The Apiary

Adam Witt is a writer, filmmaker, and comedian. He is a founding member of Schadenfreude, a Chicago sketch comedy group which enjoyed its own show on NPR for several years before focusing their efforts on screenplay work, and is still together despite Adam's recent move to California. Obsessed with filmmaking since he was a child, Adam is having fun in L.A., where, until he learns to successfully schmooze his way to megastardom, he is not at all getting tired of editing footage of naked girls. Former Schadenfreude member Ike Barinholtz, who currently stars on MADtv, recently told the Bastion that "Schad kicks ass, and if you live in Chicago and have never seen them, go right away, before they go all Hollywood." You can check out more of their videos here .

How did Schadenfreude come together, and what sorts of comedy projects have you done?

Schadenfreude came together in October of 1997 (that's Tin for all you traditional anniversary gift givers), when I asked five of my Second City classmates if they'd like to get together to form a sketch group. The original lineup was Ike Barinholtz, John Bolger, Kate James, Sandy Marshall, Gillian Vigman, and myself. Classmate Justin Kaufmann was at every show during our first run at The Playground, which at that time was at Cafe Ashie (now Stargaze in Andersonville). He started performing with us halfway through the run of sixteen awful shows. When we asked Justin to join he was so drunk he forgot the next day. Stephe Schmidt (writer/webmaster/lights & sound) was also at every Ashie show and started writing and co-directing with us when we started our two-year run at The Heartland Studio Theater in Rogers Park, ditto with Master of Ceremonies Mark Hanner to round out our "classic" lineup. Before hanging up our enormous prop bags we performed in 300+ stage shows, including a monthlong run in Edinburgh Scotland, a two-week run in New York, and twice Headlining the Chicago Improv Festival (one time turning the Athaneum into a Hotel & Casino complete with bellboys and blackjack tables). From 2003 to 2005 we wrote, produced, and voiced 60 radio theatre episodes of "Schadenfreude" for Chicago Public Radio and since then have been turning several of those episodes into screenplays. Hey, you asked.

We heard you all recently holed up in a snowbound cabin somewhere to finish off your second screenplay and/or fight off the temptation to go crazy and murder each other. What really happened during those dark days?

It had been a long time since Justin's writing had been praised by the critics and he was looking to get his career back on track, so when he discovered that Sandy had written a brilliant screenplay despite being a novice, Justin devised a plan with Kate to kill Sandy and take the screenplay for his own...wait, that's the plot to "Deathtrap."

What really happened was pure bliss, we were pretty excited to write together because we hadn't been together in four months since I ran off to L.A. Unlike previous retreats we weren't trying to write fifteen half-hour radio shows with sketches, concepts, and characters all from the ground up. We've lived with the characters who inhabit the Phudie Mart since we shot the short film in 1999. Since then the characters made several appearances onstage and episode 36 of our radio show is entirely about the Phudie Mart . So not only did we only have to write only ONE thing, but we got to play with characters who had built-in jokes, POV's we knew well. We knocked out 83 pages in five days, after ten years together we pretty much read each others minds. You ever laugh to the point of actual physical pain? There's one joke in Phudie Mart that made me laugh that hard, headaches, facecramps, everything. Now, three weeks later, thinking about it as I type, I just laughed out loud again.

- Elizabeth McQuern

Your blog is pretty entertaining. What's this whole "short-haired chick" stuff about? Would you characterize it as a fetish, or merely a strong aesthetic preference, and who according to your extensive research, is the ultimate short-haired chick?

YOU'RE entertaining. I don't know what a fetish is, can it be possible to have a Apple pie fetish? I like Apple pie? What can I say, femininity annoys me. It's bigger than aesthetics or a preference, you can tell almost everything about a girl by how short she keeps her hair. If I told you I just went climbing or camping or to a Pixies concert with my girlfriend, how long's her hair? I think a certain outlook on life accompanies that maligned hair choice, and I like more "pals" than "gals." Women are feminine no matter how boyish they dress, how much makeup they wear, or how short their hair is, society has conditioned us to believe otherwise, and lots and lots of guys agree with me. This concludes the Playboy profile portion of this interview. The ultimate Short-Haired chick? Janeane Garofalo - when she cuts it short, when she let's it grow long she looks like a dike.

