Full disclosure: Over the last two years, I’ve taken improv comedy classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. Providing much of the inspiration to do so are comedy teams like the defunct Respecto Montalban, whose members have gone on to appear on even greater stages, TV, film and radio.

Two Respecto alums—Rob Huebel (above left), who played one of Larry David’s many nemeses on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and Paul Scheer (above right), who tried to pull rank as “head page” on “30 Rock”—found a new team a couple of years ago. With stand-up comedian Aziz Ansari (above center), who played the anti-Australian fruit stand owner on “Flight of the Conchords,” and writer-director/Pelham High School grad Jason Woliner (pictured right with friend), they formed Human Giant, whose TV show of the same name is the most consistent laugh-out-loud sketch comedy show on television.

The first season of “Human Giant” arrives on DVD on March 4, exactly one week before Season 2 launches on MTV. In addition to hyping the show with teasers, bloopers and other kinds of mayhem via their entertaining production blog, they’ve just launched a nationwide promotional tour.

As a massive fan of the show, I was thrilled to conduct an exclusive 15-minute phone interview with the on-camera trio late last month and with Woliner a few days later. Although I’ll profile Woliner in a story to run in The Journal News in the near future (UPDATE: Here it is!), I figured it’d also be fun to post highlights of my interview with Huebel, Scheer and Ansari in the meantime.

That interview, which follows, has been edited for clarity, but not really for length. There’s very little I wanted to cut, and thankfully blogs allow for ridiculously long transcripts. I figure if you’re a fan, you’d appreciate the longer ‘view, right?

Read ahead to find out how the trio really feels about Woliner, the “worst moment” of Scheer’s life, the legitimacy of the demand for 1 million Web hits during the group’s 24-hour MTV marathon, the dead body and wig counts for Season 1, and the group’s ongoing(?) feud with former “The State” cast member Michael Showalter.

Chris Serico/Remote Access: Jason is obviously the fourth and off-camera member of Human Giant. Other than serving in directorial capacities, what does he contribute to the group?

Paul Scheer: I think that we are all equal. Unfortunately, sometimes, just because Jason doesn’t get a picture on the front or whatever, people don’t know that he’s a part of the group. But with everything, he’s integral. I would almost say that he brings more to the table than any of us because he sits there and edits it and does all that sort of stuff. He puts in probably more time than we’ve ever put in on the show.

Rob Huebel: He definitely logs more hours than we do, for sure. And he’s also a really great writer. The way we do it is we get in a room together and then we have some of our friends come in—other comedians and stuff—and we all just try to come up with ideas. And Jason’s one of the strongest at that, too. He’s definitely got really great ideas.

Aziz Ansari: You really can’t understand how much Jason brings to the group. He’s been there with us from the start and he’s been essential in defining how our videos are presented, the aesthetic, the way they look and feel. For all the choices he makes—the music and the way he shoots it and all that stuff—the videos would be nothing without his touch on it.

Paul Scheer: Stylistically, he has definitely helped format what the group is.

Rob Huebel: All that said, I will say that he is an abusive person. And I don’t appreciate getting bit in the face and the neck when we’re on set.

Chris Serico: I’m sorry to hear that. We’ll be sure to give that (story) full play. Was Shutterbugs inspired by Jason’s previous career as a child actor?

Aziz Ansari: You know what’s crazy? Jason, when we first met him, he kept things pretty close to the vest. He didn’t even tell us he used to be a child actor when we were making Shutterbugs. He didn’t reveal that until we were making “Illusionators.” And we were like, “Whoa. You never thought to bring that up when we were doing ‘Shutterbugs’”? And then we just started finding out nugget after nugget of how he was in “Weekend at Bernie’s”? and then how he almost was in “Home Alone” or “Cop and a Half” and all these crazy movies.

Paul Scheer: He was in a Tupac Shakur movie (“Bullet”). It was really funny because we were shooting “Illusionators” and we were out in Las Vegas, and we had been shooting for like 15 hours straight—like some ridiculous amount—and we were on our last legs. We all went out to get some food, and then all of a sudden, Jason starts poppin’ out these stories. And it was just like, “What do you mean you did” this and this? And then he’s like, “Oh, yeah, and I also traveled as a magician.” “A magician? What?!” He just has the most interesting life and I always tell him “Don’t tell us everything yet”? because when we have been overworked, he always tells us these little nuggets. He’ll be like, “Yeah, Chris Columbus and I used to breakdance together.”

Rob Huebel: He was on a TV show (“Shining Time Station”) with Ringo Starr, we found out.

Jeff Anderson, PR guy: Sorry, guys, to jump in here but I just got a copy of the DVD today and I was able to watch a little of it and I saw that there was a little tribute to Jason’s career as a child actor on the extra footage: “Grandpa.” I watched the whole thing and thought, “How far is this going to go?” Pretty interesting.

