Tammy Pescatelli: Get off the Couch!

by Jessica Agi

Watch videos of Tammy at RooftopComedy

Stand-up comic Tammy Pescatelli spills the beans on her stage secrets, her experiences on Last Comic Standing and why — despite what you may think — laziness does not a good comic make

By Jessica Agi

Having grown up in a small Italian suburb with all brothers outside of Cleveland, stand-up comic Tammy Pescatelli, a 13-year veteran of the business, has spent her entire life defending herself with barbed quips and gathering material for her stage show. Though she’s already scored her own Comedy Central Presents, was a contestant on the second season of Last Comic Standing, and appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno twice, she still has plenty of big plans.

Calling from Los Angeles, she’s exhausted but thrilled to have so much going on. “It’s one meeting to the next meeting, but as they say, this is the job that I chose,” she says, “but I’m really happy.” Her smile is loud and clear through the phone, as she took a few moments to chat with Punchline Magazine.

To someone who has never seen you onstage before, how would you describe your style? Are you offstage the same person as you are onstage?
Me onstage is “Tammy to the 10th power.” I say things onstage that I wouldn’t necessarily say, like, ‘Oh, you’re a lazy bastard.” However, I do tell people in real life that my sister-in-law is a whore. I think I’m just kind of outspoken. It’s not for everyone, but I bet everyone knows someone who will like me. I think a lot of people think what I say. A lot of the stories and people I talk about are not necessarily stories; it’s real life, like my family really did get kicked out of Disneyland, so I think you can feel better about your life if you see me.

Comics are like modern-day philosophers; what philosophy would you like to be remembered for?
I’m working this whole bit called What the Hell is Wrong With You. The fault lies with you, like the old saying of when someone breaks up with you, “It’s not you, it’s me.” No, it’s you, it’s always you and it’s always been you. Half the problem is you, and that’s the problem with the country. Sorry something happened to you at a family reunion when you were seven, but you’re 48 now and it’s time to move on.

How did you get into stand-up comedy?
I grew up in family that wasn’t necessarily the funniest family, just funny things always happened. They were very sarcastic, so in order to fend for myself I had to come up with a smart mouth. I grew up with all boys, so when they’d start punching and hitting, I knew how to say something that hit below the belt. I was the best at “yo momma” jokes, but the only problem was that we had the same mother.

Do you ever wake up and wish you had taken a more “normal” or “expected” career path instead of an entertainer?
That’s a loaded question; yes and no. There are times when I sit here trying to make the next thing happen in my career. I’ve been doing this for 13 years. In a real job, in another seven, I can retire. But I love what I do. I love the pure art form of stand-up. Grabbing a microphone and just talking at people, not talking to people— that’s called heckling and you’re not gonna win. (Laughs) I love being a stand-up. I’m blessed I found the right path. At least I hope so. People who buy tickets to see me might feel another way.

How is it to be a female comic in the still male-dominated field?
At this point, it doesn’t make a difference. In the beginning, it hurt. Once you get funny, funny is funny, people are gonna see you whether you’re a man or woman. When you first get onstage as a woman, a lot of people, for whatever reason, have that stereotype. They say that women aren’t funny or always male-bash or talk about their menstrual cycles, and I guess that’s true for some.

But Kathleen Madigan, she’s one of my best friends and one of the reasons I became a comic, she’s hilarious. Brett Butler, Carol Leifer, Sarah Silverman— you can’t tell me that these women can’t hold their own with any guy you put them onstage with.

Who are your influences?
Money, bills, Internet, pressure, parents. Actually, my boyfriend is very funny, and is stand-up writer, Luca Palanca— he’s obviously influential. Rodney Dangerfield, Uncle Lar. People who are sarcastic and say what’s on their mind and say the things everybody thinks but in a way they didn’t think it.

Stand-up seems to be one of the most underappreciated. Why do you think that is?
Because everybody thinks they’re funny. If you knew how many times I spent over a decade cultivating my act before I got seen on national TV, and you get offstage in some theater and some guy says, ‘Hey, I’m really funny, I could be a comedian, too!” Really? Because you make the four people in your family laugh? You think you can make people pay $22.50 for a ticket and to hire a sitter and pay for a full tank of gas?

