Let me first say that i know you've been awaiting my interviews that i've been preaching about. Well, i haven't heard from Joey the intern for quite a while, so until then, here's the Part 1 of the interview with him. Part 2, which will be a lot more detailed will come out as soon as i can get a hold of him. Enjoy.
Thank you very much for having this interview with me Mr. Joey or is it Mr. Intern?
Sadly I think I prefer just a shrill scream of JOEY!
For the folks at home, tell us your real name
Joseph Claude Jean Phillipe Rabier. Its two lines on my drivers license for crying out loud.
How did you get to become an intern at TechTv? Was it your first internship? What qualifications were they looking for?
When I first tried to become an intern at TechTV, I first applied to be with The Screen Savers unfortunately for me they never replied to my e-mails and they never called me back which kind of left a bitter taste in my mouth, but I was just so obsessed with the idea of working at TechTV that I had to do something. So I sent out the most mean spirited cover letter of my life with my resume attached off to Unscrewed and they loved it! I was brought in for an interview and after completing my paperwork, I was in the only catch with being an intern was that they require that you're in college, which kinda sucked for me since this was a transitional period in my life when I decided to say **** College. Luckily as I got into the fine print, they only required that I was enrolled in college and taking a class so I signed up for a Typing distance learning class worth half a credit, never completed an assignment and failed miserably. But I got to be an intern at Unscrewed, good deal.
What exactly does an intern do?
The life of an intern is a thankless one, usually it was just the busy work like making copies, running errands, and logging tapes I thought that's all it would be but at TechTV, they gave the interns the freedom to pitch ideas, develop reoccurring segments, as well get your hands dirty with the production aspects such as working camera and running teleprompter, hell in the beginning I actually used to transport show guests from the airport to the studio, so it was a good ride while it lasted.
People may not know this, but you weren't always an intern, you were hired by TechTv. What exactly were you hired as? What does that job entail?
In San Francisco, I was promoted from intern to Production Assistant, so needless to say I was quite happy about the raise from my $25 a day as an intern, then once we hit Los Angeles I was promoted to Associate Producer, a title that sounds important but in reality, not that different from a San Francisco Production Assistant see the bigger the corporations the more detail oriented they get with job responsibilities, as a P.A. in S.F. I was able to edit videos, write segments, and build graphics for the show, the only new responsibility I received was producing guests but if I was a Los Angeles P.A. I would essentially be doing intern like duties and not the cool TechTV ones either, coffee, copies, and crap tasks.
Why did you still remain as Joey the intern?
The character of Joey the Intern had been established so we decided to stick with it, besides it had a nice ring to it and in the end no one ever really said the intern part, just the loud shriek from across the cubicles to the tune of JOEY!
What's your sign?
Capricorn
How old are you?
Twenty-three come January.
What's your favorite color?
Grey, it's just such a lovely neutral color and after I heard that statistic about silver and grey cars getting into less accidents I thought maybe it would work as a wardrobe if it's good enough for a Honda it's good enough for me.
Do you play console games? If so, what is your favorite system and why?
The X-Box is my favorite console, just because it's so much like a PC, you can customize it, mod it, rip DVDs, it's the hacker's console of choice.
How did you first start in television?
I first started learning about the wonderful world of television during my time at Westmont High School in Campbell, my freshman year they had replaced the morning announcements with television announcements through a closed circuit system. It wasn't until my junior year there that I got so sick and tired of watching a PowerPoint intro to those videos every morning that I took action and designed an intro using 3D Studio Max, from there I began to help produce the announcements as well as make trailers for the various school events. Then one day during my senior year the drama teacher, Jeff Bengford contacted me about an opening at his buddies company, Dream Video Productions, where the owner Kelly Priest was more then happy to teach me the craft and damn near everything else I needed to make it in the business 3 years later and I was working at TechTV, but I still do freelance work for Dream Video time to time.
Ever heard of a comb or a brush or a barber?
