I met two boys and two girls called Frank Mills

The Frank Mills debuted their full-length sketch show Winning Dirty on May 4, and it’s running at the Blue Theater until May 26. They may have a musical number about Vladamir Putin, but this foursome comprised of two couples isn’t afraid to spoof themselves either. That Other Paper’s Jill Morris joined The Frank Mills for dinner at Katz’s Deli last Friday to talk to them about their new show, love lives, and interesting troupe name.

That Other Paper What do you guys think is the funniest thing on the menu here?

photo / Gideon Tsang Never closes. Ever. 

Erika May I think the funniest thing on the menu is the name of the woman who does the catering. S’kati.

Dave Buckman Everyone in Marc Katz’s family looks exactly like him.

TOP What makes your show more classy than others?

Erika May This show is called Winning Dirty, and it came from a workshop of The Classy Ass Show in February. We used our favorite things and developed a theme for a new show. What we came up with was a thread about what people will do in order to get their way in personal relationships, business environments, and all sorts of situations.

Dave Buckman This is quite the opposite from our last show, where the tone was encouraging modesty in people. But then we realized how funny it is when people screw each other over — that’s how everyone lives. So that’s Winning Dirty.

TOP A lot of sketch shows have all-male casts, but The Frank Mills is half and half. How has female perspective influenced your style of comedy?

Rachel Madorsky I think of it more that we’re couples — not that we’ve ever publicized that. For me, a perspective that influences our comedy is being in a relationship, and being in a group with two relationships is great. I like making fun of the things that most people try to hide. I like the private, personal stuff — I think it’s funny.

Bob McNichol It’s really hard. They’re always shutting down what we’re doing, and they make us tuck in our shirts.

TOP How long has each couple been together? Rachel and Dave? Bob and Erika?

Rachel Madorsky I’ve been with Dave for four years.

Erika May How long have we been together, Bob? Five years?

Bob McNichol Five.

TOP How would you describe The Frank Mills’ brand of comedy?

Dave Buckman Ridiculous characters in ridiculous situations with real, honest reactions.

Bob McNichol And cookies.

TOP What is your favorite ridiculous character to play?

Bob McNichol I get to play Vladamir Putin. He’s like the real Vladamir Putin, only ridiculous — more ridiculous. There’s also an advertising executive who I really enjoy playing. I think the advertising and marketing industry is pretty silly, and I get to comment on that through this character.

Erika May Rachel and I are spirit dancers at a Barack Obama rally. I love the ridiculousness of having the equivalent of the LA Laker girls dancing for a political figure.

Dave Buckman I play this grandfather, modeled after the old bedridden guy in Willy Wonka. And I just get to walk around with a cane, singing and dancing about smoking meth. It’s very liberating.

Rachel Madorsky I play someone who consults their vagina, and I’m excited to play that person.

Dave Buckman I also play one of Erika’s farts, which I’m really excited about.

Erika May We have a scene where Bob and I are in a relationship but the whole game of the scene is using lines to precede fart noises.

TOP How do you get into character for something like that, Dave?

Dave Buckman I eat a Thai buffet the night before. I am a method comedian.

TOP In comedy shows, a sketch is often cut because it’s just not good no matter how many times the group reworks it. Did you have any sketches like that?

Dave Buckman We just cut four. There was this one called “Rain” where this character comes out of the closet as someone who can’t drive in the rain. You always hear about these people in Austin who are like, “Ohmigod. It’s raining. I can’t drive.” We just couldn’t find the right angle to take.

photo / Chris Allen The Frank Mills 

Erika May We also cut this one called “Bigger Ears.” It basically makes fun of people who get dramatic plastic surgery in order to be taken more seriously. I always thought it was funny, but I try not to get personally attached to things that are cut.

Dave Buckman A lot times our scenes derive from us just sitting around eating chips and salsa at a table. I think a lot of people in other troupes would come in with fully written sketches and want them done exactly as they’re written. I think Vladamir was the only one we had — the only one that’s still in the show — that was a fully-written one.

Rachel Madorsky We collaborated a lot more this time. Don’t you guys think?

Bob McNichol Yeah, totally. In my limited experience doing sketch comedy in Chicago, it was like, “This is Joe’s scene. Joe wrote this.” And if anything needed to be changed it was like, “Uh-oh. Joe’s gonna be annoyed.” But since we wrote it as a group, we can change it as a group. I find it’s really great to work that way.

TOP Where did the name “The Frank Mills” come from?

Bob McNichol We’d been trying to think of a name for a while, but we could never really all agree on one. Then one night Rachel and I were upstairs in the green room at The Hideout and we started singing the Frank Mills song from Hair.

Rachel Madorsky Then we pitched it, and they really liked it.

Bob McNichol Then we found out there’s this chubby white guy whose name is also Frank Mills. He composed this instrumental hit in the ’80s called “Music Box Dancer.”

TOP Did you contact him to get the rights for his name?

Bob McNichol We’re waiting on word from our lawyers.

Dave Buckman I’d never heard of the song or the composer before, but to me “Frank Mills” means “factory of directness” — like a mill that makes frankness. And I really like that.

TOP We’ve been talking a lot about The Frank Mills as a group, but, let’s face it, you are all individuals. I want to know what your individual comic influences are.

Erika May I love Lily Tomlin.

