For many comics, a steady gig is the light at the end of a very long tunnel. A job as a TV host can be the final frontier, after countless club shows and hundreds of hours on the road. Not the case with Chris Fairbanks. After serving his time as a personality and writer on Fuel TV, he’s just getting started. Chris, a regular on the comedy fesitval and late night circuit, is starting a self-described “grassroots” initiative to re-energize his comedy pursuits. We recently chatted with Chris before his SF Sketchfest show to talk how speech impediments can be motivational (and hilarious), balancing skating with comedy, and why we shouldn’t expect his “cat video” to drop any time soon.

ROOFTOP: You’ve racked up some considerable festival creds at Montreal’s Just For Laughs, Aspen, SF Sketchfest among others. How do all of these events affect your style as a performer?

CHRIS FAIRBANKS: I think that when I first did festivals like Montreal, there used to be more of an expectation as far as what they would do for your career: trying to get management or trying to get someone to see you. But the game has changed so much now because of the internet and people being able to put themselves out there. They don’t really need festivals, which is bittersweet. I like that. So now, festivals have become the thing, like Sketchfest and even smaller ones like Bridgetown, where they’re just about having fun. There’s no pressure. I was so scared when I did Montreal in the past. Now the bad part is there isn’t necessarily industry watching you, but I don’t think you need festivals for that anymore, which is awesome. There are other people getting recognition because their YouTube video has a cat in it or something. They get exposure without paying their dues in stand-up and then they end up doing stand-up. There’s people I know that headline the Improv seven months after one of their videos got 4 million hits and they end up getting management and they’re thrown in a comedy club. So that’s the downside of the internet serving what festivals used to do.

RT: So we’re still waiting on that Chris Fairbanks’ cat video?

CF: Yeah, I got to get a cat video together. I have a cat, but he’s far from entertaining. He’s right here in front of me. If I had a camera right now, no one would watch me.

RT: Just in case, I’ll get a release form to you right away.

CF: For the cat. You got to take advantage of the cat.

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

CF: For the last year and a half, I was working on a TV show, writing, sitting at a desk—which I never wanted. In my whole life, I was doing everything I could to not have a job like our dads had. It’s kind of funny that that’s what stand-up led to. The show was a Fuel TV show that covered action sports and had me go out and interviewing athletes and actors and going to press junkets and writing a live variety interview show. That was an everyday job and then it got cancelled. I wasn’t doing stand-up for a living. I would do it around LA occasionally like a lot of comics here. It felt weird to not feel like a professional comic. I was doing it less. If you work 55 hours a week, I was getting real lazy. I would not do stand-up for a whole month. Now, I’m just looking forward to doing stand-up again, but it is nice to make regular income. I’m already missing that a lot, but it just feels better to be on stage. On the other side, having a bad set is the worst. It’s a weird love hate relationship, so I just want to get to where I’m usually having good sets. Then I’ll be happy, right?

RT: How did you get attracted to action sports?

CF: That was something I got into when I was fourteen. I’ve been skateboarding for some 20 years. That was already happening. It was kind of cool that it intersected with my comedy career. It’s neat when they all intertwine because, usually, stand-up is separate from skateboarding and so is my art. Right now, I’m trying to figure out how to do the comedy and art together. I guess I have to do a comic book or try to pitch a cartoon or something—which I’m actually working on right now. I have a meeting coming up and I’m totally unprepared.

RT: Just show up on a skateboard and you’ll be fine.

CF: Yeah, “Look at three things I do half-assed!” That’s the thing. For a long time I was doing stand-up and artwork for a living. I also had a regular thing with Thrasher. You stop and you wonder, “Should I commit 100% to this?” I’m not a super-motivated person that can live the professional life of barely one person, much less try and be a professional full-time artist. If you have your foot just part-way into a couple doors…

RT: On stage, you have these moments when you almost trip over your words. It comes across as wonderfully spontaneous and also gives the sense you’re really enjoying yourself up there.

