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Throughout all his work, the comedian has remained faithful to his very distinct and very loud voice.
A Conner OMalley ecosystem.
I really like the idea of Heres the price, heres what you get.
Im not going to stop doing that.
Thats something that I think is so fun.
Its just kind of like, Here it is.
I really love that.
But Ive definitely hit a ceiling with what I can do with no-budget stuff.
Its not AI, its a real person.
you’re free to speak to him atEndorphinPort.com.
Theres a VR thing were working on thats still in the early stages.
Theres a lot of stupid shit Id like to do with it.
Im not trying to be coy about it.
The pandemic was something where I felt my output increased just because I had a lot more time.
Then when we came back, it felt like the TV-and-film industry wasnt quite what it was pre-pandemic.
Then the strike shut everything down.
Not like friend rates, but their rate.
And while theyre not giving me the rate they would give to Audi, I want to pay people.
The character you play in these Endorphin Port videos is lamenting about the current state of the internet.
Joe and scrolling what came up.
I remember looking at the CD-ROM Wikipedia, like pre-Wikipedia.
I think it was calledEncarta?
Im dyslexic, so Ive always had a really hard time reading.
So early internet wasnt super-interesting to me.
It wasnt until YouTube and stuff like that came about.
Its funny to me that I wasnt a super-online guy until video came out.
What are you watching on YouTube?I watch …
I almost dont want to say.
But it was like, no, these are all the Wikipedia pages I have open.
Ive been getting into watching YouTube Shorts.
Somethings going on there thats like the Wild Wild West.
That algorithm is out of control.
What is it about YouTube Shorts?
They fucking got my ass.
I love this.And then Reels is kind of the half-assed version of that.
Its like,Oh, God.
Its less addictive in that sense.
You haveso manyHaloreferencesin your work.
Are you a gamer?Fortunately, no.
I do not have gaming disease again.
My hand-eye coordination is bad.
Its also why Im not good at sports.Haloto me is … Its equal to watching a movie, just staring at the TV.
I feel like that age ofHalofor guys our age is very evocative.
You look at boomer directors, and theyre obsessed with fucking in cars as teenagers.
And our generation is obsessed with playingHalowith 15 men in a basement.
I was so pissed that I couldnt pull out my phone in time.
Could you tell me a little about them?Content Guywas a pilot kind of similar toTruthHunters.
We shot it in 2019.
Theres a piece of it online thecuck a fan videowith Tony Camarabi is from it.
It was another sketch pilot thing for a basic-cable internet.
But the internet passed on it.
So its just been, like, sitting.
Like, not as a character?
He was literally in it?Yeah, they were in it.
I cant say who.
And I think thats how a lot of TV gets away with stuff like that.
Development is pretty hard, and also, the pandemic didnt really help it.
It was just such a weird time where everything shut down.
What if I just buried myself in the woods?
Theres a cave over here.
Lets go over there.
And what aboutThe Mask?The Maskwas a sizzle reel for a TV pitch.
Its where I met [producers] Reggie Henke and Katie Dolan, who worked on it.
Danny edited it again.
I dont know if it would have conveyed an idea of a series.
It really occupies a zone that I think is interesting.
Its not a series; its not a movie.
Its kind of in the middle.
Whats it been like to pitch to execs over the years?Its generally been okay.
Tell me about yourself.
But youre also being graded the whole time.
People are evaluating you:Whats your vibe?
Whats this idea?Its very formal in that sense, but its also kind of loose and nerve-racking.
Its just another form of writing, and its a thing you have to get good at.
But its really hard to convey an idea.
Its one of the most difficult things to do, but its not impossible.
It just takes a lot of experience.
And if you look at that staff, its a very weird mix of people in a good way.
It was a good experience.
They were like, We want everything you have.
We want to try everything.
There was a good spirit of that, so it felt easy to pitch a lot.
That was my first ever professional gig.
That was a great education.
It felt like a good apprenticeship.
BesidesLate Night, season two ofHow to With John Wilsonis your most notable job as a hired hand.
