I broke him a little bit,” he continues. “So then I was like, ‘Oh, we’re having fun!’ I think it was the line, I think it stayed in, [Stiller] pulled the gun and he’s like, ‘You like that?!’ and I go, ‘It feels like someone recently shot it!’ He giggled and then I was like, ‘Oh, thank God.’”
Ben Stiller’s company, Red Hour Productions, is responsible for bringing Big Time in Hollywood, FL to Comedy Central. The series stars Jacobson and series co-creator Alex Anfanger as brothers who dream of directing movies. When a scheme to extort money from their parents results in the death of an out of work actor, played by Stiller, you’ll laugh. But that’s where most comedies would end that storyline. In Big Time in Hollywood, FL that’s only the beginning.
“Consequences. Everything we do. On certain sitcoms and shows it’s like, ‘Oh my god, we killed that guy!’ Then next week we’re just at a diner and we’re trying to pick up two sisters or something,” Jacobson explains to me over breakfast.
“We continue. If you die on our show you are definitely going to be dead,” Jacobson says. “We just won’t take responsibility for what we do and we figure we can get our way out of it, and it becomes a steamroller of consequences that, in the first episode, by the end, you see this [murder]. It just goes, and then really once you hit the fifth episode, it gets really dark.”
Jacobson can’t help but laugh at that. “Which I love! We binge-watched them all on the Sunday,” he says, “And by the middle of six and seven, it was like, ‘That was kind of deep. I’m a little touched by that.’ Everyone has a scene where it’s a little bit of realness, which is nice.”
Raised in Western Massachusetts, Jacobson didn’t dream of being an actor. “My high school did some theater but not really, and I went to college and I just drank and played basketball. I played Division III and drank. I was a Division III basketball player and a Division I drinker.”
“Then when I was about 25 I quit drinking because it was… I [wouldn’t] say alcoholic, more of I just enjoyed it way too much, and my life was just never going to end up going in any direction possible. I think I was starting to lose my mind. And then by 27 it was like, ‘What should I do with my life? I don’t like any of the jobs I do. I am not like a big worker.’ So then living in California was like, at least that would be a nice change. I’ve always been outgoing, I’m certainly not shy by any means, I love talking and stuff, so maybe I’ll try acting.”
Jacobson worked his way up to his starring role on Big Time in Hollywood, FL with parts on shows like CSI and Nurse Jackie. The latter starred Edie Falco, whom he says helped inspire the tone on the set of this new comedy.
“I watched how she was on set, I watched how she treated people. I watched how she worked. No bullshit. Nice to everybody. Have a good set, have fun,” recalls Jacobson. Dan [Schimpf, co-creator], Alex and I, before we even started shooting I was like, no matter what happens, when people come to the set, I want them to leave and be like ‘That’s the best set I’ve ever been on.’ All the time. Let’s just make sure we enjoy this because we may never get to do this again. You never get to do the first time [again], your first big show, your first only show.”
But it’s a show that only builds and builds, unlike most comedies, in which each episode more or less exists in a vacuum. Jacobson is very aware that Big Time will need to find its audience over time, and cater to the binge-watching audience.
“We used to joke, we’re like, ‘If you hate the pilot, you’re going to love five through ten.’ You’ve seen those things, where people are like, ‘Do you watch Game of Thrones?’ You’re like, ‘Nah,’ they’re like, ‘Listen dude, you’ve just got to get through the first three or four, and you’re going to love it?’”
“You’re like, that makes no sense! So we used to joke, ‘If you love the first two episodes, you will hate the third and fourth but you will love six and seven and hate eight and nine but love ten.”
And he’s not above geeking out about his upcoming celebrity co-stars, like Michael Madsen (“He’s so cool and so wanted to do comedy. He’s like, ‘It’s time I started making fun of myself.’”) and Cuba Gooding Jr., who plays himself in multiple episodes.
“And then we have a secret guy, a secret guest in [episode] 8 or 9, who’s my favorite. It’s not like Tom Cruise or somebody but it’s someone who I’m such a big fan of. He’s a TV guy, and you’re like, holy fuck. What he does! It’s 8 or 9. The day after that I’ll tweet you and be like, ‘Was I right or was I right?’”
He’s serious. After we pay the bill he makes sure to follow me on Twitter. I follow him too, and it looks like we’ll just have to pick it up from there in six weeks… or possibly seven?
Photos courtesy of Catie Laffoon.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
