Viral Videos Propel Good Neighbor Troupe

On their own, Kyle Mooney, Beck Bennett, Nick Rutherford, and Dave McCary are probably pretty funny guys. But together, they've managed to strike elusive comedy gold in a notoriously fickle business.

As Good Neighbor, a Los Angeles-based sketch comedy group, performers Kyle, Beck and Nick, along with director/editor Dave, create silly, shockingly hilarious YouTube videos that range from laughing-quietly-to-yourself to spitting-out-your-drink funny. They first gained widespread attention three years ago with "Pregnant Jamie-Lynn Spears Speaks Out," which has garnered nearly 6.5 million view since then.

Good Neighbor brings its act to the  tonight as part of the ongoing First Fridays series. In an email exchange, the gorup told us that they're excited about tonight's event because it's "a library with wine." Here are some selections from our Q&A.

Mill Valley Patch: How did the four of you come together?

Nick: Beck, Kyle and myself were in an improv group at USC and then started making videos with Dave. After graduating, we decided to keep on performing together. We had this pretty humble college tour that we organized and went to the east coast for a month or so. Before that we had been putting our shorts online.
Dave: I was studying film at a college north of Los Angeles, and would visit my childhood friend Kyle on the weekends. I got along really well with his college buds, eventually gave up on film school, moved to LA, and ended up getting the full USC experience without actually attending. I pretty much developed my video-making skills while helping out on various shows, classes and competitions that Kyle, Nick, and Beck were in.

Q: What are your comedy roots, collectively and individually?

Beck: I started doing improv comedy at Second City in Chicago when I was 15, and did some sketch comedy in high school as well. At the time I was watching a lot of Mr. Show and that was a big inspiration.
Nick: I did theatre as a kid, and then did improv and stand up in college and all the stuff that goes along with that, started taking classes from the Groundlings and Upright Citizens Brigade, got into writing and here we are.
Dave: My high school girlfriend’s mother taught a film class that I really enjoyed. Part of me wanted to impress her by getting passionate about filmmaking, and then I figured out it was the only thing I was OK at. When I started making videos for class, I naturally gravitated towards comedy because I had trouble throughout high school taking anything seriously.
Kyle: Middle school and high school still serve as a main inspirational source for a lot of the stuff I do, and probably more important than any improv classes I’ve taken. We’ve definitely learned a lot from each other too, doing improv and sketch shows together at USC, and living together.

Q: Living and working in LA, who are your comedy inspirations? Who's knocking it out of the park right now?

Kyle: The Birthday Boys are great. They are super funny and really nice guys, and sometimes make us jealous because we wish we could come up with some of their ideas. Our friends Scott Gairdner and Fatal Farm make some of the best videos too. Individually, I like people like Josh Fadem and Paul Rust, and Tim and Eric. But I’d like to think we’re all pretty inspired by weird people on the Internet who make videos. And also found video. And people we meet at parties or people who exist in our imagination.
Beck: Yeah, those guys are good.
Nick: We’re pretty lucky to be surrounded by the funniest people we know so it's always easy to steal jokes from them.

Q: Your YouTube videos are hilarious and very popular. How did you arrive at that format, and how do you get your pieces out into the world?

Nick: We started with all of our eggs in the Google Video basket, then it just became obvious that nobody cared about anything other than YouTube. So we just started posting videos there.
Kyle: We use Facebook and Twitter to promote the videos, which is nice because our fans and friends can see our stuff immediately when we put it out there.
Dave:  I think the main format we’re known for is capturing weird characters or characterizations of ourselves having interesting or bizarre conversations with each other, which is essentially what happens between us off camera. So often times we arrive to our type of content by just trying to re-enact or script out actual moments that were improvised during a hang out.

Q: In this age of short attention spans, how can these viral videos help you get ahead?

Nick: Having a popular video definitely can get you in front of the right people. From there it’s really out of your hands. If it’s funny enough, or interesting enough or whatever, it can make someone who is just dying to give away some money go, "I want to meet these guys."
Kyle: The “S#&t my Dad Says” guy had a Twitter account that turned into a TV series, so a viral video certainly has potential to make a career. I’d like to think the fact that we have a fairly solid library of videos accounts for something, but we still don’t have a TV show.
Dave: As much as we want to take our voice to the next level, I think it’s an exciting time to be building an audience on the Internet. We’re still waiting for the perfect opportunity to make the leap into film and television, but I don’t think we’ll ever stop making weird and fun internet videos. It’s really valuable to have complete creative control over your content, and it seems like it’s virtually impossible to maintain that in the Hollywood system.

