Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. That's PVC IV, a song featuring
Speaker 1: PVC pipes being played by three men with their flip flops.
Speaker 1: My guests today are some of the most famous performers
Speaker 1: in the world, though you've likely never seen their real
Speaker 1: faces nor heard their actual voices. Created by Matt Goldman,
Speaker 1: Chris Wink and Philip Stanton in nineteen eighty nine, Blue
Speaker 1: Man Group began as a performance art piece inspired by
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties counterculture. The show would eventually grow into the
Speaker 1: worldwide phenomenon we know it as today. In addition to
Speaker 1: the original Astor Place theater show, Blue Man Group has
Speaker 1: staged three world tours and taken up residency in Las Vegas, Chicago, Orlando,
Speaker 1: and Boston. The group has released five albums, received a
Speaker 1: Grammy nomination, and performed on numerous TV shows and in
Speaker 1: some of the most memorable commercials. This past weekend, Blue
Speaker 1: Man Group's original New York City show closed after seventeen
Speaker 1: thousand performances over three decades. They're synonymous with creativity, ingenuity,
Speaker 1: and of course, a distinct shade of blue paints.
Speaker 2: My name is Chris Wink and this voice is the
Speaker 2: voice of Philip Stanton.
Speaker 1: Where'd you grow up?
Speaker 3: Well, I grew up in New York.
Speaker 4: Actually, my dad came to Union Theological Seminary by Columbia,
Speaker 4: became a minister. We were in Texas for five years.
Speaker 4: He was in a parsonage, but then he got hired
Speaker 4: back because he was a linguist guy, and he became
Speaker 4: a professor.
Speaker 3: So I grew up by Columbia. It was a really
Speaker 3: interesting Union.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what about you.
Speaker 2: I was born in Lubbock, Texas. Group in Savannah, Georgia.
Speaker 2: My father was a minister also weirdly, but my father
Speaker 2: also built churches, I say, a group in Savannah. But
Speaker 2: I really, you know, I grew up until I was
Speaker 2: eight in Texas, So I'm kind of half and half
Speaker 2: in a way.
Speaker 1: So when you were growing up, what was theater art? Creativity?
Speaker 1: Performance art? I mean, people could be doing what you're doing,
Speaker 1: which is considered this highly creative thing. I'm not just
Speaker 1: saying this for your benefit. I moved to New York
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, and by the time I was
Speaker 1: in New York and you guys opened up on Lafayette Street,
Speaker 1: which was before LaMaMa. When you were and when you
Speaker 1: had the he were staked out there at the Lafayette.
Speaker 1: I mean everyone in New York went to go see
Speaker 1: Blue Man. Now, prior to that, to this highly creative
Speaker 1: thing you guys came up with, especially at that time,
Speaker 1: we hadn't seen much like that at all. What was
Speaker 1: your diet creatively? What were you into? Well?
Speaker 2: I moved to New York to be kind of a
Speaker 2: traditional career in film and television. I wanted to study
Speaker 2: acting and audition and everything. I didn't really know about
Speaker 2: performance art. I was pretty innocent. Chris was actually the
Speaker 2: first person I met on the first job that I
Speaker 2: had when I moved to New York for a catering company,
Speaker 2: Glorious Food, and so we kind of hit it off
Speaker 2: right away somehow, and I kind of learned about performance
Speaker 2: art in the downtown scene through Chris, and having grown
Speaker 2: up a minister's son, I kind of inherited this feeling
Speaker 2: that what you do has to say something to the world.
Speaker 2: But I didn't want to be preachy, like my literally preachee.
Speaker 4: Like, especially back then, a lot of the performance art
Speaker 4: was like intolerably preachy and just you know, some of
Speaker 4: it was great, but I would say most performance art
Speaker 4: I don't like, even back then, and at a certain
Speaker 4: point we're saying, don't call us performance art because I
Speaker 4: like Larie Anderson, you know what I mean, she's a
Speaker 4: performance artist. We're trying to come buying a bunch of
Speaker 4: different forms, including vaudeville. You know, we do comedy. We're
Speaker 4: not trying to get into the gallery. We're taking Captain
Speaker 4: crunch and we're eating it. We're trying to be outsiders,
Speaker 4: to have some sort of exploration of the world. But
Speaker 4: when I was young, and I think Phil is like
Speaker 4: this too, watching those Marx Brothers movies was a.
Speaker 2: Bit oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: And I had graduated from what Bugs Bunny and Bugs
Speaker 4: Bunny's true for real. I had explored all these things
Speaker 4: at Wesleyan, but I wasn't up that's where it went. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it was great because I I was a drummer. American
Speaker 4: Studies was just a way to get to stuff. I
Speaker 4: studied film, lots of drumming there.
Speaker 3: I was a DJ.
Speaker 4: But when I got out, I was like, well, now
Speaker 4: how do I get a job? You know, I liked
Speaker 4: technology and science, but as a layman, you know, so
Speaker 4: I was like, well, I guess I'll work in advertising
Speaker 4: or marketing. And I got on a track for that,
Speaker 4: and I probably would have been you know, it was
Speaker 4: kind of traditional. I was good at it, you know,
Speaker 4: and I would have been a regular. But I was like,
Speaker 4: this is not making me happy. I quit that and
Speaker 4: I said, I'm just going to be a waiter. And then,
Speaker 4: you know, with my friends, we're going to create this
Speaker 4: stuff that combines comedy, acting, drumming, technology, design, lighting, and art.
Speaker 3: And you know, it's not going to make us a living.
Speaker 4: So we got to take this catering thing very seriously
Speaker 4: and we just started doing it literally just as a joy,
Speaker 4: as a bliss, you know. And you know, one thing,
Speaker 4: we'd have to find places to do it. So it'd
Speaker 4: be like lea Mama or p S one twenty two whatever.
