Connor Ratliff and James III
Connor Ratliff is a New York-based actor/comedian and creator of the award-winning, critically acclaimed podcast, Dead Eyes. He has appeared in numerous films & TV shows, including The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, Search Party, Orange Is The New Black, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, The Daily Show, Don't Think Twice, Pinball: The Man Who Saved The Game, and the Mean Girls movie musical. You may have also heard him on This American Life, Comedy Bang Bang, or in the audiobook edition of Tom Hanks’ New York Times Best Selling debut novel, The Making Of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece.
James III is a writer, producer, and actor, best known for co-creating and co-starring in Astronomy Club: The Sketch Show. Most recently, he wrote for the 2024 Mark Twain Prize honoring Kevin Hart, The Fairly OddParents: A New Wish, and was a voiceover performer and punch up writer for Good Burger 2. James also voices various characters on Human Resources and City Island (PBS Kids) and has appeared in A Black Lady Sketch Show, Abbott Elementary, and I Think You Should Leave. For Archie Comics, he contributed to Jinx’s Grim Fairy Tales and wrote the recent Bob Phantom (One-Shot) which Screenrant called "genius". James is the founder of Rule of III, Inc. whose inaugural comic book JUNIOR was over 150% funded on Kickstarter and released digitally in November 2023.
Please tell me the origin story of this crazy podcast.
CR: James loves the Jurassic movies, and we had been talking about an idea for a comedy feature involving people running from dinosaurs. But it was the kind of idea that would be hugely expensive, we would essentially be trying to make a movie that is as big as Jurassic Park. So then, we started talking about “what if we did a show where we made really tiny dinosaurs, and it could be an Adult Swim-type thing?” We were thinking the dinos could be little stop motion animated characters, like something out of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Then my Dead Eyes producer Harry Nelson came to me and said Hyperobject was looking to make a few comedy podcasts, did I have any ideas?
Doing it as a podcast, it would be even easier because we can just use music and sound effects to create the dinosaurs, we don’t even need animation. It never really occurred to us that we could’ve made our big Jurassic Park-type comedy as a podcast because by that time we had fallen in love with the idea of secretly making tiny dinos.
How are you two different / alike in real life? How are you two different / alike when it comes to your characters on the show?
CR: The “James” and “Connor” on the podcast aren’t really all that similar to our real personalities – we just sort of made the big choice to have me be the reckless one and James the one who is more anxious about consequences. We leaned into that when we were improvising the pilot and went from there.
J3: I think I would be freaked out to bring dinosaurs back to life but would ultimately be thrilled about it. So, in that regard me James and “Podcast James” are very similar. But outside of that, I’d like to think I am more happy-go-lucky than the character in the podcast.
CR: I am less happy-go-lucky than “podcast Connor.”’
This might expose how little I know about improv but how do you prepare for each episode? Did you world build a little before you started? Did you set some rules? What do guests know in advance?
CR: For the first couple of episodes, we didn’t tell any of the guests what the podcast was called or what the premise was, we just said we were two scientists who had a secret project. We wanted to see what would happen if the guests were completely in the dark about it. But then we started mostly telling people, because we didn’t want it to become repetitive.
The only preparation we really do is to try to come up with a broad idea of who the guest characters might be, and that’s mostly so we don’t end up doing the same kind of character dynamic for multiple episodes in a row. And every now and then, we will think of something that we’d like to have happen and we will plant the seed for that. Like, with Aaron Read, for instance, we knew we wanted him to play my brother, and that he would be dropping by the podcast to promote his band. Usually, it will be even less than that – “do you want to play a neighborhood watch person, or our landlord?” and then the person will pick one and we’ll start improvising.
Often the guests will only know the premise and that our characters live in a duplex. And as far as “rules,” it’s really just that everybody has to actually react as if the tiny dinosaurs are real, because they are real in the made-up world of our show.
J3: I’m saying this and no I won’t do anything about this, but I wish I knew more about science or at least googled a science term or two before we start recording.
