Jean Grae On Her New Show At Alamo, Her Favorite TV Judge And Nollywood

Jean Grae and Quelle Chris, looking somewhat tired after putting their show together. via Alamo Drafthouse

Jean Grae stays busy. Between her music career, her frequent appearances at comedy shows like Night Train, her own The Show Show and the Church of the Infinite You, both at Union Hall, there's plenty of opportunities to catch up on what she's doing. And this week she'll add to that resume, with the debut of Dubbled Over at the Alamo Drafthouse. The show is a collaboration with Quelle Chris in which the two tear up TV and movie clips and turn the blended up entertainment into "a one hour experience, designed to feel like you’re flipping through your own TV…only better." We talked with Grae about the process of editing everything together, why she stays so busy all the time, who her favorite TV judge is and just how much, if any, pornography Dubbled Over will contain.

So are you excited for your show? I'm more excited today because last night we did a preview to Night Train and showed a couple clips. You know when you've been sitting with something for a long time, and you're like, "I don't know what this really looks like anymore?" Like are the jokes funny? It was really nice to play it for an audience and everyone had a great time watching it. Hearing people laugh at the places where you want them to laugh is great.

Way better than them laughing at things that were not supposed to be funny. Like that was not a joke, that was just my face, actually. Not a joke. But yeah it was really good. I'm super excited.

So what's the overview of Dubbed Over, exactly? Well, it came from the idea of Quelle and I, pretty much every time we're you know we're watching TV or movies or anything, just kind of sitting there and doing voices or I complain a lot about editing. We both complain about plot lines. The kind of thing like why did that happen, why did this person do this? So, when Alamo said, 'Hey do you think you might have a show to pitch?' I immediately was going to just be like, 'I think we should just watch Nollywood movies,' cause I really love them and I don't think a lot of people are really up on them. A lot of them are just so bad that they're so great.

What movies? Nollywood, like Nigerian independent movies. Some really great ones and then there's some that, as in all genres, you're just these are bad movies. But bad in such a fucking good way. And when I went in to do the pitch I was like, no, and somehow out of my mouth came, 'Well we want to wipe the sound from TV clips and movies and stuff and kind of put things back together, like rearranging a puzzle. Just completely take it apart and start from scratch with just the visuals. Then walked out and was like, 'Nooo, that's so much work why would I have said that.' And they were like 'that sounds amazing let's do it,' and I was like, 'Oh shit.' It's been an immense amount of work that's been extremely fun along the way, and lots of laughing. But we're also pretty much doing the work of a staff, of many TV shows, because they're all so different. There's things that have animation on them, and we went through and shot our original Nollywood thing.

That's impressive. It's very impressive. It's an impressive show, Dave. That's what I would say. Please come see our impressive show. Please, please, please sell out our impressive show.

Is this going to be a monthly thing? No because that would make me want to kill myself. We're going to do it every two months. We both got things going on and his album just came out. We got videos to shoot, and, you know, Quelle does a lot of the commercials for the Show Show that I have at Union Hall, so I've got that and then I've got church. It'd be too much. We've got such a long lineup of ideas that you kind of need some refresh moments. I think two months is pretty good for that.

Did you have any kind of video production and editing background to begin with, or was this like a thing where you guys were like, 'Let's fuck around and see what we make here?' No, because that would have been terrible. We both have experience. I really enjoy the idea of editing. But even so, it was a lot because you're doing it for a whole new format. You're not just doing it for small screen or for film. This is for a giant screen in a theatre and that's very different. And then, a lot of YouTube tutorials. It's kind of like being in the Matrix, where you're like I need to know Kung-Fu in the next five minutes, or fly a helicopter.

Sure, you do it more and more and you become an expert at it. What kind of TV have you been watching that you're like, 'We're just going to dub over all this stuff.' Is it all daytime stuff, is it premium cable? It's everything. It's a mix of old shows— Care Bears and Who's the Boss? and Flipper. Or remaking Maury into Meow-ry with cats. Or shooting a Nollywood clip or Corrine from The Bachelor. Our tastes are very vast and we kind of dip into a little bit of everything when we're watching things. I definitely watch a lot more daytime TV, a lot of court shows and a lot of reality shows as well. I have an issue with those, an issue being that I love them very much and hate them simultaneously, for the entertainment they provide. I don't think we ever complain about watching the other person's guilty pleasures. So, it's picking up all of those new things that you wouldn't necessarily be watching.

I guess that collaborating. You can't just bitch about one person's thing the whole time. Who's your favorite judge? I enjoy watching Judge Faith. I'm not a Judge Judy fan. I would hang out with Judge Judy, but it always make me really anxious because I imagine that someone might take me to court for something, and that would be the person that I would not be able to deal with, because I do not have a good filter. Judge Faith is the Channel 9 court. Not the Divorce Court—I like Divorce Court too, Lynn Toler, she's awesome.

I don't think I know Judge Faith. She's really kind of young, but it's really interesting to watch people deal with someone who's younger, and they always forget to say Judge or Your Honor. There's a dude who came in and was like, 'Hey you're way prettier than you are on TV.' And she's like, 'Sir, we're not in the club, sir. What are you doing? I'm a fucking judge.'

You can't talk to a judge like that. No you cannot.

Extremely inappropriate. I think also both of us when we're working tend to keep the television on, on whatever, as white noise in the background. Especially writing, whether it's writing music or scripts, so you'll notice that.

