Tom Cotter and Kerri Louise: United Front

by Noah Fowle

The stars of WE’s Two Funny chat with Punchline Magazine about parenting twins, their new stand-up project in NYC and the pitfalls of showcasing their act on a women’s network.








By Noah Fowle

Fresh off their season of Two Funny: Cotter & Louise, are ready to tackle their next challenge as a rising comedy duo- hosting their own monthly variety show at Carolines in New York City. Both respected stand-up comedians in their own right, Cotter and Louise decided to combine their acts after the birth of their twin boys. But as the Women’s Entertainment series illustrates, the transition was not simple.

The two relied on telling stories in their solo acts, and now they are writing brand new material that counts on a combination of their timing and wit. But Cotter and Louise have already begun to hit their stride displaying true chemistry lobbing one-liners back and forth, and finding the inherent laughs in all relationships.

Despite the some glitches, they have sloughed off their early misses with their trademark self-deprecating sense of humor and began building a new place for their novel act. On stage they are like a cat fighting couple; Cotter delivers a crack about her little brain, and after the laughs subside Louise slides in a snide remark about his less than adequate sex drive.

But off stage, the two are down to earth, supportive and humbled by the new challenges of parenting. Since finishing their first season together, they maintain a steadfast commitment to their children first, followed by building their new act while in addition to continuing their solo careers.

After their inaugural show at Carolines, the duo dished on their new act, each other and their twins.

How is it going from successful solo comedy careers, back to a brand new act?
Tom Cotter: Did you see it out there? (referring to the night’s performance)
Kerri Louise: It’s still hard. It’s very different. We know what the process is and what the end result is. We know what it’s like to do an open mic and what it’s like to own a crowd.
TC: We’re like neophytes again.
KL: Starting over is frustrating. It’s hard to get time in for this show. We still maintain our individual acts. We wouldn’t be able to survive without them. This is a novelty so we are making it a priority.

Who were your influences for this new act?
TC: Well, our shared love of George Carlin made us fall in love. Also George Burns and Gracie Allen did something like this.
KL: We went to the Museum of Television and Radio and discovered an old duo Nickels and Mary. We’d never heard of them before, but they were great.

So, how did you guys meet?
TC: We met doing stand-up in Boston.
KL: We knew each other from the circuit there. We had played together. Then we went skiing up in New Hampshire, and I fell in love with him on the slope.

How was your first TV experience? What do you prefer the TV world or the stand up circuit?
KL: I love TV. That’s where I want to go, that’s the goal. But I really missed doing stand-up. TV is long hours, hurry up and wait. When I’m on stage by myself, I answer to no one. That’s why it’s so hard now to work with Tom.
TC: One begets the other. I will always do stand-up. It’s what I love. But TV let’s you choose the venue and it gets more fannies in the seats.
KL: With TV, people like you before you even open your mouth.
TC: TV allows for exposure too.
KL: But stand-up provides that immediate reaction
TC: Comedians by nature are insecure. We need that immediate gratification. I want to know right after I utter the words whether they are funny or not.

What was it like to have your first show on the WE network?
TC: Emasculating. Brutal. I never thought my first show would be sponsored by Tampax.
KL: Don’t worry, no one was watching.
TC: I wanted people to be high when they watched my TV show, not bloated and menstruating.
KL: It was strange because our demographic for the shows was very different from the crowds we play to.
TC: The show became unfunny. Each and every take they wanted to shape. It really tied our hands.
KL: We are edgy New York City comics and that’s not how we come off.

So who gets recognized more?
KL: Our boys. The first time it happened it was all four of us together.
TC: Kerri was on the second season of Last Comic Standing and got a lot of exposure for that.
KL: And Tom had a half hour Comedy Central special and was on the Tonight Show.
TC: We’re each others’ biggest fans. We really don’t compete against one another.

Where are the kids now?
TC: In the car. It’s okay, the window is cracked.
KL: No, they’re with the babysitter. Hopefully they’re asleep.

What’s more difficult— doing a combined act or parenting twins?
KL: Parenting twins. I’m more relaxed on stage. Being a parent is the hardest job. `

What do you think your sons will think of the show and your act when they get older?
TC: Hopefully they’ll think it was comical. We’re not too worried. We thought the whole process through and we don’t think it will be detrimental. They got paid about what we got paid, so it helped set up their college fund.
KL: It means a lot more work for us. We still need to teach them.
TC: We take pride in our parenting. Both of us come from strong families. Our careers keep our days free so we are there when they wake up and there when they go to sleep. We want to be very hands on. Our kids are first and our careers are second.

Do you guys find it hard to turn off your acts when you are off stage?
KL: No, I like to save myself for the stage. It annoys me when people feel like they always have to be on. I slip in a joke every now and then. But my act is mostly exaggerated stories. Tom has a little more punch, he’s goofier with the kids.
TC: My act is mostly about how small my penis is.

When your parents finally got used to the fact that you weren’t going to be a doctor or a lawyer, how did they feel when they found out your were also going to be marrying another comedian?
KL: My mom was not happy. She still reminds me about teaching jobs when I go home. She still thinks my comedy is my hobby.
TC: My dad had a lot of trouble with it. He paid for a lot of private school. I’m the mistake because I get up in front of strangers and talk about my penis. But my next older sibling, who is a great guy, really makes me look good.

You guys recently moved to Harlem, what is that like?
KL: It’s great. We’re like pioneers.
TC: Of everywhere I’ve lived in New York it’s definitely my favorite. Our neighborhood is lot of people like us, families, kids, working parents. Sure we’re the only marshmallows in the fudge, but it’s fun.

For more info, check out: tomcotter.com and kerrilouise.com.

Louis CK: Stand-up to Sitcom

by Dylan P. Gadino

For a stand-up comedy veteran of 21 years — who has gone on record saying he’d never do a sitcom — Louis C.K. finds himself in the most unlikely of places — on HBO, starring in a sitcom that he created.

