PLUME: How much of Rocko was pure script? How much leeway would they give you all to go off script?

ALAZRAQUI: Not a ton. Tom Kenny did the most riffing with his character, Heifer, but Rocko was such a thread – like a Seinfeld character – that he needed to pretty much stay true. So there wasn’t a ton of riffing.

PLUME: Is that something that you were comfortable with, or would you have preferred to have had a little leeway?

ALAZRAQUI: No, I was comfortable with that. I really… I thought my challenge was to bring the lines that they had to Rocko and make them, you know, work.

PLUME: What was it like then when the show actually hits? I mean, that show was successful.

ALAZRAQUI: It hit okay, but at that time Nickelodeon was starting to pull back from what launched it, which was Kricfalusi’s show, Ren & Stimpy, and started to plug The Rugrats and go for the marketing stuff. So I think if Rocko would have happened right now, it would have been as big as SpongeBob. Steve Hillenburg and Derek Drymon came out of Rocko – they were directors on Rocko. And so I thought that because Joe Murray wasn’t getting along great with the Nickelodeon brass, they really didn’t give it a due. It’s a cult favorite right now.

PLUME: Certainly a cult favorite. I’m actually surprised there hasn’t been a DVD box set for that yet.

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah, that’s what everybody says.

PLUME: But I’m sure everything eventually will be on DVD.

ALAZRAQUI: I think so.

PLUME: Once you actually have that success, as being established within that voice world, how easy was it to parlay that into additional work?

ALAZRAQUI: It was more difficult than I thought. It took about a good four years. Tom Kenny hit right away. He’s always been brilliant, and he hit faster than I did from that show. It took me a long time to get to know the casting directors and gain their trust and do other things. Cat Dog was the next thing I did. But that took about four years to get to Cat Dog.

PLUME: I’m assuming you were still doing standup at the time.

ALAZRAQUI: Yes, I was.

PLUME: At what point did doing the voice work actually become self-sustaining, where you didn’t have to balance it out with doing additional work?

ALAZRAQUI: After doing sketch comedy with Stephanie Miller on her show, I did her radio show. Five days a week we’d go do sketches that she would put on her radio show, and I got paid a pretty decent salary, so that kept me in town. And then in ’97 I got the Taco Bell Chihuahua voice, and that changed everything.

QS: I can’t even imagine what kind of a financial break that must have been.

ALAZRAQUI: It was just amazing.

PLUME: Obviously it was just another job that you went in for…

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah.

PLUME: At first.

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah.

PLUME: At what point did you realize it was going to be more than that?

ALAZRAQUI: I think they booked me from the callback. They booked me, I saw the video, and did a callback and put my voice to it, and then they said, “Okay, we’re gonna do this.” And I said, “Okay, great. Alright, I got a commercial.” And then there was, like, a couple of ads in Adweek about how great this commercial was, and I thought, “Oh boy!” And then they called me to do another one, and it snowballed and took about a month. And that’s the point I realized, “Oh, wow, this is amazing.”

PLUME: What was the biggest perk you got out of that period?

ALAZRAQUI: I think being on Hollywood Squares a couple of times.

PLUME: Where exactly were you positioned during that?

ALAZRAQUI: Meaning within the box?

PLUME: Yeah.

ALAZRAQUI: I was never Center Square, of course. Bottom center, top right corner. That type of thing. Yeah, I remember being bottom… as you look at the screen, bottom left corner, and having Whoopi say stuff to me. You know, it was pretty cool. Pretty surreal.

PLUME: Is that where you really feel a turning point, as far as this really has become an odd career…

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah, that’s sort of the epitome of surrealness… staring out from this glowing box and seeing an audience and having somebody call your name for the block. I used to watch that… John Davidson and Peter Marshall… I used to watch that when I was a kid, so when I heard, “Carlos Alazraqui for the block” I went, “This is just way too weird!”

PLUME: And did you get them the block?

ALAZRAQUI: Yes I did.

PLUME: See, that was two dreams fulfilled. Theirs and yours.

