Rooftop Comedy Productions is proud to welcome the newest member of the family: Chris Killian. Chris is a comic from the Nashville area, who spends his time touring clubs and college campuses, bringing his energetic mix of comedy and original songs (including “Bieber Fever”, pictured above). We recently chatted with Chris online to talk about his comedy heroes, Justin Bieber’s comedic chops, and why he’s still waiting to hear back from Jay-Z. Chris’ new album, The Not Black Album comes out tomorrow and we hope you’ll check it out.

How long have you been doing comedy?

Well I hate to brag, but you know that night we recorded the album? That was like my fourth time on stage I think. What is that—three months now? I dunno. My stand-up comedy career so far has just been a haze of drug and sex-induced bravado. Let’s just say two and a half years.

Who are your comedy idols?

Well if I don’t mention classics like the Carlins and the Pryors and the Hicks, comedy nerds might castrate me. Those guys, obviously, and really, I love anyone willing to take risks. Steve Martin is a genius. I know it sounds weird and cliché saying this because he died, but Greg Giraldo was my comedy hero. He was the first stand-up comic I ever watched live, and a few years later I got to open for him a few months before he died and the guy was just great. I still have text messages from him where we’re busting each other’s balls.

You hail from the Nashville area. What’s that comedy scene like?

It’s pretty rural. It’s a lot like LA except most of the guys are related. We love tractor jokes in Nashville.

You incorporate music into your act quite a lot and write original songs. Who do you identify as your equivalent in the music world?

I would hate to insult any musical legends by identifying them as equal to me. But probably John Lennon.

Who are your musical inspirations?

Inspired is probably a strong word. Let’s take Prince for example. I’m a HUGE Prince fan. What he really did was inspire me not to pursue real music because I’m just not that talented. Instead, artists like Prince and The Beatles and Tone Loc taught me that, like all great things, if I cut it down and make fun of it, I can pretend like it’s not that hard to do.

Have you always played music as part of your comedy?

The songs actually led me to stand-up comedy. Originally in college, I would just try to entertain my friends or pick up chicks, so I’d be like “Listen to this song I wrote about homeless people or statutory rape or necrophilia” and eventually, people would tell me I should try to perform those on stage. But from the get-go I knew I only wanted the music to be a small part to my show. The album actually has a lot more music than I usually perform. One reason is because I want the good songs I’ve written to have a longer shelf life so I don’t have to write more. But the MAIN reason is because I want the show to be diverse and break up the monotony a bit.

On the flip side, while we’re on the subject of music in comedy, I have ran into this elitist attitude from some stand-up comics, or purists, and there’s a certain backlash sometimes that comes from having music in my act. I have literally walked into clubs with a guitar and seen other comics roll their eyes and say something like, “Guitar comics are shitty. It’s just a crutch”. Well sure, I agree, some guitar comics are shitty and use it as a crutch. But just to assume that, without seeing them, because someone has a guitar, they’re automatically shitty, well that’s stupid. I know a lot of guys who don’t play music in their act who suck, but that doesn’t mean I think all monologists are terrible. I watch them before I judge.

But to answer your question, yeah, pretty much.

Has Jay-Z formally welcomed you to the “The ______ Album” club?

Not formally, but he’s got like 101 problems now instead of 99, what with Beyoncé and Blue Ivy, so I’m sure it’s on his to-do list. I did get an e-mail from Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich welcoming me, but he’s usually a dick so I didn’t respond.

What are you looking forward to this year in your comedy career?

I am looking forward to the sales of this album sky-rocketing me and catapulting me into the comedy heavens. Realistically, I’m happy to have a busy year on the books and can hopefully just keep writing and performing.

You’re a proud Justin Bieber “belieber”. Do you think he has any comedy chops?

Yeah, I do. Actually, I just read earlier today that the Biebs just bought the rights to the movie FEAR, where Mark Wahlberg played a psychotic stalker. Remember? The article said Biebs wants to re-make that movie and play the Marky Mark character, which I find hilarious. If there’s one word that doesn’t describe Justin Bieber, it’s intimidating.

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Chris will headline Zanies Comedy Club in Nashville February 1-2 and Sidesplitters (Knoxville) on February 5. To see Chris’ full tour schedule, follow him on Facebook and Twitter. The Not Black Album will be available January 31 on iTunes, Amazon, and RooftopComedy.com.

 

 

Posted: January 30th, 2012 under HOMEPAGE, Interview, News'n'stuff, rooftop comedy productions.
Comments: 1

Patton Oswalt sat down on the Conan couch last night to promote his new film, Young Adult. The conversation, though, didn’t just focus on the Jason Reitman-directed film that looks awfully good and the logical perplexities of Patton adding a love scene with Charlize Theron to his resume. Naturally, the holiday season came up and Patton wants to know the Little Drummer Boy’s secret to soothing babies (Jesus or otherwise). Watch his full interview:

Posted: December 21st, 2011 under HOMEPAGE, Interview, Late Night Television, Video.
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Las Vegas doesn’t immediately jump to mind when people think of comedy hotbeds. For Bryan Bruner, though, that’s where he got his first gigs and where he jumped the first hurdle of stealing people’s attention from the slot machines. Since then, Bryan has only been improving, crafting his own style that’s a blast to listen to on his debut album, Welcome to Djibouti. We recently sat down with Bryan to talk about some intense (and violent) heckling, Kal Penn’s relationship with cheetahs, and the comedic muse that is Florida’s swingers’ community.

Rooftop Comedy: What was it like to get your comedy start in the Vegas scene?

Bryan Bruner: It was tough because it still is a very young, tiny scene. It’s not like New York, where there’s six generations of comics and an established way of doing things. In Vegas, it’s starting. It’s creating itself. You’re doing video poker bars. People’s attentions are everywhere but being geared up for comedy. People are figuring it out though. They’re figuring out how to set up the room and how to give comedy a fighting chance. Coming from Vegas definitely gave me the chops to have the fighting chance to survive in New York.

RT: So how about that one time a Marine attacked you while you were performing onstage?

BB: I think I was doing stand-up for six months and I was hosting this show and it was in the back of the bar. I’m dying on stage. I’m getting nowhere. My mom’s in the audience. My grandma is there. It’s her 80^th birthday. I’m eating so much dick. I’m getting no laughs and one of the jokes tanks and I turn and I repeated the punch line at this guy or whatnot. Out of the blue, he comes out of nowhere and spears me from the side, knocks me into the TV and into the wall. Just a few minutes earlier, his buddy had heckled me and I made fun of him. It wasn’t anything mean. It was kind of a shitty comeback. Anyway, his buddy heckled me and I went back into the bit and then after that bit is when he just charged me onstage. It was a weird thing where I got stuck in the wall and I had to unplug my ass out of the wall. After that, I think I quit doing stand-up for quite a long time. [Ed. note: you can watch the incident on YouTube]

RT: How was it going on a U.S. Army tour overseas?

