Kids say the darndest things

Dave Foley

Time Out New York: We’re excited about the tour coming to New York.
Dave: We are too—especially New York. I always like being in New York.

TONY: Really? Tell me why.
Dave: Well, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but it’s a great city. I hang out with friends there and wander around. And there’s always been a good audience for us in New York. So it’ll be nice to be there—and do some new material. When we got together to see if we could still write together, I was very pleased by the stuff we were coming up with and how quickly we were coming up with it.

TONY: What do you enjoy about coming back to sketch after doing so many other things?
Dave: We have a relationship with each other that we don’t have anywhere else—even to the extent that we can be mean to each other is refreshing. And we work very quickly. And the guys just make me laugh. So when we get together it’s usually a good time.

TONY: Is sketch an art form?
Dave: Definitely—one of the best. I mean, it’s a very draining format: You have to put all this character and story into three minutes and then it’s over. So you burn a lot of ideas in sketch because they have to be very concise. So it’s a tiring thing to do—great when you’re young but it’s tiring when you’re older. But a great sketch is a really fantastic thing. I love those Python sketches that are just beautiful to watch because they’re beautifully structured and put together. We’re focused on trying to be the best sketch troupe we can be rather than think about what would come next…which is probably one of our greatest flaws. We never planned ahead.

TONY: Well, if you had, would you have planned to be touring again this many years later?
Dave: No, I don’t think we would have predicted it. I mean, we all thought we’d keep doing something together over the years. But I don’t know if we thought we’d be out on tour like this.

TONY: What comes next?
Dave: We’re trying to write a movie together and produce it independently. That’s probably the route for us to go. And maybe develop other TV projects. Mostly we found that we like writing together. So wherever the writing takes us is what we’ll do.

TONY: That’s very Zen.
Dave: Yeah, or just lazy.

TONY: We seem to be in a bit of a sketch renaissance right now.
Dave: It’s one of those things that get pronounced dead every once in a while. It’s like sitcoms. Every few years they pronounce sitcoms dead and then they come back. They’re dead until someone makes a good one.

TONY: Tell me your favorite character that you play.
Dave: There’s a piece I really like about an escape artist. I liked doing the Bruno and Francesca sketch.

TONY: Will we see them again?
Dave: Maybe. Those are two characters I’ve always said could be expanded on.

TONY: What’s your favorite sketch?
Dave: Might be the “Reg” sketch, which is a really old one. We’re mourning the death of a friend and then it gets revealed that we’re mourning his death because we killed him. I like that sketch a lot. There’s a sketch called “Comfortable,” where two couples have dinner and Scott eventually winds up having sex with my wife on the dining room table behind us. Those are two of my favorites.

TONY: Who’s the most difficult to tour with?
Dave: This time around I think it will be me.

TONY: Why?
Dave: I wanna get ahead of the game. I wanna be the difficult one this time.

NEXT: Mark McKinney»