Based on your interests, Im guessing the MRE episode was your idea.I dont know.
I think that might have been there before.
Im very proud of working on that show and very honored to have been a part of it.
Another great, weird staff.
But I still have this deep pride, because just the nature of that show, its so autobiographical.
Theres so much of John in it; its so based on his life.
Im pretty sure he had the MRE thing before I got there.
Its hard to tell.
So it wasSusan Orleansidea.Susan Orlean is a prepper.
She lives in a missile silo in Kansas.
Cole, specifically, hes a great guy.
And then Cole and I started talking more.
Hes such a sweet guy, and theres a sensitivity to his work.
It reminds me ofKing of the Hillor a lot of Mike Judge stuff.
Mikal Cronin is somebody that Ive been a fan of his music for so long.
I heard he was a savant with a bunch of different instruments.
Every once in a while, Ill ask, Could you do a saxophone solo?
He works really incredibly fast, and I get the stuff back and am like,Oh my God.
This just elevates everything to a completely different level more than I could ever have imagined on my own.
And another sweet, nice guy.
And Dannys just incredibly talented.
So much ofThe Maskhe found through editing, and he really put a lot of himself in it.
How did that come together?
How soon into lockdown did you decide to use this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shoot in an empty Times Square?
No shade toVanilla Sky, but thats what everything was.
And then 9/11 happened.
And theyre like, Were not doing that anymore.
Then everything shifted toSouthland Tales.
I remember watchingVanilla Skyas a kid and being like,Ill never understand this art.
I dont know what this is.
500 Cigaretteswas one I shot in the first week of lockdown.
He would edit it together, and Id send him some voiceover.
We had this process of writing and shooting simultaneously and editing until we had a thing.
I had to yell at him.
He was like, Sorry!
I dont know if he had seen me.
I also met this Irish guy in the middle of Times Square, and he contacted me afterwards.
We met up in London recently.
Where does that come from?Theyre just funny to me, the names of them.
They all have their own identity.
The south suburbs are different than the North Shore suburbs.
But for the most part, you cant tell the difference between Des Plaines and …
I cant even think of another.
Theyre all just like this weird …
Evanston.
Prospect Heights.Evanston has a vibe.
Maywood has a vibe.
Berwyn and Cicero obviously have a mob history.
I worked for 1-800-GOT-JUNK in Chicago, and we did a lot of jobs in the northwestern suburbs.
So it kind of comes from that a little bit.
Arlington Heights is getting the Chicago Bears.I had a distant cousin who was mayor of Arlington Heights.
I remember meeting him once, and he had a cop car for a regular car.
But what I really like about them is that theres always a layer of sympathy.
Theres not a lot of meanness toward them.
It just might be the way my mom raised me to be polite.
It might just be a midwestern Irish Catholic thing.
Im a fucking dumbass.
Im stupid as shit.
I wasnt good at school.
Im not good with my hands.
I would have been living in the basement of my dads house: I dont know.
He said he put in an app at Target.
I feel very lucky and privileged to be where Im at now.
But I think theres not a lot of dumb-guy representation in the media.
Were there any career roadmaps that you admired?Thats very flattering to be compared to Chris Elliott.
Hes obviously the king.
But growing up, I remember WTTW Channel 11 did a documentary on Second City calledSecond to None.
Tina Fey was in that, and Scott Adsit.
Kevin Dorff was one of the cast members.
But in terms of emulating career paths, thats something you cant be too married to, you know?
I feel its better to be adaptable.
WithLate Night, it was a weird series of events, and I got very lucky.
But The Unabomber is someone I really admired and whose career I studied.
MKUltra, Harvard, Montana, Supermax.
It was all about access to film.
Now children are born editing things on phones and iPads and shit, and nobody does cursive anymore.
They dont know how to do long division.
Also, I dont want to create an echo chamber for people.
Getting at the Hollywood of it … Yeah, I dont know.
Again, I just truly feel like kind of a dumbass whos lucky to be here.