BB: We were in Djibouti and our tour—we were just a bunch of no-name comics—but there was also a USO tour called the Hollywood Handshake tour. It was Christian Slater, Kal Penn, Zachary Levi, and Joel David Moore. So their tour meets our tour and we’re in Djibouti and they take us to this cheetah refuge. Some of them are contained behind a fence and there was one cheetah that was actually domesticated and you could pet the cheetah. I’m a little stand-off-ish about this and I’m sitting next to Kal Penn and some military officer was like, “Hey Kal, don’t try to ride this cheetah”, because in Harold and Kumar, they have to ride a cheetah back to White Castle. So they start fucking with Kal Penn and Kal Penn for a second was like, “Dude, I don’t think you guys understand. I really fucking hate cheetahs. When we were filming the movie, they purposefully didn’t feed the cheetah, so it would come across meaner”. So when Kal Penn wouldn’t go into the cheetah refuge, these military guys would just give him shit the whole time. I’m glad I’m not a movie star.

RT: Your album features a few stand-out long-form stories, including one about your introduction to the swingers’ community in Florida. Are these bits pretty polished at this point, or do you continue to develop the delivery?

BB: Yes and no. It’s got to change and it’s got to evolve. I can’t do the same thing every time. My problem that I have is sometimes I load it too much with detail and it loses focus. I’ll know I have a good story, if I feel like I’ll be embarrassed to tell it. If I’m like, “I don’t even know if I should be telling you about this”, well then that’s a story everyone wants to hear. For me, the hardest part is just getting out there and saying it. The more I say it, the more comfortable I become talking about it. What I’ll do is I’ll just go to some open mic and I’ll take my five minutes or whatever I’m allotted and I will just tell the story. I don’t care if it works or if it doesn’t. I just need to get the beats down. I’ve always been a storyteller for my friends and whatnot. Honestly, though, it was something I just started getting into before we recorded that record.

RT: You also produce the Sorta Secret Comedy Show. How did you decide to host a comedy show in your New York-sized apartment?

BB: Obviously, like everyone in New York, I have two roommates and they’re stand-ups. I wanted to do a show in a parking garage or in an auto shop and I started coming up with all these weird places I wanted to do it. We wanted to do one in our living room, but our landlord is a dick. We have a really big place. We kind of looked at each other and were like, “That’s so crazy of an idea that it just might work”. We started taking tape measurements of the room and started figuring out how we could line up couches and where we could get chairs. We charged $10 to get in the door and then it’s free beer—all you can drink. I think at our first show we had 45 people. The biggest show in our living room we had 55 people. Now, we’re taking it elsewhere. We’re working on getting into a laundromat. We just did the top of a hotel. Brown Paper Tickets totally sponsored us and rented us a sick as rock star suite at the top of a Holiday Inn. We really want to get into a Planned Parenthood.

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Keep up with Bryan on Facebook and follow him on Twitter. Welcome to Djibouti is available now on iTunes, Amazon, and the Rooftop Comedy shop.

Posted: December 13th, 2011 under HOMEPAGE, Interview, News'n'stuff, rooftop comedy productions, Video.
Comments: none

Rooftop Comedy Productions is proud to release Christina Pazsitzky’s It’s Hard Being a Person. Christina’s debut comedy album shows off her style of comedy that’s taken her everywhere from Last Comic Standing to Chelsea Lately. Christina’s not afraid to wear her “Going Out” sweatpants to someplace fancy like Applebee’s or talk about her thing for fat guys, including her very funny husband Tom Segura. We recently chatted with Christina right before Thanksgiving to discuss this generation’s Brett Butler, her personal identification with sausage, and comedy in old Hungary.

Rooftop Comedy: Are you doing any traveling for Thanksgiving?

Christina Pazsitzky: No. Thankfully, my relatives are here in Los Angeles. My husband and I are hosting this year to get our drink on.

RT: You’ve expressed your intense dislike for the term “girl comic”. Do you think there’s still a degree of pressure on funny female stand-ups to be cutesy?

CP: I think the pressure is always there for girls to be agreeable and attractive, comic or not. The culture is starving for a female voice that doesn’t reinforce the norm.  It’s all well and good to be girly—I’m not taking a dump on the girls that do that—but I think the culture is ripe for somebody like Roseanne or Brett Butler to kind of be that other voice. There needs to be balance in the comedy universe.

RT: Just this week, GQ magazine named Kristen Wiig “Bro of the Year”.

CP: Like Kristen’s so funny, she’s guy funny? It’s odd to have Comedians in GQ at all. Gone are the days when you could just have a personality and have a career. I’m trying to think…who’s that guy? Marty Feldman? He had one wonky eye and that guy was in a bunch of movies in the ‘80s. Well that culture is gone. I think it’s because of people like— not to knock him or his comedy—but Dane Cook, who was the first of that, “Oh my god. You’re so attractive and you’re funny?” Dane can sell tickets to guys and the girls who think he’s hot. But as far as posing for lad mags…I don’t see myself doing it, unless it’s the way Sarah Silverman did. She posed in a gorilla costume, which is great.

RT: So you were born in Hungary.

CP: Actually, no. For storytelling purposes, I condensed the details a bit. That popped out of my mouth in a Chardonnay haze during recording. My parents escaped from Hungary in ’69, fleeing the Communist regime, and they were put in a camp in Italy for a year and then the Catholic Church sponsored them to go to Canada. I was born in Canada, in Windsor, Ontario, across from Detroit.  My father worked at a car factory in Detroit and we moved to Los Angeles when I was four. I grew up in a working class immigrant household. My parents never told me I was a “little princess” or any nonsense like that.  On the outside, I look like a white blonde girl, but I’m made of sausage. I’m made of Hungarian kolbasz.

RT: Speaking of, sausage seems to be a common theme on It’s Hard Being a Person.

CP: I think it’s such an unconscious thing for me, because I really have a love for all processed meats. It’s just part of my upbringing. If you opened my father’s fridge right now, you would find at least 4 links. To me, sausage really speaks to what class you’re from, because it’s all the meat you’re not supposed to eat, but if it’s flavored just right, you can make it really good. But you can’t think about it. It is kind of a metaphor for life. You’re given these nasty bits and you try to put it together and make it palatable and tasty.

RT: What’s the comedy scene like in Hungary?

CP:  I don’t know what exists now, I’m assuming they get our movies and stand-up. Stand-up is a really American art form, with some Brits and Australians thrown in, too. The only Hungarian stand up I ever knew of was a guy named Hofi Géza and he was a stand-up comedian during the Communist regime. Hofi was one of the very few subversive elements allowed during the regime, because he would make jokes about stuff that you knew had a double meaning.  He was taking jabs at what was going on, but it was permitted because everyone loved Hofi.  I’d listen to my dad’s records  of Hofi when I was a little girl. I’d pick up on stuff here and there. I didn’t understand all the humor.

RT: When you were on MTV’s Road Rules, was there any pressure from the producers to be the funny blonde woman?

CP: I was actually, for many years, goth and punk growing up. I was very angry and very depressed. When I did Road Rules, I was studying philosophy in college and took myself very seriously. At best, I was snarky and sarcastic. They didn’t cast me because I was funny. They casted me because I was—I don’t know why. I was dumb, that’s for sure. I just wanted to see the world. I know my humor comes from being an angry, 14 year-old punk. I love that fiery, conscious, action-driven, DIY ethic. I’m proud though, to have been on Road Rules and in a time when they didn’t vote people off or set them on fire. Nobody even hooked up on my season. We were just a bunch of douche bags in a Winnebago having fun—good clean, honest, drunk fun. I’m still very close to a couple of my cast mates, they’re like family.

