Yamila's Little Word: "Parks and Recreation" Post

Aziz Ansari: Funny Style

Your favorite rapper?s favorite comedian is a scene-stealing Southern boy who somehow became the funniest man on TV. With one foot in Hollywood and one on the stand-up stage, Aziz Ansari is ready to craft a masterpiece.

We?re pretty sure it?s not totally racist to confuse Aziz Ansari with Tom Haverford, his hilariously cocky character from NBC?s Parks and Recreation. In our defense, they are both Indian guys from South Carolina. They both love Waka Flocka and Soulja Boy. They both wear sharp suits (although Aziz?s don?t appear to be from Brooks Brothers Boys). And come on, this guy just plays the hyperactive dickhead so well in movies and on TV (Funny People, Human Giant, Get Him to the Greek), you wanna believe he?s that guy for realsies.

Alas, Aziz is actually a pretty humble, self-effacing 28-year-old, even if he has a lot to feel cocky about right now. His new movie, 30 Minutes or Less, has the summer comedy game on lock, his Dangerously Delicious stand-up tour (filmed for DVD release, of course) just wrapped up, and he?s even voicing a rabbit in the next Ice Age movie. Oh, and in his spare time he?s been kicking it with Kanye in the studio and soaking up game from Judd Apatow. Basically, Aziz is the man Tom Haverford wishes he were. Can you blame him?

Thank you for helping us get Beyonc� on the cover. Word is that since she?s no longer being managed by her father she likes to clear all her major career decisions with you.
Yeah, I replaced Mathew Knowles. It?s kind of supposed to be under wraps.

Sorry, I had to put it out there. That?s a serious power move.
There?s a lot of heat between me and Mathew Knowles. [Laughs.]

You recently moved back to New York after being in L.A. for a few years. Do you still take the subway or are you ?cabs only? famous now?
I still take the subway. I haven?t been stabbed or anything yet.

If you had never come to New York?
?I was lying about the subway thing. I travel by helicopter when I?m in Manhattan. It?s really tough, because there aren?t a lot of helipads in New York City. So, a lot of times I just have to ladder down to where I?m going.

[Laughs.] If you had stayed in South Carolina and not gone to school at NYU, would you still be living large?
I owe a lot to being in New York. That?s where I started doing stand-up. Those kinds of opportunities aren?t even there in most places. I remember when I started in comedy, I told a friend of mine who?s pretty funny too that he should start doing stand-up??It?s pretty fun, just go to a comedy club.? He was like, ?What comedy club? I?m in North Carolina, there is no comedy club here.?

When you were growing up, what posters did you have hanging on your bedroom wall?
In high school I had a big Metallica Master of Puppets poster. I was really into playing guitar.

Were you a metal head?
Yeah, I liked Nirvana and alternative rock stuff too. But for guitar playing, if you really wanna go at it with the solos, you eventually end up listening to Megadeth. [Laughs.]

Did you play in a band?
Again, South Carolina let me down there. There was no one else who really played instruments, or was into the same music. It was kind of tough, I would just play along with the records.

Did you have a childhood crush? Janet Jackson? Topanga?
I?m trying to think of what female celebrity I would have liked at that age... Oh, Martina Navratilova. [Laughs.] I was disappointed to find out she?s not into dudes.

Damn, sorry, man. Were you surprised to see your home state elect a Punjabi woman, Nikki Haley, as the governor?
They probably just thought she was white?the tone on the TV wasn?t quite right. ?Nikki Haley! Yeah, sure! She sounds great!? [Laughs.] But no, that?s good to hear. I don?t think everyone there is racist. I encounter many nice, open-minded people from South Carolina.

It?s interesting that Tom Haverford is also from South Carolina. How similar are you to the character?
The only similarities are we?re both from South Carolina, we both like really silly hip-hop like Soulja Boy and Waka Flocka, and we both like suits. But he has slightly different taste. I try to make sure Tom dresses a little bit different from Aziz. Sometimes they?ll show me suits on Parks and I?ll be like, ?That looks like an Aziz suit, not a Tom suit.? I?m usually like, ?Give it a purple tie and that?ll make it a Tom suit.?

