Keep That Ron and Jeff: The Editors of UNHhhh on the Radical Transparency of Comedy

As the global entertainment phenomenon RuPaul’s Drag Race broke into the mainstream, it spawned a unique online video series, UNHhhh, that quickly pioneered its own innovative approach to comedy and video editing. Initially released free on YouTube, UNHhhh merged a singular style of visual gags not possible before the advent of Photoshop and Google image search with a subversion of the long-held filmic tradition of hiding an editor’s work. Instead, UNHhhh gleefully thrust the relationship between editor and on-screen talent front and center—for chaotic comedic effect.

Revealing their process, the editors behind UNHhhh and the more recent Why R Humans?, Ron Hill and Jeff Maccubbin, sat down to discuss their collaboration, the evolution of editing, and the potential that comedy has for bringing disparate peoples together.

Jake Yuzna

How did you become editors?

Jeff Maccubbin

I went to Maryland Institute College of Art for painting as an undergraduate and then studied film in grad school at the University of Illinois in Chicago. It was more of a video-art type of program, so I started making videos that were to be seen in galleries before jumping over to making more narrative stuff. All I cared about was doing funny things. After moving to L.A., I discovered that most people wanted me to help them edit. After a little while, it became what I did.

JY

Was comedy always present in your work, or did you discover the use of humor while making artwork for galleries?

JM

It was always there, but people frowned on it when I went to art school. I would create videos making fun of the gay community and everyone would say, “I don't know. This feels like it could just be on Saturday Night Live.” I thought that was a compliment until they said, “No. That’s bad.” (laughs) I realized very early on that the art gallery scene was not for me.

JY

Who was your comedy inspiration?

JM

Back then, I was really excited by a comic from Chicago named Ivan Brunetti. But Strangers with Candy is really the basis of my comedic personality. (laughs) Amy Sedaris is like a queen to me.

JY

You went to school with Eric Fensler, who made the G.I. JOE public service announcement parodies that broke new ground in online short-form comedy. Was he an influence on you?

JM

I wasn’t until years after we had gone to grad school together that I learned Eric made those. By then I had found old Jem and Hologram Saturday morning cartoons, and I decided to do my own spin on that approach by dubbing over and re-editing them. That was the first comedy I started doing on YouTube.

JY

How about you, Ron?

Ron Hill

I went to film school and like everyone else in film school I thought I would write and direct films. Be the next Spielberg. Eventually reality set in and I needed to figure out what my job was going to be. I was in a class about ideation, where someone pitched an idea for a film. I got excited about the structure and started suggesting how you could cut this and move this. My professor asked if I had ever thought about being an editor because I was thinking like an editor.

I’d never had someone of authority suggest I do something in that way. I thought: Oh, I’m an editor now. A lot of people in film school wanted to shoot their own projects and not many people wanted to edit them, and I was comfortable with computers. I'm kind of a quiet nerd and was happy to sit in front of a computer all day cutting people’s films together.

JY

Were you also always drawn to comedy?

RH

I had a similar experience to Jeff’s in that most people I went to school with didn’t do comedy. I've always been very quiet, but when I did speak up in group settings, it was usually to make a joke that almost no one heard. Editing comedy is nice because it provides time to work on the humor without the pressure of performing in front of an audience. It is closer to that experience of making a one-off joke to a friend except that everyone can experience the joke.

JY

How did you end up working at World of Wonder? I’m really hoping it was through Craigslist.

RH

Actually, it's kind of better than that. I had an internship where one of the people I worked for had a brother who was the night assistant editor at World of Wonder. The brother recommended me for the job, even though we'd never met. He told them, “I love Ron, Ron's great.” Later, he texted me and said, “They are going to interview you and ask you if you can do these things. Just say yes.” So, I did like he said and got hired as the night-shift assistant editor.

JY

Assistant editors usually are the grunt work of post-production.

RH

It's not creative at all, it's all technical stuff.

JY

How did you make the transition to more creative work?

RH

I knew I wanted to edit, so I told our producer, Pete Williams, that I'd edit anything. I'd do it in my spare time. He was nice enough to give me a break to start editing some of the company’s YouTube shows, like Fashion Photo Review. Some of what I was doing had comedic leanings. The editor who did the first nine episodes of UNHhhh, Chris Smith, was out of the office for a week. He’d already started doing that editing style of UNHhhh that was really specific to him—adding images and text to elaborate on the stories Trixie and Katya [the drag queen duo Trixie Mattel and Katya Zamolodchikova who star in UNHhhh] were telling. The show already had a reputation for creative editing.

