411mania Interviews: Web Soup Host Chris Hardwick

Posted by Al Norton on 10.13.2009

411's Al Norton sits down for an exclusive interview with Chris Hardwick, host of G4's Web Soup



Chris Hardwick first hit your TV sets as host of MTV's Singled Out back in the mid 90's; since then he has worked steadily as an actor, comedian, writer, and voice artist. He currently hosts Web Soup on the G4 Network.

Al Norton: Part of my goal in this interview is to try and get you to say, "I choo-choo-choose you" at some point.

Chris Hardwick: (Laughing) From The Simpsons?

Al Norton: Yes and I don't know why it stand out so much but you said it on an episode of Singled Out.

Chris Hardwick: Oh, God, that's right (laughing). Oh my gosh, I barely remember doing that but it does sound familiar to me.

Al Norton: How did you end up with the Web Soup hosting job?

Chris Hardwick: G4 just kind of brought me in. I had been working on Attack of the Show doing correspondent stuff and filling in every once and a while. The Soup franchise had expanded out to Sports Soup and The Dish on Style, which I call "The Lady Soup". They actually just asked me if I wanted the job.

I had guest-hosted Talk Soup years ago, when they were in between Hal Sparks and Aiesha Tyler. When I first started working for MTV it was right around when Greg Kinnear was leaving Talk Soup and I remember going to a taping and thinking, "I want this job." Of course, it took over a decade and a slight different show for it to happen but it's great.

Al Norton: Do you use your own t-shirt collection on the show?

Chris Hardwick: Yes, it is my own. I am very particular about the t-shirts I wear. I don't know why I am such a weirdo about them but I am. I wear the ones I love on the show.

Al Norton: I was trying to explain to someone the CBS Special logo you had on recently.

Chris Hardwick: Isn't that great? People asked me where I got it but I think they just think it's a shirt that says "I'm special".

Al Norton: How does an episode of Web Soup get put together?

Chris Hardwick: We have a dozen chimps in a basement riding bicycles we show them random videos, and the ones that make them screech make the show.

People are sending in a lot of stuff now that we've been on for a bit but I the early days of the show there was a lot of us trolling the internet for anything we can find. We take all the videos, narrow it down a bit, and the best way to describe it is we all sit in a room and "Mystery Science Theater 3000" them until we carve out the script.

Al Norton: Who makes up the studio audience?

Chris Hardwick: I'll send out Tweets and invite people to come to tapings so it's mostly friends and Twitter followers. At the beginning of the show people would send us emails saying, "lose the fake laugh track" but we have a real audience of about 40 people each week.

Al Norton: Do you ever feel like G4 is conducting an experiment to see how much of the screen they can cover in graphics and pop up's?

Chris Hardwick: (Laughing) You know it's interesting, it's probably similar to the early days of MTV when people said, "it moves too fast." Kids growing up now are so used to having as much data crammed at them as will fit the screen and being able to sort through it that I think it's not that weird. They're used to looking at a web page and seeing two side bars, a banner, a post, photo, a video…We're getting so used to seeing so much at once that I think we expect it now.

I think if you saw a television show without a bug in the corner telling you what network you were watching and without rolling ads at the bottom for what is coming up you'd be confused.

Al Norton: Is the girl in the "Operators Are Standing By" clip a writer?

Chris Hardwick: She is the fiancée of one of our EP's. She's great and really, really funny. They were playing around and shot a bunch of different openings at once and now it's one of my favorite things on the show. One of my favorite ones was, "I can't feel my legs."

Al Norton: Does the show have a collection of videos that you'd love to show if it wasn't basic cable?

Chris Hardwick: I feel like we get to show most of what we want to. Actually, one video they wouldn't show that I begged them to was for a "Things You Can't Unsee" segment and it was this guy in a kitchen, and he had a cyst on his back, and there are these two girls there, too. One of them pokes it with a knife and it just explodes. It's really disgusting. We're probably better off that they didn't allow it.

There was another video very nonchalantly discussing that they both had sex with this pony they owned, describing it in detail. We couldn't lay that on America. It's still on the internet, though.

Al Norton: My two favorite things are the first watermelon head video…

Chris Hardwick: Right. His name was something like Phil "Action Jackson" Duquesne. That was a blast. I want to bring him back.



Al Norton: And the other clip was the Mom on the moped crashing into Grandma in the wheelchair.

Chris Hardwick: Not only crashing but then the son simulates sex with her from behind. That was a trifecta of awesomeness.

Al Norton: What are the clips that have generated the biggest response from the audience?

Chris Hardwick: We got a lot of response to "Cake Farts", which was basically just a video of a woman farting on cakes from a fetish site. She was naked from the waist down so we covered her ass with a picture of my face. That was fun.

Al Norton: Tell me about your comedy tour? Is the show opening you up to a whole new audience for your stand up?

Chris Hardwick: I hope so. I'll find out (laughing). Wait, shouldn't I pretend and say, "oh sure, that's how it is." I am a bad fronter.



Al Norton: Anything else you want to tell people about?

Chris Hardwick: Sure. I write for Wired Magazine every few issues, which is a lot of fun. I have a comedy-music duo called Hard and Phirm and we did all the music for an animated Rob Zombie film called El Super Beasto. That's out on DVD.

Don't miss Web Soup, Tuesdays on G4.

Go to www.nerdist.com for a list of Chris' upcoming comedy shows