February 4, 2025 • 39 mins
Chris Wink, Philip Stanton, and Matthew Goldman created Blue Man Group in 1989 as a performance art piece and it has since grown to become a worldwide phenomenon. What started as a small show at the Astor Place Theater in New York City went on to tour worldwide three times and take up residency in Las Vegas, Chicago, Orlando, and Boston. But all good things must come to an end, and the lights go out on their Astor Place run this February, making Blue Man Group one of the longest running off-Broadway shows. To date Blue Man Group has released five albums, received a Grammy nomination, performed on numerous TV shows, and appeared in many memorable commercials. In this conversation, Chris Wink and Philip Stanton share how they, along with Matt Goldman, came up with the idea for the Blue Man, who brings what to the table, and how Blue Man Group took shape and evolved over time.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio. That's PVC IV, a song featuring
(00:25):
PVC pipes being played by three men with their flip flops.
My guests today are some of the most famous performers
in the world, though you've likely never seen their real
faces nor heard their actual voices. Created by Matt Goldman,
Chris Wink and Philip Stanton in nineteen eighty nine, Blue
(00:47):
Man Group began as a performance art piece inspired by
nineteen eighties counterculture. The show would eventually grow into the
worldwide phenomenon we know it as today. In addition to
the original Astor Place theater show, Blue Man Group has
staged three world tours and taken up residency in Las Vegas, Chicago, Orlando,
(01:11):
and Boston. The group has released five albums, received a
Grammy nomination, and performed on numerous TV shows and in
some of the most memorable commercials. This past weekend, Blue
Man Group's original New York City show closed after seventeen
thousand performances over three decades. They're synonymous with creativity, ingenuity,
(01:36):
and of course, a distinct shade of blue paints.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
My name is Chris Wink and this voice is the
voice of Philip Stanton.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Where'd you grow up?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Well, I grew up in New York.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Actually, my dad came to Union Theological Seminary by Columbia,
became a minister. We were in Texas for five years.
He was in a parsonage, but then he got hired
back because he was a linguist guy, and he became
a professor.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
So I grew up by Columbia. It was a really
interesting Union.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah, and what about you.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I was born in Lubbock, Texas. Group in Savannah, Georgia.
My father was a minister also weirdly, but my father
also built churches, I say, a group in Savannah. But
I really, you know, I grew up until I was
eight in Texas, So I'm kind of half and half
in a way.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
So when you were growing up, what was theater art? Creativity?
Performance art? I mean, people could be doing what you're doing,
which is considered this highly creative thing. I'm not just
saying this for your benefit. I moved to New York
in nineteen seventy nine, and by the time I was
in New York and you guys opened up on Lafayette Street,
which was before LaMaMa. When you were and when you
had the he were staked out there at the Lafayette.
(02:45):
I mean everyone in New York went to go see
Blue Man. Now, prior to that, to this highly creative
thing you guys came up with, especially at that time,
we hadn't seen much like that at all. What was
your diet creatively? What were you into? Well?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
I moved to New York to be kind of a
traditional career in film and television. I wanted to study
acting and audition and everything. I didn't really know about
performance art. I was pretty innocent. Chris was actually the
first person I met on the first job that I
had when I moved to New York for a catering company,
(03:19):
Glorious Food, and so we kind of hit it off
right away somehow, and I kind of learned about performance
art in the downtown scene through Chris, and having grown
up a minister's son, I kind of inherited this feeling
that what you do has to say something to the world.
But I didn't want to be preachy, like my literally preachee.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
Like, especially back then, a lot of the performance art
was like intolerably preachy and just you know, some of
it was great, but I would say most performance art
I don't like, even back then, and at a certain
point we're saying, don't call us performance art because I
like Larie Anderson, you know what I mean, she's a
performance artist. We're trying to come buying a bunch of
(04:00):
different forms, including vaudeville. You know, we do comedy. We're
not trying to get into the gallery. We're taking Captain
crunch and we're eating it. We're trying to be outsiders,
to have some sort of exploration of the world. But
when I was young, and I think Phil is like
this too, watching those Marx Brothers movies was a.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Bit oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
And I had graduated from what Bugs Bunny and Bugs
Bunny's true for real. I had explored all these things
at Wesleyan, but I wasn't up that's where it went. Yeah,
it was great because I I was a drummer. American
Studies was just a way to get to stuff. I
studied film, lots of drumming there.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
I was a DJ.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
But when I got out, I was like, well, now
how do I get a job? You know, I liked
technology and science, but as a layman, you know, so
I was like, well, I guess I'll work in advertising
or marketing. And I got on a track for that,
and I probably would have been you know, it was
kind of traditional. I was good at it, you know,
and I would have been a regular. But I was like,
this is not making me happy. I quit that and
I said, I'm just going to be a waiter. And then,
(04:56):
you know, with my friends, we're going to create this
stuff that combines comedy, acting, drumming, technology, design, lighting, and art.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
And you know, it's not going to make us a living.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
So we got to take this catering thing very seriously
and we just started doing it literally just as a joy,
as a bliss, you know. And you know, one thing,
we'd have to find places to do it. So it'd
be like lea Mama or p S one twenty two whatever.
We would work for three weeks straight, you know, Phil
and I would do like fourteen hour shifts. And so
Matt had a job in a software company, and then
we would take off a week and we would build
(05:28):
this thing. And then we'd go and we do one
night and about eighty percent of it would suck, but
there would be like a little bit in there that
was good.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Little nugget, you know, And so we were.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Like, yeah, so we'd grab we'll keep that thirty seconds,
We'll keep that thirty combined it with another thirty seconds.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
And the thing is, our performance art friends would have
been like, no, it's your art. If the audience doesn't
understand it, then there it's their problem. We're like, no,
we're about villions. The audience matters, you know, and I
love that, and yes, vaudeville, you know. And in fact,
a lot of our early pieces were kind of we
needed to make fun of the pretend justness of performance
(06:01):
art a little bit, like when we catch these marshmallows
and we put them on a pedestal and we say
five thousand dollars, it's like, you know, really, you know,
and we make the painting at the like the first
two three pieces of the show, even to this day,
are kind of spoofing the pretentiousness of performance art in
a way that the audience doesn't even get anymore, but
they don't care. And what we found too, is like
(06:22):
the jump cut to Burning Man, you got a piece
of art and you got a dude on a bike
that's all tricked out, and I think they're both art.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
To me, I don't care how much the museum has
blessed it, you know what I mean. I think it's
just creative expressions are awesome, but the whole pretentiousness of
arts never really appeal to us.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
I had this image of you with the catering company
and one of you has got your back to him,
and you come over there and you go, Chris, why
did you paint all the eggs blue?
Speaker 5 (06:49):
Right?
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Everything starts getting blu erry.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
Well, we wrote that piece where we're sitting at the
meal with the guests and then stuff starts shooting out
our chest all over the at a catering gig because
we're sitting in our text.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
And I was thinking, like, wow, the only reason.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
This is possible is because it takes so long for
the food to get to our anus. If it came
right out, hopefully it would, it would make this whole
thing impossible. So we said, well, what if the blue
man had a really short loop in that regard, and
if he ate something it came right out, that would
be interesting, at least to us. So remember how many
times have people tell us so you can't do that piece?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Oh? Yeah, every time? Whenever we opened a show, they'd say, no,
you can't do that in.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
People think that's too gross.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
And we do that piece and everyone goes everyone goes ew.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
And then they go, yeah, that was great. Yeah, I
mean it's true. Every every step of the way they'd
say like, no, you have to change that. Yeah, nobody
in Vegas will like that, nobody in China will like that.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Do that in France. But so you're catering together, and
where's Matt.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Well, Matt had a software job, and so you knew
each other from where, oh, from seventh grade?
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah, I was the odd man out coming from.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
You with Anna and you knew him from seventh grade?
What's cool?
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Fieldston with the field step in Riverdale.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
We went to the school and there's all these like
celebrity kids and stuff, rich kids and all, and we
felt like outsiders. But on the outside we looked like
we fit in perfectly. There was sports and all we
were outside. Well, you know, he was like the captain
of the soccer team, but we felt like imposters. They
were like, all right, we're just trying to make sure
no one notices that we you know, we don't have
(08:24):
the money these kids have, and we don't. We don't
feel like we fit in. So we created a character
that embodied on the outside how we felt on the
inside because we had managed to pull off a great disguise.
We were walking through the high and we weren't getting bullied,
you know.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
So it was art performing any of them? How did it?
Speaker 4 (08:40):
I was a drummer, first rock and roll and yeah,
well new wave punk kind of, and I wasn't supported
at all. I feels I remember, couldn't do it there.
I had to get lessons outside, and to do theater.
