This Saturday night, on my monthly live talk show Late Night with Alex Falcone (ever heard of it?), I’m interviewing two incredibly talented dudes. Bill Oakley, who is a former show runner for The Simpsons and an executive producer of Portlandia, and Steve Gaynor, a video game designer who worked on Bioshock 2 and Gone Home.

As usual, I want your input on what I should ask them. Suggest interview questions in the comments. And there are still a few tickets left if you want to go. Buy them now an MercTickets.com!

Alex is a moderately attractive comedian and Internet celebrity. He writes about philosophy, robots, travel, and himself.

3 replies on “What Should I Ask Bill Oakley (<i>The Simpsons</i>, <i>Portlandia</i>) and Steve Gaynor (<i>Bioshock</i>, <i>Gone Home</i>)?”

  1. Question #1 is for you: drinking the drinks. When can we enter the Secret Society performance space and buy their amazing drinks without standing around and making all the cool people in the main bar area feel like the nerds have invaded their cool night out? A show or two back we ended up over at the bar on the corner of NE Russell and Rodney, and while entertaining, I regretted my gin & tonic once I saw the options inside the venue.

    Here are some mediocre questions ones…
    Bill:
    – A show runner is kind of like a director, I think. But what does that mean for an animated show. How much do you get to create the story and guide the art versus herding the cats?
    – Alright, so how about those executive producers? Seems like some people just get tacked onto the list and other executive producers do things? Like deal with money, maybe? What do you end up doing in this role with Portlandia? Do you like it?

    Steve:
    These games look really cool but I sort of slid out of gaming since playing Civ4 obsessively on my computer in the late 90s/early 00s. Any thoughts on how to start without spending a kajillion dollars and hours? I have a computer, but no gaming console (and obviously no games).

    Or should I just let it go and stick with annoying the pretty people next door in the bar by discussing the nuances of fantasy literature and D&D?

  2. +1 to “Secret Society is frustrating.” It’s a great little venue space but they need to either close off the formal bar area completely, or don’t have a formal service intermingling with confused venue patrons, i.e. do all bar stuff at the bar.

    With that said, *I* have no problem going to the bar from the venue, but I can see where venue people would be confused and formal service people would be irritated at the constant herd in their little frou-frou beard-by-candlelight sexy parlor room.

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