Pete asked if I could work on UNHhhh while he was gone, so I looked at the previous episodes and immediately thought “I have to work on this. I have to take what Chris has been doing and run with it. This might be my only shot.” I threw the kitchen sink at it, and everyone loved it. After that, Chris and I would split up each episode and do them together. It became more of a collaborative process.

JY

Those early episodes of UNHhhh created a new and unique style for comedy and editing in general. You can see its influence, not only in online videos, but increasingly in television and feature film. What was influencing how you approached the editing in the early days?

RH

Mostly, we were trying to push our approach further. We didn't have much time to edit things back then, and we didn't have many resources, like images, we could pull from. The style was based on “What can I do extremely quickly with no resources?” (laughs) That is where things like the use of text to emphasize things came from. If Trixie or Katya said a word, you could do wordplay on that word. It was a way of adding a laugh without needing much to generate it. Jokes like the drag queens say one thing and then the editing takes a misunderstanding of what they said and run with it.

It was more about drawing inspiration from what had already been established. I definitely wasn't basing it off of anything other than previous episodes.

JY

Editing for online videos is a unique way of creating comedy because you don’t have a live crowd, test audiences, or development executive responding to the joke. How do you tell if it has landed?

JM

I think that is a big reason two editors work on the show. Most of the time when I’m editing, I’m trying to make Ron laugh.

RH

And our producer Pete, too. When Chris and I were editing the very first episodes, we had editing suites next to each other. Pete would come watch my half of the episode and he'd laugh. Then he’d go next door to watch what Chris had done, and I could hear him laugh through the wall. I'd be like, “Oh God, did he laugh that much in my half?”

Having two editors early on established this dynamic of trying to make each other laugh and bouncing [ideas] off each other: Jeff did this cool thing technically that I hadn't thought of. How can I apply that to mine? It wasn’t about showing the other person up. Instead, it was a competitive collaboration that applies to the technical side and the humor. We were constantly pushing the boundary of how much is it OK for the editor's voice to shine through. Over time the editor's voice became more and more prominent.

JY

The traditional approach to being an editor is for your work to be invisible to the audience. Did you ever encounter pushback to having your voice as editors so prominent?

RH

It always felt natural. For me, it came from a place of being shy. Initially people came to the show for Trixie and Katya. Their dynamic was so unique and they're so funny together that I think as editors we were always conscious of not stepping on their dynamic.

JY

How did you join the team, Jeff?

JM

My favorite drag queens were Trixie and Katya, and I was watching UNHhhh. All my friends kept saying, “This is like your sense of humor. You should edit the show!” I thought, “I should edit the show.” (laughs) I had some friends who knew drag queens, so I asked them if they knew any producers at World of Wonder. One of them had the producer Pete's email, so I emailed him.

I was really lucky because I happened to email right when Chris and Ron started editing The Trixie & Katya Show on VICE TV. [The Trixie & Katya Show aired on VICE TV for one season]. They needed someone to be the editor of UNHhhh. It was just luck and perfect timing.

JY

Were you nervous to start working on a show that you liked so much?

JM

Definitely. When I started, I wasn’t looking to do my own thing. I felt that I needed to honor this quirky style they had already created. Honor the inside jokes. Keep the right song and sound bites. As I got more and more into the work, it started to expand.

JY

How would you describe the style?

JM

It's weird because other people say, “Hey, we need this to be edited like UNHhhh.” It has become its own adjective. (laughs) That adjective describes this haphazard, text-heavy, graphics and joke-heavy style.

RH

It's a nonsensical photo-montage comedy. It is just a weird mashup.

JM

Even with the nonsensical style, we've had other people come in and try to edit the show, but they don't get it. I tell them, “No, you can't do that. That doesn't make sense.” They say, “What do you mean it doesn't make sense?” (laughs)

There is a certain approach where some jokes have to pay off and others shouldn't pay off. A lot of it is knowing when to step on Trixie and Katya’s toes and when not to. When we’d bring other people in, they would just go too crazy to the point where they would step on the actual jokes that Trixie and Katya were saying. It is a tricky thing.