Q: You seem to have an 80s nostalgia vibe going on. Are there any particular cultural or comedy touchstones from that time period that inspire you?

Kyle: Yeah, I would say we’re also pretty into the early 90s. We still watch Family Matters and Saved by the Bell and laugh really hard. There are new things that I notice in those shows that I wouldn’t have noticed when I was 8 years old that are super funny. Especially the background acting and some of Mark Paul Gosselar’s line readings. In Family Matters, the story lines got so bizarre, the show pretty much became a science fiction series. Urkel could travel through time and turn into his own version of Bruce Lee. One could definitely argue that the use of magic (Zack could freeze time), as well as some of the corny dialogue in those shows had an impact on our work. We also have a pretty deep VHS collection that is made up of a lot of children’s films from the 80s and 90s. Some favorites are Prayer Bear, the live action My Pet Monster, Purple People Eater and Nathaniel the Grublet.

Q:  Have you performed in the San Francisco area before?
Nick: We performed at the SF Sketchfest at the Dark Room and at the Eureka Theatre. The show at the Mill Valley Library is awesome because it’s a library with wine.

Q: You'll be performing a free show here at the Mill Valley Public Library. Is this a typical format/venue for you? Will you alter your show at all based on the audience?

Beck: We're choosing material that is a little more family-friendly. I wanted to do a book stack sketch, and then just start throwing books all over the library and get in a book fight, but I rejected that idea before I brought it up to the group. I’m still bummed we're not doing it, but we'll still have a lot of fun. We'll also be giving a post show talk on new media which will be a first for us, and I think we're all pretty excited about it.
Kyle: It’s definitely a unique setting. My brother works at the library, and told me we should maybe avoid our crudest stuff. I don’t really want to get him in trouble. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to say that my brother works there. Is that nepotism? Dang it, I’m sorry, Sean. I want everyone to know that we are definitely mildly popular on the Internet.

Q: Where does the name Good Neighbor come from?

Beck: It was the beginning of our senior year at USC and I had just moved into a new house, so logically we had a huge party for major fun. I woke up after this most excellent rager to my new neighbor knocking on my door. I was alarmed. I opened the door to find a woman of about 85 dressed in a moo moo with cigarette butts in her hand. People had tossed the cigarettes on her lawn and she was upset because her "curious" dog may have smelt them and then been lit on fire. I assured her it would never happen again, her only response as she backed away was, "good neighbor ... good neighbor," and I never heard from her again. We all liked that story, so that became our name.

Q: Is Good Neighbor a full-time gig, or do you all have day jobs too?

Beck: If you consider eating burritos a day job… just kidding. I used to wait tables for three years! But no day jobs anymore, at least for now. We make videos for YouTube and that takes up most of our time, and audition and do commercials occasionally. We're excited to make a movie and have a TV show as well.
Kyle: Dave and I just bought a bunch of old WWF videos from a thrift store outside of MacArthur Park for really cheap, and are planning on selling them in a few years for extra cash.

Q: How much time does it take to complete a sketch, from concept to script to filming?

Kyle: It really depends. We’ve shot videos at the beginning of the day and put them out that night. But we’ve also done more elaborate stuff that’s taken weeks, or even months if we sit on it for a while. Some scripts are rewritten a few times and that can take time, but we’ve also improvised stuff off loose concepts in our heads and totally avoided the writing process.

Q: What's next for Good Neighbor?

Nick: Movie titles, TV show names, grips, lighting guys, sound department, best boys, directors, make-up department, writing credits, a lot of stats about all the movies I made. Just the usual stuff.

Beck: Mine would look like this: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. And sound like this: cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching, and there would be a cartoon of me pumping my fist on the side. Nope, I want to do a Good Neighbor television show and do a couple movies with the group as well, maybe produce some other shows with the group further down the line. I also want to act in awesome dramas and comedies that are not giant studio films.
Kyle: I want to make movies like Ingmar Bergman or Godard or something. I liked that show Little People Big World too.

The 411: Good Neighbor: A Laugh Gone Viral is at the Mill Valley Public Library tonight at 7 p.m. Admission is free. Call 415-389-4292 x203 for more information.