Speaker 4: We would work for three weeks straight, you know, Phil
Speaker 4: and I would do like fourteen hour shifts. And so
Speaker 4: Matt had a job in a software company, and then
Speaker 4: we would take off a week and we would build
Speaker 4: this thing. And then we'd go and we do one
Speaker 4: night and about eighty percent of it would suck, but
Speaker 4: there would be like a little bit in there that
Speaker 4: was good.
Speaker 3: Little nugget, you know, And so we were.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, so we'd grab we'll keep that thirty seconds,
Speaker 2: We'll keep that thirty combined it with another thirty seconds.
Speaker 4: And the thing is, our performance art friends would have
Speaker 4: been like, no, it's your art. If the audience doesn't
Speaker 4: understand it, then there it's their problem. We're like, no,
Speaker 4: we're about villions. The audience matters, you know, and I
Speaker 4: love that, and yes, vaudeville, you know. And in fact,
Speaker 4: a lot of our early pieces were kind of we
Speaker 4: needed to make fun of the pretend justness of performance
Speaker 4: art a little bit, like when we catch these marshmallows
Speaker 4: and we put them on a pedestal and we say
Speaker 4: five thousand dollars, it's like, you know, really, you know,
Speaker 4: and we make the painting at the like the first
Speaker 4: two three pieces of the show, even to this day,
Speaker 4: are kind of spoofing the pretentiousness of performance art in
Speaker 4: a way that the audience doesn't even get anymore, but
Speaker 4: they don't care. And what we found too, is like
Speaker 4: the jump cut to Burning Man, you got a piece
Speaker 4: of art and you got a dude on a bike
Speaker 4: that's all tricked out, and I think they're both art.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
Speaker 4: To me, I don't care how much the museum has
Speaker 4: blessed it, you know what I mean. I think it's
Speaker 4: just creative expressions are awesome, but the whole pretentiousness of
Speaker 4: arts never really appeal to us.
Speaker 1: I had this image of you with the catering company
Speaker 1: and one of you has got your back to him,
Speaker 1: and you come over there and you go, Chris, why
Speaker 1: did you paint all the eggs blue?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: Everything starts getting blu erry.
Speaker 4: Well, we wrote that piece where we're sitting at the
Speaker 4: meal with the guests and then stuff starts shooting out
Speaker 4: our chest all over the at a catering gig because
Speaker 4: we're sitting in our text.
Speaker 3: And I was thinking, like, wow, the only reason.
Speaker 4: This is possible is because it takes so long for
Speaker 4: the food to get to our anus. If it came
Speaker 4: right out, hopefully it would, it would make this whole
Speaker 4: thing impossible. So we said, well, what if the blue
Speaker 4: man had a really short loop in that regard, and
Speaker 4: if he ate something it came right out, that would
Speaker 4: be interesting, at least to us. So remember how many
Speaker 4: times have people tell us so you can't do that piece?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, every time? Whenever we opened a show, they'd say, no,
Speaker 2: you can't do that in.
Speaker 3: People think that's too gross.
Speaker 4: And we do that piece and everyone goes everyone goes ew.
Speaker 2: And then they go, yeah, that was great. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean it's true. Every every step of the way they'd
Speaker 2: say like, no, you have to change that. Yeah, nobody
Speaker 2: in Vegas will like that, nobody in China will like that.
Speaker 1: Do that in France. But so you're catering together, and
Speaker 1: where's Matt.
Speaker 3: Well, Matt had a software job, and so you knew
Speaker 3: each other from where, oh, from seventh grade?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was the odd man out coming from.
Speaker 1: You with Anna and you knew him from seventh grade?
Speaker 1: What's cool?
Speaker 3: Fieldston with the field step in Riverdale.
Speaker 4: We went to the school and there's all these like
Speaker 4: celebrity kids and stuff, rich kids and all, and we
Speaker 4: felt like outsiders. But on the outside we looked like
Speaker 4: we fit in perfectly. There was sports and all we
Speaker 4: were outside. Well, you know, he was like the captain
Speaker 4: of the soccer team, but we felt like imposters. They
Speaker 4: were like, all right, we're just trying to make sure
Speaker 4: no one notices that we you know, we don't have
Speaker 4: the money these kids have, and we don't. We don't
Speaker 4: feel like we fit in. So we created a character
Speaker 4: that embodied on the outside how we felt on the
Speaker 4: inside because we had managed to pull off a great disguise.
Speaker 4: We were walking through the high and we weren't getting bullied,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 1: So it was art performing any of them? How did it?
Speaker 4: I was a drummer, first rock and roll and yeah,
Speaker 4: well new wave punk kind of, and I wasn't supported
Speaker 4: at all. I feels I remember, couldn't do it there.
Speaker 4: I had to get lessons outside, and to do theater.
Speaker 4: You couldn't do theater during the day, so if you
Speaker 4: were on a sport, you couldn't do theater. And then
Speaker 4: there wasn't really any art I would I didn't have
Speaker 4: any painterly art talent, so if you'd asked anybody there,
Speaker 4: they wouldn't have said, oh, you know, he's likely to
Speaker 4: be an artist. But I think we all shared the
Speaker 4: idea of like, well, we don't need to be an
Speaker 4: artist capital a, but we have this creative impulse. We
Speaker 4: just don't have any like specific thing that's like, oh,
Speaker 4: this is really talented. But what if we combine different
Speaker 4: arts together and used our mediocrity to an advantage.
Speaker 1: The three of you together would riff about this.
Speaker 4: Well, we talked about like because Matt was like the
Speaker 4: same thing, Like, he hadn't even done any training in art.
Speaker 4: I had studied art history and stuff, but I couldn't
Speaker 4: draw a bird, you know, I have a nine year
Speaker 4: old level drawing ability. And so we were like, maybe
Speaker 4: if we kind of mixed different mediums together we could
Speaker 4: find a form of expression. And Phil was like, well,
Speaker 4: I'm an actor, but I'm also a builder. And he
Speaker 4: was the one with a saw on the screw built
Speaker 4: the drums, and they were like, you know, that's just
Speaker 4: as much a form of creation as anything else.