CF: That’s where I think comics are actors also. Most of the time, I’m acting like something is happening right then or that there’s even a mistake so that I can have the freedom of riffing right then. If you do that and you do plan a few of those moments, then that allows you to do more truly improvised moments. It’s a 50/50 thing where some of them are planned and I know they’ll get a response, so then I’m free to riff on something else that’s happened—usually not with the audience, just with myself. People don’t heckle anymore, so I’m kind of heckling myself I guess. Some of them are planned and I’m pretending to say Champell’s Canky instead of Campbell’s Chunky, but it’s planned because it happened organically once. I learned that early. All these mistakes that would happen do happen because of my legitimate inability to speak. I have a messed up speech impediment. I used to have to suck on buttons on a string and they’d put a cage in the roof of my mouth to poke my tongue, so I would quit thrusting my tongue toward my teeth. I’ve always been real conscious of that.

RT: What else do you have coming up?

CF: I’m going to work the road a bit. I’m illustrating a children’s book with my sister.

RT: Is focusing on stand-up making you cut back on your other passions like skating?

CF: Totally—it’s just like with the art thing. Every time I go skating, I’m like “Why am I doing this?” It’s not even necessarily something that brings me joy. When I’m skateboarding, I’m just complaining, but I just can’t quit. Even though girls are like, “What? You’re 36? How old are you? You still skateboard?” That’s when I stop talking. I know that right now all I need to be doing is doing stand-up. My whole career, something comes from stand-up. That’s how I got the Fuel job. As long as you stay good at that, you don’t have to worry about any of this Hollywood crap.

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Follow Chris on Twitter @chrisfairbanks. Chris’ album, Fairbanks!, is available through iTunes, Amazon, and the Rooftop store.

Posted: February 8th, 2012 under HOMEPAGE, Interview, rooftop comedy productions, Video.
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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.
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Check out our new series Crashing the Market, now showing on MSN. It’s a weekly send-up of all the business headlines and gossip you may have missed. From McDonald’s fumbles in social media to financial tycoons losing their knighthood, we’re here to help you laugh at the absurd world of business. Click through the link below to watch the first episode, featuring host Mariah Castle. Take a look and let us know what you think!

Crashing the Market – Episode 1

Posted: January 27th, 2012 under Cool stuff from Rooftop Comedy, HOMEPAGE, News'n'stuff, rooftop comedy productions, 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.
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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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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

Celebrate the release of Andres du Bouchet’s first comedy album, ‘Naked Trampoline Hamlet’, at The Steve Allen Theater in Los Angeles, Friday October 21st at 8pm.

Hosted by fellow CONAN Writers Dan Cronin and Todd Levin.

With Performances by:
Chris Regan
Jim Earl
Jesse Popp
Andres du Bouchet
Music from Samantha Shelton
Plus Special Guests Brian Stack & James Urbaniak as fictional rival record executives!

For the price of admission guests receive a free copy of ‘Naked Trampoline Hamlet’ and free beer!

Friday, October 21, 2011 at 8:00 PM
The Steve Allen Theater at The Center For Inquiry
4773 Hollywood Blvd
Hollywood, CA 90027
Phone: (323) 666-4268
Get tickets

Follow Andres on Twitter

Posted: October 4th, 2011 under HOMEPAGE, News'n'stuff, Press Releases, rooftop comedy productions, Shows.
Comments: 5

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: 10

We have copies of Adam Newman’s new and hilarious “Not For Horses” album signed by the funny man himself.

BUT WAIT… there’s more! The next 20 people to buy the CD off www.rooftopcomedy.com can use the coupon code “horsie” and get 30% off their purchase.

Offer available for a limited time. Orders ship same day!

Speaking of good bargains, here’s an alternate version of one of the jokes on the album.

Pick up your signed copy of” “Not For Horses”

Posted: September 6th, 2011 under Cool stuff from Rooftop Comedy, rooftop comedy productions.
Comments: 17