“I have to give Paul Rudd credit,” Hader told the podcast, “because I was telling him about the sequence and I said, ‘Oh, I need good music to play when [he] come in,’ and Paul said, ‘Oh, you should have that choir sing ‘Desperado.’” It wasn’t just any choir Rudd had in mind, either, but a children’s choir. Judging by the voices heard in the episode , the Eagles’ cover of the classic song came from The Langley Schools Music Project, which posted a cover of the song on YouTube in 2013. How Rudd knew about this bizarre cover is nobody’s guess, but the comedian thought it would fit the bill for the absolutely Gene’s overblown theatrical “interview” with Vanity Fair.
“That was the Paul Rudd pitch,” Hader confirmed, “and I called him after we recorded it, and I’m like, ‘Dude, that’s so fun.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, does it work?’ and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s so much fun. Thank you so much.'” The filmmaker went on to explain that he initially envisioned more traditional theater-going music, citing the score to “To Kill a Mockingbird” as an example. “You know, the kind of music that plays when you walk into a theater and the lights go down,” Hader explained. But Rudd, of whom it should be noted that he doesn’t even work on this show and appears to have been in conversation with Hader when the idea came up, knew exactly what the situation called for.