ALAZRAQUI: The answer was, “If you’re eating Shitaki, what are you eating?” And the joke was “You have to be careful, ’cause you can eat Shitaki and die.” I said, “You’re eating mushrooms.” “I agree.” “Yes, you’re eating mushrooms.”

PLUME: How much leeway do you have during Hollywood Squares, legitimately?

ALAZRAQUI: You got a lot of leeway. They would give you possible questions that you might have to answer, and you could accept the writer’s answer or write your own. And I wrote a lot of my own stuff.

PLUME: You did three appearances?

ALAZRAQUI: I did three, yeah. I did two right away, and then three after being on Reno 911, on the New Hollywood Squares.

PLUME: How much of the actual merchandise do you still have that spun off the Chihuahua?

ALAZRAQUI: I’ve got a swag box, but not a ton. I gave most of it away.

PLUME: I’m sure you have the talking doll that came out at one point.

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah, I’ve got a couple.

PLUME: So how does that feel… since there’s no Reno 911 action figures yet.

ALAZRAQUI: No, they used some for a commercial they made, but they don’t exist.

PLUME: How does it feel to actually have a doll that speaks with your voice?

ALAZRAQUI: It’s kinda neat. Again, you know, part of the surreality of it all.

PLUME: What was your appearance on Sin City Spectacular, the Penn & Teller show?

ALAZRAQUI: I did – as I had done on the Magic Johnson show before – Kyle Feeney, Lord of the Slap. That’s when Riverdance and Lord of the Dance was really big. And so it was a parody where we slapped our upper bodies with our hands.

PLUME: Who did you do that with?

ALAZRAQUI: I did that with some dancers and a choreographer named Tiger. Martin Olson, a writer from Rocko’s Modern Life, was writing on that show. I would just saw Penn & Teller in Vegas, and I said, “Hey yeah, I did your show once, with Martin Olson. I played Lord of the Slap.” “Oh yeah, dude. Hey, how you doin’?”

PLUME: So is that a character that’s now retired?

ALAZRAQUI: That character retired, yeah.

PLUME: Coming off of the Chihuahua… how does it feel for when an ad campaign like that ends?

ALAZRAQUI: I had just come back from Europe in July 2000. I got a call, I think that morning I had come back from Europe, it was like on a Wednesday, and she said “Yeah, it’s officially over.” And I was like, “Ah, oh well.” It was sad.

PLUME: Was that the kind of thing that provided financial security enough to last a while?

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah. It helped me buy my house, in L.A. I had already, with the San Francisco Comedy Competition money, put money on a condo in San Francisco – so I had that, but this helped me buy me house and buy an Audi TT and, you know, I had enough money now that I could get a couple of dogs, and that really provided a great base.

PLUME: And obviously, as with any advertising icon, there’s always the chance it could return.

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah. I think Clara Peller is no longer living, but the dog would have to be a different dog.

PLUME: But who would notice?

ALAZRAQUI: Who would notice, yeah. It could always return, but Taco Bell was eventually sued by a Michigan ad agency and lost, so…

PLUME: Ah.

ALAZRAQUI: You know, maybe he could come back in another fast food chain.

PLUME: So really, the only way to do it is probably a cameo on Family Guy.

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah, exactly. She did a cameo for Geico Auto Insurance.

PLUME: Did you do the voice for that.

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah. Where they were auditioning characters to be the new Geico spokesman and the dog walks out and sees the gecko and goes, “Oh great, a talking gecko.”

PLUME: I didn’t know you’d actually reprised the role for that.

ALAZRAQUI: I had reprised it for that, yeah.

PLUME: Are there any ramifications in doing that for another company’s ad?

ALAZRAQUI: Nah. They’re cool with it.

PLUME: Is that something that had to be cleared beforehand to see if they were cool with it?

ALAZRAQUI: I think so, yeah.

PLUME: I’m assuming there’s some kind of contractual thing that still binds you.

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah, that probably still does exist for Taco Bell. You probably have to pay them. They probably own it in perpetuity, even though they lost the lawsuit.

PLUME: Over the years, you’d also done some live action roles…

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah, with the Stephanie Miller Show.

PLUME: What exactly was the process by which Reno 911 came about?