And don’t worry about exposing how little you know about improv. I think this podcast also exposes how little I know about improv.
What is your ultimate goal for the podcast? I see there is merch, but not nearly enough. I want a t-shirt. Action figures? Theme park? A movie about the theme park? A podcast about the movie about the theme park?
CR: For me, the main goal is to just keep doing the podcast for as long as it’s fun for us and people are enjoying it. I’d like to imagine that we will do it for years and years and that it will get crazier with each new season. I know we wanna do some live shows, and I really love the idea of it developing enough of a following to tour it as a live show. I also started a Google Doc to start doing some very very preliminary notes for a potential companion book, because I think it’s fun when podcasts have companion books.
But as far as it moving into other mediums, I think we’re obviously open to it – we wouldn’t turn down the chance to turn it into a TV series or movie. To be perfectly honest, I’m super aware that those other things would be more lucrative and also probably less enjoyable/more exhausting. The fun thing about making this the way we’re making it is that we are doing it more or less exactly the way we want to, and I wouldn’t want to move it to a bigger arena unless we’d have a similar level of creative control. Or enough money that I can stop worrying about money.
As far as theme parks go, I hadn't given this any thought but it occurs to me that it would be great to create a pop-up Tiny Dinos theme park with lots of special merch for sale but all of the rides are really small, shrunk down to the size of the tiny dinos.
J3: With the genesis of this podcast being a film idea first and then a TV idea second, I absolutely * NEED* to see Tiny Dinos realized in a form that shows physical dinosaurs. And thankfully, if this just stays as a podcast, we already have that! The animated show promos make me smile. They’re such a fun addition to this process. I just love dinosaurs so much (hahah I’m 12.)
I second Connor’s feelings that anything more than this podcast would be MORE exhausting, not sure if it would ever be enough money to stop worrying about money. I think the only dinosaur property potentially doing that for people is the Jurassic series. And then maybe whoever OWNS Barney?
James you do know this is a podcast now, right?
J3: Am I being TRUMAN SHOW’d right now??? Is this a JURY DUTY situation?!
No, I know it’s a podcast… now…
Also James have you been to Luigi’s in Akron? The mozzarella/salad situation is crazy, right?
J3: LUIGI’S?!?! Blast from the past. I don’t remember the mozzarella salad, but it’s the best pizza I’ve ever had and I lived in New York for 12 years. Yeah, I said it. Start the war. It def makes my top 10 as far as pizza eating experiences go. Maybe even top 5.
What’s a piece of artwork (comedy album, podcast, show, etc) you love so much you wish you made?
CR: The 2000-Year Old Man LP by Mel Brooks & Carl Reiner, one of the funniest things ever made. Also, I think every time I see a Jordan Peele movie, part of me thinks, “it would feel unbelievably cool to be the person who made this.”
J3: Most things. And I know you asked for ONE, but if I could name four: Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, Lovecraft Country, Dollface, and Russian Doll.
What are you most proud of?
CR: Probably Dead Eyes. I was really lucky with the producers I ended up with [Mike Comite, Jordan Allyn and the aforementioned Harry Nelson], who really were the reasons why it ended up being more than a charming mess. Headgum never messed with us, they allowed us to make the show the way we wanted to, and it turned out pretty much exactly as we hoped it might. The 7” record of the song Aimee Mann wrote for the season 3 finale is something I don't know if I'll ever be able to top, in terms of feeling creatively satisfied by the outcome of a project.
J3: In my life, my daughter is almost 2 and I can’t believe it because kids are always trying to kill themselves. Climbing on high things. Putting every manner of object in their mouths (except food.) Throwing their very soft head around with reckless abandon. Just testing the limits of their mortality at every turn.
In my career, I’d say, I started a comic company that nobody asked for. Rule of III Comics. It’s taken a few years to get stuff going but our first issues were released at the end of last year and there’s some cool stuff coming up down the road. Again, no one asked for this. But it exists.
What did you want to be when you were eight?