RH

If you make a joke on top of something they're saying, there usually has to be a connection in logic to what is being said. That is what makes it funny. You need to be able to backtrack to the genesis of your joke. If it is too difficult to figure out that connection for the audience, then it becomes distracting.

JY

Have the changes in YouTube censorship affected your approach?

JM

I think if YouTube was the way it is now, UNHhhh probably couldn’t have happened. When Ron started on the show, YouTube was such a free-for-all. The censorship and monetization of videos wasn’t like it is now. YouTube is clearly aiming its focus on kids and family-friendly content. A show about two drag queens talking about hook-ups and Contact [the 1997 film starring Jodie Foster] jokes doesn’t exactly fit into that.

World of Wonder also gave us all the freedom to do whatever we want. I think that's where that magic really came from. There weren’t a lot of people looking over our shoulder at every single thing we're doing. We don't have a ton of producers analyzing every single joke we do, which I think is the problem when you get to more television comedy. There are so many producers putting their hands into what you are doing, and a lot of the creativity ends up getting lost. I don’t think UNHhhh’s style could happen in that environment. What do you think, Ron?

RH

I've edited a little bit of TV outside of when Trixie and Katya went to TV, and there have been a couple moments where the producers say, “It'd be really great if we could add something funny here.” I would add about 1 percent of what we do on UNHhhh, like an arrow pointing something out on screen with a sound effect, and the producers will say, “That’s great. We should do more.”

After you start to do that, people farther up the food chain start to get uncomfortable. I can't think of many other instances besides YouTube where the editor's voice is really present. I think people aren't really used to seeing that in television and in films. It is funny because editors always do have a voice. We’re always deciding what to keep, what to cut. Editing is really powerful, but if you put something in the scene that reminds the people watching there is an editor involved, that's when it starts to freak out more traditional people.

JY

Do you think there is a generational gap between those who are and are not OK with acknowledging that there are editors and full teams behind the scenes that create what is presented as reality? For instance, how much of reality TV or content produced for social media is mediated and crafted?

JM

I think so and in a way it's meta for us because as editors we are tipping our hat. It’s a different approach than what is traditional, where the editor's job is to hide. The editor’s work shouldn’t disrupt the fantasy that the production is creating so that the viewer loses themselves in what they are watching.

Instead, we’re purposely trying to have the viewer not just fall into the story. It is a tricky thing, though, because if done wrong it comes across as very disingenuous. That is why not everyone can edit in the UNHhhh style. Sometimes when the subject matter is not interesting, they think they can make it interesting by doing this style of editing. It doesn’t work. You need to have the genius of Trixie and Katya. You need the right kind of personalities and humor in the footage to begin with. You need that energy.

RH

A lot of times people say to us, “Oh, I shot something that is not that interesting. Can you do UNHhhh editing and make it good?” That isn’t going to make it better.

JY

UNHhhh does have this unique form of brutal honesty that is really inviting to the viewer. Whether it's Trixie or Katya calling out to you to keep something in the edit, you are making jokes about them in the edit, or even just seeing Pete and the behind-the-scenes production, as someone watching, you begin to feel that you really know these people. Like you are a part of the gang. Did you consciously try to create that kind of feeling in the viewer?

RH

I think it was a natural extension of Trixie and Katya being so honest with each other. A lot of the stories they're telling are really personal and don’t make them seem like the smartest or least disgusting person in the room. (laughs) But they make each other laugh with their stories, and in a way, they are really, really open. That allows for the editor to come in and join in the fun. We can poke at a particularly stupid or silly thing they did because they also laugh at the joke. They are just so honest and secure in what they are saying. That kind of honesty is inviting on a personal level.

JM

If you just hang out with Trixie and Katya with no cameras rolling, it's the exact same. There isn't a performative thing that they put up when they start filming. It is how they have conversations all the time.

JY

It almost feels old fashioned, like documentaries from decades ago when the subjects being filmed forget the camera is even there. There isn’t the performativity so many people consciously or unconsciously slip into when put in front of a camera today. Another unique thing about UNHhhh is how you, as the editors, even appear on camera, like when Ron let Trixie and Katya look through his dating profile. That transparency and openness are something I've never seen before.