Speaker 2: I think it's an important story about the creative impulse.
Speaker 2: Going back to the kind of art stacked at the
Speaker 2: top of the show, the spoof on art, there's another
Speaker 2: layer to it that I think it's important to mention.
Speaker 2: It's it's like this simple, out of the box sort
Speaker 2: of creativity. You know, you take a gumball on make
Speaker 2: a painting. It's not a great painting, but it's a
Speaker 2: creative impulse. And I think that's one thing to mention
Speaker 2: about that at its core, Blue Man is sort of
Speaker 2: a celebration of our human attributes, you know, our creativity,
Speaker 2: our curiosity and our innovation and our innovation in our
Speaker 2: desire for community. It's kind of those you.
Speaker 3: Take a gumball, make a pinion and you're actually innovating.
Speaker 2: It's not a miss misuse exactly, and that's misappropriation.
Speaker 3: That's what could be more human than that.
Speaker 4: That's what's gotten us here, is that like tinkering with
Speaker 4: stuff that's sort of divergent thinking.
Speaker 3: As Sir Kit Robinson.
Speaker 1: I just want to say, if you hit that more time,
Speaker 1: how does it start? How does it start? Covering yourself
Speaker 1: in blue paint and going and having a nervous break
Speaker 1: down our stage.
Speaker 4: So we started with the characters like, all right, let's
Speaker 4: see what it's like to be blue, and we would
Speaker 4: just do socials.
Speaker 3: We walk around blue, yeah, blue, the way you ended
Speaker 3: up in the show. Yeah.
Speaker 4: At first we talked a little bit, just so we
Speaker 4: wouldn't get beaten up or something arrested. Yeah, So we
Speaker 4: would just be like and the people say, what's going on,
Speaker 4: We're like, we're trying to find figure that out. And
Speaker 4: then we would go to a bar and like people
Speaker 4: were like, you guys look interesting. And what we found
Speaker 4: is if it had just been one of us blue,
Speaker 4: people would have been like, oh, that's weird. I don't
Speaker 4: even but the three of us identically, they're like, oh,
Speaker 4: now this is interesting. What what what do you got here?
Speaker 4: I always said, well, we're hoping you'd buy us a drink,
Speaker 4: and they'd be like, all right, I'll do that, and
Speaker 4: then they would buy us a dream and would talk
Speaker 4: to them all.
Speaker 2: The best thing though, is when people would just kind
Speaker 2: of like shake their head yes, you know, as if
Speaker 2: they got something, and they were like, I don't know
Speaker 2: what they're something's resonating.
Speaker 4: But we wanted to go inside because it got cold,
Speaker 4: and let's start creating pieces. So we'd create five minutes
Speaker 4: of something out of time. And we put the drums
Speaker 4: in pretty early on. I mean it was selfish because
Speaker 4: I was a drummer, but also we wanted so we
Speaker 4: have an outsider character, but we didn't want it to
Speaker 4: be like a robe or an alien with like theorem
Speaker 4: and tech music. We also had this idea that the
Speaker 4: blue Man maybe came from our ancient past, Like we
Speaker 4: wanted there to be a tribal primal quality so that
Speaker 4: maybe people go as an alien, but actually that's me
Speaker 4: that's the tribal past that we've left behind as we've
Speaker 4: become so modern. That's as about as intellectual as we
Speaker 4: would get. But that's why when you go to the show,
Speaker 4: it isn't sort of techno music, even though I like
Speaker 4: some of that, you know, it's this tribal, primal thing
Speaker 4: that is this undercurrent.
Speaker 3: We have comedy and this and that, but there's a
Speaker 3: boom doon to kadom to katoom.
Speaker 4: So it was kind of another impulse that we had
Speaker 4: that we shared was this sort of sense of here
Speaker 4: we are in this city, walking around feeling weird, and
Speaker 4: like where's the damn cave? Where's the fireplace with the drums?
Speaker 4: You know, like what do we do as a culture?
Speaker 4: Why do we throw all that stuff out? I mean
Speaker 4: we we left behind organized religion but there's no well
Speaker 4: it would be Christianity and that was Jewish but we
Speaker 4: and there's nothing against religion, but just didn't work for
Speaker 4: us as an organized thing. But so we didn't have
Speaker 4: any where do you go for like, you know, you
Speaker 4: go to a rock show, but like where's but I.
Speaker 2: Don't know, you know, we should make a fomentary where,
Speaker 2: you know, And just since since blue mant there have
Speaker 2: been like six new species discovered. We should make a
Speaker 2: documentary because of bla right, because we should make a
Speaker 2: documentary as if as if we were discovered as a
Speaker 2: new species.
Speaker 1: Species was there, but it was hiding. Let me ask
Speaker 1: you this, though, seriously, which is that this notion that
Speaker 1: mad for me in acting and so for when you
Speaker 1: when you love something and what you'll give because you
Speaker 1: guys wind up giving a lot. You have to put
Speaker 1: the appliances on and do all this stuff all the
Speaker 1: time for years and years and years. But you want
Speaker 1: to get to that. What was it about this early
Speaker 1: on that you invested in? Yeah, no, it's a big
Speaker 1: committment every night for the years.
Speaker 4: Years because you know, we were really doing it out
Speaker 4: of a love of this thing. We'd seen Bill Moyer's
Speaker 4: interviewing Joseph Campbell and heard that shot that was heard
Speaker 4: around the world to follow your bliss was the theme
Speaker 4: of a lot of the you know.
Speaker 2: The thing it wasn't is a hope that we would
Speaker 2: ever make a living from it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we had no idea, but we were finally being
Speaker 4: able to finally had an outlet for the disparate things
Speaker 4: that we were interested in and we had a way
Speaker 4: to hang out together.
Speaker 3: And it was really pleasant.
Speaker 4: When does it become a show, Well, it starts out
Speaker 4: as bits, you know, and then little by little somebody
Speaker 4: invites us to perform somewhere up in Rochester or La Mama.