You couldn't do theater during the day, so if you
were on a sport, you couldn't do theater. And then
there wasn't really any art I would I didn't have
any painterly art talent, so if you'd asked anybody there,
(09:01):
they wouldn't have said, oh, you know, he's likely to
be an artist. But I think we all shared the
idea of like, well, we don't need to be an
artist capital a, but we have this creative impulse. We
just don't have any like specific thing that's like, oh,
this is really talented. But what if we combine different
arts together and used our mediocrity to an advantage.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
The three of you together would riff about this.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Well, we talked about like because Matt was like the
same thing, Like, he hadn't even done any training in art.
I had studied art history and stuff, but I couldn't
draw a bird, you know, I have a nine year
old level drawing ability. And so we were like, maybe
if we kind of mixed different mediums together we could
find a form of expression. And Phil was like, well,
(09:42):
I'm an actor, but I'm also a builder. And he
was the one with a saw on the screw built
the drums, and they were like, you know, that's just
as much a form of creation as anything else.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I think it's an important story about the creative impulse.
Going back to the kind of art stacked at the
top of the show, the spoof on art, there's another
layer to it that I think it's important to mention.
It's it's like this simple, out of the box sort
of creativity. You know, you take a gumball on make
a painting. It's not a great painting, but it's a
(10:12):
creative impulse. And I think that's one thing to mention
about that at its core, Blue Man is sort of
a celebration of our human attributes, you know, our creativity,
our curiosity and our innovation and our innovation in our
desire for community. It's kind of those you.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Take a gumball, make a pinion and you're actually innovating.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
It's not a miss misuse exactly, and that's misappropriation.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
That's what could be more human than that.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
That's what's gotten us here, is that like tinkering with
stuff that's sort of divergent thinking.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
As Sir Kit Robinson.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
I just want to say, if you hit that more time,
how does it start? How does it start? Covering yourself
in blue paint and going and having a nervous break
down our stage.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
So we started with the characters like, all right, let's
see what it's like to be blue, and we would
just do socials.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
We walk around blue, yeah, blue, the way you ended
up in the show. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
At first we talked a little bit, just so we
wouldn't get beaten up or something arrested. Yeah, So we
would just be like and the people say, what's going on,
We're like, we're trying to find figure that out. And
then we would go to a bar and like people
were like, you guys look interesting. And what we found
is if it had just been one of us blue,
people would have been like, oh, that's weird. I don't
even but the three of us identically, they're like, oh,
now this is interesting. What what what do you got here?
(11:27):
I always said, well, we're hoping you'd buy us a drink,
and they'd be like, all right, I'll do that, and
then they would buy us a dream and would talk
to them all.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
The best thing though, is when people would just kind
of like shake their head yes, you know, as if
they got something, and they were like, I don't know
what they're something's resonating.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
But we wanted to go inside because it got cold,
and let's start creating pieces. So we'd create five minutes
of something out of time. And we put the drums
in pretty early on. I mean it was selfish because
I was a drummer, but also we wanted so we
have an outsider character, but we didn't want it to
be like a robe or an alien with like theorem
and tech music. We also had this idea that the
(12:05):
blue Man maybe came from our ancient past, Like we
wanted there to be a tribal primal quality so that
maybe people go as an alien, but actually that's me
that's the tribal past that we've left behind as we've
become so modern. That's as about as intellectual as we
would get. But that's why when you go to the show,
it isn't sort of techno music, even though I like
some of that, you know, it's this tribal, primal thing
(12:28):
that is this undercurrent.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
We have comedy and this and that, but there's a
boom doon to kadom to katoom.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
So it was kind of another impulse that we had
that we shared was this sort of sense of here
we are in this city, walking around feeling weird, and
like where's the damn cave? Where's the fireplace with the drums?
You know, like what do we do as a culture?
Why do we throw all that stuff out? I mean
we we left behind organized religion but there's no well
(12:55):
it would be Christianity and that was Jewish but we
and there's nothing against religion, but just didn't work for
us as an organized thing. But so we didn't have
any where do you go for like, you know, you
go to a rock show, but like where's but I.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Don't know, you know, we should make a fomentary where,
you know, And just since since blue mant there have
been like six new species discovered. We should make a
documentary because of bla right, because we should make a
documentary as if as if we were discovered as a
new species.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Species was there, but it was hiding. Let me ask
you this, though, seriously, which is that this notion that
mad for me in acting and so for when you
when you love something and what you'll give because you
guys wind up giving a lot. You have to put
the appliances on and do all this stuff all the
time for years and years and years. But you want
to get to that. What was it about this early
on that you invested in? Yeah, no, it's a big
(13:44):
committment every night for the years.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Years because you know, we were really doing it out
of a love of this thing. We'd seen Bill Moyer's
interviewing Joseph Campbell and heard that shot that was heard
around the world to follow your bliss was the theme
of a lot of the you know.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
The thing it wasn't is a hope that we would
ever make a living from it.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
Yeah, we had no idea, but we were finally being
able to finally had an outlet for the disparate things
that we were interested in and we had a way
to hang out together.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
And it was really pleasant.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
When does it become a show, Well, it starts out
as bits, you know, and then little by little somebody
invites us to perform somewhere up in Rochester or La Mama.
This by the way. At La Mama. One of your
brothers came. He was with Oliver Platt, my brother Billy's
very good films. Yes, yes, So they came together very
early on and were very supportive, and it was really
nice to see people being supported. They kind of encourage you.
(14:40):
They were like, you know, I get it. A lot
of it didn't work, you know, but keep going, you know.
And you could see that even people that had gone
on to do films and stuff, I understood the gestation period,
you know. Dustin Hoffman came Yea and invited us to
come to his office and he said, you know, all
my work is about how actors have to work, and
(15:01):
I love that you guys. I could just tell it.
You're like, you were just doing this out of your love.
And we were like, you're right, you know, and he's like, well,
keep going, and then all right, that's the end of
the meeting. And then we never saw him again, but
it was so sweet that he took a little bit
of time to just say. It reminded me when I
was young, he said we would go and do all
these things. It's just because we.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Loved worked hard, and we worked hard.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
There's been a couple of times over the years where
someone will come up to me and they want to
get the secret.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Ah, you guys made it up here. What's the secret?
You know, how did you do it?
Speaker 4 (15:31):
They want me to give them an answer so they
can just take it, and then like, okay, I'll do that,
and it's like a shortcut, and I'm like, I don't
know what to tell you. Follow what you love and
work really hard and who knows what will happen.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
I mean, but that's all I can offer because I
can't say, here's the recipe. We didn't know it would
work out. It could have easily not worked. Yes, you
know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
We were having fun and you know a lot of
them is just trying to crack ourselves up. Yeah, but
we took cracking ourselves up seriously.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Now, what about yourself? Like if you said to me,
what is the ultimate extension? Maybe that's the wrong phrase.
What is the truest. I mean your artists. Was this
your artistic expression, whether other forms of artistic expression you
were playing with, dreaming of, thinking of, and this is
how it ended up.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Well, what I discovered through it is a love of
Even though I had it in my background, I disregarded
it as important, the ability to work with tools and
understand hardware and you know, pipes and things like that. Yeah,
I thought, well, I'll leave all that behind, that's useless.
But through Blue Man, I discovered my love of like
(16:38):
making shit and being a creator of stuff, you know.
So that's kind of what I'm embarking on now is
I have a lot of ideas for like useful objects,
and I'm just going to try to execute all of
that stuff that's in my head. I'm trying to follow
the the way that Blue Man started to follow what
makes me happy right now, you know. And so that's
(17:00):
it for me. I'm kind of pursuing what I found
through Blue Man to be sort of my real pursuit.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Blue Man groups Chris Wink and Phil Stanton. If you
enjoy conversations with eccentric Las Vegas performers, check out my
episode with Penjelette of the world famous Penn and Teller.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
You have to know that my mom and my dad
never said hell or damn or any absent in the house. Hardcore,
no alcohol, no heller, damn. When I started doing card tricks,
my father was like, you won't be gambling though. You
can do card tricks, but I don't like having a
deck of cards in the house. I would say, Dad,
I'm just doing manipulations and tricks. Well, that's fine.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
To hear more of my conversation with Penjelette, go to
Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Chris and
Phil talk about debuting Blue Man Group in Las Vegas
and how an unlikely series of computer ads helped explode
the group's popularity. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
(18:16):
Here's the Thing That's drum Bone from Blue Man Group's
nineteen ninety nine debut album audio. When Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton,
(18:36):
and Chris Wink first began performing, there were only three
Blue Men. Eventually, the original trio would train and hire
other performers to don the Blue Cape. I was curious
what was involved with running Blue Man Groups organization off
stage and what projects they've been working on since.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Well at blue men. We were trained, we were writing
new material, we were directing, and well actually wandering a company.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
One of the reasons I left is that we remember
the earlier story. I went into marketing and advertising, and
I got to get the fuck out of this.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
I don't do my art. Jump cut to twenty fifteen.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
I'm the fucking marketing guy, right Phil, and I'm like,
what the fuck happened?
