FROM THE VAULT: An Interview With Michael McKean (Patreon)

MY GENERAL NOTE ON THESE VAULT INTERVIEWS:Most of these interviews were conducted decades ago by a much younger me, who was much less seasoned and still had much to learn and knowledge to gain. Would I ask different questions and navigate conversations with these folks differently today than I did in the past? Absolutely. So, please know that if you reach any points in the conversation where you’re slapping your forehead, I’m most likely doing the same in reading them back now, as well. Still, as time capsules, I believe there remains much to be appreciated and gleaned from these conversations with interesting folks, and I hope you enjoy these moments in time.

Conducted ~Summer 2003

Michael McKean is a performer who has consistently reinvented himself over the years.

When I was a kid, he was the tall half of Laverne & Shirley’s geeky duo, Lenny & Squiggy. My early teen years were filled with the heavy metal demigods of Spinal Tap and their blonde frontman, David St. Hubbins. You can also add McKean’s ever-flustered Mr. Green in Clue, Dream On’s uber-boss, Gibby Fiske, and his turn in Christopher Guest’s mockumentary Best in Show.

His latest role is as one third of the legendary folk trio The Folksmen (alongside Tapers Harry Shearer and Guest) in Guest’s A Mighty Wind. In addition to his acting, McKean also co-wrote some of the songs featured in the film, which revolves around a reunion concert of classic 60s folk acts in honor of their deceased manager.

A Mighty Wind has just hit DVD from Warner Home Video, and Michael McKean is right here…

KEN PLUME: What is your songwriting process?

MICHAEL McKEAN: I’m all over the place. As you may have seen from the credits, I write with everybody. I’m kind of the town pump. I think I have a pretty good ear for what sounds good in this style. I’ve written a lot of song parodies in a lot of different styles – and parodies of different styles – and I write straight, and I write funny. The process depends on the situation, and I don’t think there are any two songs that have gone exactly the same way… well, actually, that’s not true. Several of the songs in Spinal Tap were written because we all just plugged in and started playing a couple of riffs, and the seed came from there, and maybe a funny lyrical notion, and then we pile on. I write alone, sometimes… just a thought comes into my head, and I write it all. I’ve been writing a lot of songs with Annette O’Toole, my wife. We wrote “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow,” which is Mitch & Mickey’s signature tune in A Mighty Wind. And “Potato’s in the Paddy Wagon” – now there’s an example… We were driving to Vancouver, and somewhere between Portland and Seattle, Annette is driving and she says, “What is this tune I have running through my head?” She hums a little tune for me, and I say, “I don’t think that’s an existing tune. I think you just made that up.” So we started writing that from that moment. The phrase “Potato’s in the Paddy Wagon” was intended as a mnemonic device, mainly so we could remember the rhythm of the tune, and we just liked the phrase so much that we just wrote the song about that, and kept that as a real lyric instead of just as a mnemonic.

PLUME: The lyrics tell quite a colorful story…

McKEAN: Yeah! Damn colorful! Others are just… Eugene Levy came into the office with “A Mighty Wind” – that song – with the lyric complete, but the melody wasn’t quite there yet, and he and Chris and I worked on the tune – and that’s how that one became a three person song rather than a one person song. It’s a different process every time.

PLUME: But is it substantially different when you sit down, solo, to write a song than when you’re collaborating?

McKEAN: Yeah… I don’t know whether the result is substantially different, but it feels a little different. I think the only song that I wrote all by myself in this is a tune called “Killington Hill,” which is not in the film but it’s on the DVD. It’s a “silver dagger” ballad, which is a real style of music – usually minor key, usually a song about a spoiled rich boy who murders a poor but virtuous girl. They were kind of like little Stephen King stories… but these go back many hundreds of years. There were actually so many songs about the guy whipping out a silver dagger that it became a sort of sub-genre of folk music, the “silver dagger” ballad. And that’s the only one I wrote for this project, alone. Everything else was done in collaboration. Chris had an idea for this song called “Just That Kind of Day” for the Main Street Singers, and we just kind of both had a pretty clear idea of just how lame it should sound, so that was pretty easy to write.

