And you were incredible.

I love that show.

And I feel very lucky because out of that show, the producers on that, I got to do Party Down and work with some incredible people on that.

But you're talking about the crew, like the state crew.

Yeah, I feel very, very fortunate to have met those people in college and to, you know, kind of put that we put that group together.

And it was sort of our comedy college once we graduate, you know, in college.

And then once we graduated and did our show on MTV.

What is the name? Average...

did you love about it as an audience member?

It's the type of show that I want to see when I go see a musical.

It's just like big and outrageous and super funny, laugh out loud funny.

And it's absurd, which is right up my alley.

And I enjoyed the movie.

I remember the movie.

grew up when that movie came out in the 90s.

It's very cleverly put together.

So I love that story.

Yeah, so the story is the first season we were on MTV, we had our own show.

We got our own show off of You Ready to Watch It.

We were 20, 21, I don't know how old we were, very young.

And we thought our shit didn't stink.

And so like MTV was like, great, we're giving you a show.

Um, you get to do, I don't know, whatever, however many episodes we did that first season six or eight or whatever.

you know,

Mm-hmm.

And it was in third grade or whatever.

And, uh, and I went out, a- and I got nervous, and I locked myself in a bathroom.

My sister talked, my older sister was at the camp too, and she talked me out of the bathroom, and I come out, and then I do, I do it.

Right? I build up enough courage to do it, and everybody's laughing, and I'm like, "This is fucking great.

Every- I'm really terrific." And then just recently I thought, you know what? Everybody just might have been laughing because I locked myself in the bathroom, and they're just trying to make me feel good.

Kerri Kenney

...

Yeah

... you know, we, we, we do, we do, whatever we know what the movie is, like, and so when we, when we're looking at, at, you know, what to put in and what to take out, for some reason we just [laughs] it, we know when something is not, doesn't fit-

[laughs]

And then we have an incredible, uh, editor on this, uh, on this, uh, movie, uh, John Dagle, and, uh, he just, he, he took that note, that, that action, uh, line and, uh, created the length.

And I don't know how much maybe-

Right,

right.

And I found myself, you know, we gravitated towards each other during that a lot of the times.

Yeah.

And we had fun doing that.

And so after the state sort of wasn't happening anymore and we were on different coasts, we kept talking about we should write something together.

Yeah.

video that plays while you're waiting in line to go on a roller coaster at Universal, right? Yeah,

[laughs]

The Ten was an exercise that was not necessarily fully successful, but fun to do.

We wrote The Ten, and we're like, "We're not gonna go and take notes from anybody.

We're just going to shoot this in its purest from our brain to the screen way." And somebody [laughs] happened to give us money, and so we shot it.

And for better or for worse, that's The Ten.

And there are some really wonderful things in it, and some things that, you know, I think w- if I look back, I'll...

You know, I would go, and maybe David would, I think David would agree, that maybe, yeah, maybe we coulda gotten a couple of notes from somebody.

Zach Cutter.

Here's what I

will say.

I don't know much of their work.

I tried to look up a little bit of their stuff.

They seem like fine guys.

They're like comedy-stellar stand-up comedians.

Yeah, and they feel to me like Long Island guys, and I'm a Long Island guy.

That's really cool.

If we think it's funny, then it makes it into the script, and if we like the story, it becomes the script.

It's so hard to second-guess an audience, especially with comedy, I think.

You have to just be like, this feels right to me, and that's why I want to do it.

Then, Later in the process, when you're all the way in post-production and we're screening for people, we did very low-budget screenings, 20 people in the living room.

If something continuously doesn't get laughs that we like, maybe we'll take it out because we're okay.

But overall, we really use our own guts as the moderator.

But right now, can you unpack that a little more for me? Like why do you think it was so dumb and why did you just felt such a need to make it?

I think it was just, you know, we do a thing where we get together in a room and we have to come up with something.

So David, you said, "Ken thinks of things in ways that I wouldn't n- ever conceive." And then Ken, you said, "I'm not getting it sometimes, but when I see it, it works." Can you think of specific examples, maybe even from Gail Daughtry, where each of those things came into play?

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know if I said I didn't get it.

Uh, but I was like, I trusted that David had an overall vision of what the ... piece was, and it was the, uh, lovemaking scene.

So, like, uh, there weren't a lot of jo- there weren't a lot of joke jokes in it, like, hard jokes in it.

It was, like, a visual thing that he, like, he's like, "I have a whole idea of what I wanna do." And I was like, "Okay." And he, you know, was, like, pulling up references and doing all, like, and, and, and the whole vibe of it, uh, was in his head, and I was like, "Sh- sh- you have to show me.

I sort of understand it, but, like, where are the, the jokes?" And the jokes were in just the tone of, like, the, the fact that these two are making love and how they're making love and what's going on.

singer.Have you done Broadway or have you done musical theater, Ken?

progressive.

It was kind of like YouTube, like a YouTube thing before YouTube.

And so, so we did that.

So we, they said, well, let's see it.

And so we, we, I actually didn't do it cause I was away, but they shot like three or four pieces and then handed it.

