The Hollywood Reporter (Weekly)
The DIY Charm of Hiking With Kevin
In 2017, Kevin Nealon and his friend Matthew Modine were huffing and puffing their way up a steep grade in Temescal Canyon, a tranquil trail that’s a kind of unofficial backyard for many industry figures on L.A.’s Westside.
Their breathless conversation amused Nealon, so he whipped out his iPhone and started recording. Among the oaks and sycamores, with birdsong in the background, Nealon asked Modine, who first rose to prominence in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket in 1987, which acting roles he had turned down in his career. “He goes, ‘Oh, man. Back to the Future, the Michael J. Fox part. Big, the Tom Hanks part. Wall Street,
the Charlie Sheen part.’ I said, ‘You idiot.’ He laughed.” Nealon posted some clips from their conversation on his Twitter feed, and the videos started taking off.
In an era when TV talk shows seem rarely to yield an authentic or
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revelatory moment, Nealon had unintentionally captured one while out on a hike, wearing a bucket hat and reflective sunglasses. Seven years later, the YouTube show he launched after that walk, Hiking With
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Kevin, remains an appealingly DIY entry in the often overproduced world of celebrity interviews. Nealon, who books, shoots and edits the show himself, has recorded 136 hikes, with guests including Jack Black, Conan O’Brien, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Aubrey Plaza.
“When I hike with these people, they’re really forthcoming,” Nealon says. “You’re outside, you don’t have an audience in front of you, you don’t have these bright lights. As you’re hiking, you become more casual and open and you have your endorphins going.” Now in his fourth season, he has shows on the way with Bryan Cranston and Nick Offerman, and has upped his production value by buying a drone. He wears sweats or cargo pants, Merrell hiking shoes and sometimes a pair of snake guards on his shins that his wife bought him after one too many rattlesnake encounters. “Some of the charm of the show is, it looks amateurish,” Nealon says. “People go, ‘Oh, that’s like what I do.’ ”
Nealon tries to tailor his hikes to guests’ needs. David Spade, for instance, would hike only if there was no grade, so Nealon scouted a flat walk in L.A.’s Sullivan Canyon. “It had to be between rush hour traffic. And I had to have snacks for him,” Nealon says. “We’re hiking along. There was about a 1 percent incline. And he said, ‘Are we going uphill now?’ I said, ‘Oh, Jesus. Come on.’ ”
Nealon wanted to be a forest ranger before he became a comic, ultimately spending nine years as a castmember on Saturday Night
Live. While he was on Showtime’s Weeds, he used early morning hikes to memorize lines, once encountering a mountain lion and rolling up his script as a potential weapon (he didn’t end up needing it). “I write material when I’m hiking,” Nealon says. “I meditate. I get over grief. I get a lot of stuff done.”
($20 million) and Netflix ($100 million).
The first, a disaster, ended early, and the latter isn’t expected to be renewed because neither is delivering the goods, save one reportedly fraught streaming doc series. Next time, the Sussexes should take a page from the playbook of L.A.’s homegrown royals. The Kardashians and Jenners might prove that fame isn’t picky. But they’ve also shown time and again that to earn big bucks on the back of ubiquity … well, you’ve still got to hustle.