PLUME: When you speak of the writing process, was it always directed towards a certain group – say, “We need some Main Street Singers songs,,,”?

McKEAN: Yeah, in certain cases. We wrote this “Potato’s in the Paddy wagon” song for ourselves, and then we said, “We’re doing this folk movie – we should really play this for Chris. I think it might be good.” He immediately thought, “This is for the Main Street Singers.” Then he asked us to write “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow” because they needed a song for Mitch & Mickey. He asked us to write a song. We went home, and we were out walking the dog and started playing with lyrics and melody. Annette has a wonderful ear for music. She kind of started out in musical comedy, and she’s always been a singer and dancer – but she’s never been a songwriter before, but she just has a great natural sense of what sounds good. In some cases, yeah, we knew “Just That Kind of Day” would be for the Main Street Singers – as well as the sea shanty “Fare Away,” which C.J. Vanston wrote the music for. He gave us the tune, and Annette and I wrote the lyrics.

PLUME: Would you say that the writing process, lyrically, was far straighter and more subtle than the lyrical process for writing a Spinal Tap tune?

McKEAN: You know, I think it’s one of those cases where the situation really does dictate your level of ridicule. I think the tone of this whole film is much more affectionate and kind of forgiving. Even when there are banalities, they’re usually kind of benign banalities. It’s not as repulsive as a lot of Spinal Tap’s lyrics. I mean, some of the Spinal Tap lyrics… I mean, if you write a song called “Bitch School,” you’re askin’ for it!

PLUME: Spinal Tap really isn’t about subtext…

McKEAN: No, it’s so not about subtext! Yeah!

PLUME: You can really see, even with the mostly straight lyrics from A Mighty Wind, there’s a definite subtext going on, and subtlety…

McKEAN: Yeah. I think so.

PLUME: And, as you say, it’s affectionate ribbing…

McKEAN: Oh yes.

PLUME: Were there certain songs that were just a pain to write?

McKEAN: No, not in this case. No. The whole process was just so much fun. Also, watching people who weren’t primarily instrumentalists – watching them pick up instruments… Parker Posey never played the mandolin before. Michael Higgins – who is a brilliant vocal arranger, he did all the arrangements for the Main Street Singers – he’d never played guitar before. So he picked that up pretty well. Catherine O’Hara had never played an autoharp before. I don’t think she’d ever heard of one before. But there was a kind of a sense… There’s an old cliché in folk music, when they talk about handmade tunes. There’s something about the untutored quality of the instrumentalists in some folk music that really gave the songs their charm. So I think there was very much a sense of that going on on this show. Everyone was just so committed to doing it right, and we trust Chris with what he’s going to do with it in the editing bay. I mean, he shot 80 hours for this film. That’s 80, 8 – 0, and then it was his job to get it down to 90 minutes.

PLUME: Is there ever a point when you’re in a scene and you feel “This is a scene that will be cut…”?

McKEAN: Yes, and not only with Chris’s movies. Michael Fox had a phrase for it – I don’t know where he got it – he says “This one’s got handles on it.” You can just easily lift this one out.

PLUME: When you’re speaking of a Chris Guest film, is it different when you’re in the moment, with the improvisatory nature, and you can feel that things just aren’t clicking?

McKEAN: Hmmm… I can’t think of an example in this one… No, I really can’t think of an example. Maybe… there were some solo bits. One piece that looked like it was doomed – we were going to shoot it in this hotel hallway, and it was just my character musing that maybe this was just the beginning of something, maybe we were on our way out of obscurity or something, and then we were setting up to do it – and we just had to get this other shot. We were going to lose this other shooting place – another set in the hotel – so we had to go do that, and we saved this thing for another day. I think at that point I realized that it wasn’t really going to add a hell of a lot to the story anyway, so when we finally did shoot it on the streets of New York, I said, “This is fine, but it’s not really going to give us a whole lot., as far as telling the story goes.” And I probably had a feeling that that one wasn’t going to make it. But that’d the only example that I can think of. I was surprised at some things that didn’t make it. The scene where we see each other after all those years – where the Folksmen have this kind of reunion moment at Chris’s character’s home – there was a whole kind of a barbecue, hootenanny thing that we did there. I was surprised that didn’t make it. I think that’s actually in the DVD, though.

