I’m Janet Varney and This Is How I Work

Janet Varney is best known … well, it depends on what you like her for. She has starred in The Legend of Korra , You are the Worst, and Stan Against Evil , and also created the IFC web series Fortune Rookie . She stars in the Journey to the Stars podcast audio drama and hosts the JV Club podcast. She is also the founder and director of SF Sketchfest , which has hosted an annual live comedy festival since 2001. We spoke to Janet about her career in hyphenation, how to get six busy actors together in one room, and the challenges of running a tiny one-day comedy. a festival or a giant three-week comedy festival.

LH: So you’re in Los Angeles now. Onsite or as per your usual setup?

JV: I work as usual in my home office. I look at a cloudy day and worry about a very cute bird who has built a nest on one of my hanging plants, right outside the front door, so every time one of the dogs or a person comes and goes she has to leave her nest and pretend Nothing happens. [As if] she’s just a random bird from the area, pecking for seeds! Nobody buys it. I would love to hang out with her so badly, no, just stay on the balls! Please, just don’t leave your children. This is the number one drama in my life right now.

LH: Poor bird! Let’s talk about your podcasts first – you have two, right?

SP: Aha! I’ve been doing my podcast The JV Club for about seven years now. At the moment I have about 325 episodes. On this podcast, I have been talking to casual guests for about three quarters of the year, and in the summer I do the Summer Boys episode where I talk to guys. The show’s host talks about their youth, but obviously a million other things as well.

The second podcast I host, Journey to the Stars, is much newer. This is an impromptu space podcast I do with Steve Berg, Colton Dunn, and Felicia Day. This is us in space on an alien ship, a motley group trying to return to Earth after climbing through a wormhole. I play ship AI. I am an alien and have mixed feelings about humans.

LH: I learned that all fiction podcasts have completely different creation processes. Do you record everything together or remotely?

SP: Definitely together. I don’t know how well I would do an impromptu thing [remotely]. I was a [remote] guest on one man’s impromptu podcast, and bless their hearts, I think they did a great job editing it. But all the time I felt like I was afraid of a conference call failure when everyone is talking and saying a lot, “Come on, go ahead!” “No, go on!” So I am very pleased that we are all in the same room.

It’s a huge amount of writing and preparation that goes upstairs. [Show Creator] Ryan Koppel formats the plot for each episode. I am also producing the show, so I see these things before they leave the rest of the cast. This is a very clear story. There are certain points, pieces of information and a timeline that we follow, and then we improvise the whole dialogue, add material and continue to move towards the final goal. So this is a really tough way to improvise. But I love it. It was fun to find new ways to relax in something impromptu, while still trying to move the story forward.

LH: I like to see different points on the improvisation spectrum. Improvisation as planned, or purely written, or the way the guys at Hello From the Magic Tavern – I think – rip it up completely.

SP: Aha! I have participated in their show twice. In one, I played an old woman who had her own bakery. And I was crazy when we lived in Outside Lands where I played an elf in a very bad disguise. They adhere to their general canon, but otherwise they completely adhere to it.

LH: On Voyage, what is your role as a producer?

JV: I’m working with Ryan weighing the plots of the episodes, which characters are going to be guest stars and who we end up commissioning. I work with Earwolf to book our studios and stuff.

I am not editing. It’s really well produced, there are sound effects and improvisation enhancements that create the texture of the scene, and I have nothing to do with that. I just enjoy it as a listener when they go out. I am always interested to hear what they added. As if Felicia said, “Oh, I can’t believe it’s a talking carrot!” we do not necessarily make the gingerbread talk at the moment, but you will hear this chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter in the background.

LH: Do you do web series too?

JV: Yes, my little indie short project that I did with IFC was nominated for an Emmy. It’s called Fortune Rookie . It is a mixture of Curb and Portlandia . This is a group of people playing silly versions of themselves and other people playing [fictional] characters. It also sounds like a very magical sketch-driven thinking. There is a journey through peyote, in which tiny paper dolls of me and another character come to life and have a whole conversation at the tarot table.

It’s a strange universe in which John Michael Higgins, Michael Hitchcock and Oscar Nunez are all members of an adult male boy band. James Rodi plays one of the early nemesis – [he is] very angry that Janet Varney quit show business to become clairvoyant, because he feels like this is a stolen idea from his show [ Psych ], in which he plays a fake clairvoyant.

LH: How did you move this show from idea to production? What was the process?

JV: I think it’s pretty common in the development and writing world, and especially in Los Angeles, if you’re a hybrid or a hyphen that does a couple of different things, not just a writer or director. This is the theme of the show – how many people in Los Angeles are hustling and defining themselves as different things because it takes some flexibility to survive.