RT: What factors went into your decision to release an album now?

CP:  It was time and I was finally a full-time comic. The title, It’s Hard Being a Person, came from a promise I made to myself when I was working in telemarketing years ago. I was so miserable. It was one of those jobs where you just call people every day and just get shit on—rightly so, because you’re calling people at home and offering them a survey on eggs. This guy David I worked with was so funny. One day, I just slammed down the phone and was like, “Man, I fucking hate this job”. He goes, “Yeah, well, it’s hard being a person” and I thought “Ah! That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard”. The most existential—it is hard being a person. I swore that when I became a full-time comic, I’d name my album that. The time came and I did.

RT: Do you like working the rooms in LA more than touring all over?

CP: I love LA. Because I grew up here, I understand the crowds better. I like to develop new jokes here. I do the Comedy Store a lot when I’m home. Bits are born in LA and then taken on the road to be honed. I see no value in being a comedian that only five people get. Your job as a communicator is to make your ideas understandable to a large audience. I’ve really started to enjoy the Midwest a lot. At first, I didn’t know what to expect, because I grew up in LA and had no idea how the rest of the country lived.  But they’re down to earth people. They care about family and the neighborhood. And they love hot dogs. I can respect that.

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Christina will be headlining at Crackers Comedy Club in Indianapolis Dec 14-17. Her podcast “Your Mom’s House” is available for download on iTunes. It’s Hard Being a Person is available now on iTunes, Amazon, and the Rooftop Comedy Shop.

Posted: November 29th, 2011 under HOMEPAGE, Interview, News'n'stuff, rooftop comedy productions, Standup Women Update, Video.
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Pete O’Neil likes to think big. The Managing Director of the Sebastian Comedy Society and the brand new Ft. Lauderdale Comedy Club has every intention to bring the Ft. Lauderdale Comedy Retreat to the next level. He wants the annual event to become the Sundance of the comedy world, where the next big comics of tomorrow, migrate south to participate in networking events, seminars, showcases, and the ever-popular fishing tournament. Rooftop recently chatted with Pete about the Florida comedy scene, what separates the Ft. Lauderdale Comedy Retreat from other big comedy events, and why Shanghai needs a new comedy venue.

Rooftop Comedy: What new events and programs can people expect at this year’s Comic Retreat?

Pete O’Neil: We’re doing the first two showcases, the first two nights at our new home, the Ft. Lauderdale Comedy Club, but the third night, we’re doing it at the War Memorial, which is a big auditorium down here. It’s a landmark. For comedy, it’s gonna seat 2,100. Jose Sarduy is gonna be our comic who’s going to be performing at that showcase—the headliner. Then we’ll take the best from the showcase shows the days prior and put them in as part of the show. So you may have a new young comic, who’s just started out, then comes down, does a showcase at our show, and then on that Wednesday, he’ll be performing in front of 2,100 people, which is a pretty big room.

Of course, the fishing tournament is always a big thing every year, because we’re in Florida and there’s boats. We call it a fishing tournament, but it’s just a bunch of wild guys out on the boat and the locals are invited to go be part of it. This year, we’ll make a rule up that you’re not allowed to go cheat and buy frozen fish like last year. This year, you cannot come on board with a frozen fish and win the tournament. The other thing—bowling is real fun, as strange as that sounds. A lot of the comics love to bowl, everybody local likes to bowl. That’s an event that locally, everybody really likes. It gives locals a chance to hang out with up and coming comics and spend some time with them.

RT: With the new club opening up, what kind of comedy is Ft. Lauderdale looking for?

PO: I think it’s different genres. When we do a 6:30 early bird show, those are seniors, so they’re looking for a clean show with clean humor. The good thing is 20 years ago when I started out helping promote clubs, if you told a comic, “No F-word or dirty language”, they’d be insulted. Nowadays, I notice most young comics are cool with that because they understand and they have two different sets. What I think is important about Comic Retreat is that we make it part of the community and now we’re in an even bigger market, Ft. Lauderdale, which likes to party. What we think is great about Comic Retreat is it’s really a celebration of the art form of stand-up comedy. We didn’t want to build another festival, because there’s so many festivals, and a lot of the time they’re just—no disrespect to festivals—but young comics show up and perform for free. We don’t do that. Any show that the comic performs at, they get a piece of the door, and the other thing is we think it’s important that the comics, no matter where they are in their career, that they can take a couple days off every year and they can take stock of their career: where they’re going, maybe they need a booking agent. This year, we have Joel Pace from Heffron Comedy, who’s going to be giving a seminar about how you get signed with a major agency. We’re not there yet. We’re probably two or three years off from where we want to be, but we want to be what Sundance Film Festival is for emerging filmmakers, we want to become that platform for emerging comics—where they can come together once a year, they can party, they can have a good time, do workshops, do showcases, fish, and sit by the pool. We’re kind of excited now, because Ft. Lauderdale has totally embraced it. We think this is somewhat like their Sundance Film Festival every year.

RT: What do you think the breakdown this year will be in terms of new comics and more seasoned comics?

PO: It’s 50 percent of comics who’ve been doing it less than three to five years. Then we do get some old road dogs that show up and they have fun. It’s funny—there’s a percentage of comics that hate each other and don’t want to hang out, but for the ones that like to commune, it’s a good opportunity. I’d say 50-60 percent are young comics that are new and have picked it as a career. The other thing that we found last year, is kids who’ve graduated with degrees and they can’t get jobs. You have kids graduating with an engineering degree or a doctorate and they can’t get a job, but they can become great stand-up comics. They have a knack for it, but then they need to look at the business aspect of it. We’re seeing a whole new school of comics, who I won’t say are more sophisticated, but they come into a different opportunity, where they actually can’t get jobs. I think they come in with a really sophisticated view of performing. So we’re about two years off from where I want to be with this event. Every event takes a few years to improve. Moving to Ft. Lauderdale, we’ve been getting a lot of support from Nicki Grossman, who’s the head of the Greater Ft. Lauderdale tourist board. They have a lot of events to choose from, but we were one of the few events they went out and recruited down. We’re having all the workshops at the B Ocean, which is gorgeous. It’s right on the beach—every room has a view of the ocean. A number of our comics come from the northeast, so the good thing is that in January, you don’t have to convince somebody in Detroit or Boston to get out of the cold for a few days. It’s just a celebration of the art of comedy and we’re trying to build it to become kind of like the Sundance Film Festival, but for emerging comics. We encourage people, if people have an idea for an event or a workshop we can add, we consider ourselves an open platform. So if somebody comes to us and says, “Hey, I’d love to put on a workshop”, we’re totally open to that. We truly just want to make it a meeting place for everybody.

RT: How did the Sebastian Comedy Society, the group that produces the Comic Retreat, come together?

