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Entertainment

Tim & Eric Tours are Dudes Only

If you're dead or have zero sense of humour, you may not know or care that Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim are bringing their Awesome Show to Australia this week (and to "Zealand" a little later on).

If you're dead or have zero sense of humour, you may not know or care that Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim are bringing their Awesome Show to Australia this week (and to "Zealand" a little later on). If none of that applies, you're probably as excited as we are to see the guys who invented the word "shrim!" perform live on stage. We called Eric after his final rehearsal for the tour. Here is that call.

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VICE: Hey Eric, how’s it going?
Eric Wareheim: Good! I hope this call isn’t costing you a lot of money.

No, the reason I took so long to call you is I was buying Skype credit. We can talk for hours.
Oh, so you’re using Skype, but to my phone?

Yeah.
I gotta get into that technology.

It’s like, three cents a minute.
What? When we toured England and Dublin last year, I’d just started dating this girl and I couldn’t figure out Google Voice or Skype and I was charged like $1,700 just for talking to her.

That sucks! You could have just taken her with you.
I know, but it was too early. Also girlfriends aren’t allowed on our tour. It’s kind of like a dude only thing because it’s a lot of fucking work, to be honest.

Actually, someone was telling this story the other day about a friend being in a diner in L.A. and seeing you and Tim having a meeting. He was really excited to see you guys but the crux of the story was that you seemed really serious. Are you guys all work in real life or is it just in meetings?
Ha, I love this story. We're just two regular guys, we love to have fun. When we do our artwork, we're very wacky, but he has a wife and I have a serious girlfriend. We have real lives. I have cats. And when we're doing business, we're for real. Our lives aren't the awesome show.

That's probably a bit disappointing I guess.
Well first of all it's never good to meet your idols because they're never as fun as you want them to be. The best thing about our show, I think, is that people don't know what's real. People don't know who we really are. A lot of the time I think it's best to keep it that way.

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OK. So are you ready for the tour?
We’re super excited man, we had our last rehearsal just now. It’s gonna be a good show; a lot of it is Australia specific bits.

Oh yeah?
Well, not a lot… we have a whole bit of it that going to be about Australia which should be kind of funny.

What’s a rehearsal like for you guys? Is it like, dress rehearsal?
Yeah, I think it’s six costume changes, so we have a lot of props and costumes and some characters from the show. We’ve done a couple of these bits before, so it’s mostly  remembering them. Also, it’s so physical that it’s almost like a workout. There’s a lot of stretching that goes on and a lot of vocal exercises. There’s a lot of singing. It’s really silly. We laugh that we would actually take this show on the road.

And to Australia. You obviously have a lot of fans down here, as well as everywhere. When did that dawn on you?
It started out with Email, like before Twitter. Email to our website. We also sold tons of stuff to Australia, t-shirts and stuff. We were always like, “how did it even get down there?” And then friends and bands from Australia would know our stuff inside and out. The costume designer from our movie is also from Australia, she actually helped set up Good God, that club in Sydney. She was like “listen, I’m a huge fan, but all of my friends are like freakazoids.” We like travelling and hanging out in new places. And also, when we play smaller cities, those are the best shows. The experience is just so much more energetic, and that’s what we hope to find in Australia.

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Any ideas on why you’re so popular with Australians?
I don’t know much about Australia, but I feel like because it’s so far away, it’s sort of part of the club that Tim & Eric is. Everything’s a little skewed, in a way.

That’s a nice way of putting it. And the same probably goes for New Zealand. Are you excited about that part of your tour?
All I know is that I’ve just booked an amazing fjordland state park tour, which is taking a fucking boat around some of these fjords and Lord of the Rings country, which I’m so excited about. We also know the Flight of the Concord guys, we think they’re really nice guys. Other than that, we just know about the nature in New Zealand. It’s funny, since we’ve done these tours we’ve just met so many awesome people that want to show us cool places and we’re super stoked to check it out.

Amazing. Hope you enjoy it. By the way, what else have you got coming up aside from touring?
We have a new movie coming out called “The Comedy”, which is not a comedy. This Director named Rick Alverson made this movie starring Tim. I’m in it, James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem’s in it and all these other great people are in it. Neil Hamburger’s in it. And it’s a serious, fucked up movie.

That sounds cool. Better let you go pack. See you in Melbourne.
See ya.

Catch Tim & Eric live, starting from this Saturday in Melbourne. For dates and tickets, head to timeanderic.com