Also, what the hell is Otisburg?

For those reading who might not know what you're talking about, Otisburg was the name of my blog on the previous incarnation of Schadenfreude's website. It has been replaced, as have all our personal blogs, with the group blog (before it was called "Otisburg" it was called "That's What They Want You To Think.")

As far as where the name comes from, well, Otisburg is a little itty bitty place, near Costa Del Lex, Lutherville, and Tessmacher Springs.

You moved from Chicago to L.A. a few months ago. Why did you move, and what are you up to there?

I felt my training in Chicago was complete, that I'd done ten times what I went there to do. The radio show was over, and I had quit my job of three years at a movie production company, so it felt like life was coming to a pause. It was also the first time in the history of Schadenfreude that I thought I could move and not hurt our process too much. My first love has always been the movies, and there was nothing more about the film industry that I could learn in Chicago. I wanted to take my little experience and go to the dead center of the entertainment industry where I didn't know shit and figure the industry out. Also, I was planning optimistically for the future of our first screenplay, "Alderman." Two months after I moved, Schadenfreude flew in for a meeting on the script with a talent agency.

Your interest in filmmaking goes way back. Tell us about the origins of that interest, and where you'd like to go with it in the future.

My generation's so lucky to have had so many celebrity directors while growing up, how could you NOT take an interest in filmmaking? Smoky and The Bandit was all the rage in 1977, but not a single person talked about Hal Needham, yet EVERY kid knew Spielberg and Lucas. That naturally led me to ask what it was that they did? I've studied directors ever since. I remember trying to give a presentation to my second grade class on matte photography. I don't think I explained it very well. I'm not sure I even understood it, but I wanted to. When I was in eighth grade we were supposed to shoot a fake commercial for English class. While the rest of the class made soap and cereal commercials, me and my buddies (who had studied Tom Savini's horror effects videotape religiously) made a bloodsoaked Friday The 13th trailer with pretty realistic effects. I was that kid in college who worked in the movie theatre, video store, and comic book store, which was a supercool pedigree until every indie filmmaker who broke in the nineties had the same story. I was working in a videostore when "Clerks" came out and I was like, "damn, yesterday it was cool, no I'm a fucking cliche." I got a video camera in 1993 and started making shorts and documenting my life. To date I've probably shot 500 documentary hours on Schadenfreude, someday I'll start editing.

We heard your work in L.A. has so far included editing jobs that involve looking at boobs, boobs, boobs all day long. Is it like the old gynecologist joke, you can hardly stand to look at them anymore, or is the love still there?

You know, I used to love porno, I mean really really love it. Yes, I've been editing Girls Gone Wild. Life can take some hilarious right turns. I'm told it's every man's dream, eh, not really, but you know what was my dream when I moved here? To get paid to edit, which I thought would NEVER happen. I've also gotten over the feeling of being "busted" watching porno when my producer walks in the door. Oh, and you know what else I've learned? The bush is extinct, we've finally done away with it as a species. I've seen fifty or sixty girls now and all of them are completely shaved, and you know what the guy behind the camera says every time? "Oh wow, you're shaved, that's hot." Is it? Or do they all look like that? Oh wow, you're wearing socks, THAT'S DIFFERENT.

Besides doing stuff to pay the bills, are you exploring comedy in L.A.? Seen anything great, or anything you'd like to get involved in?

Well I certainly didn't move to L.A. for the comedy scene, in fact I was kind of depressed when I moved because I had this thought in my mind like comedy was over for me because I wasn't going to be in Chicago anymore. It turns out that sketch, standup, and improv are kind of coming together to make a pretty vibrant underground comedy scene, which I thought had come and went in the early nineties with Beth Lapides' Un-Cabaret. I just read an article about how it's really catching fire. Who'd've guessed my timing was pretty good to catch a comedy wave here? Not that I've done anything but be funny on friends' couches.

Don Hall referred to Schadenfreude as "The Dick York of Chicago comedy." We'd like to give you a chance to respond, so please fill in the blank. "Don Hall is the _____________ of Chicago comedy."

Don Hall is the Dick of Chicago Comedy.