Speaker 4: This by the way. At La Mama. One of your
Speaker 4: brothers came. He was with Oliver Platt, my brother Billy's
Speaker 4: very good films. Yes, yes, So they came together very
Speaker 4: early on and were very supportive, and it was really
Speaker 4: nice to see people being supported. They kind of encourage you.
Speaker 4: They were like, you know, I get it. A lot
Speaker 4: of it didn't work, you know, but keep going, you know.
Speaker 4: And you could see that even people that had gone
Speaker 4: on to do films and stuff, I understood the gestation period,
Speaker 4: you know. Dustin Hoffman came Yea and invited us to
Speaker 4: come to his office and he said, you know, all
Speaker 4: my work is about how actors have to work, and
Speaker 4: I love that you guys. I could just tell it.
Speaker 4: You're like, you were just doing this out of your love.
Speaker 4: And we were like, you're right, you know, and he's like, well,
Speaker 4: keep going, and then all right, that's the end of
Speaker 4: the meeting. And then we never saw him again, but
Speaker 4: it was so sweet that he took a little bit
Speaker 4: of time to just say. It reminded me when I
Speaker 4: was young, he said we would go and do all
Speaker 4: these things. It's just because we.
Speaker 3: Loved worked hard, and we worked hard.
Speaker 4: There's been a couple of times over the years where
Speaker 4: someone will come up to me and they want to
Speaker 4: get the secret.
Speaker 3: Ah, you guys made it up here. What's the secret?
Speaker 3: You know, how did you do it?
Speaker 4: They want me to give them an answer so they
Speaker 4: can just take it, and then like, okay, I'll do that,
Speaker 4: and it's like a shortcut, and I'm like, I don't
Speaker 4: know what to tell you. Follow what you love and
Speaker 4: work really hard and who knows what will happen.
Speaker 3: I mean, but that's all I can offer because I
Speaker 3: can't say, here's the recipe. We didn't know it would
Speaker 3: work out. It could have easily not worked. Yes, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean.
Speaker 2: We were having fun and you know a lot of
Speaker 2: them is just trying to crack ourselves up. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: we took cracking ourselves up seriously.
Speaker 1: Now, what about yourself? Like if you said to me,
Speaker 1: what is the ultimate extension? Maybe that's the wrong phrase.
Speaker 1: What is the truest. I mean your artists. Was this
Speaker 1: your artistic expression, whether other forms of artistic expression you
Speaker 1: were playing with, dreaming of, thinking of, and this is
Speaker 1: how it ended up.
Speaker 2: Well, what I discovered through it is a love of
Speaker 2: Even though I had it in my background, I disregarded
Speaker 2: it as important, the ability to work with tools and
Speaker 2: understand hardware and you know, pipes and things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I thought, well, I'll leave all that behind, that's useless.
Speaker 2: But through Blue Man, I discovered my love of like
Speaker 2: making shit and being a creator of stuff, you know.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of what I'm embarking on now is
Speaker 2: I have a lot of ideas for like useful objects,
Speaker 2: and I'm just going to try to execute all of
Speaker 2: that stuff that's in my head. I'm trying to follow
Speaker 2: the the way that Blue Man started to follow what
Speaker 2: makes me happy right now, you know. And so that's
Speaker 2: it for me. I'm kind of pursuing what I found
Speaker 2: through Blue Man to be sort of my real pursuit.
Speaker 1: Blue Man groups Chris Wink and Phil Stanton. If you
Speaker 1: enjoy conversations with eccentric Las Vegas performers, check out my
Speaker 1: episode with Penjelette of the world famous Penn and Teller.
Speaker 5: You have to know that my mom and my dad
Speaker 5: never said hell or damn or any absent in the house. Hardcore,
Speaker 5: no alcohol, no heller, damn. When I started doing card tricks,
Speaker 5: my father was like, you won't be gambling though. You
Speaker 5: can do card tricks, but I don't like having a
Speaker 5: deck of cards in the house. I would say, Dad,
Speaker 5: I'm just doing manipulations and tricks. Well, that's fine.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Penjelette, go to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Chris and
Speaker 1: Phil talk about debuting Blue Man Group in Las Vegas
Speaker 1: and how an unlikely series of computer ads helped explode
Speaker 1: the group's popularity. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing That's drum Bone from Blue Man Group's
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine debut album audio. When Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton,
Speaker 1: and Chris Wink first began performing, there were only three
Speaker 1: Blue Men. Eventually, the original trio would train and hire
Speaker 1: other performers to don the Blue Cape. I was curious
Speaker 1: what was involved with running Blue Man Groups organization off
Speaker 1: stage and what projects they've been working on since.
Speaker 2: Well at blue men. We were trained, we were writing
Speaker 2: new material, we were directing, and well actually wandering a company.
Speaker 4: One of the reasons I left is that we remember
Speaker 4: the earlier story. I went into marketing and advertising, and
Speaker 4: I got to get the fuck out of this.
Speaker 3: I don't do my art. Jump cut to twenty fifteen.
Speaker 4: I'm the fucking marketing guy, right Phil, and I'm like,
Speaker 4: what the fuck happened?
Speaker 3: I'm begging marketing. They tricked me.
Speaker 4: Of course I gotta get the So I wanted to
Speaker 4: go back to being a scrappy artist a little bit.
Speaker 4: So I started making shit in my bathroom. I made
Speaker 4: this sort of infinity room with hanging neon stuff, and
Speaker 4: that ended up turning into wink World, which is a
Speaker 4: psychedelic funhouse. So I've been doing and it's all the
Speaker 4: things I learned to bluem and it combining kids.
Speaker 3: I have kids.
Speaker 1: How old are they?
Speaker 4: They're twenty and sixteen and I stepdaughter who's eighteen.
Speaker 1: And when you were in the house and doing your things,
Speaker 1: they just go.