PLUME: Compared to a regular film, is it difficult to keep the energy level up on a film like this?

McKEAN: I think you have everyone kind of pulling on the same end of the rope. It’s not like you’re Robin Williams and everyone else is a deaf mute. It’s like – there’s plenty of help. So no one really feels that they have to kill themselves at every moment. I think the energy is kind of… I’m trying to think of the right phrase… We’re constantly energizing each other, I think is it. Chris and Harry and myself have been doing this for so long that we have a real kind of an interesting first gear, where we can just idle along forever, you know? Sometimes we have to look to other performers to kind of spark us, but there is something kind of “old home week” about us. So I’ve never really felt the battery run down on these shows. Everyone’s trying to make it a good movie, and we all know the process pretty well, and – like I say – we also trust Chris with what he’s going to do in the editing bay.

PLUME: So what took so long to finally get Harry back in the fold?

McKEAN: (laughter) Well, he was supposed to be in Waiting For Guffman. He was actually supposed to be the role that Bob Balaban played in that film. He couldn’t do it for some complex personal reasons, but it wasn’t “I don’t wanna do this!” He had something else that he couldn’t get out of. And when we did Best in Show, he was directing his own film. So on this, he was available, and it worked out really well because Harry’s also a great songwriter and a great parodist on his own.

PLUME: And the dynamic between the three of you is, as you said, something that’s always there…

McKEAN: Yeah! It’s really amazing. At the set that is Chris’s house – which was supposed to be in upstate New York, but it’s actually in Sierra Madre, California – we did a lot of days just kind of hanging around that house doing the songs in different places… once on the porch, once in the kitchen, once in this little kind of sitting room… and we just did a lot of playing. It really got to be like we were really at his house just hanging out and visiting and playing and arguing. It was really fun. I was really like kind of dwelling there.

PLUME: How different is the dynamic getting together to do The Folksmen compared to getting together to do Spinal Tap?

McKEAN: Well, the boys in Spinal Tap aren’t quite as bright as the guys in The Folksmen.

PLUME: Well, I don’t know how bright the guys in The Folksmen are…

McKEAN: Well, they’re benighted, maybe, but they’re intelligent.

PLUME: I just don’t think they’re terribly self-aware…

McKEAN: Oh, that’s true. That’s true. But self-awareness doesn’t always go with academic excellence.

PLUME: True, unfortunately. Recent politics would bear that out.

McKEAN: Some people stay in the academic world just to avoid becoming self-aware. You can quote me on that.

PLUME: When looking at The Folksmen, we’ve got a bald Harry, and mostly-bald Chris, and you have hair. How did you manage to avoid the razor?

McKEAN: I know… I’m pretty smart, aren’t I? We talked about these guys – actually, the very moment these guys kind of were born, we were doing a photo session as Spinal Tap, and before we got into our wigs, the photographer wanted to take some shots of us just as ourselves … because it was Rolling Stone magazine and they just wanted to have both a picture of how we really looked and how we looked in the thing. We saw the Polaroid of us with our regular hair, and I said, “Geez – we look like a washed-up folk trio.” We looked at each other and went, “Hmmmmm.” Lightbulb. And we said, “Let’s do that next, if we get a reason to do that.” Shortly after that, Chris and Harry and I were asked to join the cast of Saturday Night Live. They went and did it, and I had just bought a house and my then-wife was pregnant with our second child, so it was just not a great time to be moving to New York. In October of that year – it was ’84 – they wanted me to come and host the show. So I hosted the show, and we did The Folksmen for the first time.

PLUME: I’m surprised Harry didn’t ask you to smuggle him out…

McKEAN: Yeah… yeah… but he found a way to smuggle himself out.

PLUME: I know how unhappy he was during that period…

McKEAN: Yeah…

PLUME: Although Harry’s not a joiner when it comes to certain things…

McKEAN: Well, you know what, that’s a hard job. That really is. That’s a job that it makes a few friendships, but it probably breaks more.