By Dylan P. Gadino

At a recent show at Carolines in New York City, it didn’t take long for Louis C.K. to get on the topic of his 4-year-old daughter. “She’s an asshole,” he announced, prompting those in the crowd to lose their shit in fits of laughter. As he continued to outline why she’s an asshole — in this story, she refuses to put her shoes on — you can’t help but appreciate C.K.’s commitment to his analysis. He never backs down, he never apologizes, he doesn’t modify his original words once the joke comes to an end. And still, he’s likeable.

Maybe it’s his patchy red hair and how it seems to recede before our eyes. Or maybe it’s how he admits that he has no problem eating a giant ice cream sundae in the driveway minutes before dinner. Maybe it’s the vague stains on the front of his navy blue, long-sleeve henley. In short, C.K. (a phonetic approximation of his last name, Szekely) is a lot like us — well, sort of. He won an Emmy in 1999 for his writing work on The Chris Rock Show and has a writing/directing credit for the 2001 cult favorite Pootie Tang. Yeah, maybe he’s nothing like us at all, actually.

But this ‘just like us’ idea is at the center of the 37-year-old comic’s new HBO sitcom, Lucky Louie – premiering June 11 – in which C.K. plays an average mechanic struggling to get by financially while trying to maintain decent relationships with his wife, children and less-than-successful friends. Punchline Magazine recently had a chat with the veteran comic from his office in Los Angeles.

How has it been prepping for the show’s premiere?
It’s been really fun. I mean, nothing matters until the show airs and we find out if people like it.

Do you feel a tremendous amount of pressure to make sure people like it?
Well, why wouldn’t I want it to be good?

Right. But are you preoccupied with a great fear of the show failing?
I certainly don’t want it to fail. But all I could look after is making it as good as I can. Yeah, I lose a lot of sleep over the show being good enough, sure.

We’ve been hearing a lot about how Lucky Louie is going to be a nod to the shows of Norman Lear. Maybe a lot like All in the Family.
I definitely like that show and there’s a lot that worked on that show that we’re going back to. I remember feeling like I was watching a show shot in front of an audience and that you could hear people reacting. I think there’s a certain kind of comedy — a performed comedy — that you really need an audience for and today’s multi-camera shows really don’t have that. They’re kind of single-camera shows with a laugh track so you hear laughing but you don’t see the actors really being timed out by an audience. Archie would have to freeze for a full minute or two after all the outrageous shit he was saying. So we’re kinda going back to that.

It’s the way we shot and performed it and wrote it. We definitely take that from All in the Family. We’re also able to say more explosive things and to present more ugly honesty. And that’s something they certainly did. I love those shows. I feel like I have a lot more to learn and gain from shows like that than anything that’s being done right now.

So you have some complaints about contemporary sitcoms?
I really don’t have any complaints. I generally just don’t watch them. I don’t find them that interesting. I’m not compelled to watch them. I really don’t know why to watch them. They’re just kinda executed stories about people I don’t really recognize as real people. None of that makes me laugh, so it’s just not interesting to me. I haven’t watched any kind of show like that for a long time. Cheers I thought was boring.

And I have zero interest in watching shows like Frasier or Friends. They’re fine shows that seem to be done very well but they are not something I want to see. I just don’t care. That doesn’t mean those people made bad shows. It’s just not my taste of humor. It doesn’t make me laugh. It’s people in a very nicely lit set wearing nice clothes saying very well-tailored comedy to each other. It’s just not that compelling to me.

Shows like All in the Family and The Jeffersons have historically been considered important programs for television. Do you feel Lucky Louie is an important show?
Gee, I don’t know. I think you could only tell by actually watching it air and seeing what kind of impact it has. I think for me to look at what we shot and say that this is important would be ridiculous. I think important means that it has an impact or makes a difference. That’s something that will happen or won’t happen. But I don’t think I could look at it and say it’s important. It’s important to me I guess. I just want it to be funny more than anything else. That’s the most important thing to me … and I think it is that. I mean we had an audience there laughing so I believe they weren’t all insane.

Do you feel a sense of satisfaction knowing that your show is cast with professional funny people as opposed to pretty people trying to act funny?
Definitely. Rick Shapiro is a complete nut, a total misfit. Mike Hagerty is an actor you’ve seen play the guy behind a counter in a bunch of different shows but he was never the second lead of a show. I love it. I think it’s great. We’re definitely the misfits. There’s no one in the world that would’ve given anyone on the show the parts that we have. I would never be the lead in a sitcom. It’s crazy that I’m a lead in a sitcom. And Pam Adlon, who plays my wife, she’s way past her prime. (laughs). And Jim Norton, never. We’re all just ordinary looking people. We don’t even where makeup on the show. I’ve never been touched by a makeup person.

Really?
Well, sometimes in the middle of the show I start to sweat just from working hard and they’ll pat me down and maybe put a little powder on to inhibit the sweating but I don’t wear any makeup and nobody touches my hair. There are days where we shot the show when I didn’t shower that morning.

I just woke up, stumbled to work, rehearsed all day and then shot it. And I wear my own clothes or a facsimile thereof. I’ve actually struggled to wear my clothes but that’s hard because there needs to be continuity and they need to be able to go back to re-shoot stuff so they need to have a reliable source of clothing.

But otherwise, everyone is just themselves and I love that about the show. It’s also shot on videotape instead of film. That’s another thing we took from All in the Family. While a lot of sitcoms started to shoot film, they stayed on tape and it gives a much more live feel to it and the show is more unassuming. If the way you’re shooting the show is artistic, it’s very distancing. If it’s sophisticated it’s not a good thing.