And you know, we shot it, we edited it, we acted in it and we handed it to him and we said, this is what we would do if we were on your show.

Um, And they said, great, okay, why don't you do two or three of those or one or two of those per episode.

The game then becomes how do you convey that thought to that person without that person thinking you're a difficult writer?

is what do you feel like do you feel like industry notes have gotten better and

I think it just depends on who it is giving the note.

Really? Yes.

It really does.

We've worked with really great producers who only just plus up what we're doing.

And then I've worked with bad producers who are just trying to do their job or trying to serve their ego or whatever and make it and muck it up.

But I feel like I personally respond to movies and shows and anything that feels like it's coming from a singular vision of some kind where it's like somebody's giving a personal cohesive look at something and comedies where you feel like it's done by committee and the marketing department.

So then what was, so it started with a celebrity pass.

I know.

There's a freedom.

I mean, a lot of times people think that we, you know, a lot of our stuff is improvised.

But we take a lot of pride in writing lines that we think are funny and so we want people to, you know, do them.

And then, you know, if they want to rip after that, that's great.

But this movie is an example of that.

Like, you know, we wrote the script and we thought it was funny and people...

And so

Did you base that on anybody?

What's interesting is, and I think Justin brought this up, this is the second time I've played essentially a toilet king on a TV show or in a movie.

First one I wrote for myself in the movie Wanderlust, where I was Paul Rudd's brother and I owned a big port-a-potty empire in Atlanta.

And then this happened.

It's all based on, my dad was a cesspool cleaner on Long Island.

Really? Wow.

He had a pump truck, and I would work with him.

Your dad's job would be to go pick up shit and take it somewhere else.

For at least a little bit, to show what you can do?

I went to school because I loved acting.

I fell into a group called The State while I was at school that did comedy, and that was my comedy college.

And I learned so much from all of those wonderfully funny people who are still working today, and they're super talented, and they're my brothers and sisters, sister.

And I love comedy.

Um, but I ne- my intention was never to be a comedian.

My intention was to be an actor.

Mm.

Did you base that on anybody? No.

You know, what's interesting is, and I think Justin brought this up, this is the second time I've played essentially a toilet king on a TV show or in a movie.

First one I wrote for myself in the movie Wanderlust.

where I was Paul Rudd's brother and I owned a big port-a-potty empire in Atlanta.

And then this happened.

It's all based on, my dad was a cesspool cleaner on Long Island.

He had a truck and I would work with him.

Your dad's job would be to go pick up shit and take it somewhere else.

Okay

... lit professor.

And I want you guys, you're one of my students, and you say something, uh, bad about Judy Blume.

Let's see if I remember it.

Judy Blume, you know, it's k- it's kind of for kids, isn't it? "Hey, don't knock Judy Blume.

Without her m- " Hey, don't knock Judy Blume.

Without her my younger self would never have been able to decode the random acts of madness perpetrated by that fascinating creature known as the teenage boy.

... shoot here, you know?

You're right that it was.

Big butts weekly.

Like Reader's Digest.

I had the same experience.

My friend Glenn Stockwell's dad collected Mad Playboy magazines.

So we would always have a plethora of Playboys.

Then my other buddy got his hands on a penthouse.

Uh, Ken

Sure.

Like, we wanted to...

Right? That was sort of the, the vibe that we wanted.

But it also, for me, from my perspective, I was like, "Well, this sucks," 'cause, like, we're, we're working for this, for MTV.

And at the time, MTV, you know, we grew up with MTV, and it was like, "I can't believe we're here." But we also felt, I always, I always felt like we were not part of MTV.

And I never knew how many people were watching the show, if people were watching the show.

You know, never got, like, ratings, really.

[laughs]

I want to know, Ken, if you had to walk into a large finserve institution today or a big contact center, what that is starting to think about or scratching the surface on voice intelligence, what is the very first workflow that you would prioritize, and why that specific one?

I would come in, I would be asking questions.

I would be doing a lot of listening.

I found that a every organization has, uh, awareness of where their pain points are, and there are a lot of different things in voice intelligence, uh, that need to be tackled, but the right one for your particular organization is gonna vary.

Where are your losses? Where are your vulnerabilities? What are your concerns? Having said that, there's a couple that are always gonna be in the back of my mind, uh, when talking to clients, uh, prospective customers.

Uh, the ones that usually crop up and kind of the things that they have pressing needs on are either fraud, uh, especially when you've got a customer-facing fraud and you're seeing high volumes or you're seeing upticks of, uh, detected instances.

Uh, with the technology evolving as quickly as it is, for every one detected instance you're seeing, there are gonna be many, many that are not detected.

Instead of just using a giant all-purpose LLM type AI with some instructions, why is it better to use a team of smaller specialized AI models, and then how do we know if this is actually working?

What are your memories of being on that show, and what was it like for you?

It was a dream show to be on.

You never know.

When you get on a show, you don't know what the vibe is going to be like, and every once in a while, you get lucky enough to be on a show where everybody just clicks and gets along on and off screen.

I've been lucky enough to have that a number of times.

Once with The State, Party Down is another... you know, perfect example of that.

Like when I see those people, they're my, you know, they're my dear friends.

said