Andy Kindler: ‘Judge ye and also judge yourself’

by Emma Kat Richardson

Andy Kindler is from from the self-deprecation school of comedy. Though he does take pride in deprecating other comedians as well– which will come in handy on the new season of Last Comic Standing, where he’s one of three judges. He’s also just like the Beatles.

Andy Kindler is not bitter. Angry, yes; critical, certainly. But bitter? He wishes.

And we’re not kidding. So enamored is he – a 20-plus year veteran of the stand-up scene and a man we might pretentiously refer to as a “comedian’s comedian” – with the concept of bitterness that he even named his 2003 stand-up special I Wish I Was Bitter— a title that not only suggests a grappling toward a personality flaw many already sport deeply ingrained, but a flagrant “fuck you” to America’s most rabid of grammar Nazis. (If you don’t get the latter thought, you’re not a grammar Nazi).

All this points to an unprecedented level of comedic subversiveness not seen since the glory days of that other comic wunderkind Andy K, but alas, being universally reviled by the audiences and popular targets of Kindler isn’t really the goal. And although he’s perhaps most well acquainted with the American popular consciousness as a shoot-to-kill critic of other comedians and peckish industry types, Kindler is hardly sulking about in a dank, moth-eaten doublewide while career opportunities fly by the wayside.

It’s quite the opposite really: indeed, today’s episode of wishes-he-was-bitter man finds our hero happily married and preparing to put those judgmental skills to edgiest use as a judge on this season’s Last Comic Standing, premiering June 7 on NBC. He also just happens to be playing at Comix in New York this weekend.

Sitting down for a long, hearty chat, Kindler and I to rapped about the wetness of his feet, Last Comic Standing’s new season, and why he has a ton in common with the Beatles.

So I’m speaking with the famous Andy Kindler.
Did you just say the ‘famous’ Andy Kindler?

Well, I have to assume there are some unfamous Andy Kindlers out there.
Oh yeah, there’s the guy who’s in professional wrestling. People who are into professional wrestling think he’s me, or claim he’s me. They claim that because it’s on Wikipedia… you know, Wikipedia. If it’s on Wikipedia, it has to be true! How could it be transformed into a digital format that you can see on the screen if it wasn’t 100 percent accurate?

Exactly. Glad we finally got that smoothed over. By the way, that sounds more Andy Kaufman than Andy Kindler, with regards to the professional wrestling.
Yeah, well, if I have a set that doesn’t go well, I try to do the Andy Kaufman thing. Not that his sets didn’t go well, but he was experimental. That’s my go-to: I go ‘hey, I was trying something so new, no wonder.’

Do you have a lot of success with that?
No, no. [Laughs]. There’s not a lot that I have a lot of success with. My whole schtick is self-deprecation – even if I was to become the hugest comedian in the whole world, like Dane Cook plus a million, I would still pretend that it was not happening. It’s funny, because me dissing Dane Cook is actually a couple of years too late. I think I was early with it.

Before you joined Last Comic Standing, what was your opinion of the show?
I do this speech every year in Montreal at Just For Laughs, called the State of the Industry Address. I slam everything there, so I had many jokes about the previous years of Last Comic Standing. I was never a huge fan of anything to do with competitions, anyway. So yeah, had a lot of things to say about it over the years. But they did say they were going to reboot it, and then we talked about it, and the other judges are so great. The host is great, so it just became a completely different thing.

Andy Kindler – Tremendous Amount of Space
comedians.comedycentral.com

What has being a judge taught you about the current state of comedy in the country?
Actually, there’s a lot of amazing stand-up comics. I started out in the ‘80s, so I was part of the original comedy boom, and then [there was] the alternative movement in LA that got popular in the ‘90s. Well, there never was an ‘alternative’ comedian, anyway; that was just an arbitrary label, but now, there’s so many great comics that there doesn’t need to be categories.