Aziz Ansari: There was a shot, it was an “Illusionators” sketch from the first episode where this little kid just happened to—it was the one when we were bringing back the grandfather from the dead, it’s Rob’s father (brought) back from the dead—and this little kid just has to look up and go, “Grandpa?” Jason made the kid go “Grandpa?” and it seemed fine, and then he said, “Why don’t do a couple more takes so we can have some options” or whatever, and (the kid) was like “Grandpa?” “Grandpa?” “Grandpa?” Then after we finished shooting, Jason put ‘em all together and realized he made the kid say “Grandpa?” 64 times.

Chris Serico: That’s fantastic.

Paul Scheer: And I’ll tell you this: The first time through 54th time, not that much difference.

Aziz Ansari: Yeah, some of the takes look identical. The kid is actually a great actor. We use him in this season, too; he’s a really awesome actor. And yeah, he still remembers that. He always goes around saying “Grandpa” on set. …

Paul Scheer: When we play that video for people, they think it’s fake. That’s how similar the “Grandpas” are. They’re like, “Oh, you looped the kid saying ‘Grandpa’ 64 times.” No, we literally shot it. There’s no video (manipulation) there at all.

[Scheer loses his phone connection, prompting a conference call beep.]

Jeff Anderson, PR guy: I heard a buzz, has someone called in?

Rob Huebel: Uh, yeah, this is Dave. Is this the human resources phone call?

Chris Serico: [laughs] …

[Scheer reconnects.]

Chris Serico: What’s the most lasting memory each of you takes from the 24-hour marathon?

Rob Huebel: Oh, man. That’s a really great question.

Paul Scheer: I’ll tell you mine, which was—should I tell him this? My faux-pas?

Rob Huebel: Oh, yeah, that’s a funny story.

Paul Scheer: Basically, it was like 8 or 9 in the morning. We’re almost done. We’re two hours away. We’ve been on air for like 22 hours. And (musicians) Tegan and Sara come to deliver us breakfast, and it was like kind of a white-trash breakfast. And we’re making small talk with them and they say, “So what have you guys been up to?” And I tell them “Oh, we’ve been doing a lot of things for humanity. As a matter of fact, we found some missing kids.” They said, “Oh, really? Like who?” And I say, “We found that missing kid Adam, you know, the one from “America’s Most Wanted”? That famous missing kid, Adam Walsh? Now, I didn’t realize that kid was found decapitated and dead numerous years ago. So, I make the most bad-taste joke in the world. Everyone on set reacts to it. I look over to Aziz and Rob like, “Hey, right, guys? We found Adam!” And they’re like, “I don’t wanna talk about it.” I couldn’t figure out why, because I may have stopped following that story. And then we cut to commercial break and everyone’s like, “Dude, that kid was found dead, man!” I was like, “Oh, no!” And then immediately right on my Blackberry, I get an e-mail like “I’ve been watching your 24-hour marathon, and I would tell my friends about it, but never again because of that distasteful Adam Walsh joke that you made. That was disgusting and wrong.” You can watch that clip on YouTube. It was the worst moment of my life. I’ve never had such a cold sweat pouring down my body.

Chris Serico: Oh, man.

Rob Huebel: I do remember we just completely abandoned Paul.

Paul Scheer: For good reason. You know, I don’t blame them.

Rob Huebel: I had kind of a mental breakdown towards the end. Like, I remember being so tired and kind of emotional. And at the very end, the last thing—I can’t even watch it, I get so pissed off at myself—we’re wrapping things up and Paul and Aziz do this awesome job of tying everything together and thanking the crew and thanking everybody, and that’s clearly the end of the show. And then for no reason, I chime in. And no one else can tell this but me, but I’m just about to cry, because I’m so tired. And I just repeat all the same s*** that they just said in the worst way. So, it just becomes this really long—instead of like a cool one-minute wrap-up, I make it into this five-minute blathering closing. It was really terrible.

Aziz Ansari: The marathon was such a good experience; it’s hard to really boil it down to one moment. That moment with Paul, Tegan and Sara was definitely up there. That was pretty funny.

Paul Scheer: I do remember a funny Aziz moment, too. At one point we had thought about, at a certain moment, we were all going to start wearing smoking jackets and bathrobes or something like that. And for whatever reason, Rob and I were like, “Oh, we’re not gonna wear it.” But if you watch the marathon—we were watching clips of it—all of a sudden, Aziz is in a bathrobe for like a couple of hours and then switches back. It makes me laugh because it was never explained why.

Aziz Ansari: You know why I switched? It was because I spilled a drink on myself. During Cracked Out, I was jumping up and down and I spilled a drink all over my clothes, and so I was like, “Oh, we’re all going to switch into bathrobes in a bit anyway, so I’m just going to switch into mine now.” And that never happened.

