My Bad Interview

October 17th, 2006 Posted in 2006

Giving a bad interview, it turns out, is a lot like getting a bad haircut: you spend about a week trying to avoid it as a topic of conversation, and when someone mentions it, you preemptively degrade it, secretly hoping they’ll tell you it’s “not so bad;” that in fact having sideburns of unequal length and no hair at all on the sides of your head makes you look dangerous and handsome. Then someone will inevitably dismiss conversational etiquette and agree that, yep, you sure did get one godawful haircut. The next day you buy a hat.

The interview I’m referring to— the bad one —took place over the phone two weeks ago. A pleasant, friendly guy named Ben Kharakh from The Gothamist had been valiantly attempting to interview me for ages. For one reason or another— getting married, trying to put an issue of Cracked to bed, saving AIDS-ridden orphans from a fire-engulfed church (I may have made that last one up) —I’d kept canceling on the poor guy. I’d apologize that I was too busy, then suggest another date two weeks later and tell him to call me then; at which point I’d again be busy, apologize that this was the case, and unhelpfully suggest another date.

I’d canceled twice already when, eager to postpone again, I’d rattled off another far-off random date in the future and told him I’d be happy to do the interview then. “I look forward to your call,” I said, then promptly forgot both the date and interview. We now flash forward to said far-off random date, which through bad planning on my part turned out to be my last day in the office before flying off to Canada with my wife for a weeklong vacation.

If you’ve ever worked a 9-to-5 job, you’ll sympathize that your last day in the office before a weeklong vacation is invariably spent trying to get about 50 hours worth of work done in a frantic 10-hour period. I’d just gotten out of a grueling four-hour meeting and needed to call a dozen freelancers about articles I hadn’t received yet, answer 20 emails from people desperately waiting to hear back from me, and write a handful of pieces for the next issue so they could be signed off on before I left. I hadn’t had time to eat, so I was feeling light-headed and irritable. Also, because I was about to take a weeklong vacation, my immune system had evidently decided to do likewise, and I was coming down with a nasty head cold.

I was a hot mess, in other words—completely stressed out, fighting back a runny nose and ignoring an empty stomach, when Ben Kharakh called me unexpectedly for the long-delayed interview. I was in the middle of asking for another postponement when my conscience twanged. I’d already brushed the poor guy off three times, then picked the stupidest day possible as the replacement interview date, then forgotten about it entirely. Hadn’t I roped him along enough already? Couldn’t I, John Wayne-like, grow a pair of balls and finally do the damn interview?

The results of this poor, poor decision can be found here. My thoughts on it can be found by clicking on the link below this sentence.

In working for a magazine conducts interviews, I’ve come across people who outright refuse to take questions by phone or in person, asking for them by email instead. I’d always figured it was because these people were huge pussies. Now I finally understand. It’s because doing an interview by phone or in person embodies all the negative aspects of public speaking (feeling the glare of the spotlight, knowing everything you say will be absorbed skeptically by a large group of strangers) without any of the perks (preparing your comments beforehand, practicing in front of a mirror).

I suspect it’s different for people who interview all the time, like famous actors. They get asked the same dumbassed questions so frequently, I imagine they answer with their brains on autopilot. “I fell in love with the script when I read it.” “Working with _______ was a joy and an education for me.” “My character in Deadly Instinct IV is just so complex and well-written.”

On the other hand, if you’re not famous—or at least hovering comfortably in that obscure category of “Internet famous” that might as well be “not famous at all”—you’ve probably never once in your life needed to answer the sorts of deeply introspective questions interviewers ask. Unless you really really like yourself, odds are it’s never once crossed your mind which choices and influences led you to become the person you are today. Ordinary people like you and me don’t think, “If I was asked when I first realized I liked to tell people jokes, I wonder what I’d say?” while soaping up our genitals in the shower. Nobody does this because a) you’d have to be a complete prick to interview yourself in the shower, and b) soaping up one’s genitals requires a tender hand and deep concentration, to say nothing of about ten to fifteen spare minutes.

Because our shower time is spent applying Irish Spring to our private tender business instead of coming up with answers to inane personal questions, non-celebrities don’t have pat, rehearsed answers at our disposal. This doesn’t seem like it’d be a big deal until you’re put on the spot with a cushy softball lob like “When did you first get into comedy?” and realize with dawning horror, while the seconds tick swiftly away, that you have no fucking idea when you first got into comedy; that you really don’t have any answer at all, let alone a succinctly witty one; and that none of this matters, because you’ve now said nothing for 15 gapingly quiet seconds while you thought all this, and you need to start talking immediately.