That being said, there’s still a lot of people doing jokes about, ‘I’m half this, and I’m half-other, ‘I’m half one ethnic group, half another, and when you combine it, it’s insane!’ There are a lot of people for some reason doing anti-homeless jokes, which I don’t really understand. I saw hundreds of comedians over a couple of Thursdays, an I started to see what would be the themes, and for some reason, the homeless has been a group of people that [comedians] think are either fun to pick on or easy to pick on – I’m not quite sure.

And then there are a lot of people doing references to TV. I’m kinda known for making obscure references to things, but not, you know, like Eisenhower, but there are a lot of people making references to things that I have no idea what they are. ‘What am I? A Mighty Morphing Power Ranger?’ What are the ones that are shaped like turtles? I have no idea what they’re talking about. There’s a lot of confusing references like that where I don’t know what they’re saying.

That’s more of my generation: it was a show I watched as a kid.
I guess in the old days the Smurfs were the reference. Also, people are still talking about one of the topics that I find off-putting: ‘Have you heard about this movie?’ ‘Have you read this?’ ‘Have you seen this thing in the paper that I’m going to talk about?’

So people aren’t really being too creative with it?
Well, asking the audience as a way into the bit is kind of like saying, ‘Hey, if I talk about this following subject, will you laugh about it?’ It’s a way of using a reaction.

In your own comedy, you make a lot of how under-appreciated you feel as a comic. Although, between scoring the Last Comic Standing gig and several other TV jobs, I have to wonder how under-appreciated you really still feel.
You know, I don’t know if I ever felt under-appreciated, but I always came from the self-deprecation school of comedy – and it’s not an actual school, I don’t think there’s an enrollment – but I would open up the academy as an alternative to the stand-up boot camp: the camp where everyone gets together and kind of is on the fence about their own act. I’ve always had the attitude toward that, but the other thing is that it’s not really a schtick, because I’m still a renter.

I mean, if I was wildly successful, probably, I’d own a house. But it’s been an interesting year for almost everyone I know – I don’t know if it’s sort of a yin-yang kind of thing, but I’m wondering when the other shoe is going to drop. I’m ready for it to turn around. I’m not really as negative as [you think]: I think I’m angry, but I’m not negative. It has been a good year. I’ve always felt appreciated by comics. And that’s been very cool.

Speaking of your peers, you do a lot of calling out and mocking of lesser comedic beings. Have you ever gotten any type of response from the people you’ve made references to?
Oh yeah. I’ve done this for a long time. I used to make fun of Adam Sandler, and I could just tell from talking to people that he was upset about it. Although I saw him recently at an event, and he said he’s not angry anymore. I’d like to be able to mock people, and still have them like me. I don’t really like confrontation.

So we won’t be seeing any East Coast/West Coast rap-style feuds in the comedy world?
No, that won’t happen on my end, because my part would be trying to hide at an undisclosed location.

There you go: the Dick Cheney strategy.
Exactly.

One of the things you criticize other comedians for is being too predictable. Do you ever worry that that schtick, in itself, might become predictable to your fans?
I think that anything that you rely on can become something that has a process of diminishing returns. When I first started, I did a lot of stuff about being Jewish over the years, so I can’t rely on that so much. I still keep going back to that well, though. I don’t follow all my rules, but yeah, I think that anything you overdo will start to look like it’s overdone.

Jokes.com
Andy Kindler – Strange Business
comedians.comedycentral.com

The thing that I try to do – not to get serious, because I’ve tried to keep it funny so far – but I’ve tried to keep my goal onstage, which is to say anything I’m thinking in my mind. That seems to usually work, but sometimes people can be like, ‘Well, you don’t have to toss us every thought.’ I also think that comedian’s strengths are sometimes their weaknesses, though, so what people like about them can probably also get on people’s nerves, quickly.

Can you give me an example?
When I started, I would say a joke, and if that joke didn’t work, I would go ‘Wow, you people really don’t like me,’ and I could go on forever about it. But as time would go on and I developed my act – Andy Kindler, the middle years – I would get angry at the crowd. I still get angry about stuff, though, and use it in my act.