Chris Serico: During that marathon, the audience was told your Web site needed to collect at least 1 million hits to guarantee a second season. Was that just a gimmicky façade? It seems like it would be really risky for MTV not to renew it even if you didn’t meet the goal.

Rob Huebel: We were told that it was real. Actually, I do remember at one point getting really resentful of that. It seemed so arbitrary. And in the middle of the marathon it kind of hit me: “Wait a second, we’re doing all this and it’s yet to be determined?” I remember getting really mad about it right in the middle of it. But we were told that it was completely legit. Yeah, so we just tried to barrel through it, you know?

Chris Serico: Wow.

Paul Scheer: Even to add to that, I’ll say that we did not get picked up until after that marathon was over. Contractually, there was no assurances on anybody’s part until that thing was over.

Chris Serico: It was great TV, by the way. We listed it as one of our top moments of last year for our TV blog. Hysterical stuff.

Aziz Ansari: Thanks so much. We have to give it up to MTV on that one. That was their idea. They came up to us and we had a couple of weeks to put it together. We were kind of worried at first. We were like, “Man, can we even do this?” And then it all just kind of fell into place and all our friends really kind of came through. All our friends that came out as guests and as performers. It was a lot of fun for us.

Chris Serico: Did the Writers Guild of America strike have any impact on the production schedule of Season 2?

Aziz Ansari: It didn’t. Because we’re on MTV, so we’re not a Guild show.

Chris Serico: Every Monday (in January and at the start of February), you’ve shown exclusive clips of Season 2 in front of sold-out audiences at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre (in New York). What’s the response been so far?

Aziz Ansari: People have been telling us it’s the greatest comedy stuff that’s ever been produced of all time. No, it’s been great. It’s been fun. That’s the most fun for us, because we work so hard on the stuff and you’re just sitting them watching them edit and you just hope it works because you spend hours and hours on each of these things. So when you screen it and it actually works, it’s really satisfying.

Paul Scheer: People are always asking us, “Oh, man. Is there going to be another season?” They don’t realize that it takes a long time to actually produce a second season. So, we’ve been off of MTV there for about six or seven months now, but we’ve been in production for six. We really only took about a month or two break between Season 1 and Season 2.

Chris Serico: Moving on to Season 2 itself: “Spacelords,” “Lunartics” and “Let’s Go” killed off at least a dozen characters alone. What’s the total body count for Season 1? And can viewers expect more carnage for Season 2?

Aziz Ansari: Oh, man! Someone should do a legit body count of everyone that dies in “Human Giant” and put it on Wikipedia or something. “Aziz” has even died like four or five times, I think. I died in the pilot.

Rob Huebel: I don’t know why we kill each other so much. I think sometimes, we’re like horsing around and it just leads to that. The body count for Season 1 had to be, oh man, I’m sure it’s like—
Aziz Ansari: 50!

Rob Huebel: There are like 80 sketches; I’m sure there are at least 80 deaths in Season 1.

Chris Serico: Is Season 2 more violent?

Rob Huebel: Season 2 may [laughs] be even more violent.

Paul Scheer: You know, we were nervous about it. When we first started writing, we were like, “Man, look at us! We’re not even writing any violent sketches.” But I think we really remedied that in the last week of shooting. We were like, “Oh yeah. We don’t have to worry about that.”

Aziz Ansari: Yeah, last week, it’s like guns and kids getting skilled and all sorts of crazy stuff.

Paul Scheer: All I’m going to say is that thanks to “No Country for Old Men,” one of our characters will be using a cattle gun as a weapon. …

Chris Serico: Paul, how many wigs did you go through in Season 1?

Paul Scheer: As many sketches as there were, there were (as many) wigs. If we did 97 sketches, I would say 97 wigs or hats.

Chris Serico: Aziz, did you get any free subs as a result of the Quiznos embedded ads in Lunartics?

Aziz Ansari: Oh, man. Chicken Carbonaras every day, man.

Chris Serico: Do you guys use actual family members in your clips?

Paul Scheer: Yes, my dad is actually on the show.

Aziz Ansari: Paul’’s dad’s the only real one. Rob’s parents and mine actually hate the show.

Chris Serico: I saw that Michael K. Williams, who plays Omar on “The Wire,” is going to be on, and David Cross. Any other cameos viewers can expect for Season 2?

Aziz Ansari: Bill Hader, Will Arnett, Andy Samberg, Fred Armisen—
Paul Scheer: Brian Posehn—
Aziz Ansari: The Archbishop, Desmond Tutu.

Paul Scheer: Always fantastic.

Chris Serico: Are you guys cool with Michael Showalter after last year’s infamous interview with him?

Rob Huebel: No, I must say we will never be cool with him. [Laughs.]

Aziz Ansari: F*** that guy and f*** “The State”!