PLUME: From what he told me, it wasn’t so much the workload as it was the backstabbing atmosphere…

McKEAN: Well, it’s that everyone’s got all these sketches, and there are ways other than quality to get them on. You know? It’s just kind of… I don’t know. It’s a process that you’re just going to have to read all the books that have come out about Saturday Night Live to even get a glimmer of it. I’m certainly not going to read them. But I had the experience that I had – which was much later, in ‘94/’95 – and I saw exactly what they were talking about. It’s a very daunting process. That was also just the nadir of that show. I mean, that was when nobody liked the show.

PLUME: Did you have a sense that you were manning the bilge pump?

McKEAN: Yeah, sometimes. But I don’t think it was a perfect match, anyway. I mean, I think the time to do SNL is when you’re in your late 20s and really hungry, and just want to do it. I was brought in basically to replace Phil Hartman, who was leaving the show. I was there to be kind of the adult – to be David Spade’s dad. Which was okay, and I got to do a few things. I was on 26 shows and I managed to get 20 sketches on –either as sole writer or co-writer. So I can’t say that I was completely miserable. But I also felt that the shows weren’t as good as they could have been. The show certainly has gotten a lot better. The last few years have been a remarkable recovery on that show, and it was mainly because of the writing staff.

PLUME: So it was worth it for the experience…

McKEAN: Oh yeah… yeah. I made some friends who are still friends, and this is the city of my birth. I love living here when there’s a reason to, other than just moving here. I still don’t like the winters here, but it’s an amazing city and I love it.

PLUME: Considering how long you, Chris, and Harry have been together, what is the group dynamic between you? How democratic is the creative process when you’re together?

McKEAN: I don’t really think we think of the dynamic as anything other than just kind of how it feels. Like I say, we’re all kind of pulling on the same end of the rope, and we’re all very likeminded about what’s going to work and what’s not. I don’t even think of it, consciously, as a process at all. It’s just what we do.

PLUME: What usually informs the decision to get back together? Is it a project being extant?

McKEAN: Yeah… Two years ago they were just releasing a new edition of the DVD of This is Spinal Tap, and we kind of used it as an excuse to go out and play some more. We had this very, very low-key tour. We played eight dates in six different cities, and we just had an amazingly great time. To have a really great time doing something you really like – that’s a reason enough to do something. As far as Chris’s movies go, when Chris becomes inspired enough to really want to pursue something in this style, he does so – and he usually uses that same rolodex, and we all show up because it’s more fun than anything else.

PLUME: At what point are you usually brought into the process? You’ve been in all of them except for Waiting for Guffman, right?

McKEAN: Yeah, but I wrote music for Guffman.

PLUME: His main collaborator at the beginning of these projects so far has been Eugene Levy…

McKEAN: Right. Well, he and Eugene will work on the screenplay for 5 or 6 months – and it’s not really a screenplay, it’s a scenario – and they will do the whole story, break it down scene-for-scene, and create all the characters… except in this case, The Folksmen preexisted, but every other character was something that Chris and Eugene created. They usually know who they’re writing for, and while their process is going on, they tell us, “Look, we’d like you to play this guy…” In the case of The Folksmen, that kind of made its own gravy, but with Best in Show, for example, “You’re one half of a gay couple, and this guy, John Michael Higgins, is playing the other guy, and you have these shitzus, and this is your life. You run a hairdressing salon…” And then we’ll get together while they’re still writing, and we’ll be able to input stuff about what we’d like to do and our take on this, and then that kind of gets folded back into Chris and Eugene’s work. Then, eventually, we start talking to the design people – like the hair people and wardrobe, and Joe Garrity, who’s the production designer who’s done the design on all of Chris’s films, and who’s an amazing character and just a genius. We just talk to everybody. It’s a constant input along the whole process. But Chris and Eugene – it’s their responsibility to get the story in shape and to create these characters, and it’s our responsibility to step into them, bringing as much as we can to the process.

PLUME: Would you say that, with your songwriting responsibilities, A Mighty Wind has been the film that you’ve had the most involvement in?

