Robot Butt is happy to present this special interview with Mike Sacks on his hilarious new book, Randy: The Full and Complete Unedited Biography and Memoir of the Amazing Life and Times of Randy S.!
Mike Sacks is a humor writer, editor, interviewer, and novelist. He’s written for Vanity Fair, Esquire, GQ, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and McSweeney’s. His past books include Stinker Lets Loose and Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today’s Top Comedy Writers, among several others.
As the book’s description alludes, Randy! is an experiment in memoir, biography, and, well, sheer insanity:
Randy! is a self-published memoir of a man from Maryland found by Mike Sacks at a garage sale and is being re-published “as is.” Randy is a thirty-something who sells his family farm and commissions an out-of-work local author, named Noah B., to write and type his memoir.
And here is Randy himself:
“This book is fucking awesome. It’s my life’s story. I’m thirty-four but look twenty-one. Maybe twenty-two at the most. I live in Maryland. Please read it. I’m a writer, a songwriter, an artist. I do it all. I’m an artist of life. I’m an adventurer, I’m the president of my development. Read the memoir. You won’t be disappointed. ” – Randy S
Enjoy this conversation with Mike, then pick up the book!
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RB: Randy S. is, to put it lightly, a man of grandiose ambition. He calls himself a songwriter, a filmmaker, a regular writer, a poet, an inventor, an artist of life. But his projects go nowhere, and he’s emotionally stunted and massively self-deluded. How did you create the glorious monstrosity that is Randy?
Mike: Originally it came from a character I performed on a New York radio station, WFMU. It was for a relationship show called “Why Oh Why” with Andrea Silenzi. I wanted to create the world’s worst single person. The character was just sort of improv, free form, based on all these guys I knew growing up in Maryland and Virginia. Very provincial, never heading into DC even though it was less than twenty miles away. Very suburban. Very much of the retail world, where I myself worked for ten years.
I was friends with a lot of these guys but I also felt removed from them. Tough to talk about comedies and classic movies and little-known authors and bands with them, but they were fun and loyal buddies. They had no greater dream than to get off work and head straight to the sports bars, or to Ocean City, Maryland for the weekend. What creativity they knew came through the radio and hit television shows. But I also found in a few of them a desperate need to work out their creative urges, whether it was writing a Dan Koontz-type book or coming up with a Judd Apatow-type movie involving their own lives.
I just love these characters and I love the DC area. I didn’t in any way want to mock anyone. I miss living there and this was sort of a nostalgic take on my teens and twenties. Quite frankly, I could very easily still be there, working retail, although the store I worked at for years and years went out of business: Kemp Mill Records. I could have been back there now, in my forties, with a name tag and chukka boots, eating take-out lunch, standing up at the store’s counter.
RB: There’s an idea in millennial culture that everyone deserves to live their passion, and everyone who wants to create art should be a groundbreaking genius. Were you thinking about millennials and entitlement when writing Randy? Is any of Randy! cultural critique as opposed to just pure, zany fun?
Mike: A bit, I suppose. Not millennial so much as just anyone, no matter the age, who wants to be remembered and respected and to stand out above the fray. Everyone wants to be looked at as being special. It’s a very strong human urge. But I don’t know if we as human are hardwired for it. I mean, how many people, hundreds of years ago, were known among millions besides kings and religious figures? Not many. It does interest me why this is such a strong urge.
Quite a few people I worked with at the record store wanted to make it as musicians and thought this was the quickest, easiest way to do it: working in a record store. It’d be like wanting to get into movies and working in a movie theater. But what did they know? What did any of us know? None of us knew any artists or writers or musicians or filmmakers. We knew no one but ourselves. And we wanted to be bigger than just a clerk in a store making six bucks an hour.
How does one “make it?” We had no idea. So I can’t fault someone for having creativity and wanting to produce an outlet for it and be known for it. What intrigued me, though, was this sense that you didn’t need talent to make it. You just needed to be on TV. Or in the movies. Or on the radio. Or in print. And it doesn’t work like that.
And even if it does happen, happiness is not guaranteed. I’ve seen that since. Then again, it beats working for six bucks an hour in a strip mall behind a government housing project in Aspen Hill, Maryland.
RB: Reading the book, I couldn’t help but feel bad for Randy S. He lacks self-awareness, any desire for real relationships, or focus, or depth. He rides from victory to victory in his own eyes, but I feel this sense of defeat and sadness and irredeemable disappointment, beneath Randy’s big-mouthed exterior. Do you view Randy as sad, or tragic?
Mike: Definitely sad. I feel bad for the guy. He basically raised himself, with some assistance from his elderly grandmother. He just doesn’t know any better. I think his confidence act is just a way to get through the difficult world we all face. His difference, I guess, is that he now has the advantage of having enough money to fail repeatedly.
I don’t think he’s a bad guy. Just clueless and not as bright or as creative as he thinks he is. He can’t read people. He has to pay for a girlfriend and he has to pay for a best pal to pay attention to him. He hangs out with kids who are fifteen years younger than he is at spring break. That’s sad. But he knows nothing else. He’s feral, in a sense. I hope people root for him.
RB: Much the current young generation of humorists are writing for the internet, on sites like Robot Butt or McSweeney’s or Medium, or they’re writing independent stuff for YouTube, etc. What’s your advice to the young humor writers out there, when it comes to carving a creative path?
Mike: Write what you want, how you want. Do not wait for others to give you permission to get published or produced. I know writers who have waited years to get into a certain magazine or to get published by a major book publisher.
Just fucking do it yourself. Do not wait for any permission. Do not write what you think others might want to hear. Just write what makes you laugh. Keep going. Do not stop. Never stop!
This should be fun. It’s why you got into humor in the first place. If you don’t want to write for a sitcom, don’t. If you want to write a funny graphic novel, do that. One format is no less important than the next. Just do whatever the fuck you want, how you want, and get it out there. You can do that now. You couldn’t when I first started. I envy those just starting out. You have a lot of power. Use it to your advantage.
RB: After Randy!, what’s your next writing project? What’s on the horizon for you?
Mike: I wrote a new book that will be released as an audiobook with a huge cast after the New Year, and then as a book in June 2019. This one takes place in the 1980s, instead of the 1970s, as Stinker Lets Loose did. It’s a John Hughes-type movie. But more bizarre. An homage to all those movies I loved growing up. Which are strange as shit, in retrospect. I make an appearance as a high school student who loves comedy and has few friends. You know, autobiographical. Look for the character named “Mike.”
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Buy the book on Amazon: Randy: The Full and Complete Unedited Biography and Memoir of the Amazing Life and Times of Randy S.!
Then check out Mike’s other books: Stinker Lets Loose, Poking A Dead Frog: Conversations With Today’s Top Comedy Writers, Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason, and others.
Learn more about Mike Sacks at www.mikesacks.com, and follow him on Twitter.