PO: My partner and I worked for 12 years up in New York City and we had, of all things, a pet grooming business. I had a stroke a couple years ago, so I moved down to Florida. So when I was in Indian River, I was like, “I’ll get back into promoting comedy clubs”, because I’ve done it, off and on, for that past 22-plus years. And when I was up in Indian River, at a place called Sebastian, we started Sebastian Comedy Society—sort of like “The Little Ladies Bird Watching Society”. I tell people, just like you have a good mechanic, or a doctor, or a pharmacist, in every community, you need to have a good comedy club. That’s sort of how Sebastian Comedy Society started up. In the past couple of years I’ve migrated back to comedy, just because it’s always something that makes people feel good. What we’re looking to do next year, if my investors back me, we want to put a Comedy Zone over in Shanghai, China next year. That’s next year. This year, I think it’s important that we build Comic Retreat. The biggest move is that we put it in a bigger market. This is a cheaper market for people to get to. It’s sort of a party town. It fits nicely into our future plans.

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Click here for more info on registering for the Ft. Lauderdale Comedy Retreat (deadline Dec 20th).

Posted: November 22nd, 2011 under HOMEPAGE, Interview, News'n'stuff.
Comments: none

Rooftop Comedy Productions is proud to release Everything’s the Best!, the debut album from Josh Gondelman. Josh established himself in the Boston comedy scene, winning over crowds—preschool students and club crowds alike—with his musings on dating, children, his years as a teacher, and more. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a comic as grounded in his awkward dorkiness as Josh, but that just makes him that much funnier. Rooftop recently chatted with Josh to discuss performing for preschool teachers, channeling insecurities into a confident, hilarious act, and sharing the stage with carrying the Boston comedy mantle to New York.

Rooftop Comedy: You recorded Everything’s the Best! in Boston at Mottley’s, right before you made the move to New York.

Josh Gondelman: I did. I wanted to have all my creative stuff to do with it done by the time I left Boston.

RT: Was it a packed club with all your loyal friends and family?

JG: Yeah it was great. It was really nice. I had some childhood friends who came and a lot of comedians— the Boston scene is really supportive of our own. So I felt it was a really warm send-off. And my family was there. It was great! We had two sold out shows, even during the Stanley Cup finals.

RT: Oh wow—not exactly the easiest act to share the stage with.

JG: In Boston, sports can ruin comedy. It’s really nuts. When the Red Sox won the first World Series, everyone was really psyched. Then in 2007, it was like “Oh, this is really great”, but at the same time, the longer they string this along, the more shows will get cancelled because no one is leaving the house.

RT: I imagine the Boston comedy community as one big, loving family, with Joe List and Kelly MacFarland cheering you along at your show.

JG: It’s really great. Kelly and Joe both recorded with Rooftop, so I called them both to be like, “Hey, would you recommend this? Also, do you think I should do this?” They were both like, “Yeah, man. Go for it. Rooftop’s great; you’re great”, which is very sweet of them to say. When I got to New York, there was a really nice nest of Boston people that I know through generations, like Myq Kaplan, Dan Hirshon, Joe List, Gary Gulman, Jon Fisch, Micah Sherman, so many from the improv and sketch world. It was so nice and comforting to come and in my first week, I ran into a lot of people that I knew, but probably four or five people that I knew that were Boston comics. We live in New York. We do comedy in New York, but we came up in Boston. It’s a lot of loyalty and a lot of pride.

RT: Your comedy draws a lot from your personal life and experiences as a preschool teacher. Do you like to blend these various circles and bring them to your shows?

JG: The preschool teachers, actually, that I used to work with were the best crowds when they would come. They love the preschool material and it was almost like when a group of moms go out or a group of people that don’t get out much together all go out together and so they would just be out of their mind with excitement, just cheering for everyone on the show. [Other comics] would be like, “Who’s this whole row of 28-year old women?” And I’d be like, “Oh, that’s my co-workers back when I used to teach”. They’re super nice and my old co-teacher called me, because I used to write the holiday play for the kids every year and she was like, “I know you don’t work here, but will you still write the holiday play and come watch us do it?” I would always direct it and I would be the guy onstage, telling the kids where to go, but this year they’re going to do it without me, but they still asked me to write it, which is really sweet and funny. I hope they don’t screw it up. I kind of have a reputation.

RT: Do you miss your preschool students?

JG: I do. I’m really happy to have more flexibility in my day and be able to travel more and write more, but I miss having something that I got to do every day that made me feel like a valuable member of society. I would always leave school and be like, “Man, that was a rough day. One kid was crying because his dad was out of town. Another kid pooped on the floor, but I feel like I made someone’s life better today”. I miss that. It’s a very delightful way—even when I come back to visit, because I go back to Boston, if I have time, I’ll drop in and just say hello to my old boss and the little kids. There are kids there that I know from when they were babies and they always go crazy and it’s super sweet.

RT: On stage, you mix self-deprecation, warmth, and wit. Has this always been your comedic inkling or did it evolve overtime?

JG: When I started, the self-deprecation was a lot more down. It was a lot more “Aww”. Now, I’m a very comfortable person in general. I’m kind of a weirdo, but I’m very comfortable with it. I’m very at ease most of the time. I’m not anxious, socially. I feel comfortable on stage. It’s easier to just kind of be a person and write about who I am as a person. There are things that I say that are kind of self-deprecating, but I feel like they’re not in a way like, “I suck”. I always try to do it in a way like, “I’m not good at this. I wish I were better at this. I don’t understand this. I’m fascinated by this because it goes over my head”. When the jokes are good, and I hope they are, it keeps the audience more on your side. I started when I was young. I started when I was 19 and I wasn’t as confident as I am now. So even though I’m still kind of a dork, I’m a very comfortable, at-ease dork. I feel like that puts the audience at ease.

RT: It’s also easy to relate to.

JG: Thank you. It’s not like the heavy Richard Lewis anxiety and sense of discomfort. It’s not like Louis C.K. self-loathing. Things in my life are very happy and very fortunate and where there are little creases or little wrinkles, I try to dig into those and find the little weird things that are relatable to other people.

RT: Anything else you want people to know about Everything’s the Best!?

JG: I’m just really excited for the album to be out and to have this hour of comedy out for people to hear. I have my hard copy CDs and I’ve just been handing them to people I see and been like, “I hope you like it!” Then I run away. Obviously, there’s the idea of selling a CD to make money on the road, and I’m planning on doing that, but I’m just very hopeful that people enjoy it. I don’t think this project is going to catapult me to superstardom, but I’m just really excited to have people react to it and hopefully to have it be something that they enjoy.
–
Everything’s the Best! is now available on iTunes, Amazon, and the Rooftop Comedy shop (where you can listen to a free sample track!). Josh will be performing at the Afterlife Comedy Show, Nov 18th at the Sidewalk Café in NYC.

Posted: November 8th, 2011 under Cool stuff from Rooftop Comedy, HOMEPAGE, Interview, News'n'stuff, rooftop comedy productions.
Comments: none

If you ever see Andrés du Bouchet perform live, you’re in for a treat. With Andrés comes a host of hilarious, captivating characters, making for a night of comedy that’s truly unique. There’s Danny Yeahyeah, a warm-up comic whose idea of crowd work is unlike anything you’ve ever heard; or Karl Management, who’s as passionate about managing talent as he is about pitching genius reality shows (Men With Terrible Gaydar House). Andrés, who spends his days as a writer for Conan, brings Karl, Danny, and others to his new album, Naked Trampoline Hamlet, recorded earlier this year at Bar Lubitsch in LA. Rooftop recently chatted with Andrés about his writing style, Conan O’Brien’s grip on U.S. history, marketing strategies from an unlikely source, and more.

