Ricky Gervais At The New York Comedy Festival « Comedy

Ricky Gervais At The New York Comedy Festival

58415818 As part of the New York Comedy Festival coverage, I had the distinct privilege of sitting down with one of my personal heroes, Ricky Gervais. Yeah. That's right. This Ricky Gervais.

Even though it'd only been two nights of coverage so far, I was already feeling a little haggard. Slight patches of hair were blossoming over my face like weeds on a dying field of grass. And I had to go meet with Ricky Gervais in those conditions, wearing the same underwear I'd had on for a million days straight (TMI!)

Considering the fact that he's a super genius at TV, and he should be in charge of all the TV shows, I decided to play a game with him where I gave him fake titles for TV shows and he'd pitch me the concept. Here are the ones he came up with:

My Sack of Kids

"I think it's set in the future. It's a sitcom, but set in the future, where they tax – there could be overcrowding- but they tax you if you get a kid, like in China. So what people do is they secretly have them, but if they're not exactly how they want, they throw them away. So someone comes around and collects them all and they leave them outside the hospital. It's a weird sitcom. It's on late. I'll give you that. Tim Allen would be perfect. He's the investigator who knows what's going on."

Catholic Rodeo

"They train choir boys to be really flexible and the Catholic priests try to enter them. It's a late night reality show."

Cake Subordinate

"[Laughter] I don't even wanna mess with that. That's just a great title." (Ed Note: I just included this one to brag about making Ricky Gervais laugh)

That Fucking Cat!

"That's a drama series. It's about something else, but every day, when the guy gets home, he's a cop who had to give up his badge because the drinking got to him. He goes without a badge. He doesn't need a badge. It's sort of hardcore. He comes home every night. He sits down and has a drink and he looks around and his cat has shat everywhere. And he just goes, 'That fucking cat.'"

So, after getting some of the silly stuff out of the way, Gervais and I rapped (we were totally rapping, yo bros!) about The Office, its impact and the future of television.

He talked a bit about all of the reality television flooding our televisions, "Everyone's guilty of making exploitative terrible, terrible TV. That's why it's such a joy when you have some of the greatest shows, and the most audacious, beautiful shows ever made. Things like The Simpsons, Dexter, Damages and Arrested Development."

I mentioned The Office really helped define the decade, and Gervais stopped me saying, "I think it's a bit too strong. There's slight innovation in a few aspects. I stood on the shoulders of giants. Spinal Tap is a direct influence on it being a fake documentary. Christopher Guest was the biggest influence on my acting. People have done no laugh track before, like with Larry Sanders. People have done no stars. All we did was put all those bits of innovation in one show and maybe moved them on a bit.

"I think the most outstanding thing," he added, "And I don't mean outstanding like brilliant, I mean it stood out, is that it's so naturalistic. We were obsessed with that because without that, it was just a pretty boring sitcom where not a lot happened.

"So we liked to get caught up in the world. It had to be about TV eating itself. And I think that's where the most innovation happened. In the fact that it was probably the first comedy about comedy and that it concentrated so much more on body language than on lines and plots. It was like an anti-sitcom."

Even though he had stopped me when I said The Office was a pivotal sitcom for the decade (we got into a big fistfight over it which ended in mutual tears), I said the show had a big influence on American television in particular.

Gervais seemed a little uncomfortable taking on that role though, stating, "I don't know about that. I don't think it changed anything. I don't think the biggest shows are going to be things like the English Office and Larry Sanders and Arrested Development. I think the biggest shows are going to be Two and a Half Men and Friends. And they are great at what they do.

"I think broad comedy will always be the mainstream, but there's always going to be room for the antidote."

I asked him what he thought the next decade of television would bring, and to say he was pessimistic is a bit of an understatement.

"Obsession with celebrity and fame will take over AIDS and cancer in decaying mankind. (Internet) Forums will be the new graffiti that will destroy the youth and society as know it… but I hope to work with Elmo again."