Jorma Taccone’s new Grated project
Comedian and musician follows mom’s footsteps in children’s lit work
Jorma Taccone won an Emmy Award for a video called “Dick in a Box,” directed the Rrated cult favorite “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping” and is known for detonating norms as a member of the music/comedy group the Lonely Island.
But don’t assume the Berkeley native’s new children’s book, “Little Fox and the Wild Imagination,” was a move to create a world that includes his 5yearold son, Wylie.
“The lines were already blurred with all of this,” Taccone tells The Chronicle, with a laugh. “I mean, Wylie is the baby in ‘Popstar,’ when we cut to Conner4Real at 6 months old drumming . ... We were propping up his head over a green screen and then we cropped him on to someone else’s body playing drums. That was his first paycheck. He got $125.”
The family affair continues on Saturday, Sept. 26, for a “Little Fox” virtual event with Berkeley bookstore Mrs. Dalloway’s, where Jorma Taccone is scheduled to appear with his father, theater director Tony Taccone. (Wylie, whose creativity inspired the book, may make a cameo as well.)
“It’s a little bit like the circus,” says Tony Taccone, whose father and grandfather were also artists. “It does feel like there’s a tradition that’s inherently in the blood.”
Jorma Taccone created the Lonely Island with Andy Samberg and Akiva Schaffer, two friends he met at Willard Middle School in Berkeley. They broke through with the early2005 “Saturday Night Live” digital short “Lazy Sunday,” and a string of viral hits on the show, including “I Just Had Sex,” which appeared on Lonely Island albums as well. Jorma Taccone directed the “SNL” spinoff “MacGruber” in 2010, then codirected “Popstar” with Schaffer in 2016. The Lonely Island continued its formatureaudiences output with last year’s “The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience” on Netflix, a surreal/ comic visual poem that reimagined Oakland A’s players Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire in the 1980s.
But Jorma Taccone says he has always connected with children’s literature, inspired by his mother, Suellen Ehnebuske, who worked with Berkeleybased Peaceable Kingdom, which makes gifts and interactive games for children.
“Growing up, my childhood was surrounded by graphic design and going to her office and seeing all the cool different children’s books,” Jorma Taccone recalls. “That world has just been so kind, and what it’s putting out in the world is so sweet, and I just think doing great things for kids.”
At his mother’s suggestion, Jorma Taccone coldcalled Dan Santat, hoping the author and illustrator might give him some advice. Santat, whose “The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend” won the 2015 Caldecott Medal for most distinguished picture book, signed on to illustrate and brought Taccone into his camp at Roaring Brook Press in New York.
Jorma Taccone and Santat share a madcap fundad energy that’s infused in the book, which starts with Little Fox coming home after a bad day at school. Little Fox and his father use their imaginations to go on an actionfilled adventure (with an ice cream angle) that ends with a tribute to reading and father/son bonding, all with a heavy improvisation comedy vibe.
Jorma Taccone says the foundation of “Little Fox” was a reallife quote from Wiley, who as a younger child told his dad, “Now I will put you in a mail truck and throw you in the ocean, and a shark will eat you all gone!”
“What a great thing to say,” Jorma Taccone says. “Why a mail truck? Why throw me in the mail truck first, and then have a shark eat the mail truck? I just love that kind of kid logic.”
That line, with a dizzying illustration to match, is in the new book.
Jorma Taccone splits his time between Brooklyn, N.Y., and Berkeley, often taking over child care duties while his actress/director wife Marielle Heller — a fellow Bay Area native — is working on a new project. The family traveled to Pittsburgh when Heller filmed “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” (starring yet another Bay Area star, Tom Hanks) and to Germany where Heller costars in the upcoming Netflix limited series “The Queen’s Gambit.” Their second child, a daughter, was born in August.
During a recent chat with The Chronicle, Jorma Taccone takes the Zoom call from his mother’s Berkeley home, where the air quality is at an alarming 305. “Now it’s dropped to 304,” he updates midinterview. “That’s only like (our baby) is smoking three packs of cigarettes, right? So that’s pretty good ...”
Among his pandemic activities with Wylie: building a colorful scraper bike, inspired by the Trunk Boiz video “Scraper Bike.”
Jorma Taccone’s default is selfdeprecating humor, calling the children’s book his “penance” for putting “Dick in a Box” in the world. When it’s pointed out that the digital short featuring Samberg and Justin Timberlake won an Emmy, Taccone reveals the award on a shelf behind him. (More family connections: That particular statue actually belongs to his brother, Electric Guest musician Asa Taccone, who was a cosongwriter on the track. Heller’s brother Nate Heller scores her films, and Heller’s sister Emily, a comedian and writer for HBO’s “Barry,” plays the convenience store clerk in “Lazy Sunday.”)
Tony Taccone says he wasn’t expecting his son to write a children’s book, but it makes sense. He says part of the genius of the Lonely Island is taking something that’s risque and adding a sweetness.
“They’re dealing with material that in other hands it would be volatile,” the elder Taccone says, “and they manage to make it charming. It’s almost like Rrated family humor. There’s a gentleness about that.”
Separately, Jorma and Tony Taccone praise each other lavishly. (“Jorma keeps challenging himself,” Tony Taccone says. “He keeps finding ways to make himself afraid and excited at the same time.”)
And yet both predict the afternoon virtual conversation supporting Mrs. Dalloway’s will devolve into an entertaining giveandtake, with Jorma in the crosshairs. The event is free, with donations accepted to the store, which is selling signed copies of Jorma Taccone’s book.
“He’ll probably bring up some stuff I probably don’t want him to,” Jorma Taccone says. “I think he’ll probably talk about how I did graffiti and he was always worried about me. You will certainly get our family vibe.”
The firsttime children’s book author is quick to point out that he thinks “family vibe” is a good thing.
“There’s kind of no better way to continue the relationship that you built on, than working with your parent or brother or your family members,” Jorma Taccone says. “I think it’s a really nice way for us to all stay connected.”