It seems like you only recently started wearing suits in real life. Is that Tom?s influence?
I like wearing suits when I perform. The last tour I did was in smaller rock clubs, and this time it was a theater tour, so it seems like I should be wearing a suit instead of just some jeans. But I do think Tom has a unique sense of style and it?s always fun to dress as that character. Early on, when they started talking about my character, I was like, ?I think this guy should be really into his suits, because no one else in a small town like that would be into those brands.?

Do you feel like you have a Southern accent?
I used to have a super-strong Southern accent, but I?ve lost it over time. When I say certain words, it?ll come out. I remember watching a video of me in a spelling bee when I was in the third grade, and the guy tells me, ?All right, come up here and tell me your name, what school you?re from, and what city you?re from.? And then you see me walk up, I?m this tiny little brown kid?way smaller than everybody else?and I?m like [speaks quickly with a Southern accent] ?My name?s Aziz Ansari from Marlboro Academy in Bennettsville, South Carolina.? It was that strong, I?m not exaggerating.

And now you hang out with the biggest rappers in the world. I heard you were in the house when Kanye and Jay were recording Watch the Throne.
Yeah, a couple of times when they?ve been in New York, I?ve just stopped by to say hello and hear them record?that album?s gonna be amazing. I?m such a huge fan of those guys, I definitely feel lucky to see stuff like that every now and then.

Do you remember what they were recording?
Some stuff with Swizz, and it was so funny just hearing him do the Swizz Beatz ad-libs. Just like, [imitates Swizz] ?Uh-huh, Goddamnit! 1-2, 1-2. Vroooom!? I was just sitting there dying, I thought that was the funniest thing in the world. I wanna be Swizz Beatz. I don?t want to do comedy anymore, I just want to do ad-libs. Just make noises before rappers start rapping. [Laughs.] That would be a great job.

When you?re around rappers like that, do you ever try to swag it out extra hard?
No, I just try to stay quiet and stand in the corner. Just be thankful I?m there and listen to the music. I?m not sitting there poppin? bottles and dancing. [Laughs.]

So Kanye hasn?t given you any style advice?
No, he usually just makes fun of whatever I?m wearing. [Laughs.] One time I saw him and I had on a brown leather jacket. He was like, ?Ha-ha?you look like a regular dude!? I was like, ?Well, not everyone can wear a purple sequin jacket and have people not laugh at him.? He?s like, ?Yeah, I know I look ridiculous, but I can pull it off.?

Kanye?s been known to surround himself with beautiful models. Have you had a chance to scoop up any of his leftovers?
Theoretically, if there?s a situation where there?s a bunch of models, me, Jay-Z, and Kanye, what model is gonna come up to me? [Laughs.] I think they would probably talk to their bodyguards before they come talk to me.

Bummer. It seems like you kind of created a monster with your character from Funny People. Do fans still come up to you and scream ?RAAAAAAAANDY!!??
In my experience, any time people see anyone they know from TV, they?ll just yell things at them. So, for me, whether it?s Randy or something I said on Parks and Rec, it?s just something that comes with the territory. It doesn?t bother me at all. Sure, I?d prefer that people didn?t yell stuff at me, but what are you gonna to do?

When we were doing Funny People, they were like, ?You know, if you say ?Randy? like that, people are going to yell it at you.? So I asked Adam Sandler, ?What do people yell at you? You must have done 100 movies, there must be a billion things.? He said ?You know what people yell the most? ?You can do eeeet!? [from The Waterboy.]? And I was like, ?You don?t even say that in the movie!? He?s like, ?I know.? [Laughs.] With comedians, people just want to yell the thing that made them laugh.

In your new movie, 30 Minutes or Less, you help Jesse Eisenberg rob a bank. Is this the best bank robbery comedy since Bill Murray?s Quick Change?
You know, I?ve never seen Quick Change, but I?ve heard it was great. I have to see that. But there?s been a lot of great bank robbery movies?I like Heat and I like this Stanley Kubrick movie called The Killing. It has one of the coolest endings of any movie.

You spent three months in Grand Rapids with Jesse Eisenberg while shooting. Is he as much of a neurotic weirdo as people make him out to be?
He can be, but he has a shell that you can break through. He?s always a super-nice guy. Tremendously talented, just a little shy and a little nervous.

