How did the members of “Human Giant” come together?

Question: How did the group come together?

Rob Huebel: Well, I wish there was something really funny. There is-- I don't know if how we met is that funny or amusing but we were all just performing at UCB Theater, Upright Citizens Brigade here in New York and Paul and I had known each other for about 10 years and had done a lot of improvising and sketch shows together and Aziz was doing standup. So we were all kind of-- he knew who we were and we knew who he was and it was just sort of this mutual admiration society.

Aziz started doing this show ever week called Crash Test and it was, like, a standup show and he kind of wanted people to co-host it with him so the first week he asked me and we did a sketch on stage called Shutter Bugs, which was about-- we basically had-- I had all these kids' head shots, don't ask why, I had all these head shots of little kids and we did this bit on stage where we were, like, headshot photographers and we basically just criticized these head shots of these adorable little kids and just, like, ripped these kids apart.

Then that sort of created this sketch that we eventually did called Shutter Bugs where we sort of changed it so we became talent agents for little kids. So that's how kind of we met, just doing bits on stage and doing videos and then he and Paul co-hosted insubsequent weeks and they did a video and a bit on stage about kind of making fun of shitty magicians and stuff and they did this bit called Illusionators, which is vaguely inspired by Chris Angel and so that's sort of where, you know, two kind of popular sketches of ours came from, just kind of doing bits on stage at UCB really.

Question: Do you compare yourselves to “Kids in the Hall” or “Strangers With Candy”?

Rob Huebel: I mean, when people even talk about, like, those other groups, we're actually super flattered to even be compared to any of them. I mean, we have a lot of fun doing what we're doing and try to do really funny stuff but, yeah, I mean, they're amazing sketch groups in the pantheon of sketch history and, yeah, I mean, that's always, like, really flattering to be compared to any of those guys. We just want to, like, we just want to keep doing our thing and we really don't care about anything else but just, like, making funny stuff, you know? Like, we don't worry about what's coming up down the road or anything like that. We try, you know, the great thing about, like, the comedy world right now is that there's just, like, a really good-- I feel like it's a really good time for comedy, you know?

There's just a lot of cool stuff going on that people are doing, you know, especially in New York for sure. People are just doing, like, really smart, different, funny stuff and, you know, we're glad to be in the mix. What's cool about it is that there's also, like, this sort of really supportive community and, like, no one ever shits on anybody else. I mean, you don't ever hear of people, like, just attacking other people. It's all, like, it seems like there's a lot of, like, there's a bug in here, man. What the fuck? It's just kind of a cool community right now and there seems to be, like, a lot of just admiration for different people doing different stuff, whether it's standup or sketch or improv or whatever, like, there just seems to be like a really supportive, cool thing.

I mean, for example, you know, we were able to get some guys from SNL to do some bits on our show, like Andy Samberg, Fred Armisen, and Bill Hader and, you know, we've known those guys for awhile but they just really like the show and we were, like, but you guys are already on a really great show. It's a very famous sketch comedy show, you know? And they were just, like, yeah, but it'd be fun to do your show, you know? So that's just kind of cool. There's no, like, you know, no one fights or whatever. It's just kind of cool to pop up on other people's projects.

Recorded on: April 1, 2008.