There’s plenty to be angry about in this world, so I’m pretty sure you’d have no shortage of material.
Well, I’m always going to make fun of Jay Leno, because it’s just so much fun to make fun of Jay Leno. My current joke about it is that Kevin Eubanks left to tour, because we were all waiting for that, right? The Kevin Eubanks tour: I hope I can get tickets! But the replacement for Kevin Eubanks will be required to spit blood.

…what, is Punchline Magazine a Leno friend?

No, I’m just thinking it would be a tall order to fill. It would have to be one of the people from the current vampire craze.
[Laughs]. Exactly.

I’ve had this debate with people, and I’m very interested to hear your take on it: what exactly is it about confidence onstage that manages to ruin a comedian’s persona? We see some of that with Dane Cook, Craig Kilborn, etc.
I think Craig Kilborn was trying to be more of a smart-ass, so I think in his case, it was less confidence. But talking about Craig Kilborn… people reading this are going to have to get out the online thesaurus to figure out what we’re talking about. But I think with bravado, as we’re talking about, with people laughing in your face, it’s just something that’s not engaging. My favorite comedians of all time have almost exclusively been vulnerable; going back to the beginning, with Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, they all showed different sides of themselves. To me, it’s more interesting. I’m not going to laugh at someone who’s shoving the material down our throats.

Also, with bravado, it’s kind of part of the schtick, too. Part of what comedians like that do is they get the crowd on their side by device, like, ‘I better laugh at this guy, look at how much he or she thinks of themselves! They must be hilarious. They keep telling me how good they are.’ Over the years, I wrote something called the Hack Handbook, and people over the years have used different tricks to get laughs; like, we can’t laugh at their own material? Or they pretend that the material is off the top of their head. Leno did that on his show at 10:00, where he’d go [affects Leno voice], ‘Oh, what do we have on the show tonight? Oh, it’s Jaywalking!’

I can’t see anyone laughing at the bravado, unless that’s a part of the schtick. Sam Kinison used to do stuff that wasn’t a part of the bravado, reflecting his strong opinions on women or whatever, but I think in that case, bravado is just having a strong point of view.

I’ve always thought there were two types of funny people: those who use comedy as a defense mechanism, which grows into that vulnerable stage presence you were talking about. But then the other type is the cocky, sort of frat boyish person who, I feel, gets reinforced by other people telling them they’re funny for doing outrageous things at parties. Do you see any merit to that?
You know, I don’t really know. I guess so, but I just think it’s a kind of thing where people can get far in life just through the power of positive thinking. I don’t really think you can; I mean, it’s good to be positive, but it’s almost like it’s just kind of a tactic. It’s kind of based on the fact that if someone asks you how you’re doing, and you’re not feeling well or doing well, you don’t usually tell people you’re not doing well, because people don’t really want to know. People don’t really want to hear how depressed you are. But onstage, that can be entertaining.

Jokes.com
Andy Kindler – Pretzel Nuggets
comedians.comedycentral.com

You’re known for doing comedy industry jokes, but when you were first starting out and wetting your feet, what source did you draw your material from?
Well, I did some jokes about how wet my feet were. I apologize in advance for anything further I say like that.

You know what’s interesting? I never preface anything by saying ‘you know what’s interesting,’ but when I first started, I hadn’t watched a lot of stand-up, but I was really tied in to the audience. I thought the audience would understand, so I did a lot of stuff that wasn’t necessarily real to myself. I did a lot more sexual material, and a lot of stuff that was easier; things to make them happy. Early on, I think I talked about the stuff that everybody talks about, but from the first day I went onstage, I was always trying to be in the moment, so I always had that, whatever you want to call it – deconstruction, or whatever – of telling people what was on my mind.

But what happened was that as my career, of course, developed, I started talking about what was going on in my own life, and that was a lot about trying to make my living in show business, going to auditions, etc. In the ‘90s, I think that kind of became the alternative thing that everyone was talking about: you’d get up there and talk about how your audition went today. As my life became more about making it in this business, my jokes became more about that.