So your show is less slick that the typical sitcom.
Yeah. This is just us saying this shit and this is who we are and that goes all the way to the casting, which is great. These are just ordinary folks. I can’t give a shit about really good-looking people in nice clothes in really big apartments. In order for them to have any predicament that’s funny they need to cook up some weird situation that has no relation to anybody’s life. The people on our show are people that don’t have any money and are sick of each other. So all you have to do is show that. There’s not a lot you need to put on top of that for it to be interesting, for me anyway.

Since most of the cast-members are comedians and are adept at improvisation, was it difficult to stay on script?
We don’t do a lot of improvisation because you have to be consistent and you have to shoot it the same way each time. I mean, people sometimes come up with stuff. But we rehearse the show a shit load of times and run through it before it’s ever shot. A lot of times, things will come up during those times and if they’re good enough we’ll put it in the script. But there’s a lot to shoot in a night. You shoot at least once the way it was written and sometimes for an extra take people may come up with something. But generally people don’t ad lib on the spot. We don’t give people that kind of license.

What kind of topics are you addressing on the show?
A lot of it is about raising kids and being married and not having a lot of money. It’s basically me without the career, an average American without a huge amount of direction in life. And the character is hanging out with the same idiots he went to school with. One of my best friends in the show — Jim Norton — plays a guy who sells pot to high school kids. That’s how he makes his money. For a while after I had graduated high school and before I got a direction and a career I just hung around with other people that didn’t go to college like me. And those were the people that sold pot to the high school kids and worked shitty jobs. So that’s who my friends are in the show.

How much of the show, would you say, is based on reality?
The stuff about the family are things I’m going through now and then other parts I take from different areas of my life. I used to work in a garage fixing cars and that’s what my character does. The other characters are amalgams of different people I’ve hung out with in the past or dealt with in the past. So it’s sort of culled together from different parts of my life.

When did you start filming?
September of last year.

How have your days changed since filming began?
They’re crazily long days. And the weeks are long because we shoot two shows a week; that means two shows of one episode. It’s an ongoing thing. You take a little breather in the morning. It’s not 14-hour days but toward the end of the week it gets to be that. I generally work from like 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. It’s pretty punishing. You’ve got to be in shape for it. That’s one thing I’ve learned about this stuff.

You mean you have to be in good physical condition?
Yeah. Before I go into production I try to train and get a better diet and start running. It’s really good. During the best parts of production I was riding my bicycle to work every day. That really kept me well balanced. It’s stamina. What kills a lot of people in this business is not being able to get through the grind or if you do get through it you start doing a shitty job because you’re tired.

I never thought about it like that, like you have to be physically prepped to do these things. It’s definitely something that takes you down if you’re not in shape. You start feeling it and you start getting tired and you start making concessions to make your days easier and it really fucks things up.

How long of a bike ride is it to work?
It’s 11 miles from my house to the studio so about an hour to get there. Getting home is a little quicker because it’s more downhill. It’s like 45 minutes. It feels good.

In a 2000 Variety article, you said that you would never do a sitcom. What changed?
I guess the stuff I do on stage got closer to things that made sense for TV. I talk about being in a family now. So I was acting shit out on stage doing stand-up anyway. And I also wrote this thing. So it’s more that I wrote something that I could deliver. I could never go and be in someone else’s show. I don’t think I could ever do that. But this is all the same shit that I do on stage. It’s the same muscle so it feels natural to me. Also, there’s an audience. In order to act, you have to audition. You have to go in a room and act in front of a few people.

I couldn’t do stand-up that way. If somebody asked me to go into a room with five people and do stand-up, I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t even try. I would just say, “Whatever the job is, I don’t want it.” It’s impossible. So to me, I’m not acting; I’m just playing to an audience. I’m doing comedy for an audience. And that’s second nature to me because I’ve been doing it for 21 years now. So it’s a no-brainer to me. But I could never act in a movie or in a TV show that doesn’t have an audience where I’m not doing jokes that I know and that I wrote. I need all of that to make it work.

How has your stand-up act changed over the last 21 years?
I definitely used to just string together a lot of funny ideas and just think of funny, weird shit. I think as I went along I started to observe life more and do more things that I was thinking about, things that had more meaning to me. And when I had kids and got married I started to talk about that a lot because that was on my mind. I started to do more about what’s on my mind and what I find interesting and funny instead of trying to be funny and thinking of weird shit I could talk about. Like oh, here’s a joke I could do about this

I also I tried to think more about being a good performer and being a good stand-up. Like I used to just get up. there and tell my jokes but now I take stand-up very seriously. I didn’t used to when I was younger. Then I watched guys like Pryor to see how they nailed their specials and see how they came across on stage. I approach it much more as an art than I used to and I take it much more seriously. I also watch myself. I used to hate watching tapes and stuff but now I analyze the shit out of myself. I used to be able to talk to someone about baseball or whatever until the second I go on stage. I just didn’t need preparation.

But now I force myself to sit down and think about what I’m going to do for a while and stew about it. Like if I’m driving to a gig I won’t listen to the radio in the car. It makes a difference. I think a lot of comedians, including myself in the past, are kinda lazy and think that you’re supposed to be loose and cool. But it’s such a hard thing to get good at. So why wouldn’t you fucking really try hard. So that’s what I do now.

Do you have a ritual? Or do you literally sit backstage in complete silence before a show?
Sometimes I do that. I try not to talk to people before I go on stage. Sometimes I’ll sit in the back of the club while the other comedians are on. But I’m not watching him; I’m watching the crowd and feeling the room. I get antsy. I don’t like waiting to go on stage. I get very anxious and it’s just uncomfortable. I learned that it’s important to seize on that instead of running away from it. So I stay in the back and bottle up the energy so that when I go on stage I’m more connected.

