Last Things First: Wyatt Cenac and Donwill
Episode #390
Wyatt Cenac and Donwill have enjoyed a long friendship and working relationship, with the DJ providing beats and sidekick commentary for Cenac when he had a long-running Monday night stand-up showcase in Brooklyn called Night Train, which begat a Seeso series of the same name. They also worked together on Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas for HBO. And since 2011, the duo has presided over a live movie screening event called “Shouting at the Screen,” in which they provide running commentary and more while watching a classic blaxploitation film. After hitting pause for two years during the pandemic, they have relaunched Shouting at the Screen at a new location in Prospect Park. Cenac and Donwill joined me over Zoom to talk about their comedy collaborations, the joys of guiding audiences through cinematic experiences, and how to balance jokes and silly ideas with weighty subject matter.
The first “Shouting at the Screen” event happened April 28, 2022, at Nitehawk Prospect Park. Future Shouting screenings will take place there in July and October of 2022, and January 2023. Each event also includes a surprise special guest: Past guests have included Jason Sudekis, Sasheer Zamata, Roy Wood Jr, Jean Grae, and Michelle Buteau.
If you’re not already subscribed to my podcast, seek it out and subscribe to Last Things First on the podcast platform of your choice! Among them: Apple Podcasts; Spotify; Stitcher; Amazon Music/Audible; iHeartRadio; Player.FM; and my original hosting platform, Libsyn.
If you’d like to read the condensed transcript of our conversation below, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription!
Wyatt and Donwill, thank you so much for chatting with me. We can start shouting whenever you want, since we are looking at a screen and talking about shouting at the screen right now.
Wyatt: IT’S GOOD TO SEE YOU, SEAN!
Donwill: THANKS FOR HAVING US!
IT HAS BEEN TOO LONG!
Donwill: …30 minutes of that…
Wyatt: Yeah.
So Wyatt, have I even seen you since Problem Areas in person or no?
Sitting front row center for HBO’s promotional event for the media at P.S. 149 Sojourner Truth, which shares facilities with Harlem Success Academy 1 charter school, in advance of season two for Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas, March 19, 2019.
Probably not? No, because I think that went down and — I'm not saying that the pandemic was a response to my show being canceled — but those two things fell on the heels of one another pretty quickly. So I don't know if that was just the Earth, saying hey, we wanted more of this show. Instead, we’ll just give you a pandemic, that's killing people.