ALAZRAQUI: In December 2000, I auditioned for Ben (Garant), Tom (Lennon) and Kerri (Kenney) at Jersey Television for a Fox sketch show. I go to network, go to studio, go to network, I get it, and we do a table read for the pilot episode of the sketch show. They say, “We don’t want that.” And Tom and Ben said, “We’re gonna make fun of Cops. Go home and think of a character.” So I thought of a character, we came back, we got Beth McCarthy from SNL to direct us. We went out to San Pedro, we got in our uniforms, and did all this stuff. Fox passed on the pilot. I thought, “Okay, that was it.” Then a year later they took it over to Comedy Central, Comedy Central purchases it from Fox, and they say, “We like it, we’ll go into series.” That was about 2002.

PLUME: When you went away and actually created that character, what were your initial thoughts on what Garcia would be?

ALAZRAQUI: Just an amalgam of all the uptight pricks I’d ever seen in a short person’s body, with the name James Garcia. And the rest came after they asked 20 questions about your character – “Would he like being a cop” and “Who do you hate,” “Who do you like” – that type of thing. Then, as we started to film, I had this natural chemistry with Cedric Yarbrough, who’s this big tall black guy, and you know already we played off the racism thing – one of the first things he did when he got in the car is he’d turn on the music and I’d say, “Do you have to put that jungle music on?” He’s like, “What? I’ll beat your white punk ass.” And then, you know, then it was on. We had our relationship.

PLUME: But it was friendly racism.

ALAZRAQUI: It was friendly racism. It was the big brother trying to tell the little brother what to do.

PLUME: It was racism from a place of love.

ALAZRAQUI: Exactly, like, you know, the motto was, “I would take a bullet for my black partner but I wouldn’t tell my white friends.”

PLUME: Of those 20 questions, are there any more of those that you can remember?

ALAZRAQUI: “What’s your favorite pastry?” Bear claw. “What does cop mean to you?” A cop is a protective rainbow that covers your county, city, country, region. That’s what cop stands for. Count On my Protection coming through.” That gets reprised for the movie that’s coming out, too.

PLUME: What was the vibe on that first shooting day?

ALAZRAQUI: The first shooting day in San Pedro was just unbelievable. It was so fun. We couldn’t believe how funny and fun this was. It’s like, the crew was laughing, you know?

PLUME: Was it something that, as soon as you walked out, instantly clicked for you?

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah. Especially with Cedric and I. They’d put us in the car with dash cams and we just drove around and made up shit. We just had so much fun.

PLUME: Is there anything that you can remember from that first day that didn’t make it on?

ALAZRAQUI: We were driving around and he threw a piece of trash out the window, and we eventually reprised it for the first episode of the Comedy Central version. He threw a piece of trash out the window and I wanted to make him go get it, and he wouldn’t do it and he drew a gun on me and I drew a gun on him and then we started laughing.

PLUME: It’s amazing how many of those types of improv’d shows fail… I mean, it’s a thin line – no pun intended – on those types of shows either succeeding or failing, and it’s really based on the strength of the performers.

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah. It really is. And the performers as their own writers. We wrote our own dialogue, as it were.

PLUME: It’s one of those shows that you can’t find a false note in the cast either.

ALAZRAQUI: All the good stuff is saved, and there’s some bad stuff that’s edited out, but yeah, you know, we are allowed to… we can do it. We can get it done.

PLUME: I think the real sign of the fact that you guys can bring it more often than not is the Aspen Comedy Show.

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah, where we did it live.

PLUME: Which, you know, showed it straight through, that you can continue to produce under pressure. I mean, I can’t even imagine… what was the pressure like on that night?

ALAZRAQUI: Pretty weird, you know, because you know there was some show business people watching us that were fans of the show. And so that added to it, and we had to be on. There was no editing. It was us, live.

QS: Is there any time you found yourself accidentally breaking character?

ALAZRAQUI: No, not per se, no. I did not laugh like I do on the show.

PLUME: What’s the closest you’ve come to breaking up a scene?

ALAZRAQUI: I think I called Tom Lennon my name in a scene. I went, “Hey Carlos.” He went, what the hell?

PLUME: And I’m assuming that never made it.