You?re also voicing a character in the next Ice Age movie?
Yeah, that?s so fun. I think he?s a prehistoric rabbit, and he?s a pirate, one of the bad guys. I?d never done a voice for animation before. I did one session where I did voice and then I went a second time and they showed me some animation and it was so cool. I think it?s cool to be able to do a kids? movie, ?cause it?s nice to do things that aren?t 100% filthy that only people over 18 can enjoy. It?s fun to do stuff that anyone can watch. That?s why I like doing Parks, because it?s a show that my parents can watch, and I don?t have to worry about them being offended by graphic language or anything. The same with the Ice Age movie. They?ve got a lot of cool people in it.

Drake is also in this one, right?
Yeah, that?s pretty funny. I wish Drake was one of the pirates and he was just crooning, and they just gave him that Drake voice...I don?t know what the filter is he always puts on his voice, but it?s in like every Drake song, at some point the beat just drops out?

?You mean the ?underwater? voice?
Yeah! The underwater voice! They should have just made him a fish, and had him sing his lines [imitates Drake] ?What am I supposed to do, all of my friends are gone.?

[Laughs.] Are you still writing a script for Judd Apatow?
Yeah, me and my friend Jason Woliner?who?s a director that I worked with on Human Giant and have collaborated with since I started?we?re writing a script called Space Men for Judd. It?s about me and another guy?it hasn?t been cast yet?playing disgraced astronauts who have to go back to the moon to clear their names. It?s really funny, and we?ve just been developing it with Judd. He?s such a genius. We had a meeting with him the other day. You try to absorb as much knowledge as you can when you?re with him. It?s so hard to make one good movie or TV show, and he?s made dozens of amazing things. Clearly he knows what he?s doing.

How important is it for you to write and develop your own projects?
Super-important, because most things out there aren?t that funny. I have a pretty particular taste, I say no to a lot of stuff. I?m really picky about what I do and I wanna do stuff that I?m excited about. And if you don?t develop stuff yourself, it?s not always gonna be great. No one knows how to write for your voice better than you.

News?

Show Me The MoneyBall: The Chris Pratt Interview

If you watch Parks and Recreation, you know Chris Pratt, as lovable slacker Andy Dwyer. And if you don't watch the show, you probably know Chris Pratt from Wanted, where he plays the hero's two-timing best friend, who gets whacked across the head with a keyboard, the letters (and a tooth) flying off to spell something unprintable. But for SnakePit purposes, what matters is that he plays Oakland A's first-baseman Scott Hatteberg, in the upcoming screen adaptation of Moneyball, alongside Brad Pitt.

Chris was recently in town for the All-Star Game, as one of the participants in the Celebrity Softball Game. We chatted to him about learning to bat left-handed, being discovered while working as a waiter and, as is probably inevitable on the 'Pit, Star Wars cropped up...

AZ SnakePit: Moneyball. I have read the book, and it didn't immediately strike me as being cinematic...
Chris Pratt: Yeah, right. I think that's a lot of people's reaction to it. The screenwriter is Aaron Sorkin, and I think a lot people thought the same thing about Facebook, and were like, "You're going to make a movie about Facebook? I don't get it." [Sorkin won an Academy Award for The Social Network]. But the story is cinematic. It's not so much a baseball movie. The book itself, is a baseball book. It's about statistics, it's about Bill James, sabermetrics, but the story that they carved out is a character piece about Billy Beane.

Because Beane was a guy who was a five-tool player, he looked the part, the classic American baseball player - he was a scout's wet-dream. He was drafted right out of high-school, he had scouts promise him the world, he opted out of a scholarship to Stanford - but it turns out he just wasn't that great, he couldn't hit the ball when he got called up to the bigs. He tried over and over again, realized baseball wasn't his thing, but he was stuck in baseball because he didn't have that education from Stanford. So he goes on to become a GM, who ends up defying the convention of your standard American scouting in baseball.

He wanted to get more into the sabermetrics and the Bill James stuff, look at statistics, and defy his own scouts. And everyone questioned if he was doing this out of spite, because they got it wrong with him. That's the real cinematic story: it's Billy Beane struggling to deal with his present situation, and people questioning if he was just doing it because of his past.