This idea came to me many years ago after my only experience with a psychic. I love the idea of ​​psychics. I wish I could feel like they are real! But I cannot say that my experience gave me great confidence.

But I was fascinated by this idea – almost the danger of seeing someone who doesn’t know you, who, in all likelihood, doesn’t see your future, and then tells you something to expect. People want it so badly that they create a self-fulfilling prophecy. And how strange it is to give your choices and actions in the future into the hands of someone whom you do not know at all and who does not know you.

I started experimenting with different variations of this, wrote the script, which was a half-hour show with one camera, in which I did not even think that I would be participating, and presented it. I was approached by a company that specialized in more unprepared material, taking it as a hybrid of a sketch with something like a Daily Show element, in fact interviewing real so-called psychic experts, conducting the readings as “me” with the audience. So there was a pedestrian element in it. And then it all ended with this fantastic alternate reality version poking fun at Los Angeles.

We had a lot of things that we really wanted to do. The scripts for Fortune Rookie are so easy to come up with it’s almost disgusting. There are so many funny wonderful people I have worked with that it would be so much fun to write for them. and give them such scenarios and what their problems are, what they are. What reading, what am I doing for them? Will it be palmistry, will it be reading tarot cards, will it be reading when you scatter animal feces on the ground and read it? There are so many weird, real-world ways to predict future and destiny.

My scripting partner Brandon Reynolds and our production company Drama 3 | The 4 chose what we thought we could do with our budget and I asked people I like if they would do it and wrote for them [characters]. This was the first time I wrote for friends and it was so much fun to write! It has never been easier for me to write anything.

When we started filming it, my head started spinning. As tough as the job is, acting, producing, and writing, it’s very stressful, but that ridiculous feeling of being high was coping with it. It’s probably like motherhood – I didn’t have any children! – but I think that this feeling of insomnia is associated with many miracles. Your body and your brain are saying: “We will continue to do this, this is important, I will give you reasons to experience euphoria, as well as incredible fatigue!”

LH: So these are three projects that you invite as a guest in each episode. What do you pay attention to when choosing a guest?

JV: That’s a great question. When talking to people about adolescence, everyone will tell an interesting story about them. And it turns out that if you tell people about their adolescence, there is an opportunity for vulnerability, honesty, and intimacy. Having so much time between you and this version of yourself gives you some perspective. Maybe you have a sense of humor about this, maybe you feel a little compassion. This is a great way to get to know someone very quickly. So I never run out of people I wish I could see, so the list just keeps growing, not shrinking with every episode I make.

LH: Are there any problems getting a certain guest or meeting the schedule?

SP: Of course, exactly. One cliché that I cannot avoid is that the first few seconds of the interview sound like, “Finally we did it! It only took four reschedules because both of our schedules were constantly changing, or you were on a show in Georgia for six months! “

When working on a show like Voyage , it’s quite difficult to just get our creator, our studio, and our four main actors in one room, and then start juggling with the guests, on top of that. It becomes a bit of a logistic nightmare, but somehow it always works and it works out.

At Fortune Rookie, Fred Armisen really wanted to do it, and we planned the day, and then it turned out that – he is so cool – he said, “Something happened,” and we shuffled something and made it work, and he was so restrained. talked about the issue and turned out to be hosting Saturday Night Live . So he got on a plane on Friday after he finished filming with me and flew to New York where he performed on Saturday Night Air the next night. Here’s a champion friend. So, you have to be flexible.

LH: Have you found any tricks that will help? Was there any strategy to try to cluster people and records or shoot together?

JV: We’ve learned the hard way that it’s always safer to do something on the weekend. Along with Colton [co- star of Voyage ], he’s on a show at the Superstore right now, and when they need him, he should be available. Of course they take precedence.

We usually set aside weekends in our recording schedule for this kind of generalization that there are people who can only spend weekends. The same is true when you’re filming something that doesn’t feel like a big union budget, chain production. You squeeze in here and there on Sunday morning.

LH: Let’s talk about SF Sketchfest. Could you tell me about your role in the creation of this project?

JV: I lived in San Francisco; I moved from Arizona when I was still a college student. When I was about 13 years old, I was bitten by a beetle from San Francisco. I just couldn’t get it out of my head. It was a situation where I fell in love with a place and then decided how to get there, not [move there] to school, or follow someone, or my family moved there. I was in love with San Francisco as a place, an idea, and a life, so I dropped out of school in Arizona in my first year of college and then worked for a year to get a residency so I could travel to San Francisco State with knowledge of the matter. state tuition fees.