Speaker 3 (19:18):
I'm begging marketing. They tricked me.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Of course I gotta get the So I wanted to
go back to being a scrappy artist a little bit.
So I started making shit in my bathroom. I made
this sort of infinity room with hanging neon stuff, and
that ended up turning into wink World, which is a
psychedelic funhouse. So I've been doing and it's all the
things I learned to bluem and it combining kids.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
I have kids.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
How old are they?
Speaker 4 (19:40):
They're twenty and sixteen and I stepdaughter who's eighteen.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
And when you were in the house and doing your things,
they just go.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Dad, there it goes again. They won the jackpot and
they don't know it. I'm like, come on, let's get
all this shampoo and genius and We're like, oh, that's
just weird. Don't do that, dad.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
You have kids, yeah, fifteen and seventeen, you might have
young kids. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
But to answer to the other question is that absolutely
it was was my fan. I couldn't think of a
better fantasy than Blue Man and what I'm doing now,
which is to synergize things together symphony right, the word
implies sort of like bringing things together, right, and so
bringing disparate things. You know, what's the phrase something bedfellows, uncommon,
bed strange, strange, bed friends. That has been the best
(20:29):
reward of all this. It's great that we've had this
whatever success, but the fact that we got to work
for many years, you know, doing something we loved.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
And then the joy of performing in front of people.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
It's like, that was the fun thing about last I
haven't performed in a while and I missed that and
that has a drummer.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
I like that too, So.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
What have you been doing that? Just all individuals.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
We create these I've got these things in Wink world.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
They're like, it's like a psychedelic ride at a tripped
out acid carnival.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Not that I ever have done drugs are psychedelics.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
I actually haven't seen Wink World. Yet when did it
start right before the pandemic? No, right in the middle
of it, in the middle of it. So, yeah, I
got out of travel most by accident.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
It was the perfect thing for you know, social distancing.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
But you guys are out of time. Once you are questing,
the things become really really huge, and you're gonna go
out on the road. Now, describe to me if you
I'm assuming some of you were all if you were
involved in some casting sessions, who's going to go out
on the road or who's going to replace you eventually
on the show? What's that like?
Speaker 4 (21:28):
Well, we didn't have understudies for the first We did
the first three years without an understudy, or at least
the first two, and then after a certain point the
stage matages like you know, you guys should have an understudy, right, No, No,
we're really the only ones.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yeah, we thought of ourselves as a band, you know,
like the beating.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
Because well, I'm going to train the drummer just in case,
and so we go whatever, But we're not going to
help you.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
You can train the drummer if you want, but he's
not going on.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
He's not going on ahead, so then fills at home,
you know, as you do before a show, using a
router to just do something, and apparently he routed his
finger almost all the way off.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
It shows up. It's like hanging by a thread.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
You can't go on and no, I did, I did this?
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Did the show?
Speaker 2 (22:09):
I see? Then you went to the hot and I
needed surgery. So so weirdest thing about it, Like, like
I said, we thought of ourselves as a band. So
the first moment that we saw someone else play the character,
it's like, duh. We created a bald and blue character
who is anonymous, and you know, other people and other
races should play this character.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
We were. We would go around what it's about.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
We would go around and brag about how much we
didn't have a big ego because of the blue man,
but we had this this thing. We're the only ones
that could do it. And then this guy comes in.
He does it great, Like fucking a man is always
so humiliate. And also, you know, when you fail at
a piece like this business that we're in, you can
kind of get a big ego, but ultimately it's humbling,
(22:49):
right like because you at some point you realize like all.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Right, yeah, and then we thought we realized hey, we
can beat the McDonald's of them.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
No, But it was funny because you remember when Pin
and Teller came and they were like, God, you guys.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Are so lucky because you could get other people to
do the show.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
And we're like, no, no, we could cut the I'm
the blue Man on the laft.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
But something Actually, Penn and Teller we call him up.
We're like, hey, you remember what you said about us.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
We think we wanted to open a show in Vegas,
and it's like, yeah, come on out. So they were
the ones that showed us around Vegas, introduced them to
their manager, and then he got us the basically set
us up.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
And so we owe that to Pen and Telly.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
So I can't think of anything slightly more disparate here,
but enlightened me, which is to go from Lafayette, cross
the street from the public doing that show to go
to Vegas. Different crowd, so different.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
By the way, By the way, we thought we'd gone
on the Tonight Show a couple We thought we were
sort of, you know, known, But we get out there.
We open up as a headliner in a big theater
and empty and we're like, oh, oh, when you're a
headliner people supposed to know you are ship. We left
one thing out. The one thing we left what happened.
So we're like, all right, we gotta do something fast.
(24:00):
We got something fast. We're like, oh, we got to
get on some more tonight. We went on tonight. You
helped a little bit. First, we get a call from
the Lakers, we want you to perform at halftime, and
we're like, we'll do anything.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
We got to get keep this show up. And he goes, yeah, how.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
Many is it on TV? Like non, they don't really
televise the half timething. Then why are we doing it? Well,
you know it's la and there's people. I'm like, well, okay,
we'll do it. And he goes, but one thing, do
you mind being gold and purple? That wouldn't be the
blue mag up right, Yeah, but you know it's the Lakers.
You know those are colors, you know, And we're like,
what are you talking about? And we couldn't believe it.
(24:34):
So we were just hung up, you know, and we
didn't do it. So then Intel calls, can you guys
want you to do our ads?
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (24:40):
Yeah, because your logo is blue. You know, there's more
to a blue man than the blue color, you know.
So we said no, and then the guys says, no, listen,
I'm the head of the whatever. I always I want
to I want you to say no to me in person.
And as he comes in, why'd you say no?
Speaker 3 (24:53):
It's just blue? And I don't know.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
We were at the blue Man group and we appreciate it,
but like and he goes, no, no, it's not because
it's blue. We're trying We don't have a product. We're
selling the chip inside the computer. But our brand, what
we're trying to represent is smart, innovative, fun, and we
think that's what you represent. And we go, well, that's interesting,
and I said, but we'd have to have our name
in every ad.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Is oh shit, we can't. We can't do that. I said, Well,
he comes back, is all right, we'll do it.
Speaker 4 (25:19):
So every single Intel commercial had our name in it
at the beginning for four seconds, contractually, and they played
it around the world and about three months later sold
out every night in Vegas.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Yeah. But but there is one thing a cultural context
to keep in mind too, is that there was no
precedent for artists being in the advertising world at that time, right,
you know, right, not even musicians didn't really even license.
Everybody avoided that to commercials.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Now when we were in my business, you go to
Japan and do Suntorial week commercials, they give you a
million dollars for one week.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
We were proud of those bits. I mean you should. Yeah, people,
you can google them into it.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
It was a great like thirty second medium toward.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Oh, you know, it reminds me something. I want to
tell you about Vegas really quick now.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Now I want to hear a lot about that. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
So I remember a time when we started out in
the East Village and downtown and then there we were
one night in Vegas, a couple a little bit into
the run and it was Rody a week and there
are all these guys in the audience with their hats
on kebo heyes, and they didn't take them off. It's like, no,
it's I'm gonna fucking sit here in the audience with
my cowboy hat on and no one's gonna tell him
(26:25):
not to.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
These guys are like steal, you know, done, and they.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
And the show's over and we were directing at that
point that people are walking out and this.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Guy comes by and he goes, I don't know what
that was. But I locked it.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
And we're like, all right, this is a new chapter,
you know what I mean, Like like we were glad
that we were getting to different group.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
So you're in Vegas, and how do you change? Meaning
I have a picture of you like in your room.
Now you're in your dressing room in Vegas, the other
place to paint this feeling. And now you're like on
the phone with your decorator going, this is not eagles
Nests the small paper, I said, eagles Nest. What happens?
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Well, we didn't.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
I mean, we passed it on to the local crew
and you know, cast and everything. The fun thing about
Vegas was that the challenge was it was a bigger stage.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
And so we're like, all right, how do we make.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
This bigger without losing you know, the intimacy and the
real creative idea behind it.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
And so we said, well, let's see, shadows could be
really big, and so we.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
Started playing with lights and a scrim kind of old
old school stuff, you know, but like, all right, let's
make this. And so we made the character really big
just by standing in front of lights and like you know,
drumming and the drumming on a scrim from behind. You know,
big this is pretty cool. So we had fun. And
every time we've done a different kind of venue or
even the rock tour or whatever, it was fun to learn, like,
(27:46):
all right, what is this venue?
Speaker 3 (27:48):
What are the challenges?