You’ve been known to call your four-year-old daughter an asshole on stage and rant about your wife for being a pain in the ass. Do you ever get shit for talking so meanly about your family?
Not really. I don’t say anything I don’t really mean on some level. A lot of people who I think are not going to like it, like nice soccer moms and middle Americans, they really like it. It’s a release for them. Usually people that curse and are nasty and brutally honest are people that are sort of living New York City or LA type lifestyles. But I’m talking about stuff that is very relatable to regular people. My favorite places to do that stuff are like Pittsburgh or Peoria. Those people don’t live any type of lifestyle like me but they have universal issues, like that it’s really hard to raise kids and hang in there. So we relate to each other that way.

You also have a one-year-old daughter. How long until you start laying into her on stage?
Well, I don’t know. It depends what kind of a person she is. We’ll see what she’s like. I don’t know anything about her yet since she’s just a baby. There’s nothing to say there. We’ll see.

She’s just a blob at this point.Yeah, I mean she’s great but nothing happens. I just take care of her.

You’re not the type of comic who says things purely for shock value. But you certainly never shy away from things typically thought of as taboo. Is there anything that you wouldn’t joke about?
Geez. I don’t know. I mean there are things I find boring. I hate current events humor. I just hate it. I just find that fucking tedious because that’s just everywhere. I think there’s so much of that out there on the late night shows. Something happens out there in the world and there’s this feeding frenzy of mediocre jokes and people kinda appreciate them because they know it must have been done last minute. It’s kind of a trick you’re pulling by saying, “Hey, I just thought of this and you know it just happened.”

But I just don’t care. I just don’t give a shit. Like the war— I think there’s a lot to say about that stuff that’s funny but I don’t touch it. It’s just not what I do. And popular culture shit like Paris Hilton and that kind of stuff I hate. I find it really boring and if I see a comedian doing it I just zone out. I’m just not interested.

Yeah, I feel like it’s a sign of laziness. It’s a quick way for a comic to get the audience on his side without really constructing a proper joke.
Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of comedians on the road who basically think they’re doing their own Tonight Show monologue. They use the word “apparently” a lot and other monologuey words. Like “apparently Paris Hilton said …” That joke construction is just fucking tedious and I personally think it’s as bad as doing a joke book on stage. I just don’t think it’s very fair to the audience because you could get that elsewhere. I guess I like stuff that’s more personal. You should be giving the audience something that no one else can. If they’re coming to see something live, they should get something they can’t see on television.

I like listening to someone either talking about their real life or telling someone their real thoughts that are funny or original or shocking or real perverted— like real fucked up notions that someone has. I think all of that kind of thing is interesting. But just making a joke about something that happened on Extra or whatever, Pee- fucking-U. It’s the lowest form of comedy to me. I had to do it when I worked on talk shows. You have to read the paper every morning and see what’s going on. I hate that shit. I don’t find that interesting. I even find it offensive. But I don’t find any other subject offensive.

Personally, I think if you’re a comedian you can say whatever you want. That’s just my feeling. But you have to take responsibility that other people listen to your words and if they don’t find it funny — if they’re tone deaf to your humor — they’re going to get offended by it. Generally, that’s the way it works. And that does happen. That’s the way it goes.

Was your family supportive about you getting into stand-up?
I think they always were. I was always going to do something different. I don’t think anybody had any hope of me having a regular career. I think my mom got irritated at one point because she had to come and give me rides a lot but mostly they’ve always been supportive. I did a lot of drugs in junior high, like a shocking amount. And I was in trouble and going to jail a lot. So whenever I had any sort of clean pursuit they were just thrilled. I set the bar pretty low.

You were in jail multiple times?
Yeah, just for dumb shit. Just stupid fucking little things. I fucked around and did a lot of dumb things when I was a kid. But it’s good I got it out of my system because there are drugs and drinking and stuff in comedy and I never was interested. I was only interested in doing the comedy because I had that shit out of my system. I mean it would’ve been a waste of time getting high instead of doing stand-up.

That’s a good message for the kids.
Yeah.

For more info, visit www.louisck.com.

Ray Ellin: On the Go!

by Dylan P. Gadino

Throughout his career in stand-up, Ray Ellin has always sought new challenges. Now, after producing and directing documentary The Latin Legends of Comedy, the Boston bred comedian is about to see his efforts pay off big time.

By Dylan P. Gadino

As more than 200 people spill out from the showroom and enter the front corridor of the Comic Strip Live in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a clean-cut, olive-skinned guy in jeans happily greets nearly every last person, accepting “job well done” sentiments from strangers, as well as a few phone numbers from new female fans. He even gets a big hug from a young woman’s mother; the pair was in the audience that night, apparently developing — in between laughs — a crush on the man.

Ray Ellin owns this place. Not literally, of course. But at times like this, when he emcees a night of A-list comedy, it’s easy to think it. His job is a difficult one: He needs to open the show, set the tone for the night, be funny in between other comics’ sets and keep the partially drunken crowd in check by dropping thinly veiled sarcastic comments like, “If you could order your drinks as loudly as possible, that would be helpful.”

Early in the show, he spots a couple in the front; the guy is hanging all over his woman. “Why don’t you just pee on her,” Ellin says, referring to the way an animal might mark its territory.

He then tells a story about how his veterinarian once told him that while he’s neutering his dog, he could give him testicle implants. Ray’s response: “But do they feel real?” The good doc asked, “What do you mean?” Ellin’s answer: “Like when they’re resting on your chin — do they feel real?” The crowd erupts.

As he tells it, Ellin loves his gig at the Comic Strip — in part because it keeps him on his toes and hones his ad-libbing, something he has become known for in the New York comedy scene. For instance, the following night at the club, stand-up veteran Jeff Garlin made a surprise appearance and did a 35-minute set while one comic never showed and another left early. So Ellin, without any prep work, ended up doing a total of 55 minutes on stage, much longer than typical hosting duties require.

“If you’re doing it right, the audience looks forward to seeing you,” Ellin says. “When you host, you can make it like your show, and that’s good. But it’s harder because you’re breaking up your act. It’s easier to get up there and do a set and build a flow. When you’re emceeing, you’re breaking up your bits, and you’re constantly interrupting your momentum.”