There I met my two (now for many years in a row) partners, Cole Stratton and David Owen. We were in the sketching group with the fourth member, Gabriel Diani – he’s now an independent filmmaker, I’ve done a couple of his films, and he’s a genius. But Gabe took time off to go to a one-man show, and we decided to organize a festival so that we would have more opportunities to make a long set of sketches in San Francisco. There weren’t many places that allowed or were created to do this. Comedy clubs are cool if you’re a nerdy sketch comedian who wears costumes and wigs because there is usually no backstage. The scenes are for one person with a microphone. So while we were greeted with open arms by places like Punch Line and Cobb’s – which certainly didn’t need it, but we were really lucky it was – it did create problems.

So we reached out to five other sketch groups that we met during the year while we were sketching together and asked if you would like us to look into renting a small theater for a month? We could all be co-headlining, have a pop night where we all do short sets, and we can promote that as a local sketch comedy festival. Maybe the press will be interested, and we will be able to expand our audience, and we will have a small base for a month.

This was our first year, a local six-group sketch festival. We sold out all but one of the shows because we got a lot of coverage from the Chronicle . San Francisco, despite the fact that its economy has changed, remains a big supporter of the arts, especially in the media.

In our second year, we moved to a larger theater and somehow convinced Fred Willard and his sketch troupe to join us, as well as three guys from UCB, Matt, Matt and Ian. We asked people to obey from everywhere. Suddenly we played a lot more concerts, and many more people from other cities came to us.

We are still three [programming the festival]. We have great staff who come very shortly before and during the festival. And next January we will have 19th, which is very strange to say.

LH: Now that this is an established thing, is it much easier to find places with suitable space every year, or is it still a challenge?

JV: It’s actually very difficult. It’s much easier to find a place to rent when you have the capital, and we’re fortunate enough to now have a fan base in San Francisco and have these great famous people running the festival over and over again. When you’re looking for a 75-seat theater, you have far fewer options than [when we are] looking for a hundred to three hundred seats for that, five hundred for that [bigger artist] and 1400 tickets for that … and – that level of reunion.

But at the same time, there are still not enough places even in a city like San Francisco. There is no ton that falls within a certain range. So, if the theater is not available, and it is designed for 250-300 seats, finding a suitable replacement is not as easy as you think. There’s cost, or availability, or location, or some places just have a weird dark area at the bottom that won’t allow a large group to hang out between things or be backstage during a show. Something like that.

Every year we have our pillars and we are so lucky and happy to have them there. But San Francisco is also changing a lot. There are big things to do right now because Punch Line, which has been in the same location for decades, their building was sold, and whichever company bought it, it was like “This won’t be a comedy club anymore.” People like Dave Chappel and W. Kamau Bell were outraged to hear this. They held a press conference on the steps of the city hall. So they are really lobbying to keep this iconic place where it is.

But San Francisco’s economy is now banana due to one of many technology booms. This one didn’t seem to slow down. Thus, the cost of living has become prohibitively high, and rents for businesses have increased. Fortunately, a lot of tech people love comedy. So we were able to stay in business. But we have definitely watched some of the small businesses that we have created that we respect and understand the struggles that have been forced to relocate or close.

Speaking of logistics, the most difficult thing for us is taking care of our performers, but this is a very long festival. It’s three days off now, and we have concerts in between almost every day. We will have 200 people in the city at the same time, 25 shows will take place in one night, and getting people to and from the airport is something special – a transport festival as part of a comedy festival. It will always be difficult. And there are other things that will now take care of themselves.

LH: Have you found any creative transport solutions?

JV: Lyft sponsored. It was fantastic when someone could call their car instead of the house of cards that [drives transport]. “This man was supposed to take this man to the airport, but he got stuck on the bridge.” So when someone said, “Here are some credits you can use to take people from the show to the evening show,” it was a lifesaver.

LH: I haven’t thought about how ridesharing, even without the sponsorship aspect, really changes the possibilities for a big event like this when you do so many vehicles at the same time.

SP: This almost makes up for the huge congestion in the city.

LH: You talk about hyphenating talent and seem like someone who is clearly trying out a lot of interesting projects. What parts were the first, apart from sketches, did you shoot for several years before you started writing and producing?

JV: I was definitely a theater kid in some way, but in the simplest sense of a school district. I was not part of any private repertoire. But by the time I moved to San Francisco, I kind of pragmatic my path from the thought that I would be an artist to make a living. But my friends at SF State, Dave, Cole and Gabe, talked me into becoming a member of the sketch group they had created. And I’m so glad they did it. It was really the first time I officially did a comedy. I loved doing funny plays and the like, but I was not one of those kids who participated in an improvisation group in high school. And shortly after that, we founded the festival.

So [producing and performing] was hand in hand for me by the time I arrived in Los Angeles, a couple of years after the festival. I really thought about things from different angles and it served me not to feel obligated to every audition, be it a good show or a bad show. I had confidence, I felt that if it didn’t work, I would just go back to my normal life. So there was always a behind-the-scenes view. And since I was sketching, I never stopped writing.