Speaker 4 (27:49):
Actually, if you the aster when we were at La
Mama and we moved to the Astro place, they had
this balcony.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
The balcony is ah, God, the balcon's kind of a bummer, Like,
you know, how do we deal with it? And then
we're like, well, we can actually have a guy go
up there. We can connect things, you know. So that's
we always looked at the saw.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Them as creative opportunity.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
That's right. Yeah, So I'm gonna I'm going to jerk
us in a different direction, which is now that Matt's
out here, let's talk about Matt. Matt on the things
about Matt we want to say, I.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
Don't know how he got food poisoning, but good thing
he didn't have it before the show.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Last night.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
I was so wonderful, so magical, and we weren't planning
on doing Someone just said, you know, this guy is
this last show.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
He's Larry.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
He's been playing since the beginning and we were He's
with us from the first thing we did.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Wrote a lot of the music with us, and he's.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Been in and out of the show on and off
for years.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
But so someone's like, his last show is coming up,
I'm going to go in the drummer you guys want
to go into and we're.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Like, I why not?
Speaker 4 (28:40):
So this all came together really last minute. But it
was fantastic, so much fun.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Uh did you have to cours?
Speaker 5 (28:48):
No.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
I would have never thought in a million years I'd
be back on stage though, and I'm glad I did again.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
The theater, the immediacy, people, the routine, you know. So
what's interesting, especially for any show that is musical comedy,
not always necessarily the case with drama. Because when I
did Street Car Name Desire, I'm Broadway in nineteen ninety two,
you were thinking the show, if this isn't going over,
this isn't working well, and then you realize they were listening. Oh,
they were listening intently. So when the show was over,
(29:16):
they all burst out sobbing and applauded and stood up
and went crazy. But during the show, nothing but with
you and comedies and musicals, you know exactly what you're
gonna do you know exactly how they're going to react.
I mean, it's all such a wonderful toy.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
But it's true.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
It's funny as humans. It's a weird quirk when we
are laughing. When we're with something funny, we make a
sound and we don't like complain that other people are
making this weird sound. If an alien came down and
what are they doing. Oh they're laughing. Something's funny. But
with something sublime you might go, but pretty much you're silent.
So the actor has no idea that they could just
be bored or they could be being moved deeply. And
(29:53):
so we've had a similar experience our show. We like,
we hope that it's from the ridiculous to the sublime once.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
In a while, but we don't know. You don't know
the way you do it.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Comedy Chris Wink and Phil Stanton of Blue Man Group.
If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be
sure to follow Here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app,
Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back,
Chris and Phil talk about what it's like to create
(30:26):
a world famous show but still remain anonymous in their
Daily Lives. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
And this is here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
That's the founding members a Blue Man Group performing Rods
and Cones from their nineteen ninety nine album Audio. One
of the many innovations from Blue Man Group was the
creation of musical instruments made from PVC pipes. I was
curious how such a unique idea took shape.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
We were down on Canal Street and there was like,
I don't know, we were just going to build something,
and we started playing with these pipes and we're hitting them,
like these make a pretty good sound.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
In those days, there were like industrial supply places on
Canal Street, so we would go down there because we.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Like to the other than niche hotels.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
But yeah, we were just playing with them, and then
we started hitting them with flip flops, and you know,
I wanted to as a drummer, We wanted to drum musically,
but xylophones and celestis they have weird overtones that I
didn't like, and the PVC has a pure single tone.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
The show numerous times, yeah, a couple of times, the
final show yesterday, they're they're coming to They're out.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Of town, right now.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
They got to come in for the Yeah, and it's
gonna be the end. They're not gonna do it anymore.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
Well, there's still Vegas show, but we're not planning to
do anything else, so this probably must.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
They pay you one billion dollars. Get up there at
the Royal alber Hole. Now you've had artistic triumph, but anonymity,
and then you became very famous people from doing the show.
But do you find that that's made you comfortable or
I mean, because you don't seem the people who were
like fame seekers on the onset.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
I mean, it's wonderful to be able to just ride
the subway and move around and the character is famous,
but we're not. There's times when it's annoying. I want
to get into a club or something and like now
who are you? I'm like, forget it.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Now, your wives had to raise a family. And I
think about this because I still love doing plays. I
love theater. I love it. It's the most fun. Movies
are challenging, but they are rarely fun. They're challenging to
fit it together. And then you do a play and
you're like, well I didn't like the way I did that.
I'm gonna do this tomorrow.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
It's fair in my room and make no right iterative,
which is wonderful, luxury, all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
But you're away from your family every night. What was
it like for you all of those years where you're
you're doing a show every night forever.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Well, when we first did the run, I was I
didn't have kids yet.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Same for me, it was it was more.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Yeah, no, after our long run, we had more flexibility.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
That runs how long?
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Well that was we did twelve hundred shows in a
row without a break.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
And then we still perform for years, but not every
night because yeah, we have more abilities.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
My kids were young, we were we were able to
pull it off. But yeah, it was, it was. It
was crazy. But but you mentioned though we opened the
show and we kept working on the bits for the
whole three years, like but the most year. We got
a lot of the best nuances that you don't write
them in a writer's room, you know, you write them
on stage. I always wonder about that because I, you know,
(33:52):
I haven't had a film experience, but man, as an
actor in film, you get one or two chances. We
got a chance to like work out stuff over and
even even last night, We did stuff that was in
the show when we opened way back, and we added
some iterations just because we knew a lot of the
people there would have seen it all. But it was
so fun to like try a couple of different things out,
you know, like they call it a play, but where's
(34:15):
the play. We're trying to put the play back in play,
you know, like the iteration and the play of like, no,
you can't do that with a you know Shakespeare, I'm
gonna I'm gonna play with his words. I mean, I
can do something better.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
I did a play once about Puccino. The play was
written by a friend of Pacino, about Pacino, and I
did the play and I played Pacino. Oh Wowchino comes
on to just exhaust and just to completely malign the director.
He's doing a scene and in the scene, the character
reads Shakespeare, but he changes all the words. Director goes,
what are you doing? And the Patina car goes, I
(34:47):
just sold I'd riff I'd do a little riffing. I'm
gonna riff on Shakespeare. That's what I'm gonna do, is share.
And this is in the play, and you're fucking crying
listen to this anyway, In the time you have. I
think got one more quick question, which is that what
stuff you saw back then? Because you guys are known
as one of the most original shows. It's so original,
and everybody they loved you. I was in a New
(35:09):
York where everybody in the whole fucking town saw you.
Everybody came down there to see that. Just with your
cred now and who you are creatively, one of the
things you saw that you've been impressed with you, Man,
that's really cool. I like that.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
The most recent thing that really blew me away was Hamilton, right,
very I mean that's not unusual.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
And I liked Firs, the Brutus stuff. Where's a bruta
was margin? They did some really nice stuff, I thought.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
But I mean, god, there's there's a lot of good
stuff out there and little bits and pieces. When you
go to Berning, man, you just see some dude on
a bike that's inspired.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Yeah. When we first started, Broadway was not the place
for innovation. No, you know, we were Downtownwntown, Lovetown was
very separated, you know, and downtown was the place for
innovation and creativity really, but now you know, Broadway is
a place for great innovation.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
I would count On one hand, the shows I saw
that were super creative and really really knocked me down,
and yours is one obviously that's for a lot of people.
And the other one, I mean, it's gonna sound with
Lion King. When I saw my.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Mouth was on, My mouth was on that opening sequence
is one mouth was open greatest.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
Julie Taymour, and then Michael Curry was the Oh I
built the puppets, but she visioned them genius stuff. And
then my kids make fun of me because I took
them when they were younger to gazillion bubbles. Oh all right,
so this is the cheesiest show of bubbles everywhere lasers are.
But I was just at the end, you know, I
just like, look at all these bubbles and they looked over.
(36:40):
I was crying a little bit because it was just beautiful.
Bubbles are amazing. They're perfectly round. I mean, and my
kids like, dah, that's that's crazy. You were crying at
gazelle bubbles.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
I'm like, it was. I know it's cheesy, but there
was a gazillion of them. Man, there was a lot.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
What's the stuff you put on yourself to turn grease paint?
Regular showiness? Because showed probably grace. Yeah, and it comes
in a bucket or a tube or a big big
tub pail, big tubs. If someone applies it to you,
we do I just out and makes it look.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Yeah, if we kind of do it.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
We were never trying to go for blue skin. It's
like we actually.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
Opened the show without a wardrobe person. I believe they
cut that cost. We were on our own completely. It
is a crazy thing. When we first opened, we would
have to wear neutrial gloves on our hands and then
we would take other We couldn't put the blue in
our hands because they would get everywhere. Yeah, So we
had to wear these, you know, surgical gloves or whatever,
and so people would have to dye them with this
(37:37):
writ dye that was nasty and and they have to
try to keep it from getting on the inside. Because
so at some point someone called the new Trial company
and glove company said, hey, can you guys dye these fours.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
They didn't have blue gloves back then.
Speaker 4 (37:51):
So they made blue gloves for us because we were
ordering so many and and we said we ordered for
three cities.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
And we're ordered like three years worth.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
If you'll do this, they did it, and then they
decided to make him available to the public. And when
you go out and see all the people in Ozzen
wearing the blue gloves.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
That's us.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
That's so funny.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
It didn't happen before that.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
My thanks to Blue Man Groups, Chris Wink and Phil Stanton.
