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April 29, 2005

Golden Interview Week: No. 1 - B.J. Novak

Here in Japan, we are celebrating Golden Week - a week of consecutive holidays spanning from today's Showa Day (formerly Greenery Day and before that Green Day) to next Thursday's Children's Day. And in this spirit of revelry, I decided to hold "Golden Interview Week" where I will conduct a five-question interview with a different person every day. So without further ado...

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B.J. Novak is a writer/comedian living in Hollywood, U.S.A.. He has appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Comedy Central's Premium Blend, MTV's Punk'd (second season), and is currently a writer and actor on NBC's remake of the British cult classic The Office. (He plays the temp "Ryan.") Novak's blog can be found here ("I majored in partying! My professors knew nothing about partying, and the textbooks were always several years behind the current party trends. Dammit! I should have majored in economics and partied at night!!").

1) You're from Hollywood. What's up with Tom Cruise dating Joey from Dawson's Creek?

I am not "from Hollywood," nor is anyone else who works in Hollywood.

2) What about Tom Cruise?

What is this, the Defamer? I thought we'd be talking about the decline of Japanese consumerism or something. Look: everything Tom Cruise does is kind of weird and suspect. I don't know. I'm sorry Katie Holmes is involved in all that but whatever. Good for them. I'm sure they'll look like a great couple to all the 14-year-olds at the MTV Movie Awards. I'd say more but I want to play "Young Bomb Defuser Genius" in MI:3.

3) Who do you rate as the greatest prop comic working today?

Hmmm... There are so many great prop comics today. There's this one guy, I forget his name, who brings a prop index card with original jokes scribbled on it. Then he glances at it from the stage. Genius!

4) The rumor is that you sometimes open up for Bob Saget, who played "Danny Tanner" on Full House. Isn't he like the tamest, most-family oriented comic alive?

For those who don't know, Bob Saget is actually one of the filthiest, most shocking comics working, despite his squeaky-clean TV-Dad image, and it's really a thrill to see if you haven't seen it. He's a really great comic, and it's a thrill to see for the shock value alone. (As you may know, I am opening for Bob Saget at the House of Blues at Mandaly Bay, Las Vegas, on June 4th -- tickets on sale! My publicist told me that neomarxisme.com was the best possible place to plug this show.)

5) Do you see your character "Ryan" from The Office moving from temp status to full contract employee status on the next season?

Right now, my character is in the show just enough so that if they ever announce a "very special episode" in which one of the "main characters" died, it would obviously be my character. I wouldn't expect a trick like that from our show, but I remember that [Beverly Hills] 90210 when they announced that one of the "main characters" died, and I was nervous about who it might be, but then in retrospect it became obvious that the only reason they had that blonde freshman character was to kill him off. I hope that's not what they have in mind.

Posted by marxy at April 29, 2005 12:17 PM