They eventually settled on “Silly Putty Pac Man ghost” and “Darth Vader Pez dispenser,” though the song still took them a total of five months to write, Lindhome told the Guardian during a phone call from Los Angeles.
“Sometimes things will just come to us,” Lindhome said. “It will be quick. We’ll write it in an hour and then maybe rewrite it the next day. And then sometimes it’s a five-month process.”
Clearly, Garfunkel & Oates are serious about their dick jokes.
“I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if we had a Nixon reference, followed by Watergate, followed by Spiro Agnew, followed by Lyndon Johnson?’” Lindhome said, remembering the inspiration for one of the verses of “I Don’t Understand Job.” “And then you spend like three days on those lines.”
But despite their current dedication, Garfunkel & Oates was never in either of the performers’ career plans. Both Lindhome and Micucci moved to LA from the east coast (Lindhome from Portville, N.Y. and Micucci from Nazareth, Pa.) to pursue careers in acting. Since then, Lindhome has appeared in films such as “Million Dollar Baby” and the remake of “The Last House on the Left,” while Micucci is best known for her ukulele-playing character Stephanie Gooch on “Scrubs.”
They were first introduced at the Upright Citizens Brigade improv theatre in 2006, where they were “going to see a friend’s show so we met in the audience and became friends really quickly,” Lindhome said.
A few years later Lindhome wrote and directed a short film for the two of them to star in, decided to turn it into a musical and asked Micucci to co-write songs with her. And so Garfunkel & Oates was born.
“Acting was always the primary focus,” Lindhome said. “[Garfunkel & Oates] kind of just unfolded. And once it did unfold, some people thought we fell into it. Which is true … But then after that we were like, ‘We’re really going to do this!’ and we really worked our asses off for this thing.”
Since then, Garfunkel & Oates has racked up millions of views on YouTube for their bitterly sweet, ukulele-laced songs, caught the attention of CNN (for their pro-gay marriage video, “Sex With Ducks”), performed on “The Tonight Show” and landed monthly gigs at Upright Citizens Brigade — making them staples of the LA alternative comedy scene.
Most notably, the duo signed a contract with HBO for a pilot show. They’re currently developing the script, but “things just take a lot longer than we thought,” Lindhome said.
They’ve envisioned it as the female version of “Flight of the Conchords ” — or “Glee with dick jokes,” as Lindhome has taken to describing it.
“I think it’s kind of like an extension of our stage show, where it’s two single girls in LA trying to make it,” she said. “But it’s us like five years ago, so we aren’t recognized yet or getting paid at all.”
For now, they’ll continue turning the subjects of their girl talk into matter-of-fact songs like fan-favorites, “Pregnant Women Are Smug,” “Go Kart Racing (Accidentally Masturbating)” and “This Party Took a Turn for the Douche.”
But not every subject can be made into a hilarious-ukelele jam.
“People give us song ideas all the time, and we’ll consider them, but they don’t realize that it has to fill out three minutes,” Lindhome said. “Facebook, blind dates, parents, holidays — you name it and it has been brainstormed and rejected by us.”