You can still see Blue Man Group in Boston, Las Vegas,
Orlando and internationally. I'll leave you with Club Nowhere, from
Blue Man Group's nineteen ninety nine debut album, audio by
Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing that's brought to you by
iHeart Radio.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
The
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio. That's PVC IV, a song featuring
(00:25):
PVC pipes being played by three men with their flip flops.
My guests today are some of the most famous performers
in the world, though you've likely never seen their real
faces nor heard their actual voices. Created by Matt Goldman,
Chris Wink and Philip Stanton in nineteen eighty nine, Blue
(00:47):
Man Group began as a performance art piece inspired by
nineteen eighties counterculture. The show would eventually grow into the
worldwide phenomenon we know it as today. In addition to
the original Astor Place theater show, Blue Man Group has
staged three world tours and taken up residency in Las Vegas, Chicago, Orlando,
(01:11):
and Boston. The group has released five albums, received a
Grammy nomination, and performed on numerous TV shows and in
some of the most memorable commercials. This past weekend, Blue
Man Group's original New York City show closed after seventeen
thousand performances over three decades. They're synonymous with creativity, ingenuity,
(01:36):
and of course, a distinct shade of blue paints.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
My name is Chris Wink and this voice is the
voice of Philip Stanton.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Where'd you grow up?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Well, I grew up in New York.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Actually, my dad came to Union Theological Seminary by Columbia,
became a minister. We were in Texas for five years.
He was in a parsonage, but then he got hired
back because he was a linguist guy, and he became
a professor.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
So I grew up by Columbia. It was a really
interesting Union.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah, and what about you.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I was born in Lubbock, Texas. Group in Savannah, Georgia.
My father was a minister also weirdly, but my father
also built churches, I say, a group in Savannah. But
I really, you know, I grew up until I was
eight in Texas, So I'm kind of half and half
in a way.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
So when you were growing up, what was theater art? Creativity?
Performance art? I mean, people could be doing what you're doing,
which is considered this highly creative thing. I'm not just
saying this for your benefit. I moved to New York
in nineteen seventy nine, and by the time I was
in New York and you guys opened up on Lafayette Street,
which was before LaMaMa. When you were and when you
had the he were staked out there at the Lafayette.
(02:45):
I mean everyone in New York went to go see
Blue Man. Now, prior to that, to this highly creative
thing you guys came up with, especially at that time,
we hadn't seen much like that at all. What was
your diet creatively? What were you into? Well?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
I moved to New York to be kind of a
traditional career in film and television. I wanted to study
acting and audition and everything. I didn't really know about
performance art. I was pretty innocent. Chris was actually the
first person I met on the first job that I
had when I moved to New York for a catering company,
(03:19):
Glorious Food, and so we kind of hit it off
right away somehow, and I kind of learned about performance
art in the downtown scene through Chris, and having grown
up a minister's son, I kind of inherited this feeling
that what you do has to say something to the world.
But I didn't want to be preachy, like my literally preachee.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
Like, especially back then, a lot of the performance art
was like intolerably preachy and just you know, some of
it was great, but I would say most performance art
I don't like, even back then, and at a certain
point we're saying, don't call us performance art because I
like Larie Anderson, you know what I mean, she's a
performance artist. We're trying to come buying a bunch of
(04:00):
different forms, including vaudeville. You know, we do comedy. We're
not trying to get into the gallery. We're taking Captain
crunch and we're eating it. We're trying to be outsiders,
to have some sort of exploration of the world. But
when I was young, and I think Phil is like
this too, watching those Marx Brothers movies was a.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Bit oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
And I had graduated from what Bugs Bunny and Bugs
Bunny's true for real. I had explored all these things
at Wesleyan, but I wasn't up that's where it went. Yeah,
it was great because I I was a drummer. American
Studies was just a way to get to stuff. I
studied film, lots of drumming there.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
I was a DJ.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
But when I got out, I was like, well, now
how do I get a job? You know, I liked
technology and science, but as a layman, you know, so
I was like, well, I guess I'll work in advertising
or marketing. And I got on a track for that,
and I probably would have been you know, it was
kind of traditional. I was good at it, you know,
and I would have been a regular. But I was like,
this is not making me happy. I quit that and
I said, I'm just going to be a waiter. And then,
(04:56):
you know, with my friends, we're going to create this
stuff that combines comedy, acting, drumming, technology, design, lighting, and art.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
And you know, it's not going to make us a living.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
So we got to take this catering thing very seriously
and we just started doing it literally just as a joy,
as a bliss, you know. And you know, one thing,
we'd have to find places to do it. So it'd
be like lea Mama or p S one twenty two whatever.
We would work for three weeks straight, you know, Phil
and I would do like fourteen hour shifts. And so
Matt had a job in a software company, and then
we would take off a week and we would build
(05:28):
this thing. And then we'd go and we do one
night and about eighty percent of it would suck, but
there would be like a little bit in there that
was good.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Little nugget, you know, And so we were.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Like, yeah, so we'd grab we'll keep that thirty seconds,
We'll keep that thirty combined it with another thirty seconds.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
And the thing is, our performance art friends would have
been like, no, it's your art. If the audience doesn't
understand it, then there it's their problem. We're like, no,
we're about villions. The audience matters, you know, and I
love that, and yes, vaudeville, you know. And in fact,
a lot of our early pieces were kind of we
needed to make fun of the pretend justness of performance
(06:01):
art a little bit, like when we catch these marshmallows
and we put them on a pedestal and we say
five thousand dollars, it's like, you know, really, you know,
and we make the painting at the like the first
two three pieces of the show, even to this day,
are kind of spoofing the pretentiousness of performance art in
a way that the audience doesn't even get anymore, but
they don't care. And what we found too, is like
(06:22):
the jump cut to Burning Man, you got a piece
of art and you got a dude on a bike
that's all tricked out, and I think they're both art.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
To me, I don't care how much the museum has
blessed it, you know what I mean. I think it's
just creative expressions are awesome, but the whole pretentiousness of
arts never really appeal to us.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
I had this image of you with the catering company
and one of you has got your back to him,
and you come over there and you go, Chris, why
did you paint all the eggs blue?
Speaker 5 (06:49):
Right?
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Everything starts getting blu erry.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
Well, we wrote that piece where we're sitting at the
meal with the guests and then stuff starts shooting out
our chest all over the at a catering gig because
we're sitting in our text.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
And I was thinking, like, wow, the only reason.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
This is possible is because it takes so long for
the food to get to our anus. If it came
right out, hopefully it would, it would make this whole
thing impossible. So we said, well, what if the blue
man had a really short loop in that regard, and
if he ate something it came right out, that would
be interesting, at least to us. So remember how many
times have people tell us so you can't do that piece?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Oh? Yeah, every time? Whenever we opened a show, they'd say, no,
you can't do that in.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
People think that's too gross.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
And we do that piece and everyone goes everyone goes ew.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
And then they go, yeah, that was great. Yeah, I
mean it's true. Every every step of the way they'd
say like, no, you have to change that. Yeah, nobody
in Vegas will like that, nobody in China will like that.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Do that in France. But so you're catering together, and
where's Matt.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Well, Matt had a software job, and so you knew
each other from where, oh, from seventh grade?
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah, I was the odd man out coming from.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
You with Anna and you knew him from seventh grade?
What's cool?
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Fieldston with the field step in Riverdale.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
We went to the school and there's all these like
celebrity kids and stuff, rich kids and all, and we
felt like outsiders. But on the outside we looked like
we fit in perfectly. There was sports and all we
were outside. Well, you know, he was like the captain
of the soccer team, but we felt like imposters. They
were like, all right, we're just trying to make sure
no one notices that we you know, we don't have
(08:24):
the money these kids have, and we don't. We don't
feel like we fit in. So we created a character
that embodied on the outside how we felt on the
inside because we had managed to pull off a great disguise.
We were walking through the high and we weren't getting bullied,
you know.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
So it was art performing any of them? How did it?
Speaker 4 (08:40):
I was a drummer, first rock and roll and yeah,
well new wave punk kind of, and I wasn't supported
at all. I feels I remember, couldn't do it there.
I had to get lessons outside, and to do theater.
You couldn't do theater during the day, so if you
were on a sport, you couldn't do theater. And then
there wasn't really any art I would I didn't have
any painterly art talent, so if you'd asked anybody there,
(09:01):
they wouldn't have said, oh, you know, he's likely to
be an artist. But I think we all shared the
idea of like, well, we don't need to be an
artist capital a, but we have this creative impulse. We
just don't have any like specific thing that's like, oh,
this is really talented. But what if we combine different
arts together and used our mediocrity to an advantage.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
The three of you together would riff about this.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Well, we talked about like because Matt was like the
same thing, Like, he hadn't even done any training in art.
