Comedy Q&A: Jon Glaser of Delocated!

Comedy Q&A: Jon Glaser of Delocated!
by John Wenzel on February 12, 2009

Avoiding death has never been this much fun!

The premise is simple: After ratting out the dastardly Russian mafia, “Jon” and his kin are shuffled to a new undercover life through a friendly government witness protection program. But instead of living under the radar, “Jon” talks his family into becoming reality TV stars in New York — all the while wearing black ski masks.

If that sounds a bit far-fetched or like a pitch for a particularly demented cartoon series, you’re not far off. “Delocated!” is a new series from Adult Swim that, incidentally, premieres tonight on the late-night Cartoon Network programming block.

In advance of the show we spoke with “Jon,” a.k.a. Emmy-winning comedian and writer Jon Glaser (“Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” “Human Giant,” “The Daily Show,” etc.) about the show’s origin and why digitally-altered voices are so friggin’ funny.

So how’d did you get the idea for this show?

I had an idea a long time ago for a witness protection program character that had more of a joke attached to it. The joke was that he was an impressionist that happened to be in the witness protection program. It was really stupid but kind of funny. I always liked it and wanted to do something else with that type of character, so it was after I left “Conan” that I came up with the idea for the show.

The episodes I watched seemed pretty focused but also pretty organic. How much of the dialogue is improvised?

There’s definitely a fair amount that’s improvised. We try to stick to the script as much as possible but it’s not word-for-word unless it’s something super specific. If we have to, we’ll make sure we get takes that are just a script. A lot of it’s loose, like in the “ska-mitzvah” episode. That whole exchange with me in the rabbi’s study with my son, that was just something where the actor, Jacob, he said something and I corrected him in character and he just went with it. We just lucked out with him. He’s able to improvise scenes effortlessly.

What’s the initial order for the series?

They’re going to air seven episodes total. I think it depends on how the show does and what everybody’s thinking. Hopefully we’ll get to do more. It’s just hard to say. This is (Adult Swim’s) first full, live action show. We’re all curious to see how it goes with their audience at this point. Even if it doesn’t get picked up after that I feel pretty great about the first season and that’s all I wanted going into it.

In order to hide their identities the characters have their vocal chords permanently altered. Why is vocal distortion so creepy and funny at the same time?

I don’t know. It’s just a really shocking, disturbing sound coming out of someone’s mouth. I always love that — hearing people on the news talking in the shadows — and it was one thing I loved about this character. It’s his constant, all-the-time voice to the point where it’s just something you accept as normal. This is how this guy looks and that’s how he talks. Obviously when we were working on the script we realized they couldn’t all be voice jokes or ski mask jokes. The scripts still have to ready funny regardless. But when we’d be editing stuff things would be funny and make us laugh on their own, then we’d put that voice on and we’d just go “OH MY GOD.”

I can see why you wouldn’t want all the jokes to be sort of one-note. That could get stale really quickly.

It was one of my concerns even going into writing the pilot. We wanted to make sure it wasn’t just that, otherwise it wouldn’t work. We were all about coming up with some funny ideas. Like, the ska-mitzvah has nothing to do with being in the witness protection program.

How did the show do its casting?

Casting is almost like writing the show. It can’t just be about the ski masks or whatever. It has to be a good performer first and foremost, and really there’s only a few people in the mask.