Bob Odenkirk announced he has canceled his planned appearance at Freedom 250, and his longtime partner David Cross told reporters at the Tribeca Festival that he will take Odenkirk’s slot — “and what I’m going to do is mock your old bit, Milli Vanilli Ice. I’ll be doing that,” Cross said.
The exchange came during the premiere of Bob and David Climb Machu Picchu, the new film that follows Odenkirk and Cross as they travel across Peru to Machu Picchu. Odenkirk opened the conversation by admitting the lineup shuffle had become a small ordeal. “Happy to do this. I don’t know about David, but I was busy this morning canceling my appearance at the Freedom 250,” he said, before laying out how his spot in the show moved around after other acts changed.
“The bottom line is, I was supposed to go on after Vanilla Ice and before Bret Michaels, and then I heard that Bret dropped out, and then I was moved to before Vanilla Ice,” Odenkirk told the audience, then added with a grin that the practicalities had been harder than the commitment. “And by the way, canceling Freedom 250 was so much harder than signing up. So David, if you decide to cancel, get a lawyer on your side now.”
Cross framed his offer to fill in as the easy, comic counterpoint to Odenkirk’s struggles. “What I am doing is I’m going in your spot but I’m going as you,” he said outright, then described the gag he plans to run through. The two have leaned on that shorthand for decades: they’re the comedy duo behind Mr. Show, and their rapport showed in the way they described making the Peru film. “When Bob and I get together, we very effortlessly fall into this rhythm,” Cross said, noting that the decision to make the trip took only “about 17 seconds.”
The film, directed by Michael LaHaie, is the project that brought them to Tribeca. It follows Odenkirk and Cross as a pair of friends and comic collaborators hiking across the country to the ruins at Machu Picchu. The movie’s centripetal pull — two familiar voices thrown into an unfamiliar landscape — was the thread of the interview and the context for the lineup news: the cancellation and the replacement offer were raised not as a publicity stunt but as part of a conversation about their partnership.
The contrast between the ease of their creative decisions and the awkwardness of live-event logistics is the story’s friction. Odenkirk’s quip about canceling being harder than signing up landed as more than a joke; it acknowledged the practical burdens performers face when schedules and festival bills shift. Cross’s willingness to fill the slot “as” Odenkirk underlines their comic chemistry, but it does not erase the fact that one of them opted out — and that the opt-out was difficult.
For now, Cross has said he will go in Odenkirk’s spot and has described what he would perform. The Tribeca appearance confirmed the partners’ priorities: they will keep making work together and will trade jokes about one another on stage. Whether Cross’s replacement set at Freedom 250 is finalized, when it would occur, and how organizers will list the change were not specified at the premiere; the public record so far is Cross’s commitment and Odenkirk’s warning about how thorny cancellations can be.