Speaker 4: Dad, there it goes again. They won the jackpot and
Speaker 4: they don't know it. I'm like, come on, let's get
Speaker 4: all this shampoo and genius and We're like, oh, that's
Speaker 4: just weird. Don't do that, dad.
Speaker 2: You have kids, yeah, fifteen and seventeen, you might have
Speaker 2: young kids. Yeah.
Speaker 4: But to answer to the other question is that absolutely
Speaker 4: it was was my fan. I couldn't think of a
Speaker 4: better fantasy than Blue Man and what I'm doing now,
Speaker 4: which is to synergize things together symphony right, the word
Speaker 4: implies sort of like bringing things together, right, and so
Speaker 4: bringing disparate things. You know, what's the phrase something bedfellows, uncommon,
Speaker 4: bed strange, strange, bed friends. That has been the best
Speaker 4: reward of all this. It's great that we've had this
Speaker 4: whatever success, but the fact that we got to work
Speaker 4: for many years, you know, doing something we loved.
Speaker 2: And then the joy of performing in front of people.
Speaker 4: It's like, that was the fun thing about last I
Speaker 4: haven't performed in a while and I missed that and
Speaker 4: that has a drummer.
Speaker 3: I like that too, So.
Speaker 1: What have you been doing that? Just all individuals.
Speaker 3: We create these I've got these things in Wink world.
Speaker 4: They're like, it's like a psychedelic ride at a tripped
Speaker 4: out acid carnival.
Speaker 3: Not that I ever have done drugs are psychedelics.
Speaker 2: I actually haven't seen Wink World. Yet when did it
Speaker 2: start right before the pandemic? No, right in the middle
Speaker 2: of it, in the middle of it. So, yeah, I
Speaker 2: got out of travel most by accident.
Speaker 3: It was the perfect thing for you know, social distancing.
Speaker 1: But you guys are out of time. Once you are questing,
Speaker 1: the things become really really huge, and you're gonna go
Speaker 1: out on the road. Now, describe to me if you
Speaker 1: I'm assuming some of you were all if you were
Speaker 1: involved in some casting sessions, who's going to go out
Speaker 1: on the road or who's going to replace you eventually
Speaker 1: on the show? What's that like?
Speaker 4: Well, we didn't have understudies for the first We did
Speaker 4: the first three years without an understudy, or at least
Speaker 4: the first two, and then after a certain point the
Speaker 4: stage matages like you know, you guys should have an understudy, right, No, No,
Speaker 4: we're really the only ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we thought of ourselves as a band, you know,
Speaker 2: like the beating.
Speaker 4: Because well, I'm going to train the drummer just in case,
Speaker 4: and so we go whatever, But we're not going to
Speaker 4: help you.
Speaker 3: You can train the drummer if you want, but he's
Speaker 3: not going on.
Speaker 4: He's not going on ahead, so then fills at home,
Speaker 4: you know, as you do before a show, using a
Speaker 4: router to just do something, and apparently he routed his
Speaker 4: finger almost all the way off.
Speaker 3: It shows up. It's like hanging by a thread.
Speaker 2: You can't go on and no, I did, I did this?
Speaker 3: Did the show?
Speaker 2: I see? Then you went to the hot and I
Speaker 2: needed surgery. So so weirdest thing about it, Like, like
Speaker 2: I said, we thought of ourselves as a band. So
Speaker 2: the first moment that we saw someone else play the character,
Speaker 2: it's like, duh. We created a bald and blue character
Speaker 2: who is anonymous, and you know, other people and other
Speaker 2: races should play this character.
Speaker 3: We were. We would go around what it's about.
Speaker 4: We would go around and brag about how much we
Speaker 4: didn't have a big ego because of the blue man,
Speaker 4: but we had this this thing. We're the only ones
Speaker 4: that could do it. And then this guy comes in.
Speaker 4: He does it great, Like fucking a man is always
Speaker 4: so humiliate. And also, you know, when you fail at
Speaker 4: a piece like this business that we're in, you can
Speaker 4: kind of get a big ego, but ultimately it's humbling,
Speaker 4: right like because you at some point you realize like all.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, and then we thought we realized hey, we
Speaker 2: can beat the McDonald's of them.
Speaker 4: No, But it was funny because you remember when Pin
Speaker 4: and Teller came and they were like, God, you guys.
Speaker 3: Are so lucky because you could get other people to
Speaker 3: do the show.
Speaker 2: And we're like, no, no, we could cut the I'm
Speaker 2: the blue Man on the laft.
Speaker 3: But something Actually, Penn and Teller we call him up.
Speaker 3: We're like, hey, you remember what you said about us.
Speaker 4: We think we wanted to open a show in Vegas,
Speaker 4: and it's like, yeah, come on out. So they were
Speaker 4: the ones that showed us around Vegas, introduced them to
Speaker 4: their manager, and then he got us the basically set
Speaker 4: us up.
Speaker 3: And so we owe that to Pen and Telly.
Speaker 1: So I can't think of anything slightly more disparate here,
Speaker 1: but enlightened me, which is to go from Lafayette, cross
Speaker 1: the street from the public doing that show to go
Speaker 1: to Vegas. Different crowd, so different.
Speaker 4: By the way, By the way, we thought we'd gone
Speaker 4: on the Tonight Show a couple We thought we were
Speaker 4: sort of, you know, known, But we get out there.
Speaker 4: We open up as a headliner in a big theater
Speaker 4: and empty and we're like, oh, oh, when you're a
Speaker 4: headliner people supposed to know you are ship. We left
Speaker 4: one thing out. The one thing we left what happened.
Speaker 4: So we're like, all right, we gotta do something fast.
Speaker 4: We got something fast. We're like, oh, we got to
Speaker 4: get on some more tonight. We went on tonight. You
Speaker 4: helped a little bit. First, we get a call from
Speaker 4: the Lakers, we want you to perform at halftime, and
Speaker 4: we're like, we'll do anything.
Speaker 3: We got to get keep this show up. And he goes, yeah, how.