Rooftop: Tell me about how your character Karl Management—a slick Hollywood suit who’s never short on new reality show ideas—came to be.

Andrés du Bouchet: Well I think, if I’m not mistaken, the character and the shows were two different things initially. It was another example of me re-assigning material to a different character. Those shows might have just been a blog post at first or something I wrote. The Karl Management character—do you remember, several years ago, there was this movie called The Aristocrats?

RT: Yes.

ADB: In the movie, all these comics tell their variation of that joke and then I participated in a show at the Peoples Improv Theater in New York where the whole point of the show was just for all the comics to do their version of “The Aristocrats”. So I decided I would tell it from the point of view of the talent manager of who these people were coming to. In most variations of that joke, you’re telling it from a third person perspective, where it’s just like “Here’s what happened. The manager is sitting there and he says blah, blah, blah”. So I just decided I’d tell it as a first person point of view story of the guy and these freaks came into his office. I’m always a big fan of making characters as—like calling a manager Karl Management. That just tickles me. Talking that way is just fun for me. It’s sort of like a style of speaking that’s like, one of my favorite comedians, Eddie Pepitone and my friend Michael Reisman who’s one of the guys I did a lot of comedy with in New York. It’s not the way he normally speaks, but sometimes, to make a point, he’d talk like that. He’s probably my favorite guy to appear as. It’s just very easy to talk like that and mundane things seem funny to me.

RT: As Karl Management, you build this great energy as you list more and more reality show pitches. Is that list framework your creative sweet spot as a writer?

ADB: I think any comedy writer would tell you that the format of the list is one of the most fun things to write. It’s not necessarily easy, but the fact that you have this structure in place makes it easier than normal. The order you put things in can help you decide which ones are going to be more elaborate and which ones are going to be quicker and simpler. You build off of previous items on the list, because certain things are already on the list, you can have a callback joke later that is sort of building off that. Anytime there’s a structure in place, it just makes writing more easy and fun. It gives you something to build on. I love listing off stupid things—who doesn’t? I like quiz formats. Those are another example—a lot of the bits I write here at work sometimes are these quizzes Conan and Andy do back and forth. Those are fun because it’s the same sort of thing: you build off of previous questions and you’ve got this structure to work with.

RT: Can you give an example of that kind of quiz segment?

ADB: They do this recurring bit I came up with where, because the premise is “Some people think Americans shouldn’t be allowed to vote unless they are educated enough in American history that they can pass the same test immigrants need to pass to become citizens”. That was some news story on CNN.com at some point last year. I was like, “Why don’t we just have Conan say ‘I agree with that! I’m going to take the citizenship test right now on camera’. Andy’s like, ‘Are you sure? These questions are pretty hard’. Conan’s like ‘I know my stuff. Let’s do it’. So obviously you can already see what’s going to happen. The first couple questions are real and then they get…and the way we do it is Conan is always right, even if his answer seems ridiculous. So I make up the questions and all the stupid answers and it’s fun to put them in a certain order that builds in ridiculousness or the momentum shifts from all these fast ones to, all of the sudden, a round where it’s a more elaborate thing with “Finish the phrase” or “Fill in the blank” or whatever and then it gets more and more ridiculous and then the last big question, Conan suddenly answers accurately in a long-winded, dry explanation. Like, “Explain what the Teapot Dome scandal was” and he’ll give a big paragraph of a completely accurate explanation. Those are always fun for me to write because there’s that structure in place.

RT: You just had an album release party in LA. How was that?

ADB: It was a lot of fun. It was at this place called the Steve Allen Theater. Two of the other Conan writers were co-hosts and co-hosted as these characters who were supposedly a company hired by Rooftop to do the marketing for the album. They called themselves—the two guys who did this were Dan Cronin and Todd Levin—their marketing firm was called Human Centipede. They were like, “We had our name way before that stupid movie came out and they refused to change it”. They had this whole really funny riff about how their company name and their slogans and stuff are just very unfortunate matches to stuff from The Human Centipede movie. Their logo looked like three guys sewn together. It was really funny. They did a slideshow of where they were going to advertise my album and it was all these very inappropriate places—Photoshop-ed billboards of the album in very inappropriate places, like at the bottom of the reflecting pool at the 9/11 memorial. We had a bunch of other comedians do spots and we had a great musical act. We had another bit where these two record execs approach the musical act at the end of her set and offer her a record deal. It was a lot of fun, a good crowd. I gave everyone in the crowd a CD.

RT: Next week you’re off to New York with some of the other Conan writers for a show at Upright Citizens Brigade?

ADB: I’ll do stuff that’s similar to what you heard on the CD. On Friday, I’ll avoid doing things that are already on the CD now that I’m working on other material. I’ll do some sort of character bit or whatever.

RT: Anything else about Naked Trampoline Hamlet we didn’t cover?

ADB: I’m just happy to get it out there. I think it’s the kind of thing that people will get more out of if they listen to it a couple times. At least, I like to think that I’ve peppered it with a lot of little, weird nuggets. There are a couple callbacks. There’s something that I did on purpose which is—you know how there’s a lot of fake names I use? There’s one name I use twice in two different bits. I just want to see if people can pinpoint what that is. It’s a fun little Easter egg.

–

Naked Trampoline Hamlet is available for purchase through the Rooftop Comedy shop and Amazon.

Posted: October 27th, 2011 under Interview, Late Night Television, rooftop comedy productions, Video.
Comments: none

Mo Mandel started his comedy career in San Francisco, before going on to fame and fortune in Hollywood. Mo starred in Comedy Central’s Reality Bites Back, and had his own highly-rated Comedy Central special. He has appeared on Modern Family, Conan, and Craig Ferguson, he’s a regular guest on Chelsea Lately, and starred in the recently-cancelled NBC sitcom Free Agents. Next month, his first CD, The M Word, will be released on Comedy Central Records. San Francisco based comedian Sean Keane (Iron Comic, Bridgetown Comedy Festival, SF Sketchfest) was kind of enough to interview Mo for the Rooftop Blog.

Sean Keane:  First of all, congratulations on Free Agents. Were you a fan of the British show before you started doing this one?

Mo Mandel: I actually never saw it, because I don’t live in England, and I get American television. They gave it to us before we shot the pilot, but I didn’t want it to affect how I viewed the show and how I approached my character. But since then I’ve seen it and I think it’s really good.

SK: Do you watch the show when it’s on?

MM: Definitely. I’m a huge narcissist. I Tivo it, and it plays on a constant loop. Also, my roommate is an actor, and I’m a comedian, so I like to have it on in the apartment to make him feel horrible about himself.

SK: Is it exciting to work with Hank Azaria, and is it difficult to not just ask him questions about The Simpsons all the time?

MM: It’s very hard not to talk about The Simpsons, and I’ve had to accept the fact that I’m just going to do that. I’ve actually got him to record different Simpsons voices as my voice message machine. Currently I have Comic Book Guy telling people that my real name is Mohahn and then saying “Worst name ever.”

