Bastion contributor, filmmaker, and funny kid Jon DeWalt has been hired by Boom Chicago, and we got a chance to chat him up before he takes off for the land of red lights and liberal coffeeshops...

Can you give us a brief description of your comedy background/training?

I started in high school with The Second City Teen training, known as the 'Teen Ensemble', and then went into A-E, the adult program, when I hit college. During this time I was commuting every week from ISU (Illinois State University) for my Second City class, which is six hours round-trip. I started iO Level 1 when I finished that program in the summer after my first year of college and knew I wasn't going back. I moved here permanently. I've been at iO and online ever since.


What was the impetus for starting ThoseGuysFilms.com? How regularly did you want to put up new stuff, and how much work was involved? (I remember talking to you early on, and you saying one film in particular took a huge amount of hours to edit...were there times when it seemed like too much work?

I started a comedy-video Web site two years before The Lonely Island got hired by Saturday Night Live because I loved their Web site so much. They were having so much fun together and were being funny and it was all well made and I just wanted to do it. So I started the initial site that turned into ThoseGuysFilms.com the summer after high school.Then I met Jason Piazza in my Second City Level A class and we gelled right away, both as friends and as comedy partners. When I moved here permanently I wanted to make sure he was involved. Our goal was to get better, be funny, and have fun doing something (at the time) that no one else was doing. Then The Lonely Island dudes got SNL the same year that YouTube became important and before you know it everyone is doing this or something like it.

I remember being so happy to be doing improv and videos and feeling unique, but then it became about standing out in the seas of thousands of people who wanted to be on SNL and be in "Lazy Sunday" and "Dick in a Box". In November of 2006 Jason and I added Rachel Lewis and Jake Schneider to our cast based off of our relationship with them from the iO community. It's been the four of us (and occasional guest stars) ever since.

I never had a specific goal like mirroring The Lonely Island or anything, I just wanted to put up good work and challenge myself to always be improving. I was sure that if you work hard and do well for an extended period of time something would happen eventually no matter what. It is a lot of work since I maintain the site, do all the editing and producing, etc. For a simple short video I might spend a total of 15 - 20 hours on it, and for a video that is longer or has fancy editing moves (like a music video) it might be 35 - 45 hours or more. A lot of late insomnia nights, a lot of nights coming home from doing a Harold at iO and editing until 4 a.m. and then going to work at 8. I never thought it was too much work, and never will. Having a lot of work to do is a blessing, I enjoy doing comedy and hope I will always have more work to do.

Tell us about your initial contact with the Boom Chicago folks, how they heard about you, and anything they said about your films and what role they played in getting hired.

My friend Brian Jack (The Reckoning, Deep Schwa) was a cast member there for a year and he recently went back for an extra two months to work on their new Comedy Central Euro show. While there he found out they were looking for a third video director and Brian mentioned my name and showed them the Web site, and I got hired from that. I owe Brian deep gratitude and thanks.

What kind of work will you be doing there? What are your goals and particular things you're excited about? How long you'll be there?

I will be directing/editing/writing video content for Boom's show on Comedy Central Euro (a new episode five days a week), their Web content, the videos in their live show, and some other projects as well. I will also get to improvise twice a week in fun late night shows they have, so I am excited to still get to play. My goal is to learn a ton and do my best, they have so much amazing equipment that puts mine to shame, so I will be learning a lot of techniques and methods. All sorts of new tools will be added to my belt and I want to master them. I am excited to live in Europe, I have never been overseas and I am a young guy so it will be a great life experience outside of comedy as well.

- Elizabeth McQuern