ALAZRAQUI: That didn’t make it. No, there’s a couple of laughs that you can really check out that you can see on some of the finished products that I’ve done.

PLUME: What’s been the hardest for you to contain yourself on? Because obviously there’s quite a bit going on that could break you at any point.

ALAZRAQUI: I think it was Michael Ian Black when he played this Make a Wish patient with a dream to go out with two cops, and he was just so funny that I was just losing it. He grabbed my nightstick and banged on the police car as hard as he could. It wasn’t like, “I’m gonna fake like I’m gonna bang on the police car.” He just wailed on it and I lost it, and then every time we tried to move him he would scream. “Aaahhh!!” And I was just losing it. It was so good.

PLUME: How quickly do you feel like you get into that groove when you start shooting?

ALAZRAQUI: Takes about two takes, when you’ve been off for a long time.

PLUME: What’s the longest you all have been off, about a year?

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah. This will be the longest in-between seasons, I think.

PLUME: But obviously the film filled in that gap a bit.

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah, a bit. But I think it’s been close to a year that we’ve been off. Yeah, that’s how long.

PLUME: How surprised were you by how the law enforcement community has taken to the show?

ALAZRAQUI: I’ve thought they would have a problem with it but most of them like it. They love it.

PLUME: Any perks or appearances that have come from that?

ALAZRAQUI: There’s been a few perks, you know. Haven’t gotten out of a ticket, per se. But there’s been some gigs because of it and my standup money has gone up. So it’s good. And some recognition at Clippers games. It’s nice.

PLUME: There must be something in your mind that also registers the fact that this is a show that has legs and will last beyond when it goes out of production.

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah, it will. It will in DVD and reruns and… you know, it’s does have some legs. So does Rocky.

PLUME: And you’re still doing standup at this point.

ALAZRAQUI: Occasionally I will get out there and do a gig or two, but I’m really enjoying the voice work and staying at home and really wanting to do just the private corporate gigs that pay a little bit better, rather than to do the clubs. I’m done with that. I’m really… you know, unless the club is gonna pay a lot of money and I can work with a friend, I really just don’t need to go out anymore. Standup was always a means to an end for me.

PLUME: Right. You finally reached that point to where you only do it when you want to go out, not when you need to…

ALAZRAQUI: It’s when I want to go out, yep. Even as far as showcases here in town. People say, “Hey, you wanna come out and do a spot?” No. I did cartoons all day, I walked my dogs, I’m going to the Clippers game tonight. You know, that’s my life now. I don’t need to be in comedy clubs and I’m not wanting for that type of attention. I wanna be with my dogs.

PLUME: How much would you say that your act has changed over the years?

ALAZRAQUI: Not super drastic, but it’s gotten more adult and more honest.

PLUME: When you say more honest, is it because it’s become more truthful to who you actually are?

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah… my point of view, rather than trying to think of something that people will think is clever and, I’m like, “No, this is my point of view.” So if I do a Dr. Phil bit, it’s not “Here’ll be a clever way to put it…” No, I saw Dr. Phil with this lady who was addicted to Tim McGraw on the show, and his advice to her was telling her that she had to stop. And I thought, “That’s bullshit. That’s pocket therapy. That doesn’t work.” And then I liken that to a contractor on your house saying that your foundation’s all screwed up, you have bad wood and dry rot and termites, and what you need to do is paint over that and stop looking at it. You can’t fix yourself if you don’t fix the foundation, so that’s become a really great bit, and I did that on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and people really loved that bit because it’s grounded in truth. It’s not like, “Oh it’s Dr. Phil as an airplane pilot.” No, it’s “Here’s my opinion about Dr. Phil. Here’s my opinion about cars getting way too big. To the point where you gotta build a new car called the Ford Fuck You. Get the fuck out of the way. What about an electric car? Well why don’t you put on a speedo and slow down to Ed Begley, Jr., you poodle fucking pansy.” So yeah, you know, all that hatred and anger that I sort of feel from the American attitude of, “I can drive whatever the fuck I want, screw gas shortages,” and basically it’s saying, “Fuck you. Get out of my way, my car’s bigger than you.” So I put all this sort of stuff in my standup, and to me it becomes a lot more honest and weightier, and ultimately funnier.