You should probably ask Hank Azaria if it’s difficult working with an aggressive burly Jew who is obsessed with The Simpsons. For me, it’s really not that hard, because I figure I’m an obnoxious guy, so I’m going to do it, but it probably annoys the hell out of him.

SK: You’re also working with Al Madrigal. Did you know him at all from your San Francisco comedy days?

MM: When I started comedy in SF, Al Madrigal was a name thrown around by SF comics as an example of how you could come out of San Francisco and really make it in Hollywood. Because of where he was at when I moved down here, I hadn’t had a chance to perform with him much. So this has been a real treat to work with him, he’s such a funny guy, and the same thing is true for Natasha Leggero.

SK: What you and Al seem to have in common is a really strong work ethic. You write a lot, you produce a lot of stuff. Was that something you’ve always had, or did you develop that after you got into comedy?

MM: I had a terrible work ethic in many other aspects of my life. Every job I’ve ever had I’ve been a complete slacker at. Because I love what I get to do now – writing, acting, and standup – other people have hobbies, my hobbies happen to also be my job. I love doing it more than any other stuff. But I was probably the worst person to work at Peet’s Coffee in the history of San Francisco.

SK: That was your job when you got into stand-up?

MM: I used to work the 5:15 AM to 1 PM shift every day, six days a week, and then do open mics every night. I didn’t have a car, so I had to bus around, it was a nightmare. I remember one day when I was feeling really low, just bombing at the open mics, and then I had to walk to work at five in the morning. It had rained the night before, and I didn’t realize I had holes in the bottom of my shoes. I was like a Dickens character. I got to work and realized my socks and shoes were soaking wet, and I didn’t have time to go home and change. So I took off my shoes and socks, put plastic bags around my feet, and then stuck my feet back into my wet shoes, and worked a seven-and-a-half-hour shift, serving lattes to yuppies. I remember thinking, if I don’t make it in comedy, I’m gonna blow my fucking head off.

SK: When did you decide to make the move to Los Angeles?

MM: It was when I won “Open Mic Fight” for Comedy Central. I was bartending on a Saturday, working a brunch shift, and I got a call from Comedy Central at 10 AM. I told my boss I had to go to the bathroom, checked my voice mail in the bathroom, and a woman told me I’d won, which meant $10,000. And then I had to go back downstairs and make Bloody Marys for the next six hours, while thinking, I’m getting the fuck out of here as soon as possible. I moved three weeks later.

SK: Was Reality Bites Back part of the Open Mic Fight prize?

MM: That was completely different. The price for Open Mic Fight was you got to be on Live At Gotham and you won some money. But through that I got to do the Miami Comedy Festival, where Comedy Central executives got to see me do more stand-up, and when they were casting the show, my name came up. And now we’re going into SEASON NINE on Reality Bites Back!

SK: The residuals just keep pouring in.

MM: As I look around my giant mansion, it’s ALL Reality Bites Back money. It’s me and Theo Von, living together in a huge, huge mansion in the hills.

SK: That’s the American dream.

MM: Let me tell you one story about that show. This is when I really got the sense that you have to be on TV a lot for anyone to know who the hell you are. One time after we’d shot Reality Bites Back – and it was currently airing – I was hanging out at a bar with Theo Von and a friend of his who had won Big Brother the year before. A guy comes up to us and says, I’m a big fan of seeing you guys on TV, I love your work, you guys are awesome. Then he walked off, without saying anything to me. I turned to the other guys and said, I guess we know no one is watching me on TV. And then the guy immediately popped back in, as if he were in a multi-cam sitcom, and said to me, “Listen, I just realized I didn’t even acknowledge you. Just because you’re not on TV doesn’t mean you’re not a human being. That was really rude of me.” And then he left. It was fucking ridiculous. It was as if someone had written the scene in order to crush my ego at a bar.

SK: When did you begin to focus on acting as well as stand-up? Do you think it helped that you were filming sketches and man-on-the-street pieces before things started really happening?

MM: It’s funny because, you do these little videos, and you think they never matter. I remember, I shot this little piece when the iPhone came out. Not a lot of people saw it, but I always thought it was kind of funny. And then after Reality Bites Back, I booked a co-hosting gig on a VH-1 game show pilot that never went to air, but we shot it. The producer told me that one of the reasons he booked me was that he’d looked me up on YouTube, he’d seen that video I’d made, and he decided, OK, this guy’s fast on his feet. So you never fucking know. You’ve got this resume online, and it really doesn’t matter how many people have seen it, as long as the right people are looking at you. If you think you have talent, you should find a way to showcase that, because it’s the only thing under your control. Who watches it is not in your control.

SK: Speaking of showcasing yourself, how much do you focus on Twitter? (Twitter: @momandel)

MM: Somewhat? I definitely enjoy doing it. I don’t know if you know this. I was just picked as one of the Top Ten Sexiest Men of the new fall television lineup by Cosmo.

SK: Congratulations.

MM: They wrote, “According to the pilot, Mo’s as funny on the show as he is on Twitter.” I don’t have a lot of Twitter followers, so obviously someone looked me up on Twitter. The fact that I’m one of the sexiest men on TV should tell all the women in the world that these magazines are absolutely ridiculous and you should not take your information from that.

SK: You ARE very strong.

MM: I don’t know. I think when you make one of these lists you have to have a Jew on it.

SK: If nothing else, you are the sexiest new Jew on television.

MM: Even that seems like a stretch. But I’ll take it.

SK: What’s your favorite thing that you’ve written that’s never been produced?

MM: I wrote a pilot for NBC last year about two guys working in a think tank trying to come up with ways to stop a giant meteor from destroying the Earth in five years. There was no solution, so everyone in the think tank basically fucked around and got into mischief every week. I thought it was a real interesting funny idea. It got a lot of buzz from executives, but ultimately wasn’t enough to get made. But the response I got from people who read the pilot has been very very good. It may have been a good thing that they passed, since getting to know NBC executives probably got me Free Agents, so you never know what’s going to lead to what.

SK: You do Chelsea Lately a lot. Have you noticed a boost from those appearances?

MM: Absolutely. You can tell because a lot more women will come to the shows, and a lot more hot chicks. Especially if they plug the date on an episode of Chelsea, it’s quite a boost – in fact, way more than anything else. It’s not so much how many people watch the show as it is how many people love the show. And people who watch Chelsea Lately fucking love it, so they really embrace people who are on there.

SK: Add that to the Cosmo thing, your audiences are really going to change. What can fans expect from The M Word, your new album that comes out November 8^th?

MM: They can expect a very uncensored, hopefully very funny high-energy comedy album, that is completely offensive – and also hilarious – to all. I recorded it at my favorite club, Comedy Works in Denver. I’m really proud of it, it’s an honor to have an album out on Comedy Central Records, and I think the cover’s pretty dope. Anyone who is doubting the top sexiest thing, they can look at the cover and shut the fuck up, because it speaks for itself.

Follow Mo on Twitter.

Follow Sean Keane on Twitter.
 

Posted: October 12th, 2011 under Interview.
Comments: 3

Rooftop Comedy Productions is proud to announce the release of Hal Sparks’ Escape from Halcatraz. Recorded at the legendary Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco, Halcatraz showcases Hal’s knack for hilarious voice work and takes you on a whirlwind tour from Ozzy Osbourne’s stint on American Idol to the very non-sexy appeal of a man with a Kentucky accent. Rooftop pal Nathan Timmel interviewed Hal to talk Peter Gabriel, the best comedy venues, and the greater role comics play in society.