Performing well despite breaks in momentum is something all comics — Ellin included — need to do on a consistent basis. In case you thought the opposite, stand-up isn’t really the most stable profession. It’s a sort of one-step-forward-two-steps-back type of endeavor — and that’s if you’re talented and lucky. But Ellin’s more than 15 years on the national comedy circuit has been paying off, especially as of late. Broken momentum looks to be a thing of the past.

LATIN LEGENDS AND REINFORCED CROTCHES
“You haven’t lived until you’ve measured a mailman’s inseam,” Ellin laughs as he reminisces about a job he once had selling postal uniforms door to door (or, in this case, post office to post office). “You know you’ve seen it all when you can just look at a man’s waist and recommend the 12-ounce gabardines.”

Ellin was really good at selling these things. He had it down to a science. He even gave demonstrations to help drive up sales. He would get the two biggest mailmen in each office and have them each pull a pant leg in opposite directions, proving to the workers what he already knew — the reinforced crotches refused to tear. He even won sales awards, scoring a cruise one year and a Mexican resort vacation another. “It was a great job,” he says. “You made your own hours, so I was able to sleep late, work in the afternoons and do comedy sets at night.”

Here’s the thing: Whether it’s emceeing a show, headlining colleges or selling gray pants and blue shirts to government workers, Ellin fully commits. That includes maxing out six credit cards to fund his latest project, The Latin Legends of Comedy, a concert/documentary film that will be released on DVD by 20th Century Fox in either late summer or early fall.

“I just kinda went for it. I thought it was a good gamble,” says Ellin. “Worst-case scenario, I file for bankruptcy.” Lucky for him, the film, which features full sets from longtime New York City friends, comics Joe Vega, J.J. Ramirez and Angel Salazar — is a solid piece of filmmaking and quite hilarious.

So in March 2004, production began. The comics’ sets were filmed over the course of one night at the Comic Strip, the place where all three got their start. While two shows were shot, Ellin — who not only produced and directed the film but also appears as the host — decided to only use footage from the early show.

The film does an excellent job of not only showcasing how funny these three well-respected comedians are, but also subtly distinguishing their unique styles. Vega is a classic stand-up; he’s well dressed, and his delivery is debonair. He talks a lot about sex, relationships and the things we can all relate to. J.J. Ramirez — known as the “Latin Lunatic” — is a huge Don Rickles fan and has no problem using that same attack style with the audience. Salazar, who quite literally swam to America from Cuba when he was 14, is simply out of his fucking mind. He has been known to don miniskirts on stage. In Latin Legends, his finale consists of an audience participation musical number that finds Salazar just about naked.

So how did Ellin, a Jewish guy from suburban Massachusetts, get involved with this? He was introduced into the Latin comedy scene when he began working for a Latin entertainment company, becoming a co-creator and producer of La Familia, an animated series starring John Leguizamo. His work on the show helped him earn a job producing the 2002 Jack Daniel’s Latino Comedy Series (a 13-week comedy festival in New York City) and the 2003 Jack Daniel’s series, which branched out to Chicago and Miami.

Although Ellin worked with up to 35 different comics at a time during these events, he became most intrigued with Vega, Ramirez and Salazar, as well as their 20-year friendship. “It hit me,” Ellin says. “Why are these three guys not bigger. Part of it could be that they’ve pretty much stayed on the East Coast; part of it could be luck. They each did some big things, but they kinda flew off the radar. They weren’t as big as, say, Paul Rodriguez.”

“And then a bell went off,” says Ellin, a graduate of Boston University’s film school. “I remember thinking they’re friends, they’re great, they each have their own style, but they complement each other really well. So I thought there was a movie here.”

He was right. Not only that, but thanks to a chance meeting with a script at the Phoenix Film Festival (where he was showing Latin Legends), Ellin was asked to direct the upcoming comedy, The Bourbon Brothers, starring academy award winner Mercedes Ruehl. Filming should begin this summer.

TALES OF A SIXTH GRADE SOMETHING
Since Ray Ellin was 11, he knew he wanted to be a comedian. He even performed a stand-up bit at his sixth grade graduation. “I killed amongst my fellow sixth-graders, so I got hooked early on,” he says. “I was quiet in the house but really loud in class. If I was a kid now and I acted the way I did when I was a kid, they would’ve totally put me on Ritalin.”

Ellin grew up just five miles outside of Boston, in the mostly affluent community of Brookline — Conan O’Brien’s hometown — with his parents and two older sisters. “I always got away with murder,” he admits. “I was the only boy, and I was the youngest. By the time I got a little older, there were no curfews.”

Dad was an engineer and designed cameras for Polaroid: Mom was a classical pianist and piano teacher. “My Mom was always a little cooler about me wanting to become a comic since she was already in the arts,” he says. “My Dad is a much more logical thinker. He would’ve rather me become an engineer or an orthodontist or something. It wasn’t until about eight years ago when he saw me perform that it turned around. There was a line down the street to get into the club, and the show turned out really well. Since then, he hasn’t really said a word. In fact, he would start e-mailing me to suggest joke topics.”

Always looking for new challenges, Ellin’s career in stand-up has routinely lead him to more work, including movie roles (indie flick Killing Cinderella), commercials (Budweiser, Volkswagen, Sci Fi Channel) and television-hosting duties (NYC’s MetroChannel show New York Now).

If Ellin ever leaves stand-up, it won’t be due to a lack of interest. Turns out, the man just has more to give. “Stand-up, to me, is a constant,” he says. “I love doing it. But in life, and in showbiz, you often get pigeonholed. I feel like you can do lots of things.”

So far, it seems Ellin’s formula to gather the most from life is working. “You have to take advantage of opportunities,” he says. “There has been other things that I’ve gotten involved in over the years that weren’t worthwhile. But you have to investigate, and not just wait around. You have to get your name out there. And you have to be assertive without being an asshole.”