McKEAN: Oh yes. Without question. I mean, other than Spinal Tap – that’s a different story. It’s not a Chris Guest film. That’s something that Rob Reiner directed, and the four of us were really equally involved in the creation of that story.

PLUME: One that’s definitely spun off into a life of its own…

McKEAN: Yeah.

PLUME: So what exactly is the future of Spinal Tap?

McKEAN: You know, I don’t know. When we can figure out a way to really tour and make a profit, then we’ll do it again. The last time we did it we actually made some money, and it was lovely, and we didn’t play all that many dates, and it was actually very kind of relaxing. We were going to play some more, but then 9/11 happened, and it was just sort of like everyone wanted to spend as much time as they could not flying in airplanes. So, circumstances will dictate, as they always do.

PLUME: But you’re still ready and willing to play, should the opportunity arise?

McKEAN: Oh, sure! Sometimes we drop in and do an acoustic set somewhere, and that’s really fun to take all these insanely loud songs, and to do them quiet. It’s really a sight to see… or to hear!

PLUME: How many times were you all booed as The Folksmen, opening for Spinal Tap?

McKEAN: Well, only once, because every other time we had been careful to say, “Hey, there’s an opening act, and here’s what they look like.” And people who look at the poster will say, “I get it… I get the bit.” But we’d forgotten to tell them that at the Beacon Theater in New York, and they didn’t know there was going to be an opening act, and all of a sudden these three old fogies come out there. And we really weren’t booed off the stage. Our opening set is designed very, very short anyway, so that Chris and Harry can go put their funny heads on, and they can get out of their bald caps and we can all wear our wigs. So there’s a certain amount of transition time – it’s like a long intermission. The opening set for The Folksmen is designed as a failure, in a way. It’s designed as something that only goes 20 minutes. “The Skeletons of Quinto” moment in the film is very much where that came from.

PLUME: What was it like to actually be booed at that point?

McKEAN: It was ironic. Here are these people booing us so that we’d get offstage, so that we could come back on. It was a very odd situation. We’re not the first act to open for ourselves, by the way. There was a guy named C.W. McCall – I don’t know what his real name is, but he recorded…

PLUME: “Convoy”…

McKEAN: Right… but he’s also Manheim Steamroller, and occasionally his two bands would open for one another. Sonic Youth, apparently, used to do that, too… either Sonic Youth or Smashing Pumpkins… I think it’s Sonic Youth… used to come out as someone else to open the show, kind of a cover band. I think, when they were still working live, XTC used to open as Dukes of Stratosphere, which was their psychedelic knock-off band. But that might be just a rumor. But anyway – it’s not totally unique, but it’s rare, certainly.

PLUME: You’ve tackled rock and folk, and Eugene and John Candy tackled polka – so what musical genre is left?

McKEAN: Well, we talked briefly about doing a cowboy swing band. These really, really old guys who are still playing the same music as they played in the late 30s – western swing, which was a real subgenre. The only remnants of that is probably “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” It’s, like, the only song that anyone knows from that era.

PLUME: So you’re going to force Harry to learn the fiddle…

McKEAN: No, no… he’ll be with the stand-up bass again, I’m sure. None of us can fiddle.

PLUME: See, if only you could work the stand-up bass into Tap…

McKEAN: Yeah! Yeah… we actually have played some Tap tunes with that, just for our own edification.

PLUME: But there’s always the electrified stand-up bass…

McKEAN: Oh yeah….

PLUME: So, Harry has directed his own film, and Chris has done several… What about you? Does your interest even lie in that direction?

McKEAN: Yeah… there’s a couple of film ideas that I’d like to direct. I’m writing a musical with my wife right now – an original musical for film. But I don’t want to direct that. I think that’s something that I want people who’ve done 10 or 12 movies to be directing that for me. As far as directing, yeah, I’d like to do that. But you’ve got to spend at least a year, year-and-a-half doing that. It’s got to be something you really love. To direct a sequel to somebody else’s work is not interesting to me. To do a teen comedy, I don’t think is really something I’d want to spend a year of my life doing at this point. So, if it’s the right thing, of course I’d like to do it.