If you understand the world of promotion, the spark behind an interview is tied to a product or pitch from the interviewee. The interviewer is supposed to mention the product (or pitch) as much as possible in order to drill the thought “Must purchase” into the reader’s head.

That stated, I, Nathan Timmel am a very bad interviewer. Instead of talking exclusively about his new CD release—Escape from Halcatraz—I spent most of my time talking with Hal Sparks about the concept of art, the role of comedy in society, and wandering down needless tangents involving Bloom County and the Billy and the Boingers single placed in one of the old books. In fact, when he not only played with my Peter Gabriel reference in the first question, but took it one step further by referencing Peter Gabriel live stage performances, I knew I was going to enjoy our time on the phone.

So, instead of saying repeatedly “Go buy the Hal Sparks CD!”, this interview is an end-around. Hopefully, by offering a bit of insight as to who Hal Sparks is as a person, there’s a good chance you’ll obtain a sense of who he is on stage, what his comedy is like, and therefore want to buy the CD after all.

Hopefully it all works out in the end.

NT: Your new CD release, Escape from Halcatraz, has the same title as your 2008 DVD release. Are you employing the Peter Gabriel method of artistic expression, where your product will all have the same name in order to confuse outsiders? [Peter Gabriel named his first 4 CDs the same]

HS: Yes. [Laughs] Actually, this is the first time that special has been available on CD, so I’m not actually putting out multiple projects with the same title, it’s just the CD of the DVD. I’m sorry it’s not more complicated than that, because, ironically, most of the things I do are to be as much like Peter Gabriel as possible. In fact, my next special will be done through a phone receiver as I walk on a treadmill.

NT: And then you’ll bring your daughter in to harmonize with you as you tell your jokes.

HS: While riding a bike upside-down on the ceiling, yes. For the record: Peter Gabriel concerts? Awesome. I think the Cirque Du Soleil people ripped him off. They were sitting around, thinking, “Can you sing? I can’t sing, but I can do all the theatrical stuff!”

NT: [Laughs] Well, since this is a re-release, that makes me ignorant of many of the specifics. Talk about the special you recorded, and what buyers are getting.

HS: This is my first special; I self-produced it. It was recorded at Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco, which is one of my—if not my single favorite—club in the country. I’ve been going there for years, and the audiences are just so smart there that I knew if I needed to tape something, there would be no delay between the smart punchlines and the laughter. Like, if you do the same joke in another room, they’ll still laugh at it, but there’s a delay between the punchline and the laughter, because they might not get it right away. Taping a special, you need the audience to be right there with you; you can’t wait around for them to figure it out.

NT: Unless you wanted to hire a very precise editor: “OK, we need to take out 3 seconds here, 3 seconds here…”

HS: Exactly, too much work.

NT: Since you mentioned having a favorite club, let’s talk about that. Now that you have a name for yourself, do you prefer working clubs—“This is where I got my start, it’s real and raw comedy”—or do you like theaters, where there’s no last call or a check being dropped during a punchline?

HS: There are still certain clubs I love to do because of how they’re laid out, and how they treat the performers… Obviously Cobb’s, Flappers in Burbank is that way… but truthfully, I do prefer the 800 to 1,000 seat theaters, because the audience is there for a reason; they’re invested in the show. No one dragged them there, they didn’t get a free ticket or it just happens to be “comedy night” at a place; they’re there because they bought the ticket, and they know what I’m about. In so far as being able to experiment as a performer, and go out on a limb, it’s much better when you have a room full of people who aren’t trying to flag down a waiter and who are already interested in what I’m going to do.

NT: God, we could go off on such a tangent here that I probably wouldn’t put in the interview [I have, but I’ve edited it like a TV movie: for time, space, and content], you talk about going out on a limb and experimenting: how do you feel about the fine line between experimenting and getting your words and thoughts out there vs. the fact people have paid to laugh and not hear someone rant their beliefs into a microphone?

HS: That’s actually a “conflict” I’m very comfortable with. Laughter is the dynamic that makes stand-up special, because otherwise you’re just a philosopher hoping people are interested in what you’re saying. If they’re not, you’ll lose them. That’s why I think that if you’re doing stand-up, comedy is job one; it’s not a compromise to go for laughs. If you’re doing something else, it’s performance art, which is totally cool, but it’s not comedy. I enjoy the concept of going, “OK, here’s an idea I have, and here’s an important point socially that I think needs to be made… how do I make it funny?”

It’s like being an artist, and saying, “I paint paintings, and within the ‘confines’ of this canvas, I can do anything I want; I can go anywhere.” I think the same thing goes for comedy, except the canvas is laughter. As long as I’m getting laughter, it allows me to go however deep I want into any psychological or spiritual area and hold on to people. Where if you’re just philosophizing, their minds will wander.

NT: Or they’ll start to think about why they disagree with you, or why you’re wrong…

HS: Exactly. In the most recent show I did in Edinburgh, Scotland, I ended the show with a bit about a Jewish person and a Palestinian in a cave coming to the conclusion, “You know, we’re a lot alike.” And I almost wanted to avoid the joke because the conflict has been going on so long, and on a socio-political level the joke could be the equivalent of “Dogs and Cats are different” or “Men and Women are different.” But, at the same time, is there a responsibility on the performer to gain a new perspective on it? Obviously the conflict hasn’t been solved, so if you create a bit that doesn’t take one side or the other and you make jokes that ridicule the whole thing you actually do help—in a way—to chip away at the reasons for the fight.

NT: I would agree with all of that, and go one further that even if you are re-treading old ground or doing a “Men and Women are different” joke, as long as you bring your personality and perspective to it, you can give the bit some vitality and originality.

[Interviewers note: I brought up Doug Stanhope much earlier in the interview, and then Hal and I went down what would be several pages of transcribed paths were I to have included all our ramblings about him, Carlin, Eddie Izzard, and comedy with commentary.]

HS: Exactly, you brought up Doug a while ago—and while I should be promoting my own stuff, I love the art of stand-up comedy so I don’t care and love talking about this—Doug has a bit about politicians running on getting the unemployment rate down, and wondering where the guy running on 100% unemployment is. Where’s the politician saying “Let robots do it! Spend more time with your family!” And while a lot of comics are talking about the economic climate right now, that’s Doug bringing his own unique voice to it. And I talk about economic and job frustration in my act and on Halcatraz, and do so from my point of view and using my voice.

NT: Which goes all the way back to the idea of the comedian as the court jester, who poked fun at serious subjects and at the king in order to get a message across, but with a feather-touch, so to speak.

HS: Yes, and it’s becoming clearer and clearer that in America, a vast majority of people are not seeking democracy; they’re seeking individual kingdoms. They want to sit in their TV-chair thrones, with their remote control scepters, and change channels, going: “Off with his head, off with his head” until they find something they like, then watch that until they grow bored and “Off with his head…” As a stand-up comedian, it’s your responsibility to call attention to that so it doesn’t grow out of control. You get people to laugh at themselves, that they not take themselves too seriously.

