Matt Schultz Talks Strip Malls, Sincerity, and His New Podcast The Heartsick Boys

Strip malls, no matter where they’re located in our country, are fairly uniform in their abject ugliness. The beige paint, the random debris littered about, the absolute dearth of atmosphere that is somehow also an atmosphere in and of itself. The main character of The Heartsick Boys, the new narrative comedy podcast directed and written by humorist Matt Schultz, lives next to one such desolate stretch of concrete. The setting is inspired by Schultz’s mom’s home in Philadelphia, which is also near a dire shopping center.

“I love how on the side of the strip malls, all the pipes and the air conditioner stuff are painted the same color as the walls back there, that tan, as if they’re trying to camouflage the pipes, like they’re embarrassed of having pipes, which just makes me laugh. It’s such a weird thing,” Schultz tells me over Zoom.

These sort of mundane yet absurd observations are what make Schultz’s writing so sneakily hilarious. In the first chapter of The Heartsick Boys, our hero Jason (voiced by Schultz himself) waxes lyrical about how grim it is to have his front stoop facing “permanently wet loading docks and dumpsters with one lid open, one lid closed, winking at me.” The podcast—which boasts a brisk run time of just under 70 minutes—follows Jason, an aimless and friendless wind turbine technician who just wants a pal to hang out with. Jason gets much more than he bargained for, though, when he discovers a paper bag full of cash behind the Quest Diagnostics at the strip mall, complete with a note from the mysterious “Heartsick Boys.”

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The story that follows possesses some Coen Brothers DNA, but it’s distinctively, undeniably Schultz. The Philly native developed his idiosyncratic comedic voice while writing at ClickHole, honing in on sad sack characters like the Hamburger Dipshit and incredibly specific observational details.

“I think I’ve just been training my brain for a long time to look at things, like very small observations, and build them out in a way that I hope other people aren’t doing,” Schultz explains, later adding, “I hope no one else has described a light fixture in a shitty luxury apartment as looking like an eye floater. I’ve never heard that, and it excites me that I’ve never heard that before, so I’m going to put it down on paper.” He name checks author Charles Portis as someone whose work regularly has him thinking, “I wish I’d thought of that.” (Not for nothing, the Coen Brothers adapted Portis’ novel True Grit for the silver screen.) As a writer, I know that feeling—the desire to word something in a way that’s novel yet accurate, which is no easy feat. And, in Schultz’s case, it’s also got to be funny.

Schultz’s comedic style has served him well at ClickHole, and he’s also branched out into writing for TV. His scripts have placed in contests and he’s made it on The Black List, but the industry has mostly let him down. Opportunities fall through at the last minute and conversations about projects end up going nowhere. Most recently, Schultz sold a podcast to Team Coco and Audible. He hired writers, they wrote a season of the show together, and they were about to go into production when Team Coco was bought by SiriusXM. It’s the same old story that’s happened more and more frequently of late—the financial bottom line comes first, and actual creativity falls by the wayside. Some Audible Originals were eliminated in the deal, and Schultz’s podcast was scrapped.

Schultz was understandably disappointed, but The Heartsick Boys has given him the chance to explore the medium on his own terms, rather at the whims of a corporation: “I had the story to tell, and it felt funny and interesting to me. It’s just fun to make art for the sake of making something.”

The podcast may be a DIY effort, but the team behind The Heartsick Boys is truly impressive. The voice cast includes Brendan O’Hare, Cory Snearowski, and Rajat Suresh, to name a few—the kind of funny people who you may be used to seeing on your Twitter feed, but are so much more than that. The Heartsick Boys was also produced and sound designed by Will Kempner (2 Dope Queens, Inspector Ike). Schultz never set out intending to voice Jason himself, by the way, but his collaborators insisted: “It’s in your voice. That’s how you talk. You have to be Jason.” And for the record, I agree with them.

The Heartsick Boys is a true group effort, one that makes the listener appreciate Jason’s quest for belonging even more. Jason might be smack dab in the middle of a Coen Brothers movie, but beneath the goofiness is a sincerity in his desire for connection.

“A lot of absurd new comedy is almost ironic, or tongue-in-cheek a lot of the time, knowing that they’re in on the joke. And I think something I’m proud of with this story is, it’s not that at all. This is a really earnest character in a very earnest story that’s trying to say something,” Schultz tells me, concluding with, “I hope there’s a lot of heart and humanity in this guy’s journey to try to make some friends.”

The Heartsick Boys is available now wherever you listen to podcasts.

Clare Martin is a cemetery enthusiast and Paste’s assistant comedy editor. Go harass her on Twitter @theclaremartin.