AZSP: It's been an on and off project - it started under Steven Soderbergh, then stopped. Have you been with it from the beginning?
CP: No, I wasn't with the Soderbergh version. I know that this has been a constantly evolving project that has gone through a lot of different people and has taken a long time to do. And ultimately, when (director) Bennett Miller signed on, he was was looking to tell a real narrative. I think Soderbergh was looking to cast baseball players to play themselves, and Miller realized that, as a narrative, it is best served to have these parts played by actors, so he cast me as Scott Hatteberg.

AZSP: Do you have much of a baseball background?
CP: I was an athlete all through high-school, and I played baseball up until my freshman year, Little League baseball, stuff like that. It was the same season as track, and I was a shot-putt and discus thrower, so I didn't end up playing it in high school. I wasn't great at it, so I had a lot of work to do, in terms of trying to make my play seem authentic. That's one thing that the movie does really well, is it stays authentic to real baseball. We do have real players playing.

AZSP: Yeah, I saw that former D-back Royce Clayton plays Miguel Tejada. Did you go through much training for the film?
CP: I did, yes; I went through a really intensive, very rigorous training program, leading up to the film. I think it was altogether a three-month process, but a good six weeks of that was spent with Chad Kreuter, who's the former head coach of USC. Basically he said, "I'm here as much as you want to use me," because he was running a camp at USC with his son Cade, who was recovering from a shoulder injury. So I showed up at USC, probably six days a week for six weeks, and they ran me through the numbers. Both Chad and Cade really helped in terms of getting me to swing the bat realistically left-handed - Hatteberg's a lefty and I'm a righty - and field at first. It was awesome, like a dream fantasy camp that dads sent their kids to for thousands of dollars. It was really incredible.

AZSP: What was the hardest thing about learning to play a baseball player?
CP: I think the hardest thing was the mechanics of the baseball swing, and doing it left-handed versus right-handed. It was all difficult physically, but it was just so fun that it didn't seem that hard. It was a lot of fun. Kind of a dream job, just like every boy who was in Little League, had a dream of one day stepping into a major-league uniform. I certainly don't have to the chops to play in the pros, but for a few months in Oakland, I got to wear a major-league uniform, and step out on the field and play catch with guys who were ex-big league guys and it felt pretty damn good.

AZSP: You said you had to turn around and bat left-handed. Does that now feel natural? If you picked up a bat today, would you hit left- or right-handed?
CP: I did it yesterday, before the Celebrity All-Star Game, and I was hitting righty, and I was doing alright - but as soon as I hit the ball left-handed, that felt natural. I swung the bat probably close to a thousand times a day left-handed, just at home. I was pretty obsessed with it, and my wife was out of town, so I didn't have much to do anyway. Plus, trying to lose weight, I wasn't really drinking or doing anything fun, so I would pick up a bat and just swing it over and over.

The mechanics of my left-handed swing are much better than my right-handed swing; I don't have as much power and I'm not as accurate, necessarily, but I think the mechanics are better. What's nice is I didn't have a swing left-handed, so I didn't have any bad habits to break. I just go to go through the numbers, and I think developed a pretty good swing.

AZSP: Have you met the real Scott Hatteberg, and did you base your character off him?
CP: Yes, but that's the thing - I didn't. I didn't meet him, and I elected not to meet him, until we were through the more difficult part of my character's work on the movie, and I didn't read the book until after we were done filming either. Because when I read the screenplay, it was one of these projects - which happens more and more these days - where the screenplay was under lock and key. No-one's allowed to read it; I was allowed to read it, the day of my audition and I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement. '

But when I read the script, it just worked so well, to me, as a story, that I didn't want to read the book and was apprehensive to meet Scott. What was on the page for the screenplay was a story that I wanted to tell, and I didn't want to find myself in a situation where I was saying "Oh, that wasn't how it happened," because we're making a movie. As it turned out after I read the book, it didn't differ too much, but I really wanted to stay true to what was being represented in the screenplay, so I elected to not read the book and postpone meeting Scott until we were through doing the bulk of my work on the picture.

I finally met him when we were in Oakland, filming at the Coliseum - and man, he's great. Such a nice, nice guy: great family, beautiful wife, lovely daughter. He was just thrilled with the whole process, there on set, and I think we'll remain friends. I'm looking forward to him seeing the movie; hopefully, he'll like the way I've portrayed him! I met Billy Beane, he took me into the clubhouse the first day at the Oakland Coliseum; I was there before a game, and in the locker-room, and got to meet all the players. It was phenomenal to walk down the corridor where these professional baseball guys walk every day - it was pretty surreal.

