Dan Interviews Jeff Witzke of House Husbands

Last week I got the opportunity to have a chat with Jeff Witzke whom you might recognize as the star of House Husbands, the web series I previously reviewed earlier this week on Geekadelphia. Jeff is an actor and writer from Los Angeles, California. Some of Jeff’s most memorable roles include the kidnapper in Jason Reitman’s film Thank You For Smoking, the uber-Hollywood baby talent agent in last season’s Nip/Tuck, and on stage as Brother Brightbee, in the eleven month Los Angeles run of the smash-hit Book Of Liz, by Amy and David Sedaris.

Recently, Jeff just celebrated the world premiere of Reitman’s newest film, Up In The Air, where he has a cameo opposite George Clooney. Jeff will also be in the season premiere of The Mentalist opposite Simon Baker. I had a lot of fun chatting with Jeff about everything from why he decided to produce his own web series to what was his favorite Star Wars film.

Can you tell me a bit about how a your background, and why you decided to become an actor?

I guess my major interest started in high school, my best friend and I always just loved fooling around and making our own home videos. So then we decided to get involved with school plays as well. We both got cast in the various plays, and acting in those really got me into loving acting. I still continued to make home videos for our friends and family, and that really solidified “Oh this is fun, I like doing this!”.

I saw you continued your career in college, on a student produced college sitcom. How was the transition from a college run sitcom to national TV and film?

You know that was actually a fantastic opportunity, because I haven’t since heard of many colleges that have a school sitcom being produced on campus. The great double edge sword of that is, it was student produced, student written and student acted as well. There was little bit of faculty oversight, but they really let us do whatever we wanted so we could learn from our successes and on the other side of it, we learn from our failures as well. So it was a fantastic learning experience, and one of those great exercises in learning by doing. Some of the skills I learned by doing that I completely carried it over to working on professional TV shows. So in some of my acting classes I was proud to say, “Oh I’ve done some sitcom work in my college.” The great thing is that show it’s called The Show at Michigan State is still being produced today, 20 years later it’s still running and is known as the longest running sitcoms in college history.

Your roles on your IMDB page are pretty diverse can you tell me about some of your favorite roles that you have played in the past.

You know one of my favorite roles is the kidnapper in Thank You for Smoking just because it’s so deliciously evil, and it was great to work with Aaron Eckhart and be part of Jason Reitman’s first feature. It was just a fun role, I considered him kind of like a mini Bond villain, where I just sit back and monologue while my henchmen are slapping the nicotine patches all over Aaron Eckhart. That’s one of my favorite roles.

Another great thing was when I did a voice on the Family Guy, that was quite a fun experience. I was sitting in the waiting room to record my part, and all of a sudden I heard this voice call out my name “Jeff your next up!” and I was like that voice sounds familiar. Then I realize, oh my God it’s Seth MacFarlane the creator, and he even directed me in the booth. I expected someone else but it was him!

That was just a thrilling experience, but to even top that when I walked out of the booth the casting director said, ”Oh Jeff I would like you to meet Adam West.” I was blown away, I grew up watching Batman on TV it was one of my favorite shows as a kid, and there I am face-to-face with Adam West. Who just put on this big smile was like, “Hello Jeff, it’s a pleasure to meet you” and I was like “Oh my God!” and I shook his hand. Adam was like “I just got in from Palm Springs and I drove, it was like two hours but thank goodness I had a Power Bar” and I was like he is just like he is on the show. He plays the mayor on Family Guy, and he’s just like wacky and out there. That was just a thrill.

I love every role I played, because it means I get to work.

Now let’s talk about House Husbands, I saw the pilot and I really enjoyed it. What was the inspiration and make it a web-based show? But, I do think with the subject matter it lends itself rather well to that format.

Thank you. The inspiration was two-fold, one I’ve always enjoyed as I told you making videos, since my teenage years I always kind of made my own thing. In college I did that as well, so I’ve always wanted to get back to using my creativity in that way. The other inspiration was the other two guys in the show Michael Cotter and Darren O’Hare. We were all in the same acting class and in LA these days a lot of people starting to do their own thing with the advent of You-Tube  and digital video.

It’s so much easier to make high quality product, and just kind of put it out there for people to see. So we all decided you know, everyone else is doing is why shouldn’t we? So we put our heads together and decided to come up with an idea the three of us can do together, that we could write and we can all be in. I don’t actually know where the idea came, from but it just kinda popped up and the three of us just started laughing and running with it, and we were like let’s do it! We wrote it, we produced it and we even got a director involved. We had a three-day shoot and put it together and we are quite proud of how it finally turned out.

Could you tell my readers a bit about the show, the elevator pitch if you will.