I had studied art history and stuff, but I couldn't
draw a bird, you know, I have a nine year
old level drawing ability. And so we were like, maybe
if we kind of mixed different mediums together we could
find a form of expression. And Phil was like, well,
(09:42):
I'm an actor, but I'm also a builder. And he
was the one with a saw on the screw built
the drums, and they were like, you know, that's just
as much a form of creation as anything else.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I think it's an important story about the creative impulse.
Going back to the kind of art stacked at the
top of the show, the spoof on art, there's another
layer to it that I think it's important to mention.
It's it's like this simple, out of the box sort
of creativity. You know, you take a gumball on make
a painting. It's not a great painting, but it's a
(10:12):
creative impulse. And I think that's one thing to mention
about that at its core, Blue Man is sort of
a celebration of our human attributes, you know, our creativity,
our curiosity and our innovation and our innovation in our
desire for community. It's kind of those you.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Take a gumball, make a pinion and you're actually innovating.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
It's not a miss misuse exactly, and that's misappropriation.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
That's what could be more human than that.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
That's what's gotten us here, is that like tinkering with
stuff that's sort of divergent thinking.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
As Sir Kit Robinson.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
I just want to say, if you hit that more time,
how does it start? How does it start? Covering yourself
in blue paint and going and having a nervous break
down our stage.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
So we started with the characters like, all right, let's
see what it's like to be blue, and we would
just do socials.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
We walk around blue, yeah, blue, the way you ended
up in the show. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
At first we talked a little bit, just so we
wouldn't get beaten up or something arrested. Yeah, So we
would just be like and the people say, what's going on,
We're like, we're trying to find figure that out. And
then we would go to a bar and like people
were like, you guys look interesting. And what we found
is if it had just been one of us blue,
people would have been like, oh, that's weird. I don't
even but the three of us identically, they're like, oh,
now this is interesting. What what what do you got here?
(11:27):
I always said, well, we're hoping you'd buy us a drink,
and they'd be like, all right, I'll do that, and
then they would buy us a dream and would talk
to them all.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
The best thing though, is when people would just kind
of like shake their head yes, you know, as if
they got something, and they were like, I don't know
what they're something's resonating.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
But we wanted to go inside because it got cold,
and let's start creating pieces. So we'd create five minutes
of something out of time. And we put the drums
in pretty early on. I mean it was selfish because
I was a drummer, but also we wanted so we
have an outsider character, but we didn't want it to
be like a robe or an alien with like theorem
and tech music. We also had this idea that the
(12:05):
blue Man maybe came from our ancient past, Like we
wanted there to be a tribal primal quality so that
maybe people go as an alien, but actually that's me
that's the tribal past that we've left behind as we've
become so modern. That's as about as intellectual as we
would get. But that's why when you go to the show,
it isn't sort of techno music, even though I like
some of that, you know, it's this tribal, primal thing
(12:28):
that is this undercurrent.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
We have comedy and this and that, but there's a
boom doon to kadom to katoom.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
So it was kind of another impulse that we had
that we shared was this sort of sense of here
we are in this city, walking around feeling weird, and
like where's the damn cave? Where's the fireplace with the drums?
You know, like what do we do as a culture?
Why do we throw all that stuff out? I mean
we we left behind organized religion but there's no well
(12:55):
it would be Christianity and that was Jewish but we
and there's nothing against religion, but just didn't work for
us as an organized thing. But so we didn't have
any where do you go for like, you know, you
go to a rock show, but like where's but I.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Don't know, you know, we should make a fomentary where,
you know, And just since since blue mant there have
been like six new species discovered. We should make a
documentary because of bla right, because we should make a
documentary as if as if we were discovered as a
new species.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Species was there, but it was hiding. Let me ask
you this, though, seriously, which is that this notion that
mad for me in acting and so for when you
when you love something and what you'll give because you
guys wind up giving a lot. You have to put
the appliances on and do all this stuff all the
time for years and years and years. But you want
to get to that. What was it about this early
on that you invested in? Yeah, no, it's a big
(13:44):
committment every night for the years.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Years because you know, we were really doing it out
of a love of this thing. We'd seen Bill Moyer's
interviewing Joseph Campbell and heard that shot that was heard
around the world to follow your bliss was the theme
of a lot of the you know.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
The thing it wasn't is a hope that we would
ever make a living from it.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
Yeah, we had no idea, but we were finally being
able to finally had an outlet for the disparate things
that we were interested in and we had a way
to hang out together.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
And it was really pleasant.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
When does it become a show, Well, it starts out
as bits, you know, and then little by little somebody
invites us to perform somewhere up in Rochester or La Mama.
This by the way. At La Mama. One of your
brothers came. He was with Oliver Platt, my brother Billy's
very good films. Yes, yes, So they came together very
early on and were very supportive, and it was really
nice to see people being supported. They kind of encourage you.
(14:40):
They were like, you know, I get it. A lot
of it didn't work, you know, but keep going, you know.
And you could see that even people that had gone
on to do films and stuff, I understood the gestation period,
you know. Dustin Hoffman came Yea and invited us to
come to his office and he said, you know, all
my work is about how actors have to work, and
(15:01):
I love that you guys. I could just tell it.
You're like, you were just doing this out of your love.
And we were like, you're right, you know, and he's like, well,
keep going, and then all right, that's the end of
the meeting. And then we never saw him again, but
it was so sweet that he took a little bit
of time to just say. It reminded me when I
was young, he said we would go and do all
these things. It's just because we.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Loved worked hard, and we worked hard.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
There's been a couple of times over the years where
someone will come up to me and they want to
get the secret.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Ah, you guys made it up here. What's the secret?
You know, how did you do it?
Speaker 4 (15:31):
They want me to give them an answer so they
can just take it, and then like, okay, I'll do that,
and it's like a shortcut, and I'm like, I don't
know what to tell you. Follow what you love and
work really hard and who knows what will happen.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
I mean, but that's all I can offer because I
can't say, here's the recipe. We didn't know it would
work out. It could have easily not worked. Yes, you
know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
We were having fun and you know a lot of
them is just trying to crack ourselves up. Yeah, but
we took cracking ourselves up seriously.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Now, what about yourself? Like if you said to me,
what is the ultimate extension? Maybe that's the wrong phrase.
What is the truest. I mean your artists. Was this
your artistic expression, whether other forms of artistic expression you
were playing with, dreaming of, thinking of, and this is
how it ended up.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Well, what I discovered through it is a love of
Even though I had it in my background, I disregarded
it as important, the ability to work with tools and
understand hardware and you know, pipes and things like that. Yeah,
I thought, well, I'll leave all that behind, that's useless.
But through Blue Man, I discovered my love of like
(16:38):
making shit and being a creator of stuff, you know.
So that's kind of what I'm embarking on now is
I have a lot of ideas for like useful objects,
and I'm just going to try to execute all of
that stuff that's in my head. I'm trying to follow
the the way that Blue Man started to follow what
makes me happy right now, you know. And so that's
(17:00):
it for me. I'm kind of pursuing what I found
through Blue Man to be sort of my real pursuit.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Blue Man groups Chris Wink and Phil Stanton. If you
enjoy conversations with eccentric Las Vegas performers, check out my
episode with Penjelette of the world famous Penn and Teller.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
You have to know that my mom and my dad
never said hell or damn or any absent in the house. Hardcore,
no alcohol, no heller, damn. When I started doing card tricks,
my father was like, you won't be gambling though. You
can do card tricks, but I don't like having a
deck of cards in the house. I would say, Dad,
I'm just doing manipulations and tricks. Well, that's fine.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
To hear more of my conversation with Penjelette, go to
Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Chris and
Phil talk about debuting Blue Man Group in Las Vegas
and how an unlikely series of computer ads helped explode
the group's popularity. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
(18:16):
Here's the Thing That's drum Bone from Blue Man Group's
nineteen ninety nine debut album audio. When Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton,
(18:36):
and Chris Wink first began performing, there were only three
Blue Men. Eventually, the original trio would train and hire
other performers to don the Blue Cape. I was curious
what was involved with running Blue Man Groups organization off
stage and what projects they've been working on since.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Well at blue men. We were trained, we were writing
new material, we were directing, and well actually wandering a company.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
One of the reasons I left is that we remember
the earlier story. I went into marketing and advertising, and
I got to get the fuck out of this.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
I don't do my art. Jump cut to twenty fifteen.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
I'm the fucking marketing guy, right Phil, and I'm like,
what the fuck happened?
Speaker 3 (19:18):
I'm begging marketing. They tricked me.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Of course I gotta get the So I wanted to
go back to being a scrappy artist a little bit.
So I started making shit in my bathroom. I made
this sort of infinity room with hanging neon stuff, and
that ended up turning into wink World, which is a
psychedelic funhouse. So I've been doing and it's all the
things I learned to bluem and it combining kids.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
I have kids.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
How old are they?