While working at TechTV, my hair became such a part of my character, that my producers asked me not to cut it, hell there was even a clause in my talent contract that basically said I couldn't cut my hair without permission from my boss. It wasn't until this year that I've discovered the beauty of the hairdryer and turned my halfro into a full blown afro, although now my hair has so big that it's collapsing under its own weight, so I'm either going to have to use some sort of product it in, cut it to find the right balance, or get a perm.
Who has the weirdest hair? You, Martin Sargent or Laura Swisher?
Laura's hair is pretty crazy, but the day I realized my hair had surpassed her hair came as quite a surprise, for some reason looking at us from behind in the fall, Laura and I were constantly confused with each other at the bar or the office, people would get too damn confused with our similar hair.
Was Unscrewed the first show you started working for?
Yep, it was actually never my intention to get in front of the camera either, all I wanted to be was a behind the scenes guy, but unfortunately for me, the first day of work there was a pitch meeting, I didn't know if I was supposed to go to the meeting or what so I stayed back and continued my intern duties turns out that a man named Dave Roos was throwing around an idea for a sketch called the Lighter Side of Linux, a computer joke sketch where the lack of funny jokes would be the joke itself. The question was asked who could be the dorky computer nerd and that's when I walked in Martin just looked at me and said "THAT GUY!" Sometimes things have a funny way of working out.
Was Martin the initial host of the show? Who else could we have been seeing? Could the people at home been watching "Unscrewed with Bob Dole"?
Martin was the initial host of the show, but when the original pilot was shot, it was actually Morgan Webb riding shotgun.
When taping Unscrewed, would you ever finish a show in the, what, 22 minutes that is aired? Is there a lot of editing to be done?
We always had a good time working on the show, so the actual taping process would almost always go long, probably took us on average about an hour per episode, if we were doing really good we could crank those ****ers out in 30 minutes.
There were a lot of crazy people on that show, how did you get them on the show? Did you put an ad out for freaks of all sorts or did they come calling?
We had a staff that loved to surf the internet, and the crazy freaks that you speak of have one place where they truly feel accepted, the interweb. So if there was one thing we were never short on, it was crazy bastards to entertain us.
Who was your favorite guest on the show? If you even have just one
Brian Brushwood comes to mind, he's a stage magician who puts on one hell of an act and was cool as hell to just hang out with, he’s just about the only guest that I still talk to on a regular basis and actually consider to be a friend.
Where would you guys get all those great videos that were ritually shown after Marty's opening rant?
Days of searching various forums and websites, the thing that sucked about those was the amount of clips that we couldn't show because they would be considered old news by the time the show would air.
What was the most successful skit on the show?
According to the focus groups, Girls Gone Wired, and I guess G4 thought so too since that's going to be the name of one of their new shows.
What were your favorite skits/segments?
Way too many to list, the old Dear Blogs where he was just in a room were great, as well as Mysteries of Science Explained, and of course every dark tip where Kevin and I would get to blow shit up will always have a special place in my heart.
Was there a time TechTv came to you all and said, wait, you can't do this or that on the show?
TechTV? Not really, G4? Like a mother****er the worst was when the lawyers basically began to work closely with the sexy guests and essentially co-produce a segment, for example, we had Sadie Allison on to talk about her new book, Tickle His Pickle. Well at one point things got so bad that in the talks with the lawyers, they wouldn’t even let us say the word pickle as a euphemism for penis. Oh yeah, also couldn’t even say Penis, or Fellatio or condom for that matter even though trojan ads would run during out commercial space.
American Dad comes from Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy. This new animated series focuses on Stan, the paranoid man of the house, who is a CIA agent. Francine, wife of Stan with a past she would prefer hidden, Hayley, the liberal daughter and Steve, the nerdy son. Not to be excluded are Klaus, a French goldfish who is madly in love with Francine, and Roger, an alien Stan rescued from area 51 who has to remain in the house.