And then there are the parallels between how you feel about the country and stuff. There’s a lot of parallels between politics and whatever, and then it just became something that was, ‘controversial’ among comedians. Comedians can make fun of Michael Jackson all day long and nobody cares, but if they make fun of another comic, it’s like, ‘Oooh, what’s he doing there?’ It developed slowly.

Do you think that’s something of a winning formula that you might want to stick with for a while, or do you anticipate your career evolving or changing direction any time soon?
Well, I think that you have to ultimately talk about what’s going on with your own life, and that just depends on what’s going on with your life. For 15 years, I’ve been doing that speech in Montreal. It’s kind of a cool thing, because all year long, I’ve been focusing on what’s happening in popular culture … whenever I have an idea, I just jot it down, so I never make sure this is a show-oriented idea or a popular culture-oriented idea. I’m married, but if I had kids, I’d talk about that, so I think it’s more like I can still talk about what’s going on in my life; not that it’s the same stuff going on, but it’s similar in nature.

It’s kind of like what the Beatles did – how they grew and aged with their fans, as opposed to releasing the same material over and over again.
All I want from this interview is that you somehow compare me to the Beatles. If you could put in there: ‘Much like the Beatles, Andy’s…’ And could spell my fans phonetically, as in ‘phans.’ If you could refer to my fans as ‘disciples,’ because Twitter has followers, so I want disciples.

And if you could also throw in ‘kind of a cross between the handsomeness of Paul McCartney and the outrageousness of John Lennon.’ Maybe you could even say, ‘I know he’s a fantastic musician; I’m pretty sure he’s good at whatever he does.’

Hm, starting to sound like somebody’s a little of a cocky comic there…
That’s right, that’s right! I kinda know there’s this thing where the crowd is all whipped up, and some of the bravado comics will get the crowd all whipped up where they’re screaming and yelling, and that’s just not the right atmosphere for comedy. I think it’s better when the room is quiet and half-full, and the audience is as on the fence about you as you are.

How do you keep from participating in some of the celebrity comic behavior that you find so deplorable? Is there a way to toe the line between integrity and success?
One of my jokes I used to have was that my advice for people getting into show business is ‘take the high road. There’s no traffic.’ If I wanted to, quote, ‘sell-out’ anyway, I wouldn’t know what I was doing and I wouldn’t be that effective at it. I’m kind of going the way I’m going because this is the only way I know how to do it. It’s very unlikely that I would get more popular by some kind of catchphrase or something, or if I added a public part to my act. I don’t see that happening; don’t see that happening.

If you’re not bitter, what are you?
Well, the whole point of naming that DVD I Wish I Was Bitter is because I get angry and have issues, but you look at another year where things turn around and people are making a fabulous living (where being a comic is the lowest common denominator on the scale), I try to get angry about it, but there’s nothing to get angry about.

In the old days, I was less aware of my envy and jealousy, so now I’m aware that a lot of it was just plain envy. Not of their acts, but because of their successful station in life. I would like to not have to worry about paying bills: that would be nice.

Since we know what makes you angry, what makes you happy?
Well, my wife. I’m very happily married, and we have no kids, so we don’t have that aggravation. I still love comedy. I’ve seen so much on Last Comic Standing, but I didn’t get tired of comedy from it. In some ways, I feel like I’m more excited about comedy, although when you see so many people in a row, your mind starts to go numb.

That was my last question; anything else you’d like to add?
Well, as far as the interview, I’d like to know how I did. I think there were some peaks in performance; there were some valleys. I think I may have gone off on a couple of tangents, and I’m always happy to supply as many run-on sentences as requested.

It’s kind of hard to get out of judge-mode, isn’t it?
Yeah, especially when I’m judging myself. That’s the best part. Judge ye and also judge yourself.

For more on Andy, check out his official site andykindler.com; and check out NBC’s official site for Last Comic Standing.