Absolutely! It is about three guys whose wives make more than they do, so for different reasons they are all stay at home husbands. One is a stay-at-home dad, one is a slacker and kind of the video-game player and my character actually gets laid off. But he decides not to tell his wife and hang out with his buddies instead, so it’s kind of the adventures of these guys in the daytime. Which is traditionally been kind of more skewed towards females in our culture over the years. So it’s kind of how these three guys kind of tackle being at home during the day and the adventures they go on.  You know, it’s more relevant unfortunately because the current state of the economy, with people getting laid off. There are just so many more guys who are at home nowadays.

They often say write what you know, and the three of us are actors and were home during the day. I’m not married but Michael and Darren are, so some of this is based off of our lives. We didn’t want to make them actors because we didn’t want to make a series about the business, there is enough for those out there. But we did realize, we all know some guys who were stay-at-home husbands and dads. We thought there something funny there and there was something there to be said, because we were not exactly sure men are genetically engineered to be at home during the day. Something about the situation is just a little bit off and I think that adds to the comedy.

There seems to be a lot of geeky elements to the show, from one husband who is a gamer – to multiple Star Wars references. What influenced you to make these decisions in the writing process?

I think there’s an inner geek in every single one of us. Every one of the characters has a geek aspect to them as well, Darren who plays the slacker, has the video game aspect. I am a big Star Wars fan, so I think that was a bit of my influence and Mike is just a geek in general. There’s a tad geeky-ness to it all , heck there is a geeky-ness to going out and making your own video – yet there is something noble about it as well.

It’s funny because the one scene in House Husbands with the iPhones light sabers duel, I’ve actually done that.

It’s what guys do.

Speaking of Star Wars what’s your favorite of the two trilogies?

I would have to say the Empire strikes Back. That’s funny when Star Wars:Episode One came out I went to see it, and I know a lot of people were disappointed. I said you could have just had a camera on the desert planet of Tatooine and Jawa walk by every 20 minutes and I would still be happy. But soon after seeing that I re-watched the first 20 minutes of Empire Strikes Back, and I was like that is what it’s all about right there! That’s a good movie, so that’s my favorite of them all.

What are your plans for the pilot of House Husbands? Will you release it to the public, or are you going to shop it around to get some more interest in the project?

At the moment we’ve got a few meetings, and we are trying to get some interest. As you said, you know it seems to be fairly relevant. We think it’s fun and it appeals to people. We were trying to get some interest to have someone help us produce it. As much as we love doing it this all came out of our own pocket, and our own passion. It would be great if someone said “Hey you have got something there, let me help you make it.” That is where we are right now. We are trying to got to meetings, we are trying to drum up some interest and hopefully someone will help us share it with the world.

Because what you actually saw was two of the three webisodes we wrote. We wrote three of them but we only had enough time and favors to call in to shoot two of them. We thought it would at least give you a taste for what were looking to do, and hopefully get someone interested who would then launch it as a web series. Then you know either weekly, or biweekly or even monthly we can go out shoot them and put them on the web. Which is kind of the new frontier of entertainment.

In the entertainment business in Los Angeles it’s fantastic, but you also only work when someone decides to let you work, if that makes sense. It’s up to a producer, a director or someone else you know. You can be a talented actor and want to work every day but you can’t, so this was an opportunity for the three of us to say, “Hey! Why should we sit around waiting for someone else to decide whether we work or not, lets make our own project!” The great thing is the technology is in this place, where even five years ago it wasn’t necessarily even possible to put together high-quality project without putting a lot of money into it. Now you don’t need to put in as much money but you still have to put in the time, the passion and the sweat, which we will do.  No problem.

The only reason we haven’t released it on our own yet is we got some advice that sometimes, especially out here in Hollywood. It’s a little bit more enticing if it hasn’t been released everywhere, and it’s like “Oh we get to release it!”  Push comes to shove we can always release it ourselves. We could even shoot it ourselves. Maybe not with the steady cams and the stuff we had to shoot the first two episodes.  But, you know what? We can still do it, and we have said as we were putting it together worst-case scenario, at least we have this produced – that thing that you saw and we are extremely proud of it and happy with it and that’s great in itself. So it’s win-win for us, but that being said we also think something is there. We think there’s interest in seeing the adventures of these three guys

My last question have you ever been to Philly, and if so what’s your favorite spot  you’ve been to?

I was in Philadelphia once when I was 12, and I went to the Liberty Bell. I remember that. So I am afraid I’m going to have to say that is my favorite spot, because it’s the only spot I remember. But I remember it was a nice town. But my aunt actually lives right outside of Hershey, Pennsylvania. I have been there quite often. I’ve only been to Philly once so that just means I’m going to have to come back again!