Pictured: Mantzoukas with Jessica St. Clair

J: What are the differences in performing improv with two people compared to performing improv with a full group?
JM: Two people is lovely. I love Mother, Assscat and [Magnet’s] Tiny Spectacular -- all the shows I do with big groups of people, I love. But groups have ebb and flow. You’re on and you’re firing on all cylinders and engaged and in a scene, and then you’re out and on the back line. You’re still listening and active but you’re at half power or half strength, because then you’re in the back. Then you go back, and it’s that give and take.

With two-person shows, you walk on stage, and it’s on. For the rest of the show you’re in that mental state of go, go, go, go, go. I love that, I think it’s great. The thing with Ed is awesome because the way of playing with Ed versus Jessica St. Clair in the other one, is it has a lot of ‘who knows?’ Ed said that it feels like we’re wrestling. That’s definitely the case. For Ed and I doing those shows, we’re always trying to destroy each other. It’s the two of us going head to head in a way that’s so fun. It’s absolutely just pushing the other person to go further. What I like is that it does get chopped up and we do lots of scenes in the hour. Then there’s a question and answer period that always makes no sense.

With St. Clair, it’s less frenetic because it’s one scene. It’s really just approach more than the execution. You’re still on and firing and committed 100 percent. There’s a way you know that there will be no change. Once you make your initial set of decisions and declare your point of view. It’s that I’m thinking about character more in the First Date show, and narrative and developing the story and these people.

Long-form improv has a long-standing battle with games versus story or plot. Once you become adept enough at playing a game or a pattern, you long to be able to tell a story in real time. It’s hard to do improv narrative storytelling because the audience is already way ahead of you and you can never act fast enough. They get where it’s going. So it feels a little slow and a little boring, but when you get to a certain level, there’s a challenge to play fast enough that it seems like a slow, normal story, and it’s compelling. That’s what we’re thinking about in the First Date show, building a story that makes sense and shows growth and different sides of the characters and is about really listening, and just exploring this archetype of the first date. Everyone has some sort of association with what a first date is.

J: Is it hard combining the games and the story?
JM: The thing is, all games are is patters -- patterns of behavior. Patterns should be a tool you use all the time. It’s a grounding device that allows you, your partner and the audience to understand that you’re still playing within the constructs that you’ve established for them to understand forward movement. The establishing moment is this, then I return to it here, so you see how this is moving forward. Now that I’ve come back to this scene, this has happened. And I come back to it again. It gives the skeleton to understand it. Otherwise improv could be so diffuse that you could very easily lose people because it doesn’t make sense, so a pattern always helps you. It’s like chord changes in a jazz solo. You understand what’s underneath it and you get it. It’s different now but it’s still John Coltrane playing “My Favorite Things.” You recognize “My Favorite Things” even though it sounds nothing like it right now. I grew up playing drums and playing jazz, so that’s how I think of it a lot. The pattern exists, and then I’m just playing on top of it.

J: Are you working on more sketch shows or just focusing on improv?
JM: Right now I’m focused on improv. One of the reasons we’re doing “First Date” is to generate … everything St. Clair and I do starts as improv and then becomes written sketch shows. Both of our sketch shows have started from improvised scenes. When our next sketch show will happen, I’m not sure. It was similar with Mantzoukas Brothers too -- we have all these shows now that we’ve done and taped, and there could easily be a time when Ed and I put together a bunch of those scenes -- rewrite them and focus them into a sketch show.

We did “We Used To Go Out” for a long time, for a year, and developed a TV pilot out of it and that took a long time. It was very time consuming to write the pilot and shoot it. Then it all came to a head at the end of spring, so I got really excited to do all these improv shows, because it’s a blast. And I’m writing several things, or procrastinating them, anyway. So I don’t have time to write a sketch show but I do have time to show up and do an improv show. But I would love to do another show with St. Clair, or with a big group of people. I’ve never done a sketch show with a group of six people or so. That would be fun.

J: What is happening with “We Used To Go Out” as a TV pilot?
JM: We did “We Used To Go Out” as a TV pilot for HBO, as a half-hour sitcom essentially. We shot it here in New York last fall and they didn’t pick it up. Now it’s basically dead. It was a good process though because it allowed us -- doing it at HBO was cool because they didn’t care about what we did or said (in content). So we were able to do the show we really wanted to do, which is really dirty and really funny but also had moments that I hope were really sad or not sitcom-like, where an audience would feel bad for the characters. I felt that was part of what people liked about “We Used To Go Out,” and what we liked about it -- that these two characters feel both sympathetic and reprehensible. You would root for both of them in that relationship and then (react) ’Oh, no, that was bad. That’s horrible!’ I feel HBO was very cool in allowing us to do that.