NT: I would agree with everything you said, except for one part where you said it’s becoming more and more obvious, or clearer and clearer about how “Now this is happening…” I think people have a tendency to say “It’s worse now than it’s ever been,” when in fact it was probably fairly bad in the past, we just tend to gloss over the negatives in history and paint it as a shining example of “When things were better”.

HS: Oh, sure. I’m not a big believer in “The past is better than the present.” I just think that because of the comfort level we have today, there’s a good segment of society that says, “Well now I can have everything I need, I don’t need anyone else.” They fail to remember how inter-connected we all really are.

NT: OK, that I agree with; I think I confused your point of “We have more access to apathy now than before” with what I thought you had said.

HS: Because we live as “kings” more than we ever have… I mean, 600 years ago, ice cream was a near-impossibility for over 80% of the populace. Now you can barely drive a block-and-a-half without seeing some form of it. A lot of life is the normalizing of experiences; we take it for granted.

NT: And to take your historical example and modernize it: 10 years ago having a plasma-screen TV would mean you were rich; today everyone has one. So, let’s try and take the fact that how we’re speaking right now will give people a good sense of who you are and how you think—now that they have that foundation, describe your comedy to someone who hasn’t seen you. You’re obviously intelligent and well-spoken; take the “armchair king” we’ve been talking about, someone who might think you’re just going to be speaking over his head, and draw him in.

HS: Well, that’s my job, isn’t it? I take things that are of “higher concept” and boil them down to their most palatable and understandable version. It’s not my job to be the encyclopedia, I’m the Cliff’s Notes; I don’t end the conversation, I start it.  While my stand-up isn’t political in nature, it can’t not affect politics, and while I’m not sociological in nature, it can’t not have a sociological effect. I’m basically deconstructing your life in a way that if somebody else did it, you might get mad at them. But in the way I do it, you go, “He’s doesn’t mean any ill will.” So I’ll go from the sublime to the mundane, all in order to progress the conversation a little bit.  A lot of what Halcatraz is about is ego; about how completely full of shit we allow ourselves to be, myself included—when you see the opening and ending, and how they tie together, that will make more sense.

–

Escape from Halcatraz is currently available on iTunes.

 

Posted: September 22nd, 2011 under Cool stuff from Rooftop Comedy, HOMEPAGE, Interview, rooftop comedy productions.
Comments: 11

Our very own producer and San Francisco based comedian Edwin Li caught up with fellow comedian Joe Wong. Joe discusses political correctness, performing in China, his autobiography, life after Letterman, and more. Joe headlines the San Francisco Punchline September 20th and 21st.

Edwin
You recently did Letterman for the third time. Has your life changed dramatically since then?

Joe
Since my first time on Letterman my life changed dramatically, but there is not much change since my second and third one to be honest. (Laughs)

Edwin
Before you were a full time comic you were a scientist. What was that transition like?

Joe
The transition it take some getting use to because with the 9-5 job you don’t have to plan too much, you know, you have to worry about your kids meals and stuff but other than that you just show up to work and just do it. You deal with the same numbers and same people. So there is a nice structure to it.

Stand Up comedy is a 24/7 hour job. There is always something you can be doing. It’s tough to make a decisions, for example, tomorrow is it best for me to write stand up jokes or write scripts or some other stuff business related? You get more control of your own time but it takes some getting use to.

Edwin
Do you write a lot of scripts now?

Joe
I write a lot in general. I worked on script writing for a while. I’m writing an autobiography in China and that takes up some time. Well, not too much time. I know what happens in my life, so that’s easy. (Laughs)

Edwin
Is it in Chinese or English?

Joe
I wrote it in English because my Chinese typing is excruciatingly slow. (Laughs)
Basically just orally translated taped in voice and send it to China where they type it up. That’s how it works.

Edwin
Can you tell me about it?

Joe
It’s about how I grew up in Eastern China back in the 70′s and 80′s. It’s a very rural area, and a lot of things happening there are very interesting like one of the stories I told on Letterman where I have to pave the road. Then it was about me going to college in Beijing and then coming to the United States. How life in the United States is like. A lot of people are curious because a lot of Chinese people watch American movies and televisions but they want to hear a real person telling about their stories. I also talk about my comedy career. How I get started. The obstacles. That’s basically the content of the book.

Edwin
Do you have any fans in China?

Joe
The correspondents dinner got ten million hits there. China has a twitter but it’s a different kind of twitter. They call it a mini blog or something. I recently started blogging there. It has about 180,000 followers, but I”m not a house hold name.

Edwin
Have you were performed comedy in China?

Joe
I did it once back in 2008.

Edwin
How did that work out?

Joe
I learned a very good lesson. I did about 7 minutes of stand up routine and jokes that rely on play on logic or what I call play on logic or just pointing out the flaws in logic what can be logically inferred on something can always make people laugh no matter what language you are speaking but then the jokes that are based on word play or cultural content, that’s going to be tough.

Edwin
What are some ways you come up with material and what inspires you.

Joe
That is always the hardest question. I think comedy comes out of fascination. I’m always fascinated by people’s lives. I remember watching people go by thinking, “what is this guy thinking? What is motivating this guy to do this?” Sometimes I see people walk around with their dog in day light during the week and I’m like “Wow. How did this person pull it off? I have to bust my ass making a living but he looks so comfortable and at ease. I’m just curios about peoples behavior motivation and the mentality.

Edwin
How do you like performing in San Francisco. What’s the difference between Boston and San Francisco?

Joe
I think people in San Francisco are more nicer and more earnest. (Laughs) And people in Boston have more of a mean streak. Some of the more meaner jokes were taken really well in Boston but when I said it in San Francisco people were pretty sensitive about it. (Laughs) I have a joke about biographies where I say my wife loves biographies but I don’t have that time so I just read obituaries, because they always say nice things. Sometimes I wonder what the obituary of Jeffery Dahmer would have been like if he was executed. It would have been like, Jeffery Dahmer died yesterday after a short battle against an electric chair”. And that joke always gets a big laugh in New England.
Sometimes people are very PC which should be a good thing but comedy is comedy and dark comedy has its place too.

Edwin
What is your take on political correctness on comedy.

Joe
It’s really complicated. I think it’s a double edged sword. In one sense it’s good. The thing I did not like, like some comedians they pick on Asians they would have never have the guts to pick on blacks or Hispanics. Those Comedians I just don’t like at all. When I see them nowadays I confront them. You know just because an Asian person is there you can’t call them China man or something and think you shouldn’t get away with it. That’s just not cool with me unless you’re doing it to a black comedian or something but they don’t have the guts. See that’s the part I don’t like. I can’t stand how much hate is really behind the joke it’s this really heart felt hate, and it’s not comedy anymore, but if you say you suck and I suck then that’s comedy.

Edwin
What do you like most about comedy?

Joe
I guess it’s just a way to make sense of life. If you look at life rationally it does not make any sense at all. I mean you can work your butt off, you can be a saint, but in the end we all die, so what’s the meaning of life? But on the other hand, it’s also the biggest joke ever. Life itself is the biggest joke, and I just feel day to day, life is just a joke.

Visit Joe Wong’s Rooftop Comedy profile.

Posted: September 19th, 2011 under HOMEPAGE, Interview.
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