This is the interview I had with David. The next episodes will be on format, where the focus will be stories.
This is all more of a test than anything else...Hell of a funny convo though.

There is gonna be a lot of stuff but I'm floating it under my 868 Moments Blog and RSS Feed.
So you will have to follow that.

I am recording more stuff with Dave- I hope to break down some of our old skits and talk about new shit.
I'll be talking with Bryan about music.
Also others that I've collaborated with, like Alex Skolnick.
There will be a cool little thing called Black and White Coast to Coast with my man, Larry Mandt.
I got some folks in Cali, I wanna get with, too. So- shit is coming...I'll up date here when I can remember but if you follow the 868 feed you will get it ALL, son!

Sunny D and Bigger Than Me

Okay. It's been a WHILE but let's try to lay this out.


Origin:

The Sunny D open was planned to be a commentary on what we considered to be bullshit on public access but ended up being a slam on TV in general. I don't remember how we came up with all the ideas for all the bits in that skit- but I do remember shooting The Sunny D part when my parents weren't home.

A lot of our skits, in the beginning, were dreamed up at Dave and Rob's house-
It would usually go where one of us had something he was thinking about and then the other two would add to it and make it funny OR beat the hell out of the idea 'til we didn't want to do it.
Eventually, one of us would come up with an extreme idea, another of us would back him up and the third member would be left going- "...Uhhh...Idunno guys..."

That was the case with "Bigger Than Me".
If I remember correctly- I was thinking it would be funny to do a bit where a dude is telling an embarassing story that OBVIOUSLY happened to him as if it had happened to someone else. Rob jumped in and we came up with the whole "being forced to perform oral sex at gunpoint" story. By this point Dave was already throwing in ideas and we were just laughing our asses off at how fucked up the story was getting-
That was about the time the "You can have this in your mouth or THIS in your mouth" line was born- we knew we were pushing it a bit far but that was what was making us laugh.
Dave was the one who came out and said we shouldn't do this- He thought that the viewers would really think the story happened to one of us. We thought that was ridiculous. But then he asked- "So, which one of us is going to play the role of the victim?" and suddenly- no one wanted to really prove Dave wrong.
So- like true acting cowards we pitched the idea to Bryan and we told him the WHOLE story and why we were all scared to do the roll and he just shrugged his shoulders like we should have but it worked out PERFECT.
Bryan fit the bill like a champ- we added the other stories in the beginning to set you up for how fuckin' horrible Bryan's story would be.
I think this is the only DG skit with neither of us on camera, now that I think about it.


Doppel Facts:
The opening shot is of me at the helm of the Master Contol board of KRRT- this is where Dave and I came up with a lot of skits for the Saturday Night Shocker.


The woman who plays the "mother" in the Sunny D bit is the actual mother of the baby in the "Crazy Ahkmed" bit.


My Favorites:
I love that we actually got pretend to "fire blanks" in a baby's face- that is funny (I wonder where that kid is now?). Crazy Ahkmed cracks me up to this day.
And I take a lot of pride in the line "this in your mouth or THIS in your mouth" as you can pretty much just say that line and most people know exactly what you mean.

Teen Club Auditions

This is one of my favorites as well...

Origin:
Back in the day Fox 35 started up a teen club called "Express Yourself" for which they held auditions and we LOVE taking stuff from work and makin' fun of it. So we decided to go for it. The ironic thing is I was actually Producing/Directing "Express Yourself" at the time and had to reassure the kids it wasn't directed at them.

Doppel Facts:
Once again, We make a play on words right at the top. The cities that Rob and I claim we are from are actually medical terms. "Angulation" is the term used when someone fractures their penis and "clean catch" is a technique women use for giving a urine sample. So there you have it. Intellectual pee pee jokes.

Immediately after we shot my "striptease", the segment was cut together and the tape promptly erased at my insistence (well, Dave and Rob did make me chase for it a little bit). The last thing I needed was video of me in a speedo (yeah, I was clothed in the studio...Freak!) floating around the office.

My Favorites:
I'm always surprised when Rob falls in front of the camera after being shot and then I start giggling like a little school girl.

Wrestling pt. 1 and 2.

Wrestling pt.1 comes from episode 5- meaning it was one of the skits we did as part of "The Saturday Night Shocker."

We start with this and its' partner, Wrestling pt. 2 because we all have roles in it and it's a favorite of mine.

Rob really gets to shine in these because he has a total of 5 characters between the two bits and he is on point with all of them.

Origin:
This skit came about because back in the day of the Fabulous Freebirds and Andre the Giant, a great part of wrestling was trash talk. Trash talk was some of the funniest stuff ever. I'm pretty sure it was Dave's idea to have us take a stab at it.