Right on.

For more info, visit www.rayellin.com.

Lewis Black: Black Attack!

by Dylan P. Gadino

He may be pissed off but Lewis Black has his reasons. Punchline Magazine spent some time with the future stand-up comedy legend to see what makes him tick – and ticked. In the process, we found a softer side of the surly man in black.

Planted in a red, mini loveseat backstage at the Comedy Connection in Boston, Lewis Black looks relaxed and loose, maybe even satisfied, like he’s just ended a marathon session of sex. He smiles a lot, smokes a cigarette and chats with his long-time opener, comic John Bowman as well as other friends and manager types who line the walls of the tiny room.

To be fair, Black did spend the previous hour in serious release mode, flailing his arms, vigorously wagging his index fingers and — during especially intense times – gripping with his right hand the raised letters, m, e and d on the wall behind him. So now it’s time to mellow. The venue, of course, was sold out. And as expected, the crowd hung on Black’s every tirade, diatribe and odd placement of the word “fuck,” as in “Cracker Fuck Barrel” or “Dr. Fuck Phil.” Dressed in black from his pants to his shirt and jacket to his trademark black trim glasses, the 57-year-old comic delivered his act like an angry preacher on the verge of a rage- induced seizure.

It’s a wonderful thing to see Black air out this way. He’s seen mostly every week in his “Back in Black” segment on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, where he sports a loose tie and opines loudly on that week’s political misdealings, shoddy media coverage thereof and the general stupidity of human beings. Though his language is restricted on Comedy Central, viewers still get the message: He’s angry. The idea for the segment was born 10 years ago from his stand-up routine, which snags liberally from headlines. “I don’t know why I even do this for a living anymore,” he tells the Boston crowd during his set. “I should just come up here with a newspaper and say, ‘Hey, did you read about this…?”

He’s right. The time is so ripe for Lewis Black that he could barely catch his breath between major world events. So that night he gradually checked off members from his hit list. Dick Cheney, as usual, is near the top of said list. Of the vice president pumping his friend Harry Whittington with bird shot and on quail hunting in general, he says, “They raise these animals to be killed. It’s like animal Auschwitz!”

Throughout the set, Black also hits on Arnold Schwarzenegger, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, the handling of Hurricane Katrina and the immigration debate. And in light of his belief that voting is a fairly outdated and ineffective way of choosing our leaders, he also proposes a new way to pick our next president: Throw a dart at a map. Fly a monkey over whatever city was hit. When he’s over the city, push the monkey out of the plane. The first person he holds hands with is our new president.

This technique of suggesting ludicrous ideas to solve the country’s woes is a common one for Black. It only makes his overriding message clearer. That message: We are all fucked.

MOVIE MADNESS
“I’m on hold today. I’m not exactly sure what that means,” says Black, days before his Boston performance. “I think it means I’m supposed to be available because they may call at any minute.” It’s 11 a.m., and he speaks quietly; he sounds tired but content. His blood isn’t boiling, and he’s not dying to spout about politics. Black is in his hotel room in Salt Lake City, where he’s filming the Warner Bros. flick Unaccompanied Minors, but he’s still getting adjusted to the motion picture world. After all, this is a guy who does 250 shows a year.

So he’s still touring in earnest while shooting the film. “I worked here three days and then had to leave,” he explains. “I came back for two days then had to fly back east. And I’m flying Delta, so you get the feeling they’re going to go on strike while we’re in the air.”

In Minors, Lewis plays an airport manager who on Christmas Eve is about to take his first vacation in 12 years. But when a blizzard hits, he’s grounded. As it turns out, so are a group of unruly minors sans parents. Black spends a lot of the movie disgruntled and dealing with these devil children. “Yeah, it’s a real stretch to get in character,” jokes Black. “Sometimes, all you have to do is wake me up at 6 a.m. and say, ‘Let’s shoot.’”

With four other movie projects in the works – including Barry Levinson’s political satire Man of the Year and the Bob Saget-helmed animated mockumentary Farce of the Penguins – the world at large is going to be seeing and hearing a lot more from Lewis Black this year.

“The movie thing came totally out of left field,” says Black. “I didn’t know this was going to happen. They called me to do this movie and then as it turns out, Barry Levinson had written a part for me in his film. But no one has seen any of these movies yet. That’s why I have a successful movie career. This will all end once they’re out in theaters.”

In addition to his upcoming movies, Black just released The Carnegie Hall Performance, his fifth live stand-up album. The two-disc set features nearly an hour and a half of some of Black’s funniest and most solid material. During the performance, he does a masterful job of not only brandishing jokes about what you’d expect from him – Rick Santorum being a bigoted jerk-off, how Congress interfered with the Terry Schiavo case, the problems with airport security – but also of presenting a slightly softer side to his otherwise agitated persona.

He tells some endearing anecdotes about his parents and about growing up Jewish, he laments growing older and he manages to do more than a few minutes on the evils of candy corn. At a measured, deliberate pace and at a soft volume – the same he uses when he’s talking about world atrocities and building up to a “HOLY FUCKING SHIT!” – he philosophizes about this famous Halloween treat. “Nothing proves [long pause] just how dumb [short pause] we are collectively [short pause] as a people [pause]… nothing proves it more [pause] than candy corn.”

“He has a great mind and a great way of presenting his dissatisfaction with things,” George Carlin said of Black in a Playboy interview last year. “I like Lewis’ relentlessness. I love his overkill. I love the fucking sledgehammer. Lewis wields a mighty sledgehammer.”

And maybe at the end of the day that disgusting but popular candy is a perfect metaphor for the nation. At the very least, it might provide an explanation as to why Black – a man who thrives on exposing the ugliness of this country – can keep thousands of people coming back for more. No matter how bad that wax-like confection tastes, we’ll keep eating it. And no matter how bad the nation is, we’ll still want to hear about from Lewis.