Speaker 4: Many is it on TV? Like non, they don't really
Speaker 4: televise the half timething. Then why are we doing it? Well,
Speaker 4: you know it's la and there's people. I'm like, well, okay,
Speaker 4: we'll do it. And he goes, but one thing, do
Speaker 4: you mind being gold and purple? That wouldn't be the
Speaker 4: blue mag up right, Yeah, but you know it's the Lakers.
Speaker 4: You know those are colors, you know, And we're like,
Speaker 4: what are you talking about? And we couldn't believe it.
Speaker 4: So we were just hung up, you know, and we
Speaker 4: didn't do it. So then Intel calls, can you guys
Speaker 4: want you to do our ads?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, because your logo is blue. You know, there's more
Speaker 4: to a blue man than the blue color, you know.
Speaker 4: So we said no, and then the guys says, no, listen,
Speaker 4: I'm the head of the whatever. I always I want
Speaker 4: to I want you to say no to me in person.
Speaker 4: And as he comes in, why'd you say no?
Speaker 3: It's just blue? And I don't know.
Speaker 4: We were at the blue Man group and we appreciate it,
Speaker 4: but like and he goes, no, no, it's not because
Speaker 4: it's blue. We're trying We don't have a product. We're
Speaker 4: selling the chip inside the computer. But our brand, what
Speaker 4: we're trying to represent is smart, innovative, fun, and we
Speaker 4: think that's what you represent. And we go, well, that's interesting,
Speaker 4: and I said, but we'd have to have our name
Speaker 4: in every ad.
Speaker 3: Is oh shit, we can't. We can't do that. I said, Well,
Speaker 3: he comes back, is all right, we'll do it.
Speaker 4: So every single Intel commercial had our name in it
Speaker 4: at the beginning for four seconds, contractually, and they played
Speaker 4: it around the world and about three months later sold
Speaker 4: out every night in Vegas.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But but there is one thing a cultural context
Speaker 2: to keep in mind too, is that there was no
Speaker 2: precedent for artists being in the advertising world at that time, right,
Speaker 2: you know, right, not even musicians didn't really even license.
Speaker 2: Everybody avoided that to commercials.
Speaker 1: Now when we were in my business, you go to
Speaker 1: Japan and do Suntorial week commercials, they give you a
Speaker 1: million dollars for one week.
Speaker 3: We were proud of those bits. I mean you should. Yeah, people,
Speaker 3: you can google them into it.
Speaker 2: It was a great like thirty second medium toward.
Speaker 3: Oh, you know, it reminds me something. I want to
Speaker 3: tell you about Vegas really quick now.
Speaker 1: Now I want to hear a lot about that. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I remember a time when we started out in
Speaker 4: the East Village and downtown and then there we were
Speaker 4: one night in Vegas, a couple a little bit into
Speaker 4: the run and it was Rody a week and there
Speaker 4: are all these guys in the audience with their hats
Speaker 4: on kebo heyes, and they didn't take them off. It's like, no,
Speaker 4: it's I'm gonna fucking sit here in the audience with
Speaker 4: my cowboy hat on and no one's gonna tell him
Speaker 4: not to.
Speaker 3: These guys are like steal, you know, done, and they.
Speaker 4: And the show's over and we were directing at that
Speaker 4: point that people are walking out and this.
Speaker 3: Guy comes by and he goes, I don't know what
Speaker 3: that was. But I locked it.
Speaker 4: And we're like, all right, this is a new chapter,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, Like like we were glad
Speaker 4: that we were getting to different group.
Speaker 1: So you're in Vegas, and how do you change? Meaning
Speaker 1: I have a picture of you like in your room.
Speaker 1: Now you're in your dressing room in Vegas, the other
Speaker 1: place to paint this feeling. And now you're like on
Speaker 1: the phone with your decorator going, this is not eagles
Speaker 1: Nests the small paper, I said, eagles Nest. What happens?
Speaker 3: Well, we didn't.
Speaker 4: I mean, we passed it on to the local crew
Speaker 4: and you know, cast and everything. The fun thing about
Speaker 4: Vegas was that the challenge was it was a bigger stage.
Speaker 3: And so we're like, all right, how do we make.
Speaker 4: This bigger without losing you know, the intimacy and the
Speaker 4: real creative idea behind it.
Speaker 3: And so we said, well, let's see, shadows could be
Speaker 3: really big, and so we.
Speaker 4: Started playing with lights and a scrim kind of old
Speaker 4: old school stuff, you know, but like, all right, let's
Speaker 4: make this. And so we made the character really big
Speaker 4: just by standing in front of lights and like you know,
Speaker 4: drumming and the drumming on a scrim from behind. You know,
Speaker 4: big this is pretty cool. So we had fun. And
Speaker 4: every time we've done a different kind of venue or
Speaker 4: even the rock tour or whatever, it was fun to learn, like,
Speaker 4: all right, what is this venue?
Speaker 3: What are the challenges?
Speaker 4: Actually, if you the aster when we were at La
Speaker 4: Mama and we moved to the Astro place, they had
Speaker 4: this balcony.
Speaker 3: The balcony is ah, God, the balcon's kind of a bummer, Like,
Speaker 3: you know, how do we deal with it? And then
Speaker 3: we're like, well, we can actually have a guy go
Speaker 3: up there. We can connect things, you know. So that's
Speaker 3: we always looked at the saw.
Speaker 2: Them as creative opportunity.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, So I'm gonna I'm going to jerk
Speaker 1: us in a different direction, which is now that Matt's
Speaker 1: out here, let's talk about Matt. Matt on the things
Speaker 1: about Matt we want to say, I.
Speaker 4: Don't know how he got food poisoning, but good thing
Speaker 4: he didn't have it before the show.
Speaker 3: Last night.
Speaker 4: I was so wonderful, so magical, and we weren't planning
Speaker 4: on doing Someone just said, you know, this guy is
Speaker 4: this last show.
Speaker 3: He's Larry.
Speaker 4: He's been playing since the beginning and we were He's
Speaker 4: with us from the first thing we did.