Doppelfacts:
The Dopplewig makes ANOTHER apearance. This time on my head. You never know when the Dopplewig is going to show up next and who's head it's gonna be on.

The Doppelwig was originally purchased by Rob in order to apply for jobs without cutting his hair. He didn't actually land a job using it, but, he did run into someone he went to school with while applying at one place...they stared at him for quite a while.

Here is a direct translation of what the Nasty Flash is saying for all ya'll non-spanish speaking individuals:



"I am the king of the little people! Kneel! Listen to me. Uh, give me money, give me your daughters. Or die! Ha, ha ha! Or die!"

"Yes, yes. Yes! Shoe! Shoe! Ha, ha, ha!"


The Nasty Flash's mask was bought alongside the Batman mask at a costume shop that had an after Halloween sale. A lot of times we would build a skit around a prop but in this case we created a character around one.

Regis Q's character was based on a very annoying kid show host in San Antonio back in the day. I'll tell you more about him in other skits. He uses the term "2 Times, Baby!" which was a phrase we wanted to use on our show (The Saturday Night Shocker) when we wanted to repeat a cool scene from the movie. You know, "That was so cool I had to see it TWO TIMES BABY!".

Ironically we only repeated a scene once on the show but we said the phrase a lot amongst each other.

Larry Holmes calls out to his production assistant "Richard" and you actually hear his voice (played by David). In the "Breakfast with Larry" skits he speaks to Richard as well but you never hear Richard's response. I cannot remember why we never got a chance to dub it in. I will tell you more about Richard when we put up the "Breakfast with Larry" skits.

My Favorites:
Rob makes me laugh with the "Any one with $22.50 is gonna see me kick the shit outta someone..." line because it's so specific for an ad-lib. Rob was really into the character and as always he is on point with the commentary as we do the back and forth.

Dave and Rob play the Rowdy brothers a little TOO well. I think they would have made a kick ass wrestling team.

I also like the line "You might not be Coasta Rican, but you sure as hell look like one!".

Some Backstory

Before we get started posting clips let's do a little backstory on The Doppel Gang.

It started long, long ago. At a college far, far away.

Well, actually it was in San Antonio back around '88. I was in the Radio Television and Film classes where I met a few students that were very talanted and had some vision.

It struck me one night, when I was flipping through channels and discovered the realm that was San Antonio public access- that I could assemble these students and do a show that was as good or better than "The Hondo Show" or "The Worst Show" which were staple programs of the time.

So I called a meeting that was to go down at a Jim's resturaunt near the school.

The only person that showed up was David and he brought his brother, Robert, who I had never met but had seen in "Bob the Super-Hero", one of Dave's class projects, in which Rob had the starring role.

Undaunted, we began to speak about funny ideas we had and how they could be shot. I don't remember all the bits we had on our minds at the time but I know we discussed the premise for "True Stories", doing a "Bob the Super-Hero" series of skits and a character named "Goose" who gave cheap handy-man tips to save some "Beer Money". I also distinctly remember Dave telling me how funny he thought it would be if we could do a talk show with Larry Holmes as the host and call it "Breakfast with Larry".

I laughed my ass off that night.

So we did it.

We shot enough material to make 3 episodes and Dave and I cobbled them together (mostly Dave) and put them up on Public Access where they ran eternally.

One day the GM at Fox 35 asked us if we wanted to host their Saturday night movies called "The Saturday Night Shocker"- to which we agreed, as long as we could do skits and not have to talk about the movie all the time.

We did that for a while- and stopped when it got to be too much to try to keep our jobs or do these skits for free (Rob was the only one to ever be paid for his time on the Doppel Gang- Dave and I gave our share of the money the station paid us to him because we had jobs and he was going to school- it was barely enough money for him to buy lunch on a regular basis- so Dave and I weren't sacrificing much).

It was decided that we would collect the skits we shot for Fox and uncensor them so they could air on public access as episodes 4, 5 and 6. It took us a while to do the music videos for the shows but when they were done the shows went up and we washed our hands of the Doppel Gang...

'til now.

So with no further ado- The posts will begin.

We hope you enjoy.

Welcome Ya'll!

This here will be the Doppel Gang's official blog.

It is my plan to put up the original skits on YouTube and link them here so that the rest of the Gang and myself can comment on the stuff we did back in the day.

Dave and I have talked back and forth over the years about how cool it would be to do a DVD with some backstory on the sketches but then someone has to pay for the DVDs and someone has to disribute the DVDs and our fans can't afford DVD players and on and on and on.

This seems like a much better way to handle the situation for those that are interested.

Stay tuned...