It is here precisely, smothered in the awkward silence of a halted conversation, that your brain will kick into preservation mode and string together as many random vowel sounds as it can until you’ve composed what might charitably called a complete sentence. You’ll talk uninterrupted gibberish for minutes on end, peppering your response with obviouslys and basicallys and I guesses and ums, until your sentence rolls mercifully to a halt and, lacking any more words to add to it, you’ll gratefully punctuate the sorrowful mangled thing, exhaling deeply. Then you’re asked another question you’d never considered before and the process starts all over.

Members of my forum have enthusiastically posted several excerpts from the interview that make me sound stupid, pompous or, more usually, both at once. I should state for the record that this isn’t Ben’s fault at all, and in fact he conducted a well-researched and complimentary interview. I just don’t think he expected that I’d drone on like an idiot every time he asked me the simplest of queries. Here’s one of the stupid quotes, asked about my hometown:

What sort of place is Kingston?

It’s a small town midway between Ottawa and Toronto.

Was that a suburb?

It wasn’t a small town. […]

Heh heh. This was me trying to correct myself after I realized Ben had assumed Kingston was a suburb and was trying to double back. “It was a small town.” “Oh, a suburb.” “Well, it wasn’t a small town, it…” Sadly, without the proper inflection, it reads like I’m blatantly contradicting myself a sentence later: “I come from a small town.” “Tell me this small town, Jay.” “I’d be happy to, Ben. Kingston is an imposing, sprawling metropolis whose skyscrapers blot out the very sun. Also, it’s possible I’m having a stroke. Do you smell burnt toast?”

Here’s a quote that, while not contradictory, makes me sound like a pompous asshole:

What was the worst letter of rejection that you’ve ever gotten?

This may sound vain, but I’ve never gotten a letter of rejection. It’s simply because I went so long before starting to submit pieces that I was spared the pain of having my worst stuff turned down. By the time I actually started submitting stuff, it was universally accepted.

This was the point in the interview, I should note, where I’d managed to step outside of myself for a second and realized to my own terror that my mouth had been coasting along a decline without any gas in the tank for well over fifteen minutes. I had no recall of anything I’d said for the past quarter-hour.

The thing is, I haven’t ever actually gotten a rejection letter, but I remember thinking, “How can I say I’ve never gotten a rejection letter without sounding like a braying jackass?” My solution was to give an “I didn’t really start submitting material until I’d been writing for a while” excuse, thinking it’d sound like I wasn’t getting rejected only because I hadn’t submitted a lot of crap. Even as I was explaining this, though, I realized it just made it sound worse: like I awoke one morning, decried “Today I pronounce my work genius,” and from that point forward sold everything I ever submitted to anyone ever.

In retrospect, the answer I was aiming for would have been that I’ve hardly submitted any material for publication at all. On the few occasions that I did, it was because I’d been approached by the editor personally or knew someone working there who told me I should. I’ve never received a rejection letter because I’ve barely submitted anything, and only when specifically asked to.

But you know, even that isn’t a great answer. It sounds like I’ve got editors beating down my door to beg for my work. To be honest, I don’t think there even is a right answer. Getting asked for a funny rejection story when you’ve never had your work rejected is like answering, “Oh, I don’t watch TV” when asked what your favorite show is. You can’t give an honest answer without sounding like a pompous blowhard.

Seriously, though, I’m reading this and I have no idea what I was thinking: “By the time I actually started submitting stuff, it was universally accepted.” I’d kick my ass reading this. “Universally”? I don’t know why the hell I said that. When you’re getting interviewed, you tend to leap hungrily at whatever word bothers to appear in your head, thus allowing you to finish your sentence and not gape like a tool at the interviewer. I’m just grateful I didn’t say “By the time I actually started submitting stuff, it was boots marzipan rocketship testicles.”

There are countless other gaffes, inconsistencies and instances where I sound like a cock available for your amusement in the interview, which I’ll let you explore at your leisure and my expense, saying only that, no, I wasn’t misquoted: I actually say things this stupid and incoherent when put under pressure and being recorded for posterity. In the future I think I’ll be a huge pussy and only conduct interviews by email. Failing that, I think I’ll just never do interviews again. As Mark Twain said, “It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.” I prefer to think of it as “It’s better to look quietly mysterious than to come off as brain damaged,” but the gist is pretty much the same.