Speaker 2: Wrote a lot of the music with us, and he's.
Speaker 3: Been in and out of the show on and off
Speaker 3: for years.
Speaker 4: But so someone's like, his last show is coming up,
Speaker 4: I'm going to go in the drummer you guys want
Speaker 4: to go into and we're.
Speaker 3: Like, I why not?
Speaker 4: So this all came together really last minute. But it
Speaker 4: was fantastic, so much fun.
Speaker 1: Uh did you have to cours?
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 2: I would have never thought in a million years I'd
Speaker 2: be back on stage though, and I'm glad I did again.
Speaker 1: The theater, the immediacy, people, the routine, you know. So
Speaker 1: what's interesting, especially for any show that is musical comedy,
Speaker 1: not always necessarily the case with drama. Because when I
Speaker 1: did Street Car Name Desire, I'm Broadway in nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: you were thinking the show, if this isn't going over,
Speaker 1: this isn't working well, and then you realize they were listening. Oh,
Speaker 1: they were listening intently. So when the show was over,
Speaker 1: they all burst out sobbing and applauded and stood up
Speaker 1: and went crazy. But during the show, nothing but with
Speaker 1: you and comedies and musicals, you know exactly what you're
Speaker 1: gonna do you know exactly how they're going to react.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's all such a wonderful toy.
Speaker 3: But it's true.
Speaker 4: It's funny as humans. It's a weird quirk when we
Speaker 4: are laughing. When we're with something funny, we make a
Speaker 4: sound and we don't like complain that other people are
Speaker 4: making this weird sound. If an alien came down and
Speaker 4: what are they doing. Oh they're laughing. Something's funny. But
Speaker 4: with something sublime you might go, but pretty much you're silent.
Speaker 4: So the actor has no idea that they could just
Speaker 4: be bored or they could be being moved deeply. And
Speaker 4: so we've had a similar experience our show. We like,
Speaker 4: we hope that it's from the ridiculous to the sublime once.
Speaker 3: In a while, but we don't know. You don't know
Speaker 3: the way you do it.
Speaker 1: Comedy Chris Wink and Phil Stanton of Blue Man Group.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be
Speaker 1: sure to follow Here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back,
Speaker 1: Chris and Phil talk about what it's like to create
Speaker 1: a world famous show but still remain anonymous in their
Speaker 1: Daily Lives. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 3: And this is here's the thing.
Speaker 1: That's the founding members a Blue Man Group performing Rods
Speaker 1: and Cones from their nineteen ninety nine album Audio. One
Speaker 1: of the many innovations from Blue Man Group was the
Speaker 1: creation of musical instruments made from PVC pipes. I was
Speaker 1: curious how such a unique idea took shape.
Speaker 4: We were down on Canal Street and there was like,
Speaker 4: I don't know, we were just going to build something,
Speaker 4: and we started playing with these pipes and we're hitting them,
Speaker 4: like these make a pretty good sound.
Speaker 2: In those days, there were like industrial supply places on
Speaker 2: Canal Street, so we would go down there because we.
Speaker 3: Like to the other than niche hotels.
Speaker 4: But yeah, we were just playing with them, and then
Speaker 4: we started hitting them with flip flops, and you know,
Speaker 4: I wanted to as a drummer, We wanted to drum musically,
Speaker 4: but xylophones and celestis they have weird overtones that I
Speaker 4: didn't like, and the PVC has a pure single tone.
Speaker 1: The show numerous times, yeah, a couple of times, the
Speaker 1: final show yesterday, they're they're coming to They're out.
Speaker 3: Of town, right now.
Speaker 1: They got to come in for the Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: gonna be the end. They're not gonna do it anymore.
Speaker 4: Well, there's still Vegas show, but we're not planning to
Speaker 4: do anything else, so this probably must.
Speaker 1: They pay you one billion dollars. Get up there at
Speaker 1: the Royal alber Hole. Now you've had artistic triumph, but anonymity,
Speaker 1: and then you became very famous people from doing the show.
Speaker 1: But do you find that that's made you comfortable or
Speaker 1: I mean, because you don't seem the people who were
Speaker 1: like fame seekers on the onset.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's wonderful to be able to just ride
Speaker 4: the subway and move around and the character is famous,
Speaker 4: but we're not. There's times when it's annoying. I want
Speaker 4: to get into a club or something and like now
Speaker 4: who are you? I'm like, forget it.
Speaker 1: Now, your wives had to raise a family. And I
Speaker 1: think about this because I still love doing plays. I
Speaker 1: love theater. I love it. It's the most fun. Movies
Speaker 1: are challenging, but they are rarely fun. They're challenging to
Speaker 1: fit it together. And then you do a play and
Speaker 1: you're like, well I didn't like the way I did that.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do this tomorrow.
Speaker 4: It's fair in my room and make no right iterative,
Speaker 4: which is wonderful, luxury, all this stuff.
Speaker 1: But you're away from your family every night. What was
Speaker 1: it like for you all of those years where you're
Speaker 1: you're doing a show every night forever.
Speaker 3: Well, when we first did the run, I was I
Speaker 3: didn't have kids yet.
Speaker 2: Same for me, it was it was more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, after our long run, we had more flexibility.
Speaker 1: That runs how long?
Speaker 3: Well that was we did twelve hundred shows in a
Speaker 3: row without a break.
Speaker 2: And then we still perform for years, but not every
Speaker 2: night because yeah, we have more abilities.