Speaker 4 (19:40):
They're twenty and sixteen and I stepdaughter who's eighteen.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
And when you were in the house and doing your things,
they just go.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Dad, there it goes again. They won the jackpot and
they don't know it. I'm like, come on, let's get
all this shampoo and genius and We're like, oh, that's
just weird. Don't do that, dad.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
You have kids, yeah, fifteen and seventeen, you might have
young kids. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
But to answer to the other question is that absolutely
it was was my fan. I couldn't think of a
better fantasy than Blue Man and what I'm doing now,
which is to synergize things together symphony right, the word
implies sort of like bringing things together, right, and so
bringing disparate things. You know, what's the phrase something bedfellows, uncommon,
bed strange, strange, bed friends. That has been the best
(20:29):
reward of all this. It's great that we've had this
whatever success, but the fact that we got to work
for many years, you know, doing something we loved.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
And then the joy of performing in front of people.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
It's like, that was the fun thing about last I
haven't performed in a while and I missed that and
that has a drummer.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
I like that too, So.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
What have you been doing that? Just all individuals.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
We create these I've got these things in Wink world.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
They're like, it's like a psychedelic ride at a tripped
out acid carnival.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Not that I ever have done drugs are psychedelics.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
I actually haven't seen Wink World. Yet when did it
start right before the pandemic? No, right in the middle
of it, in the middle of it. So, yeah, I
got out of travel most by accident.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
It was the perfect thing for you know, social distancing.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
But you guys are out of time. Once you are questing,
the things become really really huge, and you're gonna go
out on the road. Now, describe to me if you
I'm assuming some of you were all if you were
involved in some casting sessions, who's going to go out
on the road or who's going to replace you eventually
on the show? What's that like?
Speaker 4 (21:28):
Well, we didn't have understudies for the first We did
the first three years without an understudy, or at least
the first two, and then after a certain point the
stage matages like you know, you guys should have an understudy, right, No, No,
we're really the only ones.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yeah, we thought of ourselves as a band, you know,
like the beating.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
Because well, I'm going to train the drummer just in case,
and so we go whatever, But we're not going to
help you.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
You can train the drummer if you want, but he's
not going on.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
He's not going on ahead, so then fills at home,
you know, as you do before a show, using a
router to just do something, and apparently he routed his
finger almost all the way off.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
It shows up. It's like hanging by a thread.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
You can't go on and no, I did, I did this?
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Did the show?
Speaker 2 (22:09):
I see? Then you went to the hot and I
needed surgery. So so weirdest thing about it, Like, like
I said, we thought of ourselves as a band. So
the first moment that we saw someone else play the character,
it's like, duh. We created a bald and blue character
who is anonymous, and you know, other people and other
races should play this character.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
We were. We would go around what it's about.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
We would go around and brag about how much we
didn't have a big ego because of the blue man,
but we had this this thing. We're the only ones
that could do it. And then this guy comes in.
He does it great, Like fucking a man is always
so humiliate. And also, you know, when you fail at
a piece like this business that we're in, you can
kind of get a big ego, but ultimately it's humbling,
(22:49):
right like because you at some point you realize like all.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Right, yeah, and then we thought we realized hey, we
can beat the McDonald's of them.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
No, But it was funny because you remember when Pin
and Teller came and they were like, God, you guys.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Are so lucky because you could get other people to
do the show.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
And we're like, no, no, we could cut the I'm
the blue Man on the laft.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
But something Actually, Penn and Teller we call him up.
We're like, hey, you remember what you said about us.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
We think we wanted to open a show in Vegas,
and it's like, yeah, come on out. So they were
the ones that showed us around Vegas, introduced them to
their manager, and then he got us the basically set
us up.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
And so we owe that to Pen and Telly.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
So I can't think of anything slightly more disparate here,
but enlightened me, which is to go from Lafayette, cross
the street from the public doing that show to go
to Vegas. Different crowd, so different.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
By the way, By the way, we thought we'd gone
on the Tonight Show a couple We thought we were
sort of, you know, known, But we get out there.
We open up as a headliner in a big theater
and empty and we're like, oh, oh, when you're a
headliner people supposed to know you are ship. We left
one thing out. The one thing we left what happened.
So we're like, all right, we gotta do something fast.
(24:00):
We got something fast. We're like, oh, we got to
get on some more tonight. We went on tonight. You
helped a little bit. First, we get a call from
the Lakers, we want you to perform at halftime, and
we're like, we'll do anything.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
We got to get keep this show up. And he goes, yeah, how.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
Many is it on TV? Like non, they don't really
televise the half timething. Then why are we doing it? Well,
you know it's la and there's people. I'm like, well, okay,
we'll do it. And he goes, but one thing, do
you mind being gold and purple? That wouldn't be the
blue mag up right, Yeah, but you know it's the Lakers.
You know those are colors, you know, And we're like,
what are you talking about? And we couldn't believe it.
(24:34):
So we were just hung up, you know, and we
didn't do it. So then Intel calls, can you guys
want you to do our ads?
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (24:40):
Yeah, because your logo is blue. You know, there's more
to a blue man than the blue color, you know.
So we said no, and then the guys says, no, listen,
I'm the head of the whatever. I always I want
to I want you to say no to me in person.
And as he comes in, why'd you say no?
Speaker 3 (24:53):
It's just blue? And I don't know.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
We were at the blue Man group and we appreciate it,
but like and he goes, no, no, it's not because
it's blue. We're trying We don't have a product. We're
selling the chip inside the computer. But our brand, what
we're trying to represent is smart, innovative, fun, and we
think that's what you represent. And we go, well, that's interesting,
and I said, but we'd have to have our name
in every ad.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Is oh shit, we can't. We can't do that. I said, Well,
he comes back, is all right, we'll do it.
Speaker 4 (25:19):
So every single Intel commercial had our name in it
at the beginning for four seconds, contractually, and they played
it around the world and about three months later sold
out every night in Vegas.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Yeah. But but there is one thing a cultural context
to keep in mind too, is that there was no
precedent for artists being in the advertising world at that time, right,
you know, right, not even musicians didn't really even license.
Everybody avoided that to commercials.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Now when we were in my business, you go to
Japan and do Suntorial week commercials, they give you a
million dollars for one week.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
We were proud of those bits. I mean you should. Yeah, people,
you can google them into it.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
It was a great like thirty second medium toward.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Oh, you know, it reminds me something. I want to
tell you about Vegas really quick now.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Now I want to hear a lot about that. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
So I remember a time when we started out in
the East Village and downtown and then there we were
one night in Vegas, a couple a little bit into
the run and it was Rody a week and there
are all these guys in the audience with their hats
on kebo heyes, and they didn't take them off. It's like, no,
it's I'm gonna fucking sit here in the audience with
my cowboy hat on and no one's gonna tell him
(26:25):
not to.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
These guys are like steal, you know, done, and they.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
And the show's over and we were directing at that
point that people are walking out and this.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Guy comes by and he goes, I don't know what
that was. But I locked it.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
And we're like, all right, this is a new chapter,
you know what I mean, Like like we were glad
that we were getting to different group.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
So you're in Vegas, and how do you change? Meaning
I have a picture of you like in your room.
Now you're in your dressing room in Vegas, the other
place to paint this feeling. And now you're like on
the phone with your decorator going, this is not eagles
Nests the small paper, I said, eagles Nest. What happens?
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Well, we didn't.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
I mean, we passed it on to the local crew
and you know, cast and everything. The fun thing about
Vegas was that the challenge was it was a bigger stage.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
And so we're like, all right, how do we make.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
This bigger without losing you know, the intimacy and the
real creative idea behind it.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
And so we said, well, let's see, shadows could be
really big, and so we.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
Started playing with lights and a scrim kind of old
old school stuff, you know, but like, all right, let's
make this. And so we made the character really big
just by standing in front of lights and like you know,
drumming and the drumming on a scrim from behind. You know,
big this is pretty cool. So we had fun. And
every time we've done a different kind of venue or
even the rock tour or whatever, it was fun to learn, like,
(27:46):
all right, what is this venue?
Speaker 3 (27:48):
What are the challenges?
Speaker 4 (27:49):
Actually, if you the aster when we were at La
Mama and we moved to the Astro place, they had
this balcony.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
The balcony is ah, God, the balcon's kind of a bummer, Like,
you know, how do we deal with it? And then
we're like, well, we can actually have a guy go
up there. We can connect things, you know. So that's
we always looked at the saw.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Them as creative opportunity.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
That's right. Yeah, So I'm gonna I'm going to jerk
us in a different direction, which is now that Matt's
out here, let's talk about Matt. Matt on the things
about Matt we want to say, I.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
Don't know how he got food poisoning, but good thing
he didn't have it before the show.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Last night.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
I was so wonderful, so magical, and we weren't planning
on doing Someone just said, you know, this guy is
this last show.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
He's Larry.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
He's been playing since the beginning and we were He's
with us from the first thing we did.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Wrote a lot of the music with us, and he's.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Been in and out of the show on and off
for years.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
But so someone's like, his last show is coming up,
I'm going to go in the drummer you guys want
to go into and we're.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Like, I why not?
