Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job didn’t exist yet, but I was obsessed with Tim and Eric videos I’d seen online, before Youtube even existed. After randomly meeting someone from one of of their videos at a cafe, I asked them to be in “Adventures of Power,” naming the Bakir cymbal kingpin “Versatio Bakir” after two Tim and Eric videos called “Versatio.” But they’d just gotten TAEASGJ approved and didn’t have time to shoot with me, so I cast Nick Kroll for a totally different take on the character.

Six months later, I finally got the money to shoot the Chinese restaurant scenes in Newark. So, to find a way to use Tim and Eric, I did what any director would do: I added a “Midnight Cowboy” + masturbation + pervert + Jersey bully + Kung Fu rescue + fight scene (above). Of course! It ended up mostly on the cutting room floor, since it didn’t belong in the story, but it was fun to shoot, and it got them their SAG actor union cards. – Ari Gold