Tell me a bit about your Last Comic Standing experience.
For what it was, it was a great time. I made some lifelong friendships that last forever. Ha, are you sure I’m a philosopher? Lifelong friends for life? But I had a great time with some of my friends, with Ant and Kathleen and John Heffron and Alonzo and Gary—they’re some of the best comics out there and I was glad to be part of it. Jay London, I had a really nice conversation with him the other day. It was an exciting time. I felt like it was gonna be something special and it was. I appreciate the other seasons, but I think we had some magic that season.

What do you hope to still accomplish in your career? Where do you want to be this time next year?
I want to get another Tonight Show in the can—that will be my third and that’d be great. I have two movies coming out: Made in Brooklyn and Everybody Wants to be Italian, which I hope are well received. I’d like another part in a movie and if I can get somewhere on a sitcom, that’d be good. I don’t want a lot, do I? But really, I love going out on the road and as long as that stays strong, I think the rest will come.

Do you have any advice for aspiring comics?
Be funny. A lot of comics think it’s just the audience— no, it’s probably you; it’s “what the hell is wrong with you?” Rewrite the joke. People think the American public is stupid but they’re not. They’re smarter than you think. Seriously, if someone tells you to quit, keep trying. That’s not the secret. I don’t have the secret to life, like that book. If you weigh 500 pounds and visualize yourself being skinny, that doesn’t make you skinny— the power of positive thinking is great, but you gotta get off the couch, you lazy bastard.

To watch video of Tammy, visit RooftopComedy. For more information, check out www.tammypescatelli.com.

Steve Hofstetter: Who Books That?

by Steve Hofstetter

By Steve Hofstetter

I grew up in New York City, and not in the way that people from Connecticut did. I lived a few blocks from a subway and fewer blocks from a project. We moved when I was in high school and, as the crow flies, my new bedroom window was less than 30 feet from a bus stop. Or as the pigeon flies, anyway. When I moved to Los Angeles, I joked that I did it for the small town feel.

As a road comic, I have played some small towns. Perhaps the smallest was Cottey College in Nevada, Missouri. Nevada is pronounced “Nuh-vade-uh” – like the state, but with less class. One hundred and seventy-five of the 275 students who attend the school came to the show. I could have had someone rob their rooms while I was on stage. But nothing could have prepared me for Ontonagon, Michigan.

There are 300,000 people in the upper peninsula of Michigan, and 299,999 of them are not Ted Nugent. That’s the sign of small town America – when you only have one famous person in the whole region, and he hasn’t even been famous since 1990. In LA, people point out celebrities’ houses. In the upper peninsula of Michigan, people point out celebrities’ upper peninsulas of Michigan. Nugent actually moved to Texas a few years ago, but that doesn’t stop the UP from claiming him.

So how did I end up in a town of 1,769 people? (Thank you Wikipedia). My column is actually syndicated in the Ontonagon Herald. The editor’s daughter contacted me about doing a charity show at their new theatre, and I agreed— though I had to learn how to spell Ontonagon to send a contract.

Comedian Denis Donohue and I rolled into town, or slid due to the snow. We went to dinner at the one café that was open, which could have been awkward because posters for the show were everywhere. Sure enough, a guy came up to us and asked if we were the comedians. It took five minutes of awkward conversation before we realized he didn’t know we were the comedians ahead of time – he just didn’t recognize us, and therefore thought it best to find out if we were trouble.

It was the first time I’d ever been recognized by not being recognized.

The show itself was fantastic – over 300 people in a gorgeous new theatre (who’s purpose I still can’t quite figure out). It was the first time the town had live stand-up in seven years, which led 17 percent of the town to come to the show. It also led to the release of seven years of pent up “have you heard this one?” The standout joke was clearly one man’s, “Where do you keep your hat? On Da Noggin!” I was told I could use that. I politely told him that to do so, people would had to have heard of Ontonagon.

Mark Twain once said “travel is fatal to prejudice,” and he’s right. As unimpressed as I was at the jokes I was told, I was very impressed by the kindness and the welcoming nature of those I spoke to afterwards. I had a great time, and I really hope that theatre thrives. If I do make it, I’d like to go back to Ontonagon and play it once more. And if that happens, perhaps I’ll open with a great joke about where I hang my hat.

Steve Hofstetter is a nationally touring stand-up comic and columnist for Sports Illustrated. To see more Steve, check out DailyComedy and his calendar at his official site, www.stevehofstetter.com. Watch videos of Steve at his MySpace site and at RooftopComedy.