RH

That was a really cool opportunity, but also a little nerve-racking. Because one of the reasons I chose editing is that production stresses me out, around all those people. Editing was a way to be behind the computer. I grew a little bit bolder when people started to notice and appreciate the editing.

For that episode, I specifically chose things about my online dating persona to show them. Things that would be the funniest and the weirdest. It is all very real, and I didn't manipulate anything, but I still had to pick the weirdest things about myself that people would enjoy. Every single person is weird, and it's about appreciating the humor in that.

I also think there's something in feeling like someone else shares their specific comedic taste. The things that resonate the most strongly are things where we’re not sure if people will get the joke. Like, I don't know if people will get this reference. One thing I've learned is that people love a reference. People love thinking: Oh my God, someone else is into this, too. People love feeling like there is something very specific they are a part of. It makes people find a strong connection to what we’re all up to.

For instance, I’ve made a lot of jokes in UNHhhh about the movie Contact with Jodie Foster, but I’ve still never seen Contact.

JY

It's terrible.

RH

(laughs)

JM

Because the show has gone on for so long, and Trixie and Katya have told so many stories, I think a lot of the diehard fans feel that they are friends with them. Every once in a while, especially if I'm at a DragCon, people come up and just start talking to me, as if we've known each other forever. They are not being rude or anything, but it is a weird experience to have to stop someone and say, “I don't know who you are.” (laughs) It must be a million times worse for Trixie and Katya. But the beauty of this kind of comedy going on for so long is that if someone has been watching all of it, they feel like they are part of the inside joke now.

JY

With you being in the unusual position as editors who are known by the audience, do you get a lot of fan interaction?

RH

Not like Trixie and Katya. You can't walk down the street with them without someone asking to take a photo, even out of drag. They're instantly recognizable. For me personally, that would be too much. We feel really lucky that people do recognize us as the editors. How many editors can you name, much less recognize on the street?

JY

How do you collaborate together?

JM

Every once in a while, Trixie and Katya will turn to the camera and say, “Don't do that, Ron.” Or, “Keep that in.” There are also times where they say, “Hey, actually don't put that in. We didn't need to talk about that person.” (laughs) That communication through the footage is definitely fun.

It's also a unique way of working because we’re geographically removed. We're not on the set with them. Usually when they're filming, we'll come by and say hi because we're friendly. Usually, we're busy editing when they're filming.

They'll film and then we'll be looking at the footage days or weeks later. We'll see that they called out to us, and then we'll build a reference to that in the edit. Trixie and Katya won’t see what we’ve done until it goes live on YouTube months later. But if Trixie and Katya start noticing a trend in previous episodes we’ve edited, it will start influencing what they are doing. For instance, if Katya knows we’ll put in a buzzer if they put their hand out, she will ask us to add one. They know we’ll zoom in on Trixie when she's laughing and add bird noises.

It is a strange version of a conversation that exists out of traditional geography and time. I can't picture another type of show where I'd be able to do that again, have that kind of interaction.

JY

How did Why R Humans? come out of your collaboration together?

JM

Once Chris left to edit other things and Ron came back to UNHhhh, we realized we had a very similar work ethic and were always on the same wavelength. We are so lucky that the head of World of Wonder, Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey, asked to hear our other ideas for shows. We were able to brainstorm and pitch ideas to them, and Why R Humans? is the one that they like the best.

RH

We didn’t want it to be another UNHhhh because that's so unique to Trixie and Katya. But we still wanted to explore the editing style and how it relates to people telling stories. Instead of two people telling stories, how about multiple people? What if we film it remotely because that is easy for us to do as editors? We worked backwards from that and asked: Why would these videos be shown? What is an excuse to have this sort of format? That is when we arrived at the obvious conclusion: all humans are dead and robots are going through these video logs.

JY

Are there avenues in comedy Why R Humans? allows you to try out or explore?

JM

Since the show is half interviews and half a narrative cartoon, we get to write scripts and do the voice acting. It is almost as if we're doing a more reality-based show and a narrative-based cartoon all at the same time. That lets us fire all cylinders off at once.

RH

We keep trying to add to our skill sets with each show we do. For Why R Humans? it was building animated puppets that are controlled by acting in front of a webcam and mimicking our performances. We keep asking ourselves: How can we generate these art assets in new ways? Whether it's like adding something new to the way things are Photoshopped or playing more with space or 3D scans of objects, it’s exciting to really play with different forms of very quickly generated assets. New concepts build from there.