J: Is the YouTube explosion good for getting ideas seen or does it mean more than that?
JM: That’s such a conversation topic right now in our scene -- not just YouTube, but also Funnyordie, Superdeluxe and all these places that feature comedic short films. I always feel like I’m coming from the point of view of an old curmudgeon. I feel like I’m the generation that is too old for that stuff. I never was part of a movement to make short films. I come from an old point of view that prefers putting up a whole sketch show, that itself represents the TV show we could make out of it, that itself could be developed into something else.

I love a lot of YouTube pieces but I wonder how a two or three minute piece equals a half-hour of television each week. Sometimes it does, but what if it doesn’t? It might be fun to do just these 10 short movies and that’s it. There’s no beyond for it. In a good way, it’s giving a lot of great people a venue and getting a lot of great stuff out there. In a bad way, this sounds curmudgeonly, but it’s focusing all the industry’s eyes on micro stuff, really short bits -- it’s like the music industry focusing on a song rather than an album. It’s the same thing, focusing on one bit, a little idea, rather than a well-thought through whole. That’s not a horrible thing.

But for the way I work and a lot of the stuff I do, it’s stuff I hope would be a bigger story than ‘wouldn’t it be funny if the guy who showed up on a date had lobster claws?’ -- ‘Ha ha ha, lobster claws,’ and it’s done. I’m much more interested in the 20 minute mark of that date. I want more. That said, they do have funny stuff on those sites.

J: Do you think that Web bits will never totally extinguish the sitcom or fuller length comedy TV show?
JM: That’s another thing that people say, that YouTube or the Web makes TV comedy irrelevant. There’s no arguing that TV comedy is at a low point. Although a lot of young people get their comedy from websites, but I don’t think half-hour sitcoms are going to go away. There are still good sitcoms out there, just very few of them -- like “The Office,” “30 Rock” can be on, flourish and do well. That’s heartening, but there’s still “Blue Collar TV” and lots of other garbage -- or “Mind of Mencia” -- mind numbing.

There will be a lot of opportunities given to the people who are successful in these shorter forms to try to do something bigger. I don’t know if half-hour comedy is going to go away. That said, I think Adult Swim has done something really fascinating -- 15-minute blocks instead of half-hour blocks, and I love a lot of the shows on Adult Swim. A lot of those shows are pretty brave. Would you be surprised if two years from now, Fox decided to do the same model -- 15 minute blocks of animated programming on Tuesday and Wednesday nights instead of [the normal thing]. That could happen.

J: What are your influences and what things do you like?
JM: I loved Steven Wright. He was the Boston comic of the time I was a kid. I loved Monty Python and SNL. I would stay up and watch SNL or VCR tape it. When Kids In The Hall came out when I was in high school, that was a big deal.

J: What era of SNL?
JM: It wasn’t the original because I was too young for that. When I started watching, it was the Dick Ebersol years, with Christopher Guest. I was about 10 years old. … I remember comedy albums -- I had a Steven Wright tape, a Bill Cosby tape, an Eddie Murphy tape -- “Delirious” and “Raw” on tape -- I remember mowing the lawn and laughing hilariously. That really was comedy at that point. There wasn’t comedy networks. There were just movies. I loved all the movies of that time, like the John Hughes movies, and coming of age stories, but also all those sketch movies like “Kentucky Fried Movie.”

We did high school variety shows, and so we wrote sketch comedy in high school. All the things I wrote in high school were either Monty Python ripoffs or SNL ripoffs -- of specific SNL sketches. Those were my big ones. I remember when The State came out but I didn’t get into them. I missed The State for whatever reason. In college I got into older stuff. Jessica St. Clair and I get compared to Nichols and May a lot and I love those old Nichols and May records. That was really important to me. Then I got into specific movies that I thought were very funny -- like “The Graduate,” which is hilariously funny and also heartfelt. Hal Ashby’s “Harold & Maude” is the funniest saddest movie on earth. “The Last Detail” -- all those movies -- I like things that are so funny but yet heartbreaking. If I have a style [of material], that’s part of it.

J: To be compared to Nichols & May in the press, that must be the clip you send to your parents.
JM: Oh yeah, absolutely. My parents are very supportive. They love this stuff. They think it’s hilarious. They’re obsessed with the Mantzoukas Brothers show because it’s the Mantzoukas Brothers. But Nichols & May is the greatest complement. Variety named St. Clair and I in a top 10 comics to watch piece a couple years ago, and compared us to Nichols & May, and we were blown away. That’s huge for us because that absolutely is the greatest compliment. It’s a crazy thing because how is it possible there hasn’t been another mixed-gender comedy duo since then? You almost have to go back to Nichols & May to recall one. It’s weird.