(Left to right: Scott Adsit, Jay Johnston and Dino Stamatopoulos)
Dino Stamatopoulos has written for some of the funniest cult comedy series in the last ten years, including Mr. Show, TV Funhouse, Tom Goes to the Mayor, and most recently Moral Orel, an oft-misunderstood stop-animated cartoon created by Stamatopoulos himself. He's also written for other series, including Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and Mad TV.
With the new second season of Moral Orel starting November 12, Stamatopoulos and I spoke on the phone about what fans could expect in the new season, and about TV comedy in general.
There's a cool little interview with Moral Orel creator Dino
Stamatopoulos over at the Adult Swim site. Before Moral Orel came along, Dino was a writer for
both Conan and Letterman. He also worked on The Ben Stiller Show, Mr. Show, and TV
Funhouse. The most interesting thing in the interview, besides confirmation that there will be a second season of
the series, is that despite its aesthetic, Moral Orel is not really influenced by the pious Davey and
Goliath cartoons of the 1960s. Instead, Dino took a script he had written for Iggy Pop (in which Iggy would play a
twelve-year-old boy) and turned it into a cartoon. The result was the "
Comedy clubs tend to be parodies of themselves, a place where mediocre comics trot out the same tired gags while the
audience, semi-drunk on watered down cocktails, laughs and claps along. It's a great place to perform if your act
involves impressions of celebrities or a trunk full of ventriloquist dummies, but if you're looking for an audience
that really wants to be challenged, they won't be hanging out at PJ Laughenheimer's Giggle Hut.
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