AZSP: One of the other things that raised people's eyebrows was having Brad Pitt to play Beane.
CP: How cool is it to be a guy and they say, "Hey, we're doing your life story." Really? Who's playing me? "Brad Pitt." Not bad. I would like that, that would be pretty sweet. I think he does a great job. He's obviously a terrific actor and Bennett Miller really did a good job. This is not so much a story about baseball, as a person who happens to be a general manager of a baseball team.

AZSP: How was the Celebrities Softball Game?
CP: It was really fun. It was more of the same which has been happening through this process, which is to be surrounded by these legends, and down on the field with them, wearing the uniform. It never gets old. It's really rare that, as a professional, as part of your job, you get to play. Baseball players, professional athletes, or as an actor, you get to play. I'm really fortunate to be able to do that. Plus there was, like, 30,000 people there wasn't there?

AZSP: So when you were filming Moneyball, you were playing in an empty stadium and they filled the crowds in later?
CP: They filled the crowds in later, but they probably had about 4-5,000 extras, and they would put them in different parts of the stadium and shoot them. It's all real people, but I think there were 100,000 people there for game twenty during the streak [in 2002, the A's won 20 games in a row, the longest streak in AL history, the final one coming in front of the largest crowd in Coliseum history. Oakland blew an 11-run lead before Hatteberg walked them off with a homer in the ninth]. So they couldn't really get that many extras, but it looks like it in the movie.

AZSP: Doing my extensive research for this piece - thank you, Wikipedia! - it says you were discovered while working as a waiter. How did that happen?
CP: It was one of those strange things. I feel like I did everything in my power not to move to LA, and it found me - it makes me believe in fate or destiny. I was working as a waiter at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Factory in Maui, and was literally living in a van with a bunch of friends: we lived on the beach. I was 19, and having the time of my life. I had done stand-up comedy, theater before this, and fancied myself an actor, but just took zero steps towards creating a career in Hollywood. I never dreamed I would ever go to LA for acting: I didn't know anybody there, it was completely outside the realm of possibility.

But I still knew I wanted to be an actor. I waited on a director [Rae Dawn Chong], and they gave me a chance and put me in a movie - I got paid $700 and moved to LA. I had $700 in my pocket, and bought a car for $700 bucks - and started being a waiter in LA! I didn't know her name, but I knew she was a movie star, and I knew I recognized her; that was what initially started the conversation. "Whoa, you're a movie star, what are you doing here?" I tried some of my material on her, and she was, like, "Hey, you're funny, you should be an actor."

AZSP: What are you working on next?
CP: I'm actually doing a commercial shoot for Xbox and this new Star Wars game. I'm going to have a light-saber fight with Darth Vader, and they're going to rotoscope my footage into the actual footage from the real Star Wars, and they're going to run it online. It sounds pretty awesome!

CNBC Titans: Quincy Jones and Daughter Rashida Jones

Rashida Jones talks about one of the secrets of her father's success...his extraordinary skills as a communicator and leader.

Rashida Jones at the "Friends with Benefits" Special Screening

Rashida in "Wilfred" Production Stills

Pictures of Aziz Promoting "30 Seconds or Less"

Spoilers

Episode 4.01 of Parks & Recreation will be called "I'm Leslie Knope." Ann is being harassed by other male employees and Ron and Leslie go fishing - with shotguns.

"I'm Leslie Knope" airs September 22 on NBC.

Question: Is there anyway to get some Parks and Recreation scoop in celebration of their Emmy nods, and as consolation for the greatest comedic ensemble on TV right now being snubbed in the supporting actor/actress categories? Please? ?Charlotte

Ausiello: You got it! If the scheduling can be worked out, Paul Schneider will be back as Mark for an arc this season. ?We had a storyline for him last year but then the season got cut short,? explains exec producer exec producer Michael Schur. And what exactly WAS that storyline? ?When Mark left he said he wanted to go work for a local construction company. So there?s been a storyline floating out there that a project that that company?s working on intersects with the parks department and he comes back into the world and has to deal with the old gang again for an episode or two."

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