'Psych' actor Dule Hill

Psych is the funniest show on television today. No, really. No, it isn't subjective. Hyper-observant Shawn Spencer (James Roday) works for the Santa Barbara Police Department, his status as a consultant being based on the extremely-untrue supposition that he has psychic powers; he is a slacker and a goofball and the most entertaining character on basic cable. I would be amiss, though, not to give credit where credit is due: the show would be nothing without Shawn's best friend and sidekick Burton Guster (better known as Gus)—played by Dule Hill, with whom I got to talk about the show the morning before the premiere of the fourth-season finale episode. Enjoy.

Hey, it’s great to meet you. How are you?
All is well.

God, I can’t believe the fourth season is ending already.
Time flies by. I can remember when we weren’t even sure if the show would be picked up, and now… here we are, finishing the fourth season.

I heard that someone is gonna bite the dust on tonight’s episode…
You heard that someone’s gonna bite the—now I’m trying to remember! We filmed the episode about five months ago. Let me think. Someone is going to bite… the dust… OH, YES! That’s right! [laughter] I forgot a little bit! Yes, someone does bite the dust tonight. I can tell you that it’s… someone who… has been there before. It’s not someone who just came in for this one episode; it’s someone who has been there before.

Am I gonna cry?
Are you gonna cry? Uh… maaaybe. Maybe. Depends on your mood in the moment. You may cry. You might cry a little bit.

I’ll brace myself.
But you’ll also laugh. You’ll cry, but then you’ll laugh a little while later.

You’ll do your best to bring us out of funereal spirits?
Yeah.

That’s good. Have you already started filming the next season?
No, we go back at the end of April. We’re on a break right now, and then we go back to Vancouver at the end of April to start on the next season.

Sweet. I know James Roday has been writing quite a few episodes for the show lately, especially the more serious episodes. What about you—do you have any interest in writing any episodes?
Well, James actually wrote and directed the episode that’s gonna be airing tonight.

Oh yeah! I know he did the first episode with the Yin Yang killer, too.
Yeah, he did that one as well. But I don’t really have the ambition to get into it. I have no passion for writing. I don’t see myself trying to write an episode of Psych. I think it can be dangerous; a lot of the time, if you’ve been on a show for a while, you might feel obligated, but I think you should really only do it if you have a passion for it. Same thing with directing. I mean, maybe I will direct, possibly, when I know the show is canceled; maybe I’ll do one of the last few episodes. When you see me behind the camera, that’s when I’ve started looking for a new job. [laughter] That means we’re going off the air. But even then I don’t know if I would do it. I like doing what I’m doing, what I’m passionate about.

Right. Speaking of which, I know there’s a lot of… ad-libbing when it comes to thinking up new Gus names or eighties references. Is that all James, or do you dive in there too?
Oh, yeah, no, it’s definitely a collaborative effort between myself, Roday, all the cast, and the writers. We definitely all participate, especially with Gus’ names. I mean, if somebody writes a funny name, we’ll use that; if somebody comes up with something different… sometimes we use the names of people we know. The whole show is very collaborative. Some of the tangents Roday goes on are made up on the spot. It’s a very free-flowing environment. For example, Roday and I could be doing a scene, and we’re in the scene but we’re also kind of observing it. We’re seeing if it’s funny and a new idea would overdo it, or vice versa. Everyone is pretty open to giving and taking suggestions.

Yeah. And I know you guys have a lot of fun with in-jokes; my favorite was that episode where you named the villain Ken Tucker.
[laughs] Oh, yeah! That was a little inside… Ken Tucker is a TV critic who didn’t like our show.

[laughs] No, trust me, I know. That was good. That was funny.
[laughs] Yeah. Yeah, we do have some fun on this show. Yeah. That was fun; we actually enjoyed that one a lot.

Every time his name came up you guys always said his full name and enunciated it very clearly!
[laughs] Right! Oh, man. Everyone just had fun acting like a fool.

Are there other bits that you think you’re going to work into new running gags? Like, for example, I know the pineapple thing started on the spur of a moment, and now I can’t look at a pineapple without thinking of Psych.
Well, every once in a while something comes up. I can’t remember how many seasons it was ago that I started going [in a high-pitched voice] “Whaaaaat!” but we wove it through the whole season, and, like, we never planned for it to happen, but that’s become one of our things for a while.

Well, you mentioned not having any particular ambition to write and direct, but you have been producing. I know you’ve produced some episodes, and you’ve also produced the play that James Roday is doing off-Broadway right now. Extinction.
Yeah, I do enjoy that. I would hope that I get to do more; I enjoy working that whole angle. I finally get to put to use that whole finance major—almost a finance major that I had. I didn’t graduate; I left during my junior year.

So it’s the putting-together that you enjoy.
Exactly.

Psych airs Wednesdays at 10pm EST; the fourth season ended last week, and the fifth season begins shooting at the end of April.
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Family of the Year band member Sebastian Keefe

Family of the Year is, as I say to band member Sebastian Keefe while I am interviewing him, kind of like the offspring of a merger between the "royal" Tanenbaums and the Addams family. Well, aesthetically, that is. Musically speaking, their sound is more Wes Anderson mellow than weirdly spooky-kooky. They specifically make happy music, which seems to be pretty rare, for some reason; the only other band I can name off the top of my head that makes a concerted effort to do so is fun.—whom I have interviewed for this website and whom we discuss in this interview. We touch on numerous other topics as well: the genesis of the band, the themes of the album, and the way in which the band has been a "self-fulfilling prophecy". Enjoy.