Rachel Madorsky Me, too.

Erika May Steve Martin. A lot of early SNL. Like the late ’70s, early ’80s. I really like those guys. Oh, and my dad. My dad is pretty funny and audacious. My entire family on that side is natural born ridiculous.

Rachel Madorsky I also went around imitating Lily Tomlin. I used to go down in the basement and listen to Steve Martin records. I had that thing you stick in your head — the arrow — and I used to do the whole entire show by myself in the basement.

Bob McNichol I also was obsessed with Steve Martin. Obsessed. I love Peter Sellers, I think he’s hilarious and I’ve loved him since I was a kid. I loved stand-ups growing up and David Letterman — I wanted to do whatever it is he did or does. I was also really influenced by the people I watched and performed with here and in Chicago. Oh, and Peter Cook. I don’t think a lot of people know about him in the states, but he’s this British satirist who was around from the early ’60s to mid ’90s. He totally changed British comedy, like, overnight. It went from being yuck-yucks to satire.

photo / Chris Allen The Frank Mills 

Dave Buckman I was a big Robin Williams fan when I was a little kid. And the Marx Brothers. And Saturday Night Live — my parents had one of the first VCRs, and I’ve watched pretty much every episode. And I think Howard Stern is pretty much the best improviser that’s ever lived. The guy’s been talking for five hours a day, for 25 years. I don’t know any other improviser in the world that can do that. He’s been a huge influence. He speaks the truth. He insists on complete and total honesty, which has been a huge influence on how I perform.

Erika May And he throws bologna on women’s asses.

Dave Buckman I’d be lying if I said something about that doesn’t sound appealing.

TOP Speaking of throwing bologna on asses, where do you draw the line in terms of offensive material for your show?

Dave Buckman I don’t think we do.

Rachel Madorsky We do.

Dave Buckman No, no, no. We took an improvised show about a making a homemade snuff film and put it into our sketch show. And our last improvised show was show about slaves.

Erika May Sorry. I had a fried pickle in my mouth. What I wanted to say is that there’s a fine line between satirizing a person’s view and embracing it — making a joke about gay people for the sake of making a joke about gay people or being racist for the sake of being racist. But I’m all for satirizing people who are ignorant.

Rachel Madorsky We try to be sensitive to the line, but we’re almost always coming from a good place. I think if you’re coming from a good place there is no line.

TOP What was it that appealed to you about the Blue Theater as opposed to any other theater in Austin?

Dave Buckman One of our thoughts was to expand our audience, open up beyond the people that only go to The Hideout and ColdTowne Theater, and show those people who go to traditional theater that there’s something beyond rehashed SNL scenes — not that there’s anything wrong with that.

TOP How have your day jobs influenced your sketch show?

Dave Buckman I work in a national flood insurance office. I’m like the Radar O’Reilly for 300 people. For people under 25, that’s a M*A*S*H reference. So I work with hundreds of people from every walk of life, and I’ve definitely got some characters out of them.

Bob McNichol I work for a software company downtown, but I don’t know if there’s anything about my work that influenced what we’re doing. It’s a really great company. It doesn’t take away from my sense of comedy or suck my soul away or anything like that.

Rachel Madorsky I’m a hooker, and I’ve gotten a lot of good material from my job.

Erika May I’m gainfully, temporarily employed. So I don’t think I’ve really gleaned anything from my temp jobs.

TOP What’s the worst temp job you’ve ever had?

Erika May This week’s last assignment is pretty up there. I worked for a property management company who liked to yell at each other in order to get through the day.

TOP What’s it like to be in a relationship with someone you’re also doing a show with? Do you ever bring problems from home into rehearsal?

Dave Buckman I think everything going on in Rachel’s and my life is in the show right now. There’s some very personal things that have gone on in our lives in the past year, and they’ve all made it into the show somehow. That’s really where the best comedy comes from — somewhere personal. Stand-up, sketch, and otherwise.

Bob McNichol I totally agree with Dave. Just with regards to our relationship, or with any relationship really — whether you’re friends or married or whatever — it’s hard to not carry baggage from the relationship to the rehearsal. Because you’re like, “Hey! You’re still doing that annoying thing you always do!” But on the plus side, it’s been really easy for the four of us to work together. We know each other’s bits, as old as they are. It’s easy to write stuff.

Rachel Madorsky I like it a lot. Dave is my closest friend. I’m also from the mindset that the most personal shit can be the funniest. I love that I’m in a relationship where we can poke fun at ourselves and try to make it funny.

Erika May Going off what Bob said, what I love about us is that we’ll just “bit out” together. Like the fart couple getting ready is something that really happened. I was at my mom’s house, and I was naked and I bent over and I farted accidentally. So I was like, “I just feel so relaxed around you.” We ended up doing that bit back and forth for 30 seconds.

photo / Chris Allen The Frank Mills 

TOP You farted for 30 seconds?

Erika May No, I was out of farts at that point.

Dave Buckman It’s so nice to come home and have someone who understands the pressure that you’re under — as opposed to someone who doesn’t do comedy and kind of looks down on it, someone who considers it a cute little hobby and poo-poos on it. But Rachel understands the pressure because she’s doing it, too. I’m glad I’m not married to a doctor. I’m glad I’m marrying Rachel and we’re doing this show together.