CR: I wanted to be an animator, or some kind of cartoonist. I didn’t really have the chops to do it at the level you need to be at to do it professionally. We’ve been doing these little animated promos for Tiny Dinos where James and I do sketches and give them to this incredibly talented animator named Jay Marks and he magically transforms our drawings into fully-realized animations. It’s sort of a dream come true, because I don't have what it takes but I have a little spark of something in me, still.
J3: Connor and I are very similar here. At one point, I wanted to be a hybrid of Mel Blanc and Chuck Jones. Who I guess is like a Seth MacFarlane today? Not sure exactly when that started and it never really went away except I don’t illustrate as much as I used to. Getting to work those muscles for the show has been challenging, but greatly rewarding! And given Jurassic Park came out when I was seven, at 8, I definitely had big dreams of being a paleontologist. I could name every dinosaur and collected “fossils” in my backyard for years after that.
What’s a podcast you love that everybody else already knows about?
CR: I'm bad at keeping up with podcasts but right now I'm listening to the Seth Meyers/Lonely Island podcast and really enjoying just listening to them talk.
J3: I don’t really listen to podcasts regularly, but I am a fan of The Breakfast Club (which is true radio lol) and The Psychologists Are In which is a Psych rewatch podcast. I don’t know if everyone knows about that one, but the Psych-Os sure do. You know that’s right.
What’s a podcast you love that not enough people know about?
CR: This is kind of a cheat, but I'm teaching a podcasting class for UCB and some of the ideas are really weird in a good way. I hope they find their way out into the world and people hear them. I'm about to start listening to one called Texas Twiggy, about Shelley Duvall. Oh, wait! I just thought of one: A Place Upstate, by The Cozy Brothers. I recommend it!
J3: When you do comedy, you unfortunately know about A LOT of podcasts that not enough people know about. I got into my friend’s podcast a while back called The Morbid Museum which I guess falls under like true crime? Which I never really dabbled in otherwise, but it deconstructs the history of morbid events, there’s episodes on death masks, burial sites, haunted places, urban legends, goth stuff like that. It’s sick.
Are there too many podcasts?
CR: Yes, but that’s ok. There’s too much of everything now, a person simply can’t keep up and it’s overwhelming. But not every podcast needs to be heard by a million people, and it’s great that so many people get a chance to make one. Back in, say, The Golden Age Of Radio, very few people got a chance to put their voice out on the airwaves. Now, we have this ever-expanding glut of programming with no meaningful barriers to entry, so you can make something that is absolutely unlistenable and no one will stop you. The good news is that there is more high quality stuff than you would have time to listen to if you lived to be a thousand, you just need to know how to find it.
J3: I do more podcasts than I listen to them. So, I don’t think I can have a real opinion on this. But to try to answer this question, I mean, are there too many TV shows? Are there too many movies? What’s “too many” if there’s always something to consume, what’s “enough”? You can’t watch them all, but there’s literally something for everyone and still stuff that needs to be made that haven’t been made. For instance, I love time traveI movies, and I’m the kind of guy that looks at the “if you liked” category on Netflix or whatever, skips to the third or fourth page and watches the lower budget scrappy movie I hadn’t seen yet over watching Terminator 2 for the twelfth time. My hope is podcasts are like that for podcast listeners. You have an interest but no ones talking about it, maybe you need to just scan all the way down to the bottom or skip to another page on your app to find the one you’re looking for “Tiny Dinos” available wherever you get your podcasts.
What’s something about tiny dinosaurs that most people don’t know, but only you know because you are scientists?
CR: There are many things we could tell you here but let's just say that listeners will learn those things as the series progresses.
J3: They teach us new things every day. Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to say what.
What did I not ask you about that I should have?
CR: No, these were all good questions. I'm just very happy to be working with James on this silly, fun show. I hope people will check it out.
J3: You asked about Luigi’s, but didn’t talk about Swenson’s. So, I guess my question to you is, do you NOT know about Swenson’s? Or do you not care about Swenson’s? Are you in Ohio right now, what’s the deal there? Man, I want Swenson’s now.
Thanks, Connor and James!