PLUME: But nothing at this point has come close to rousing your interest?

McKEAN: No… no, not really.

PLUME: What kind of genre would pique your interest?

McKEAN: Oh, I don’t know…

PLUME: Well, I guess your next project in the immediate future is a recurring role on Smallville as Perry White…

McKEAN: Yeah!

PLUME: Besides being married to one of the castmembers, how did that come about?

McKEAN: I think they kind of like me up there, and were looking for something for me to do. They almost cast me as the principal of the high school, which didn’t work out because I was doing these IFC spots – this was last year – but I’m glad I waited. I had such a good time doing this. I worked with Jeannot Szwarc, who’s this journeyman French director – he’s actually an American now… he’s been in this country for over 35 years or so… but he’s just a wonderful little guy. He’s just an amazing character and a real professional. He’s done a lot of films with big stunts and special effects and stuff, and he’s one of those guys who’s not swamped by it. He really takes care that the scenes make sense, and he’s just a real good craftsman. And everybody up there was very lovely to me, and Vancouver’s a lovely city, so I really had a good time and I’m glad it worked out this way. To be part of the legend is interesting to me.

PLUME: Any idea of how often the character will be recurring?

McKEAN: No. At the end of this episode that I just did, he’s on his way to Metropolis to see if he can maybe find a job. We know what he’s going to wind up doing. We all know he’s eventually going to be the editor of the Metropolis Daily Planet…

PLUME: See, now you spoiled it…

McKEAN: I gave away the ending! Yeah, but it doesn’t happen right away. Also, the series takes place in Smallville – not Metropolis. We’ll maybe see him one more time this season, and then we’ll see.

PLUME: Are we ever going to see a straight, non-comedy album from you?

McKEAN: You know, Annette and I have talked about this, because we do a lot of singing together, and we write al these songs together, and people ask us, “Do you guys want to make an album together?” And we both have the same kind of knee-jerk response, which is – when you go to a store and you see a CD by people you know as TV actors, or as actors at all, we all think about Bill Shatner doing “Rocket Man,” don’t we? We always think about Lorne Greene doing whatever he did…

PLUME: Yeah, but he gave us “Ringo”…

McKEAN: “Ringo”! Exactly! Yeah… And there’s something about it that’s, like, novelty release. So, it’s not number one on our to-do list.

PLUME: Yeah, but obviously from the output so far, the quality is there, so I think that should inform the decision somewhat…

McKEAN: Yeah… yeah… Well, we’ll see. Right now, we’re just really loving the whole “songwriter” idea, Annette and I, and we’re writing our own stuff. Also, my friend Michael O’Keefe sent us some lyrics and said, “You guys got some tunes for these?” And we’re having a really, really good time doing that. We just like being sort of working professionals.

PLUME: How close to completion is the musical?

McKEAN: Well, we have about 10 songs written, and there’s like 1,000 characters in it, so we’re right now tracking every character through the story, just in prep to sit down and write the screenplay. We want to do this so we don’t have a clump of songs, then nothing, and then another clump. We want to really balance things out. And because it’s a lot of different characters in an interwoven story, we’ve just got to do a lot of homework first. So we’re kind of in the middle of that right now. Needless to say, because we’re actors who love other actors, we’ve cast the entire thing already!

PLUME: So, maybe you should go ahead and direct it…

McKEAN: No.. no… we’ll find exactly the right guy or gal…

PLUME: Just flip through the rolodex…

McKEAN: Yeah, exactly.

PLUME: Is there any one project that you’ve been dying to do but have yet to be able to?

McKEAN: Not really, no. I mean, you’ve gotta work fast… You can’t get scooped here. I always thought that The Quiet American would make a great movie. They made a lousy movie of it in the 50s, and for years I’ve been talking about doing that.. about getting the rights – I’m a big Graham Greene admirer. And so, lo and behold, a really good director got a great cast and made a wonderful movie – so, oops! Too late!

PLUME: That’ll teach ya…

McKEAN: Yeah… So there are certain things I’d like to do, and they’ll either happen or they won’t, and you’ll either hear about them or you won’t.