Speaker 4: My kids were young, we were we were able to
Speaker 4: pull it off. But yeah, it was, it was. It
Speaker 4: was crazy. But but you mentioned though we opened the
Speaker 4: show and we kept working on the bits for the
Speaker 4: whole three years, like but the most year. We got
Speaker 4: a lot of the best nuances that you don't write
Speaker 4: them in a writer's room, you know, you write them
Speaker 4: on stage. I always wonder about that because I, you know,
Speaker 4: I haven't had a film experience, but man, as an
Speaker 4: actor in film, you get one or two chances. We
Speaker 4: got a chance to like work out stuff over and
Speaker 4: even even last night, We did stuff that was in
Speaker 4: the show when we opened way back, and we added
Speaker 4: some iterations just because we knew a lot of the
Speaker 4: people there would have seen it all. But it was
Speaker 4: so fun to like try a couple of different things out,
Speaker 4: you know, like they call it a play, but where's
Speaker 4: the play. We're trying to put the play back in play,
Speaker 4: you know, like the iteration and the play of like, no,
Speaker 4: you can't do that with a you know Shakespeare, I'm
Speaker 4: gonna I'm gonna play with his words. I mean, I
Speaker 4: can do something better.
Speaker 1: I did a play once about Puccino. The play was
Speaker 1: written by a friend of Pacino, about Pacino, and I
Speaker 1: did the play and I played Pacino. Oh Wowchino comes
Speaker 1: on to just exhaust and just to completely malign the director.
Speaker 1: He's doing a scene and in the scene, the character
Speaker 1: reads Shakespeare, but he changes all the words. Director goes,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? And the Patina car goes, I
Speaker 1: just sold I'd riff I'd do a little riffing. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna riff on Shakespeare. That's what I'm gonna do, is share.
Speaker 1: And this is in the play, and you're fucking crying
Speaker 1: listen to this anyway, In the time you have. I
Speaker 1: think got one more quick question, which is that what
Speaker 1: stuff you saw back then? Because you guys are known
Speaker 1: as one of the most original shows. It's so original,
Speaker 1: and everybody they loved you. I was in a New
Speaker 1: York where everybody in the whole fucking town saw you.
Speaker 1: Everybody came down there to see that. Just with your
Speaker 1: cred now and who you are creatively, one of the
Speaker 1: things you saw that you've been impressed with you, Man,
Speaker 1: that's really cool. I like that.
Speaker 2: The most recent thing that really blew me away was Hamilton, right,
Speaker 2: very I mean that's not unusual.
Speaker 3: And I liked Firs, the Brutus stuff. Where's a bruta
Speaker 3: was margin? They did some really nice stuff, I thought.
Speaker 4: But I mean, god, there's there's a lot of good
Speaker 4: stuff out there and little bits and pieces. When you
Speaker 4: go to Berning, man, you just see some dude on
Speaker 4: a bike that's inspired.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When we first started, Broadway was not the place
Speaker 2: for innovation. No, you know, we were Downtownwntown, Lovetown was
Speaker 2: very separated, you know, and downtown was the place for
Speaker 2: innovation and creativity really, but now you know, Broadway is
Speaker 2: a place for great innovation.
Speaker 1: I would count On one hand, the shows I saw
Speaker 1: that were super creative and really really knocked me down,
Speaker 1: and yours is one obviously that's for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And the other one, I mean, it's gonna sound with
Speaker 1: Lion King. When I saw my.
Speaker 2: Mouth was on, My mouth was on that opening sequence
Speaker 2: is one mouth was open greatest.
Speaker 4: Julie Taymour, and then Michael Curry was the Oh I
Speaker 4: built the puppets, but she visioned them genius stuff. And
Speaker 4: then my kids make fun of me because I took
Speaker 4: them when they were younger to gazillion bubbles. Oh all right,
Speaker 4: so this is the cheesiest show of bubbles everywhere lasers are.
Speaker 4: But I was just at the end, you know, I
Speaker 4: just like, look at all these bubbles and they looked over.
Speaker 4: I was crying a little bit because it was just beautiful.
Speaker 4: Bubbles are amazing. They're perfectly round. I mean, and my
Speaker 4: kids like, dah, that's that's crazy. You were crying at
Speaker 4: gazelle bubbles.
Speaker 3: I'm like, it was. I know it's cheesy, but there
Speaker 3: was a gazillion of them. Man, there was a lot.
Speaker 1: What's the stuff you put on yourself to turn grease paint?
Speaker 1: Regular showiness? Because showed probably grace. Yeah, and it comes
Speaker 1: in a bucket or a tube or a big big
Speaker 1: tub pail, big tubs. If someone applies it to you,
Speaker 1: we do I just out and makes it look.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if we kind of do it.
Speaker 2: We were never trying to go for blue skin. It's
Speaker 2: like we actually.
Speaker 4: Opened the show without a wardrobe person. I believe they
Speaker 4: cut that cost. We were on our own completely. It
Speaker 4: is a crazy thing. When we first opened, we would
Speaker 4: have to wear neutrial gloves on our hands and then
Speaker 4: we would take other We couldn't put the blue in
Speaker 4: our hands because they would get everywhere. Yeah, So we
Speaker 4: had to wear these, you know, surgical gloves or whatever,
Speaker 4: and so people would have to dye them with this
Speaker 4: writ dye that was nasty and and they have to
Speaker 4: try to keep it from getting on the inside. Because
Speaker 4: so at some point someone called the new Trial company
Speaker 4: and glove company said, hey, can you guys dye these fours.
Speaker 3: They didn't have blue gloves back then.
Speaker 4: So they made blue gloves for us because we were
Speaker 4: ordering so many and and we said we ordered for
Speaker 4: three cities.
Speaker 3: And we're ordered like three years worth.
Speaker 4: If you'll do this, they did it, and then they
Speaker 4: decided to make him available to the public. And when
Speaker 4: you go out and see all the people in Ozzen
Speaker 4: wearing the blue gloves.
Speaker 2: That's us.
Speaker 3: It's true.
Speaker 2: That's so funny.
Speaker 3: It didn't happen before that.
Speaker 1: My thanks to Blue Man Groups, Chris Wink and Phil Stanton.
Speaker 1: You can still see Blue Man Group in Boston, Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: Orlando and internationally. I'll leave you with Club Nowhere, from
Speaker 1: Blue Man Group's nineteen ninety nine debut album, audio by
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing that's brought to you by
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio.
Speaker 3: The