You don't find it distracting or anything? No. Kind of a thing where you need your brain to be operating in a few different places, and that makes it easier. I can't operate in complete silence. I need a bunch of things to be happening at the same time. And I think that's also what the show encompasses. It moves so fast. It's like hey, it's kind of what the world is, it's not just one thing. You're always surrounded by all these different facets of life and reality that you can't ignore them I think. If you've got Hulu, if you leave it on long enough it starts to go into other shows, and when you come back you're like, 'wait, what? I definitely don't want to watch this.' Like our TV has been trying to force us to watch a very specific episode of Star Trek called "Pen Pals" for about two months. It won't stop doing it, and I'm not sure why, but it really thinks that we want to do that.

Something in the algorithm. Something in the algorithm is like you need to watch this "Pen Pals" episode. None of the other ones. Specifically this. And no, I'm not going to listen to the TV.

I watched the preview, and I thought of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! when I was watching it. Are you a fan of that specific show or Tim and Eric's whole thing in general? We're both very big fans of the show, and their whole aesthetic. I think we're general fans of different kinds of humor, and humor that's not afraid to edit things differently or be be awkward and make you feel uncomfortable. We both definitely enjoy things like that. I think Quelle is more of a fan that I am, not that I'm not a fan, but he's definitely showed me a lot of things they've done, including their movie. Which was something that I said I had to digest over time after I saw it.

The movie's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot, a lot happens. And, if we wouldn't have the issue that it would be impossible to license all these things and do it as a TV show, this would be something that you'd say hey we should pitch this to Adult Swim, it feels like this would live in that kind of space. But because we're doing it in a way where we're not worrying about clearing things and we do it live, we can make an extended version of something and really go crazy with it.

How did the show happen? Did Alamo come to you? No, but that would have been great. It was equally as fast though. Wyatt Cenac and Donwill have that show Shouting at the Screen, and it disappeared for a little while because they didn't have a venue to do it at. They brought it back when Alamo [opened]. And I didn't even know Alamo was coming. It's so interesting that part of Brooklyn is getting so many things and it's changed so much. I was like "There's gonna be a Target and a Century 21 and a movie theater? Okay!"

So I went to guest on a Shouting at the Screen, and when I was there they said they were still getting into their programming and looking ideas for events. And I kind of just brainstormed on it to see what made sense. It had to be original, unique, do something that no one else was doing. I wanted to be ambitious and challenge ourselves, and that definitely happened. I like mixed media, I think both of us really do.

Have you heard from Alamo at all about the show? I'm hoping that they love it? I'm really excited that they were like 'It's great, it's happening' without even seeing it. So, thank you for trusting us. I mean what if it was terrible? That would not be good. Or what if it was just porn, all porn. But, it's not, there's no porn in it.

Will you be there to introduce every episode? Yeah, we'll be there for the first 10 or 15 minutes to give a talk. And I think with every episode that we do there'll be clips, or original things that we're shooting, before we go into it. It's great to have the chance to talk to the audience and make it kind of interactive and give you a little background. For instance there are two American Ninja Warrior clips that we did over. Specifically, because every time we watch it and it's a woman doing a run, they never stop talking about how she's a woman through the entire run. It doesn't matter how great she is or how much of an athlete, they're just like 'And she's being a woman!' and it's like, okay alright. So we kind of redid that one over and then did another one for juxtaposition. A lot of the clips are addressing these social quirks that seem to be getting by and no one is saying anything about it. I have a problem with that, so instead of writing people a letter and being like 'Can you just fucking stop with that shit?' I did this. It was interesting watching other people watch it and be like 'Shit, it didn't even occur to me that this happens so much, but now that you're doing it so excessively I could see how that's fucking wrong.'

Or, giving the background on the Nollywood movies. We shot Beyonce and Rihanna 6, and yes there are five original Beyonce and Rihanna movies. they're all amazing. Nobody actually looks like Beyonce or Rihanna. The music's amazing, the scripts are amazing. Those kind of Nollywood movies do this kind of thing where it's like 'Fuck sound or editing, don't put a lavalier on anyone, don't compose a shot.' Just, who cares. So in shooting our own version it was a really interesting place to go in, to be like 'I'm just gonna let go of all the things that I really want to do. I know i really want to set up this shot or I really want the lighting to be better, but just fuck it, that's not where the joke is.' And we have so much fun shooting it that we're going to continue with that series. Beyonce and Rihanna In Space, Beyonce and Rihanna Go To Jail. Why not just keep them going?

Sure, space is the place that so many franchises wind up when you keep doing them. Yeah, you have to do jail, you gotta do a really scary halloween, you gotta go to camp. Blue Ivy Goes To Camp, I'm thinking. We're having fun with it.

So between The Show Show and the church and other appearances on comedy shows, it feels like you're never not working. Is it because you have this attitude of 'I have to stay busy so that I don't get stuck not doing anything?' Is it some kind of compulsion? I don't know what I'm doing Dave, I do too much. A big dream of mine is to do nothing some time. But, I'm also transitioning out of a career and into doing different things, and I don't like to waste time. So if there's an opportunity or something that needs to happen, I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow or next week or the next year, in the rest of the world, but I do know that I want to live out my fucking destiny. So, there's no time like now to do all of the things. Just fuckin' do them. And also, eating food and paying rent is good. That kind of drives it too. So, if everyone would please come to our hilarious and educational and not-porn show, I could stop bleeding from the eyes and go on vacation one day.

Dubbled Over debuts on Thursday, March 23 at 9:30 p.m. at the Alamo Drafthouse.