PLUME: So your standup has moved away from you assuming a character, into just being you…

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah, I am me, but I can go in and out of character and it’s real subtle. It’s not like a Dana Carvey thing or a Kevin Pollock, when he did the impressions and stuff. It’s like I said – I don’t do a Dr. Phil, but it comes out of a point of view. If I do, it’s taking it to a preposterous end. Like talking about supermodels and how gangly and dinosauric they are, as it leads into Steve-o and, “Today we’re on the hunt for supermodels. These bitches haven’t eaten in three weeks. They’re extremely agitated.” So yeah, it would be character driven, but not overtly so.

PLUME: How different then are the corporate gigs from a standard performance at a club?

ALAZRAQUI: They’re usually set up pretty well. The money’s much better.

PLUME: Do you tailor your act for the specific gig?

ALAZRAQUI: You have to sometimes tailor your act a little bit. You talk about the corporation a little bit. For maybe about the first 10 minutes. And you clean it up, ’cause it’s… a homogeneous audience, I guess you’d call it. Right? They all know each other and they work in the same environment, so you try not to offend the boss or try not to offend certain workers or certain stereotypes, but you gotta scale it down a little bit.

PLUME: Is there any corporate gig that’s just gone off the rails?

ALAZRAQUI: Not that I can remember. There have been some that have been hard because people aren’t listening.

PLUME: Do you get the feeling sometimes, when you’re in those gigs, that you really are just a hired hand?

ALAZRAQUI: Yes. They really don’t care about your act so much, it’s just, “Do your entertainment and make fun of the boss and get out of here.”

PLUME: One of the last things I should probably ask about is the Reno feature film.

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah, that was great fun. South Beach, Miami for 12 days, 8 shooting days, and back in L.A. Some surprise guests that you’ll have to wait for. Just fun. Just a lot of fun being in South Beach and have people recognize us and wearing white and blue uniforms, and, you know, getting recognized and staying out late and going to the hotel Victor and all these clubs, and it was great.

PLUME: Was the shooting experience essentially the same as the show?

ALAZRAQUI: It’s pretty much, ’cause we are like a film. We shoot on location. We have craft service. We’d stay in our trailers. We don’t have a set except for the Carson Sheriff’s station, which we used again for the film. That’s a real working sheriff’s station. So yeah, the same experience.

PLUME: Is there anything that was fundamentally different?

ALAZRAQUI: Blocking. Some blocking for the hi-def cameras. And that was about it. Making sure that we were on screen for certain scenes in the first part of the film, we had to block properly for that. So that was what was fundamentally different. We couldn’t be as loosey-goosey on some scenes, ’cause there were group scenes where we needed to sort of find our positions and find the camera a little bit better.

PLUME: Was that something that you just had to get acclimated to?

ALAZRAQUI: Yeah. There’s a couple times I was having problems with it. ‘Cause on the show we can just go. ‘Cause it’s like Cops. On Cops, you don’t worry about blocking. The camera finds you. That’s the definition of it. So for the film we just had to switch that. But other than that, the show’s the same. Film’s the same.

PLUME: Is it something that, should this prove enough of a success to do so, you wouldn’t mind doing again?

ALAZRAQUI: Oh, yeah, I’d love to do it again. You know, let us be the new Police Academy.

PLUME: And yet no Bobcat Goldthwaite cameo.

ALAZRAQUI: And no Bobcat Goldthwaite cameo.

PLUME: And when does the new season start shooting?

ALAZRAQUI: I understand that it could be October or January. We’re not quite sure which. It’s really depending I think on certain schedules, particularly Tom and Ben’s as they are involved in other films, directing and writing.

PLUME: And what other projects do you have coming up?

ALAZRAQUI: I have a possible project with CTV owned by my friend Jeff Valdez. It’s English language Spanish network. And we’ve got a project that’s almost ready to go for a pilot there, my friend Nick and I. And then I have a couple of production meetings coming up with production companies, and hopefully we can maybe get together with show runners and make something happen. Then I have my cartoons, and I have a couple loose standup dates.

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