Perhaps there is more self-writing, scrappy [approach] to comedy, and I am very lucky that this was my introduction to show business because there are people who are brilliant actors, but they are just waiting for the phone to ring. … And I couldn’t live like that. It would drive me crazy. So, for example, you asked what I’m going to shoot on the screen … I don’t know! I can get a role in something, but I sold the pilot to IFC, so I just wrote it with my partners, wrote other things and promoted other shows.

[It’s good to have] that kind of flexibility and be ready for anything, and be ready for something that didn’t seem to come close to you until you suddenly do it. I helped develop and run HuffPost Live in a way I never imagined. But they came to me and said that this is what we create, and it can be really interesting, special and unusual.

I said that I have no journalistic education. They said that everything is fine, this is what you are going to do, this is what you are going to find out, this is what you are going to produce, this is what you are going to host. It was an oddly organic experience, even working for this huge company, owned by an even bigger company, and going to work in the bullpen every day, which was a very, very big deviation from my normal life. But I’m so glad I did it. I have such a wealth of experience and strong friendships that I would never have had if I hadn’t done this for six months.

If I was in, I don’t know, in something that would have 12 seasons … My friend Kirsten Wangsness has been in Criminal Minds for 15 years and she is one of those people who cannot sit still creatively. So she does this show, but then she takes all of her time off to write plays and perform in a theater troupe, and she has a distillery. And I would like to think that I would be that person if I was on the show for so long, but I could also see that I was never involved in a bunch of things I do and thought I had a job. and it is constantly renewing itself, which is a lot of money, so why waste emotional and physical energy fighting to do anything else?

Lewis Hamilton Means, you also have to make some difficult decisions. Sometimes you find yourself running out and need to figure out what you are giving up. Was there a time when you had to give up something – or when you did it and regretted not doing it?

SP: I don’t know what happened. It’s kind of smaller. I mean by doing HuffPost I definitely found out why it wasn’t something I could handle. I have too many other things that I could not stop doing and do without ceasing. It was a situation in which I realized very quickly that this was not something I could continue to do. It’s not about making that choice, and it was great. Now I know what it is like to go to the other side of the word “this is impossible.”

There are definitely auditions that now mean something different to me. It’s like they’ve been filming something in New York for six months. I just auditioned for a video game which means working in Serbia and I just can’t do that right now. I have too many things that tie me to the States and, in particular, to being in the city.

There was definitely a time in my career when I was just lucky if something happened. But especially if you’re someone who has the thrill of making your own stuff and is in demand – whatever that means, be it a bunch of creative friends who want you to do something with them for free, or that filmmakers enjoy working with you or people like what you write – I’m not talking about myself, just about everyone who plays in different fields – it’s really hard to say no. When you enter show business, anxiety is instilled in you: “This may be your last job!” It’s kind of a negative side, but the positive side is that it’s just great to help other people. And they do it for you, and they do something just for fun. And if you are lucky enough to do what you love, you want to be able to do it all the time. It’s hard to say no because everything is fun, not just because you are afraid, you have a fleeting flash: “Maybe this person won’t hire me next time!”

The idea of ​​being somewhere really far away for an indefinite period of time is very difficult. Likewise, the idea of ​​having only one concert, which takes a lot of time, becomes very daunting.

LH: I want to summarize some of our standard questions: what are you currently reading or are you really recommending?

JV: Oh my gosh. I am currently going through a real notch of Ruth Rendell . I love riddles, I have long been a British mystery botanist, and Ruth Rendell has written so many books and lived such a long and rich life that I probably won’t run out for a long time. I am now listening to the Book of Asta , which she wrote under a pseudonym. I don’t know why, maybe people said, “You can’t put out so many good books, we hate you for that,” so she started using the name Barbara Vine. But the Book of Asta takes place in two different time periods. One of the main characters is a Danish woman who lived in London in 1910. And that’s great. You will learn much more than you thought by listening to the secret.

LH: What are you still trying to figure out?

SP: What is not ? It’s a challenge for me to sew together a few different things that I do. I sincerely believe that if someone is a fan of this thing I did, I’m sure they would like it to be a different thing. But that’s outside of their fandom. I voiced Korra in The Legend of Korra , who has this amazing, loyal, wonderful, thoughtful fandom that continues to lead me to Comic-Con and the like, but a lot of these people are like we are watching anime, watching cartoons. , we read graphic novels. We love superheroes. This is what we do. But at the same time, I want to go, but there’s also something else, this weird podcast, this impromptu comedy that doesn’t fit in with anything you’re doing right now, but if you listen to it, I think you’ll think it’s it was fun and great!

Since I like so many different things and they exist in these different areas, it is still difficult to glue things together, to present the things that I am proud of in one package so that people can say, “Oh good!”