'A Love for Silliness'

In the first episode of "Stella," a comedy trio's eponymous new show, three roommates are evicted by their elderly German landlord. Sounds like a typical sitcom premise until the absurdity kicks in: following a day of homelessness--they are reduced to splitting a bean three ways for sustenance--they find themselves sporting giant skunk tails to impress a New York City co-op board ... before breaking into a choreographed dance number. They attempt to re-rent their old apartment wearing only moustaches and hats as disguise. When their erstwhile landlord, who turns out to be a Nazi, realizes it's them, he has a heart attack. The trio performs open-heart surgery on him with a butter knife and a straw.

If you're not sure this sounds funny to you, you're not alone. Reviews of the Comedy Central show have been mixed, which is not surprising as it swings like a hyperactive child from flashes of sheer brilliance (think: the Marx Brothers crossed with Monty Python) to depths of embarrassing not-funniness (think: the Monkees meet Benny Hill). People seem to either love the threesome or hate them.

But Michael Showalter doesn't quite understand what people have trouble understanding. "Being funny is silly and goofy and absurd and not to be taken seriously," he says. And "Stella" is nothing if not silly. He's braved the ambivalence before: in 2001 he co-wrote "Wet Hot American Summer," an inspired send-up of 1980s teen comedies with fellow "Stella" star David Wain (and co-starred in it with Stella's third man, Michael Ian Black). In the four years since the movie was released--and mostly ignored--it has become a cult classic. All three are alumni of MTV's mid-'90s sketch comedy show "The State," an underground hit that was equally tough for critics to agree on.

Showalter, 34, also wrote, directed and stars in "The Baxter," a romantic comedy that will be released later this summer. He recently spoke with NEWSWEEK's Brian Braiker about what's funny. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What are you trying to do with "Stella"? Michael Showalter: We're really just trying to make a funny show. We don't have any real agenda or target audience or any larger thing we're trying to accomplish. It's a sensibility we've developed over the last seven or so years. It seems to have somewhat of a broad appeal. It's really rooted in old-school slapstick comedy. Really it's a love for silliness. Dumb comedy dressed up in a suit, as your tagline goes.

There is hopefully an intelligence to what we're doing. It's not just being thrown against the wall, but we're not trying to be too serious about it.

What's your take on feedback so far? There have been really mixed reviews. People seem to either love it or hate it.

It does seem to be that people are kind of taking sides, doesn't it? Most of what's been said has been really positive. There are a lot of people who say "I think it's great but I don't know if you will." For a show that only just started being on TV, already there's this debate: is this funny or not? And that's such a funny debate to me. Of course it's funny. We've been doing this now for a long time. I think the debate should be: why is it funny? I don't think we know or understand what's so challenging about this material.

Well you say yourself that over the years you've developed your own sensibility. In "Stella" that can come across as overly silly and inside-jokey.

Probably. That's what was said about "The State," and that's what was said about "Wet Hot." I've only done this once--and once was enough: I went to Netflix to read the audience reviews of "Wet Hot American Summer," and it's either [five] stars or no stars. Nothing in between. Either people absolutely love it and think it's the greatest thing they've ever seen, or they think it's [an] absolutely unwatchable, worthless, completely unnecessary piece of film.

When you see stuff like that do you think "well obviously we're doing something right?" I would imagine it's hard not to second-guess yourself.

Of course. Part of me just has to throw my hands up in the air. It's a strange position to kind of have credibility and yet to continually be in this place of having people debate the material that we're doing. A comment that I heard from a friend about "Stella" that resonated for me was that a lot of the jokes need to be understood on a second level. A lot of the jokes need to be thought about. "Why was that funny?" That may be something that people don't want to do. They just want to be made to laugh.

Can you give an example?

There is a joke where we see a flier advertising that there's going to be an open house for an apartment. The flier is around the corner--we couldn't have seen it from where we were sitting. I read something by someone who didn't see it until the second time he watched the episode. So I think that there's a lot of moments like that--there's a joke that people don't see the first time. In "Wet Hot American Summer" there is a scene I've heard people criticize where my character slips on a banana peel. Our joke is: we did a banana-peel joke. That's kind of an esoteric joke. It's a joke about comedy. That movie came out in the summer of 2001 and we're now four years later and people are starting to really get it. It's been a really slow build.

Does that mean it will take four years for people to get "Stella"?

I hope that's not the trajectory for it. I hope people get it faster than that. There was one review that said in the year 2008 people will love this show. I hope people get it right away because it's really funny.

Are you bringing the same sensibility to "The Baxter?" It feels like it was tamped down a little bit for this next movie.

"The Baxter" is a movie that's very close to my heart. I was in no way watering anything down. It definitely has my sensibility and my aesthetic--the film does have a cartoonish quality to it. But it's much more sincere. It's much more conventional and much more truly character driven and not really always a comedy. It's got genuine character development and a genuine story that hopefully an audience will follow. So I'm pretty sure that this movie won't have the same kind of polarizing effect.