“I think I get forgiven by the audience because my character is so fucking nuts,” says Black. “But I think I’m also kind of even-handed. Also, there’s a huge, massive frustration that’s been built and nobody’s talking to these people. I think the reason The Daily Show works and my comedy works and the reason Stephen’s show [The Colbert Report], works is because no one else is trying to speak English to the American people. They just keep saying, ‘Don’t worry, everything’s OK. Look, the economy’s good!’ And they know it’s not good.”

“What gets me angriest is when I’m watching Meet the Press or that Bob Schieffer one, I forget the name of it,” he says. “The thing that really gets me the most are those Sunday morning shows because it’s the only time politicians have to talk for more than three or four minutes, and they actually have to speak. And that’s when I realize just how bereft we are of leadership. I just get crazed because I start thinking, You’ve got to be kidding me. Where do you get the balls to say that?

THE APPLE DOESN’T FALL FAR…
If you look at Lewis Black’s childhood, it’s hardly shocking that he feels this way about government and authority in general. It seemed at first that Black really did everything in his power not to engage in politics. But politics and government just kept finding him. He and his younger brother, Ronald, were born and raised in Silver Spring, Md., barely eight miles from the nation’s capital. He also grew up during a time when the Soviets were scary fuckers, when you practiced the old duck and cover in school and when having a well-stocked bomb shelter was totally cool.

Add to these variables his parents. Jeannette and Sam Black had to have been two of the most progressive parents of the 1950s, consistently challenging the status quo with their words and their actions. By today’s standards even, they’d be considered ahead of the curve. Jeannette had her master’s degree and taught math in an all-black high school in Washington, D.C. She quit after the administration told her to stop straying from the rigid curriculum, wherein there were no real practical applications for students, many of whom were not going to college. She was a terrible cook, would eventually work for Women Strike for Peace during the Vietnam War and forbade Lewis from becoming a Boy Scout.

Sam was a mechanical engineer who built sea mines for the government during World War II and the Vietnam War. He quit 10 years earlier than he planned after reading the Geneva Accord and deciding there was no justification for the U.S. occupation of Vietnam. He then dedicated his life full-time to art, mostly stained glass and painting. He was also the one who introduced his son to theater and play writing, two things that defined Lewis’ artistic endeavors long before he clumsily stumbled into stand-up comedy.

“They were remarkable,” Black says of his parents. “They were as supportive as you could be. They were always a little worried about me, but they always backed me up. They came to everything I wrote.” In fact, they were there the night he recorded his newest album at Carnegie Hall. Black also drew a lot of inspiration from his brother, Ronald, who died of lung cancer in 1996.

His love of the theater is why he went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he majored in drama. It’s why he and some friends bought and ran a theater in Colorado Springs, Colo. And it’s why he would in 1977 earn his MFA from the Yale School of Drama.

There was nothing deliberate about Black’s introduction into comedy. After he graduated from UNC, a friend who played in a band asked him if he would mind doing some stand-up between sets at their weekly gigs at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, N.C. “I was awful. I mean really dreadful, like scary bad,” Black wrote in his book Nothing’s Sacred. “Between the dry mouth, the shakes, the vertigo and the nausea, I was a mess.” Oddly enough, he returned week after week. “Something about the pain of it all must have intrigued me.”

He continued plugging away at stand-up part-time. Even during the Nixon administration while he was working for the Appalachian Regional Commission (an anti-poverty group), he did some stand-up at the Brickseller in downtown D.C. While in drama school, he also found time to get married; the marriage lasted less than a year.

After graduating from Yale, Black eventually moved to New York City, where he became the West End Café’s playwright in residence. He always emceed the shows he produced there, indirectly finding his comic voice and honing his stand-up chops. After a decade, he left the Café and became a full-time stand-up comic. Nearly 10 years later, Black is one of the nation’s most popular comics and social critics.

BLACK IN PAPERBACK
As if Black weren’t busy enough touring to support The Carnegie Hall Performance and also filming movies, he just recently finished work on his latest HBO special, Red, White and Screwed, which airs in June. In addition, he and comedy writer and producer Jeff Stilson (The Osbournes, The Chris Rock Show, Politically Incorrect) are working on Red State Diaries, a show for Comedy Central, in which Black visits Republican states in an effort to learn more about the people there. “I basically try to comprehend how they’re different or if they are different,” he says. “We tested the show, and it did well. I think Comedy Central is rethinking it for the fall. Who knows what they’re fucking going to do.”

And the summer will be packed as well, with two of Black’s movie, Accepted, a teen comedy, and Farce both set to debut in addition to the release of Nothing’s Sacred in paperback on July 11.

The question now is whether Black will have time to relax, which for him means golfing. “I’m most at peace when I golf,” admits Black. “Which is sad because it’s really a disturbing, sick game. Maybe I wouldn’t say I’m at peace exactly. But it’s the one place where I don’t think. Well, I still think, but it’s about stupid shit, like ‘I bet if I breathe through my ass I could hit the ball better.’ I enjoy the hell out of it.”

Even if he can’t manage to squeeze in nine holes or if shuttling between movie sets and comedy stages becomes a tad stressful, Black recognizes that things could be worse. “These are problems anyone would be thrilled to have,” he says. “What a terrible life.”

For more info, visit www.lewisblack.net.

Tom Rhodes: Live in Paris

by Dylan P. Gadino

Armed with a stoner-meets-intellectual vibe, Tom Rhodes is an enigmatic character for sure. On one hand, he maintains an alluring contempo-hippie mystique. From his stand-up material, you can tell he goes with the flow; you can tell he’s in love with life and with people and with experiencing things for the sake of, well, experiencing them. He talks about the joys of smoking pot and of drinking lots; on why he became a comedian, he muses, “How can I feed my drinking problem and yet still remain the center of attention?”