Hey, Sebastian. How are you?
Hi! I’m good, thank you. How are you?

I’m good! So let’s talk about Family Of The Year’s album Songbook.
Yeah, sounds good. I want to tell you that I’m kind of in the middle of nowhere visiting my family, so in the event that I get cut off I’ll try to call you right back… But, yeah, let’s go.

[laughs] Okay, well, first of all, I’d love to know how the group came together.
Well, Joe and Vanessa—Joe is my older brother, and he and Vanessa started the group. They wrote the music that is on Songbook over the course of a year and a half before they were even planning on putting a group together. They were just kind of making it as a project in their apartments, basically, and in borrowed rehearsal studios. Then they decided they wanted to put a band together, so Joe basically enlisted myself and Jamesy because we’d all been in bands together for years, and then the group grew and added Christina and Meredith to the mix.

According to the pictures on your MySpace and on your website, you guys have this really cool aesthetic… I obviously get the idea of this weird, perhaps somewhat reclusive family. It seems kind of like Royal Tanenbaums-meets-Addams Family.
[laughs] Well, we’re certainly interested in just being an eclectic group that reflects our personalities, that’s for sure. We definitely have—it’s a very organic story, an organic evolution of just two people falling in love and writing music together and adding in their best friends to form this group, and we’re kind of like this nomadic family where we travel around in an RV and go on these adventures together. Now we all live in a really cool, funky old house on a hill, which is somewhat Addams Family-like. [laughs] Yeah, we all live together. Yeah, I can see the comparisons!

It would make so much sense if you guys were crafting a narrative about the family your name is supposed to represent. Like, this story with different characters and family members.
Well, I feel like the thing is… and I might be completely wrong about this. [laughter] But I feel like the term “self-fulfilling prophecy” sort of applies here. We’d never planned, but sort of became, what we wanted to become? We kind of became what the music was. The music that Joe and Vanessa wrote—they wrote a very large catalogue of music and basically went through it; there was really a very large music catalogue to go through, and we decided what we wanted to perform as a band and what we wanted to release, so the album and our live shows kind of evolved around what we wanted to become as a band. It was never really… basically, since the music was written before the group was actually formed as a whole, we kind of followed the music and kind of became what the music wanted us to do.

That makes sense. The music on the album all flows together really beautifully, and the song titles are so great. I mean, do you know how the specific songs on the album were chosen?
Yeah, the process was… like I said, there really was a catalogue with about 40 or 50 songs. However, there was an overall feeling we wanted to get across, which was kind of like excitement and youthfulness and playfulness and not just one person discovering themselves but a couple discovering each other, which kind of evoked a larger idea of people discovering themselves and new relationships. And we just had a good time doing it. We didn’t want to put out a downer record, you know? There’s a lot of music out there that’s so very serious and negative right now, and that’s not to say it’s not something very serious, and we do take it very seriously, but… I guess we take being happy very seriously. [laughs]

Well, there’s nothing wrong with that.
No, absolutely. It’s a quite eclectic album; so I’ve heard from a lot of people, and I agree, and it was kind of a group effort to put it together in some way that made sense, rather than having it be all over the place. But it kind of does go into a few different movements, like discovery and happiness and sadness. It was definitely designed in a specific way, actually, with a lot of help from our manager Emily, because it was really important to have an objective opinion on all the music.

Yeah. It definitely has a very unique sound, and… it’s just refreshing. It’s not something you’ve heard a million times before. Like you said, it’s fun. [laughs] It’s not downer music. Like you said, people don’t make much music that isn’t these days.
Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

Have you heard of this band called fun.? They also go out of their way to make happier music.
No! There’s a band called fun.?

Uh-huh.
Wow. No, I’ve never heard of them!

They also are very big on making non-downer music. You know what—can I play a clip from one of their songs through the phone for you?
Wow, that sounds awesome. Absolutely; go ahead. What’s their story? Where are they from?

Well, the lead singer used to lead this band called the Format, and the other members were in other bands… I know the Format dissolved; I don’t know whether the other members’ bands dissolved, but they kind of all came together—here’s a good one. [plays ‘At Least I’m Not As Sad (As I Used To Be)’] Um, so, yeah, there you go.
[laughs] It’s so interesting-sounding! It sounds like maybe if the Beach Boys rescored The Wizard of Oz or something.

Yeah, that’s kind of how I put it: if mellow retro-pop and Broadway had a baby!
[laughs] Yeah, exactly. That’s crazy. Oh, wow, I must definitely check them out. They sound awesome.

Well, I think there need to be more artists and bands that champion upbeat music nowadays. All the movies and plays are depressing; there should be something out there that makes you feel happy!
Yeah, and makes you feel like, “You know what? You might be in your mid-twenties, but you can still feel like a kid once in a while.”

If you'd like to learn more about Family of the Year, which you hopefully do, you should check out their website or their MySpace.
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