Tom Shillue: Comic belief

by John Delery

Busy everyman comedian Tom Shillue is more than confident in his ability — he’s Overconfident, the apt title of his new CD. So exactly what stokes the jokes in this husband, father, comedian (and admitted dork)?






By John Delery

It’s lunchtime on W. 14th and 9th in New York City on the sort of unseasonably cold, heck, unreasonably cold March day that would make even the cheapest person ante up to send Old Man Winter somewhere so south he’d have to wrestle Satan for the one melting cube in the ice machine. But nothing, not even OMW’s severe cold breath, can eclipse the California-sunny disposition of New Englander Tom Shillue, The Pathologically Positive Comedian.

He blows into The Diner (apparently, judging from the recognizable customers, the off-duty hangout of comedians working Comix around the corner) on the force of his breezy personality. He’s here to refuel before another voice-over audition and to discuss Overconfident, both the title of his new CD and the where-does-that-come-from adjective that nevertheless succinctly describes his comic persona and evidently the offstage Shillue, too.

“I suffer from high self-esteem,” he confesses, borrowing one of the funniest lines from his stage show, Dad 2.0, while removing his jacket and a corduroy newsboy cap, hardly body armor in the war against winter.
“A lot of comedians superimpose a character on top of themselves,” Shillue resumes after ordering an omelet and french fries. “I’m not playing a character. I’m playing myself. I am cool…at least in my head.”
Shillue, taxiing toward 40, if not there already, sounds like a comedian, in that he tells jokes for fun and profit.

But he looks like the kind of harmless, agreeable softie (Translation: succccccker) that aggressive comics aim potshots at from their sniper’s position onstage. Absolutely nothing about his appearance (Sears-catalog-male-model slim, not GQ buff) or bearing (affable but not Ryan Seacrest cloying) even whispers cool or suggests an upbringing other than “Brady Bunch”-ian in the ‘burbs.

So if necessary to label him, then consider Shillue suburbane, i.e., someone too cool for private school but otherwise the entertaining Hobbbit-reading, flashlight-tag-playing-in-his-teens-no-less dork next door. Then again, Shillue need not peer into a mirror to see himself; he’s in on the gag.

“I’m cool,” he announces early on Overconfident, available on March 27. “That’s clear, right?” he asks, a leading personal question that the audience at Gotham Comedy Club in NYC answers honestly, with laughter, the desired response, really.

It turns out Shillue has become the hilarious neighbor, his aspiration, sort of, while navigating childhood in Norwood, Mass., an exurb of Boston, where he spent lots of time, make that plenty of prime time, watching acrobatic Dick Van Dyke and button-down Bob Newhart on their TV shows.

At the time, though, he clearly saw more of his father than himself in those two workaday comic gods (whose characters, both familiar family men, wore suits to work and left for the office at 9 in the morning and came home at 5 every evening) because what didn’t Shillue want to be when he grew up?

“I didn’t want to be an entertainer,” he says while spearing three french fries with his fork. “I envisioned myself as one of those guys with a briefcase, like Dick Van Dyke or Bob Newhart. I thought I’d become an ad man or an architect like Mr. Brady.”

Like Van Dyke tripping over that inescapable ottoman, Shillue fell into comedy after graduation from Emerson, a prestigious communication and arts school in Boston, and the equivalent of clown college for Steven Wright, Denis Leary, Anthony Clark and David Cross, among other conspicuous comedians and alums.

After singing for a while with an a cappella group at colleges nationwide and later reciting corporate speak at Universal Theater in Florida for 20 minutes of every hour, seven times a day, Shillue’s career in comedy sprouted in 1993 — apparently from a seed planted several years earlier by another Emerson graduate, Spalding Gray, an actor and screenwriter known best for his monologues, though not the type Leno, Letterman and Conan deliver. No, instead of spouting one-liners one after the other for five minutes, Gray would take audiences on two-hour journeys through his subconscious and life.

“I remember seeing him in college,” Shillue recalls, “and thinking, Wow, I didn’t know that was possible.”
Shillue, like Gray, enjoys talking about himself and the characters in his funny life story to strangers who pay for the updates. So on Overconfident, he personalizes jokes from all the major comic topics: sex, dating, race, though in a PG style befitting this sweater-vest-wearing (a heckle-able offense in at least one comedy club in New Jersey) husband and father, who carries a photo gallery of his young daughter in his BlackBerry and has been known to launch a spontaneous exhibition at professional gatherings.