One of the things that's always been fun about this process is that we're taking photos other people took and repurposing them. We’re not only editing the video footage, but we’re also editing all of these images. Not just in the sense of Photoshopping a bunch of different photos to make one, but also changing the context of each of those photos as we place them into a story or gag. The joke is often informed by what kind of photos we can even find. Sometimes you'll try to find an image to make a joke, and after looking at pages and pages of stock photos you just won't find the thing you need. That becomes the moment when you think of a different search term that isn't related at all to what you were trying to do, and suddenly that's the joke. (laughs)

Jeff has talked about this before, but when you're Photoshopping something, it's sometimes the lack of quality that makes it funny. It is sometimes funnier if you can tell that it's obviously a Photoshopped image. There's just something about the absurdity of it.

JM

Yeah. One of my favorite gags in the older episodes was whenever Katya would jump up, she would have a rake and a broom for legs. That was really stupid looking, but it always makes me laugh.

JY

Do you think different jokes or comedy resonate with different ages? For instance, do younger audiences prefer faster jokes? Or more of the failure-of-Photoshop gags?

JM

I'm not sure. We look through comments and we can't really tell what the ages of the commenters care. I think a lot of it comes to references. We'll make some reference to a movie like Clue, and then the older crowd goes crazy. I think a lot of it depends on your attention span.

JY

Is the technology that exists now for disseminating and watching videos affecting the comedy and the audience?

RH

The barriers for the technical knowledge and the amount of money that you need to spend on equipment keep dropping dramatically. People can do so much with their cell phones, and it will be interesting to see how that continues to change us. I think it's going to happen again with A.I. soon. That is fraught with all kinds of moral questions, and it might end up destroying us all, but it will mean we can create faster.

For instance, a long-form video for us is like 12 minutes. That is way longer than TikTok, but has a certain rhythm that is similar. Our speed of the jokes is faster because the episodes are all composed of a bunch of shorter stories. I think it does hold the younger generation's attention span longer because it's a rhythm and a pace that they're familiar with in even shorter-form content.

JM

It's likely because me and Ron probably have A.D.D. (laughs)

JY

Are there any new developments in comedy editing that you’re excited about?

JM

There is a weird disconnect right now between TikTok filters and the actual editing world. (laughs) There are certain things TikTok filters can do in seconds that would take days for us to try and edit ourselves—morphing faces, putting makeup on people, and things that TikTok can do just so easily. I wish that was available in the editing world.

RH

I've seen some examples with video game streamers where they'll take a chunk of a video game stream that has been going for hours, condense it down, and add text and funny zooms. It is specific to video game streaming, but there is something unique in the way they are taking something much longer, distilling it while adding another voice to it.

JY

That seems to continue the trend with comedy always appearing early on when new forms for distributing video appear. Do you have any thoughts on why comedy is one of the first genres to show up?

JM

I think a lot of it is the small timeframes. When YouTube first started, videos had much shorter timeframes than they do now. It's hard to get someone invested in an emotional dramatic story with such little time. (laughs) But with a five-second Vine video, you could get someone to laugh. Comedy is always the easiest way to get someone to remember something. When you really laugh at a joke, it sticks with you. You tell it to someone else or it enters your vocabulary. You get the biggest bang for your buck the fastest with comedy.

JY

Do you feel comedy can change society? Can it push-back or resist homophobia, transphobia, racism, and other forms of hatred?

JM

Yeah, I see comedy is a way for people to deal with hard emotions. It is an avenue to talk about something that someone is uncomfortable with. That can also be a very dangerous thing because there is a very fine line between using comedy to talk about something uncomfortable and using comedy to exploit. For me, the whole reason I got into comedy is that I grew up as a gay kid who was bullied, and the way I got out of being bullied was learning how to tell jokes and make my bullies laugh. For me, in a weird way, I do feel comedy is the way to bring people together.

RH

I think if you're making someone laugh, you can tell stories to an audience they wouldn't otherwise be willing to receive. Maybe it’s a more conservative audience, or by itself the topic would be too scary. I think we just present the absurdity of the human experience, and people prefer to laugh and let live rather than take things way too seriously.▪︎

Watch Jeff and Ron's work on UNHhhh and Why R Humans? at WOW Presents Plus.