Speaker 4 (28:40):
So this all came together really last minute. But it
was fantastic, so much fun.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Uh did you have to cours?
Speaker 5 (28:48):
No.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
I would have never thought in a million years I'd
be back on stage though, and I'm glad I did again.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
The theater, the immediacy, people, the routine, you know. So
what's interesting, especially for any show that is musical comedy,
not always necessarily the case with drama. Because when I
did Street Car Name Desire, I'm Broadway in nineteen ninety two,
you were thinking the show, if this isn't going over,
this isn't working well, and then you realize they were listening. Oh,
they were listening intently. So when the show was over,
(29:16):
they all burst out sobbing and applauded and stood up
and went crazy. But during the show, nothing but with
you and comedies and musicals, you know exactly what you're
gonna do you know exactly how they're going to react.
I mean, it's all such a wonderful toy.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
But it's true.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
It's funny as humans. It's a weird quirk when we
are laughing. When we're with something funny, we make a
sound and we don't like complain that other people are
making this weird sound. If an alien came down and
what are they doing. Oh they're laughing. Something's funny. But
with something sublime you might go, but pretty much you're silent.
So the actor has no idea that they could just
be bored or they could be being moved deeply. And
(29:53):
so we've had a similar experience our show. We like,
we hope that it's from the ridiculous to the sublime once.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
In a while, but we don't know. You don't know
the way you do it.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Comedy Chris Wink and Phil Stanton of Blue Man Group.
If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be
sure to follow Here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app,
Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back,
Chris and Phil talk about what it's like to create
(30:26):
a world famous show but still remain anonymous in their
Daily Lives. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
And this is here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
That's the founding members a Blue Man Group performing Rods
and Cones from their nineteen ninety nine album Audio. One
of the many innovations from Blue Man Group was the
creation of musical instruments made from PVC pipes. I was
curious how such a unique idea took shape.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
We were down on Canal Street and there was like,
I don't know, we were just going to build something,
and we started playing with these pipes and we're hitting them,
like these make a pretty good sound.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
In those days, there were like industrial supply places on
Canal Street, so we would go down there because we.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Like to the other than niche hotels.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
But yeah, we were just playing with them, and then
we started hitting them with flip flops, and you know,
I wanted to as a drummer, We wanted to drum musically,
but xylophones and celestis they have weird overtones that I
didn't like, and the PVC has a pure single tone.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
The show numerous times, yeah, a couple of times, the
final show yesterday, they're they're coming to They're out.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Of town, right now.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
They got to come in for the Yeah, and it's
gonna be the end. They're not gonna do it anymore.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
Well, there's still Vegas show, but we're not planning to
do anything else, so this probably must.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
They pay you one billion dollars. Get up there at
the Royal alber Hole. Now you've had artistic triumph, but anonymity,
and then you became very famous people from doing the show.
But do you find that that's made you comfortable or
I mean, because you don't seem the people who were
like fame seekers on the onset.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
I mean, it's wonderful to be able to just ride
the subway and move around and the character is famous,
but we're not. There's times when it's annoying. I want
to get into a club or something and like now
who are you? I'm like, forget it.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Now, your wives had to raise a family. And I
think about this because I still love doing plays. I
love theater. I love it. It's the most fun. Movies
are challenging, but they are rarely fun. They're challenging to
fit it together. And then you do a play and
you're like, well I didn't like the way I did that.
I'm gonna do this tomorrow.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
It's fair in my room and make no right iterative,
which is wonderful, luxury, all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
But you're away from your family every night. What was
it like for you all of those years where you're
you're doing a show every night forever.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Well, when we first did the run, I was I
didn't have kids yet.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Same for me, it was it was more.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Yeah, no, after our long run, we had more flexibility.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
That runs how long?
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Well that was we did twelve hundred shows in a
row without a break.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
And then we still perform for years, but not every
night because yeah, we have more abilities.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
My kids were young, we were we were able to
pull it off. But yeah, it was, it was. It
was crazy. But but you mentioned though we opened the
show and we kept working on the bits for the
whole three years, like but the most year. We got
a lot of the best nuances that you don't write
them in a writer's room, you know, you write them
on stage. I always wonder about that because I, you know,
(33:52):
I haven't had a film experience, but man, as an
actor in film, you get one or two chances. We
got a chance to like work out stuff over and
even even last night, We did stuff that was in
the show when we opened way back, and we added
some iterations just because we knew a lot of the
people there would have seen it all. But it was
so fun to like try a couple of different things out,
you know, like they call it a play, but where's
(34:15):
the play. We're trying to put the play back in play,
you know, like the iteration and the play of like, no,
you can't do that with a you know Shakespeare, I'm
gonna I'm gonna play with his words. I mean, I
can do something better.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
I did a play once about Puccino. The play was
written by a friend of Pacino, about Pacino, and I
did the play and I played Pacino. Oh Wowchino comes
on to just exhaust and just to completely malign the director.
He's doing a scene and in the scene, the character
reads Shakespeare, but he changes all the words. Director goes,
what are you doing? And the Patina car goes, I
(34:47):
just sold I'd riff I'd do a little riffing. I'm
gonna riff on Shakespeare. That's what I'm gonna do, is share.
And this is in the play, and you're fucking crying
listen to this anyway, In the time you have. I
think got one more quick question, which is that what
stuff you saw back then? Because you guys are known
as one of the most original shows. It's so original,
and everybody they loved you. I was in a New
(35:09):
York where everybody in the whole fucking town saw you.
Everybody came down there to see that. Just with your
cred now and who you are creatively, one of the
things you saw that you've been impressed with you, Man,
that's really cool. I like that.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
The most recent thing that really blew me away was Hamilton, right,
very I mean that's not unusual.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
And I liked Firs, the Brutus stuff. Where's a bruta
was margin? They did some really nice stuff, I thought.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
But I mean, god, there's there's a lot of good
stuff out there and little bits and pieces. When you
go to Berning, man, you just see some dude on
a bike that's inspired.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Yeah. When we first started, Broadway was not the place
for innovation. No, you know, we were Downtownwntown, Lovetown was
very separated, you know, and downtown was the place for
innovation and creativity really, but now you know, Broadway is
a place for great innovation.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
I would count On one hand, the shows I saw
that were super creative and really really knocked me down,
and yours is one obviously that's for a lot of people.
And the other one, I mean, it's gonna sound with
Lion King. When I saw my.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Mouth was on, My mouth was on that opening sequence
is one mouth was open greatest.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
Julie Taymour, and then Michael Curry was the Oh I
built the puppets, but she visioned them genius stuff. And
then my kids make fun of me because I took
them when they were younger to gazillion bubbles. Oh all right,
so this is the cheesiest show of bubbles everywhere lasers are.
But I was just at the end, you know, I
just like, look at all these bubbles and they looked over.
(36:40):
I was crying a little bit because it was just beautiful.
Bubbles are amazing. They're perfectly round. I mean, and my
kids like, dah, that's that's crazy. You were crying at
gazelle bubbles.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
I'm like, it was. I know it's cheesy, but there
was a gazillion of them. Man, there was a lot.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
What's the stuff you put on yourself to turn grease paint?
Regular showiness? Because showed probably grace. Yeah, and it comes
in a bucket or a tube or a big big
tub pail, big tubs. If someone applies it to you,
we do I just out and makes it look.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Yeah, if we kind of do it.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
We were never trying to go for blue skin. It's
like we actually.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
Opened the show without a wardrobe person. I believe they
cut that cost. We were on our own completely. It
is a crazy thing. When we first opened, we would
have to wear neutrial gloves on our hands and then
we would take other We couldn't put the blue in
our hands because they would get everywhere. Yeah, So we
had to wear these, you know, surgical gloves or whatever,
and so people would have to dye them with this
(37:37):
writ dye that was nasty and and they have to
try to keep it from getting on the inside. Because
so at some point someone called the new Trial company
and glove company said, hey, can you guys dye these fours.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
They didn't have blue gloves back then.
Speaker 4 (37:51):
So they made blue gloves for us because we were
ordering so many and and we said we ordered for
three cities.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
And we're ordered like three years worth.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
If you'll do this, they did it, and then they
decided to make him available to the public. And when
you go out and see all the people in Ozzen
wearing the blue gloves.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
That's us.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
That's so funny.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
It didn't happen before that.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
My thanks to Blue Man Groups, Chris Wink and Phil Stanton.
You can still see Blue Man Group in Boston, Las Vegas,
Orlando and internationally. I'll leave you with Club Nowhere, from
Blue Man Group's nineteen ninety nine debut album, audio by
Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing that's brought to you by
iHeart Radio.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
The
Host
Alec Baldwin
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