On the other hand, by no means is Rhodes your typically baked-out comic. Sure, he has a laid-back delivery (actually, it’s much more laid- back than what’s heard on his previous album, Hot Sweet Ass), but his otherwise rich voice — there’s a barely audible Southern drawl in there — doesn’t concede to your typical stoner stammer.

He’s articulate and charming. His material is thoughtful and many times, especially on Live in Paris, revolves around culture and the funny things that crop up when you travel the world as Rhodes has.

Recorded at the Hotel du Nord, Live in Paris finds Rhodes reflecting a lot on those travels as he tells a very vocal audience about the misadventures he’s had, in, among other places, England (getting mugged and Maced), Peru (forced to eat a hamster), Holland (where he dated a Moroccan Muslim), China (where he saw a 70-year-old man in Beijing “pulling a cart full of scrap metal like a donkey” and in Australia, where he caught some local sports: “I think I would rather take speed and watch piranha eat my dick than to ever watch another cricket match again.”

Although his jokes often have settings in foreign lands, Rhodes never takes the easy road — highlighting a stereotype and then dissing the entire country’s population. Rather, when he does establish stereotypes, it’s usually to point out his own shortcomings in a humble and hilarious way.

But the Florida native also finds time to rail against his own kind: “If Wal-Mart just had a prison and a baby day care center, no one in America would have to go anywhere else,” he says. “You can visit your fucking loser family in prison, visit the kids and pick up some laundry detergent.”

By the end of the hour-long performance, it’s easy to like Tom Rhodes: He’s the type of guy you want around to calm your nerves, show you the good things in life and make you laugh.

Eugene Mirman: En Garde, Society!

by Dylan P. Gadino

If there’s really such a thing as alternative stand-up comedy, then New York City comic Eugene Mirman is pretty damn close to the forefront of that scene. It’s not that he blows paint from his ass between bits or babbles nonsensically to form a stream of hip faux jokes just cool enough to draw smirks from the audience.

It’s more that he’s got the uncanny ability to vary his live shows with a few simple devices without stumbling down a road littered with gimmicks.

He showed this versatility on his first album, 2004’s The Absurd Nightclub Comedy of Eugene Mirman, on which, among other things, he plays a phone call he made to a creditor he owed $521 and then read a letter he wrote to Fleet Bank, which, unbeknownst to him, had sold the debt to said creditor.

On En Garde, Society!, Mirman — a highly intelligent but unpretentious guy — carries on much in the same way, peppering his well-paced set with novel respites from traditional jokes.

At one point, the Russian-born comic reads letters he wrote to “nouns and pronouns. Here’s one: “Dear, Arthritis: You’re very weird.” And another: “Dear, Christian Right: You’re very crazy and scare the shit out of me. Why don’t you go back to Russia, circa 1860. That’s right, you remind me of totalitarianism. Snap.”

He also shows the amused crowd a copy of the New Testament — one published to look like a teen magazine — and then simply makes fun of it, saying things like “You know how the King James version of the Bible leaves out beauty tips? This Bible puts it back in.”

Mirman also recounts how when he was young and had no money, he would give coupons to his parents as gifts. Toward the end of his set, he does the same with the audience. “This coupon guarantees two minutes of ass party,” he says, adding enthusiastically, “Your rules!” As he gives another one to a crowd member, he reads, “This coupon entitles the holder to have Eugene cum on his back.”

These comic maneuvers are hilarious but in no way overshadow Mirman’s more conventional jokes. He tells stories (one about his grandmother getting hit by a train), makes observations (Irish, Scottish and English people all sound like pirates) and picks on Republicans —  namely an unnamed comic from The Right Stuff, a group of conservative comedians.

Up until now, Mirman was probably best known as co-producer of NYC’s East Village show Invite Them Up, for which Comedy Central released a three-CD album late last year. But with the release of En Garde (Sub Pop) and a tour of mostly large rock venues to follow — not to mention a spin on the Comedians of Comedy tour under his belt — chances are we’ll soon be hearing a lot more from young Eugene.

The Friars’ Club Private Joke File

by Keith Hernandez

Edited by Barry Dougherty with a forward by Lewis Black

Lewis Black thinks they help you travel through time; Richard Belzer believes they date back to Cleopatra’s Egyptians. Whatever their proper use or origin, one thing’s for certain: Dirty jokes are funny.

The pubescent kid inside all of us gets a kick out of hearing perversely wicked tales and then dishing these secret barbs to co-workers, friends and loved ones. With that in mind, The Friars’ Club Private Joke File successfully celebrates debauchery and dirt with more than 2,000 jokes from the men and women who, for decades, have graced the famous dais to whip low blows and raunchy one-liners at each other.

The Friars’ Club Private Joke File is the ultimate poop-joke book. Reading it cover to cover will not give you nearly as much pleasure as rummaging and flipping through the 400 pages at a leisurely pace. It’s a book that you return to and never want to finish, hoping there is one more joke that will drive you into laughter.

The book is broken into eight sections, ranging from wife dick jokes to doctor dick jokes all the way to animal dick jokes, all delivered with childish fervor. The most hilarious jokes by far are the ones pulled from actual Friars’ Club roasts, like Belzer’s burn of Chevy Chase: “The only time Chevy has a funny bone in his body is when I fuck him in the ass.” In these moments, you can truly see the comedians’ sharp wit and deep understanding of wordplay come to life, albeit, to the detriment of their friends.

One of the biggest surprises of the book: Paul Shaffer and Joy Behar are actually funny. Their television personas don’t do them justice as they definitely have comedic talent. Jeffrey Ross, Lisa Lampanelli, and Jackie Martling all shine with quips that are outlandish and hysterically honest.

Then come the old-timers like Milton Berle, Dick Capri and Freddie Roman, who validate the idea that you can be dirty without cursing. In addition to the jokes, short essays interspersed throughout vary the book’s structure and help make the thick volume an entertaining read and ride.