“I’m pathologically positive about things,” he reminds his audience of one, making Shillue an anomaly in an occupation teeming with mopes and misanthropes who cleverly disguise their loathing (of themselves and others) in laughter.

He makes parenting sound like the most amusing job on the planet in Dad 2.0, his hour-long stage show at the Ars Nova theater in NYC. It seems the updated Dad has the same hardware as the previous version, but, for better or worse, is wired differently.

So Shillue kicks in the double doors and brings the audience with him into the delivery room, for generations the mysterious birthing chamber off limits to The Impregnators. (“When my sister was born,” he recalls in his act, “I remember exactly where my father was: at home, spooning out spaghetti to my brothers and me. When the phone rang, he said, ‘Hello. Uh-uh. OK, yeah.’ Then he hung up the phone and said, ‘Well, you’ve got a sister; pass the cheese.’”)

His being a father and a comedian, writing a funny show about parenting should have been easy for Shillue. It was a positive experience for him: positively painful. “I’m used to going onstage, getting laughs and leaving,” he says, fittingly rocking forward and back while discussing his other “baby.” “Suddenly,” he continues, “I’m being told I need an arc. Suddenly, I ‘m being told, ‘Those jokes are funny — but cut ‘em.’ Somehow, I was tricked into writing a show.”

He does not carry the telltale briefcase to work, but Shillue is a businessman nonetheless. He is building the Shillue brand onstage at clubs, in theaters and through his wry contributions to DailyComedy.com.

“It’s weird that the biggest show around these days is American Idol,” says Shillue, who, instead of speaking in comic bursts, measures each syllable. “It’s like this Schwab’s Drugstore ‘waiting to be discovered show’ in a time when so many other entertainment outlets are available. If you’re not using them, if you live and die just playing clubs, you’re being about as productive as someone who buys a lottery ticket every day, hoping to become rich.”

Someday, somehow, Shillue wants to win the Seinfeld lottery and cash in. But until then, he earns more than enough money to support his wife, their child and his habit. He’s a comedy addict, confirming: “This is my life’s work!”

Of that Tom Shillue’s positive.
For more information, check out Tom’s official site at www.tomshillue.com

Jen Kirkman: Self Help

by Dylan P. Gadino

At the start of her debut album, stand-up comedian Jen Kirkman quickly disarms the at-home listeners with this, lest we start to think she’s got some serious comedic skills: “No one knows who I am except this room and that’s even like semi-debatable.”

It’s a typical subtle tool for a comic, to ensure the audience knows the comic herself doesn’t believe she has any right to stand on stage with a microphone and try to make people laugh– no less while being recorded for repeated listens!

But if Self Help (Aspecialthing Records’ inaugural release) is any indication of what this Los Angeles-based comic is capable of, Kirkman not only has the right to do such a thing – that is, try to make people laugh – but, since she’s really good at it, she’s also got the right to be cocky. Of course, that would probably kill her endearing qualities, of which she has many.

The umbrella that hovers above those qualities is that she’s normal— unless she’s criminally insane and simply plays a well-adjusted woman on stage. Sure, she talks at length about her insecurities, idiosyncrasies and fears. But you get the sense, whether she’s manipulating the mundane or humanizing the absurd, that it comes from a grounded, quick mind and not from an over-rehearsed zany comedy persona.
She has the amazing ability to take traditional stand-up topics – flying on an airplane, sex, having kids – and twist them so horrendously out of shape that you don’t even realize she’s touching on matters of this world.
On the other hand, she deftly takes absurdities – zombies, the idea that it’s so easy to murder her friends for no good reason, the possibility of a cockroach raping her – and blows them up into extended stories lined with hilarious realisms, which scarily make us wonder… could these things happen?

Wrapped up in a delivery that’s part chatty friend, part zealous social scientist, Kirkman consistently balances her act between being wholly accessible and not-quite-hipster edgy.

When she contrasts her masturbation fantasies with that of the typical woman she explains, “I can’t just think about Johnny Depp in some friggin vacuum that makes no sense. It’s like ‘How did I meet Johnny Depp? Why is Johnny Depp interested in me? I thought he was married. Is he still married? Because I don’t want to be an adulterer. Is his wife OK with it? Because I don’t want to be a step mom.” And on she goes dropping mini punch lines on her way to the joke’s end.

She tackles religion using simple words with hilarious effect: “I should get back into a routine of going to church… But then I go, ‘Who cares? God’s forgotten about me. I’ve moved around a lot; sometimes I wear a hat. He might not know where I am.’”

Regardless of topic or tone, Kirkman’s set at LA’s Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre is honest and funny from start to finish. Self Help is a refreshing release from contemporary stand-up comedy albums and offers proof that there’s plenty to look forward to— if not from underground stand-up comedy across the nation than at least from Kirkman herself.

Kristin Key: Buckle Up!

by Alana Grelyak

On Buckle Up! Texas-born stand-up comedian Kristin Key, leaves no stone unturned and no taboo untouched— even if it means embarrassing the entire female species. To put it plain, Key’s style is not only manlier than her female comedic counterparts but also tougher than a lot of men in the game.

She opens the show innocently enough commenting on the insanely hot weather in Colorado Springs – where the live performance was taped – and then quickly relates to the eager crowd her coldest weather experience, commenting on how frigid temperatures once caused her to sprain her nipple.

It’s this willingness to give away female secrets that would make any woman blush. Her graphic discussion of women’s bathroom etiquette is almost too true to be funny, leaving most women, no doubt, hiding under tables and most men laughing and pointing hysterically.

The Last Comic Standing alumnus also thankfully spends a good bit of time talking about her role as a preacher’s daughter to hilarious effect; sneaking a smoke outside during service and cursing inside the halls of God are just some of the confessions she makes.

Although the latter part of the album suffers from some odd joke placements, Key keeps it mostly entertaining. She seems to deliver her closer but then continues with a silly guitar-strummed song about St. Patrick’s Day. A bonus track – “Big Faggoty Pink Drink” – wherein she derides a man for his choice of alcoholic beverage is funny as is the way she fires back at a male heckler, announcing, “You can take the guy out of the trailer park but you sure can’t take his uncle’s cock out of his ass.”

Key’s brash sense of humor and straightforward style of delivery pair well with the jokes she delivers. Her voice is reminiscent of Kathy Griffin without that slight annoying edge. Combine that with the dry wit of Paula Poundstone and George Carlin’s “I don’t give a shit” attitude and Key has certainly proven she’s a young comedic talent on the rise.

Harland Williams: Communes with Comedy

by Noah Fowle

You’ve quoted his quirky characters from some of Hollywood’s most memorable comedies, but comedian Harland Williams is more than a urine chugging cop. He enjoys long walks in the forest, painting at home and writing children’s books. Seriously.

By Noah Fowle

Over the past two decades Harland Williams has carved himself into many niches. To say the least, he’s a multi-faceted performer, showing off his comedic wares on stage, in films and in print. And the Canadian-born funnyman keeps adding to his vast repertoire. His career has followed a path as wacky and as varied as his stand-up delivery, which is clearly inspired by his own whimsical desires.

On stage Williams typically dishes out well-polished bits liberally peppered with mock antagonistic conversations with the crowd. He’ll drop a three-line fart joke in the middle of a longer segment about driving. He shifts from setting his jokes in the real world to blurting out absurd asides like, “He was out of there faster than a little Norwegian whale skinner at a Chinese roasted walrus festival.”

He’s not afraid to set the crowd up with good-natured, G-rated humor – “Did you know that pumpkins were the only living organism with triangle eyes?” – only to knock them down with concise adult retorts, like when he punishes his girlfriend for complaining about his sexual stamina by finding a dastardly remedy: “I popped six Viagra and I drank a case of Red Bull. Her funeral is this Tuesday.”

Throughout his act, he still holds on to that same friendly, country-bumpkin attitude that continues to endear him to his audiences and allows for a dose of his unique humor to drop at the slightest provocation. This ability has led him to craft some of the most quote-worthy characters in some of Hollywood’s top comedies.

In New York City recently on a stand-up tour stop at Comix to promote his CD, Har-Larious, Williams was surprised to find that the mounted police force are often harassed by pedestrians shouting “Buttercup!” the way Williams’ good-natured, pot headed kindergarten teacher character did in Half Baked after accidentally poisoning a horse.

“That was a one-note scene that became long and drawn out. Every time I’d improvise, it just kept going and going,” Williams says. “Fortunately the guy who played the cop just kept going too. I just hope someone doesn’t get kicked in the head by a horse, well maybe a small kid.”

Williams’ sense of humor is simultaneously tuned in to be both sweet and sick. Take for example another of his oft-quoted lines, this one from his pee-drinking state trooper character in Dumb and Dumber: “You fellas been doing a bit of boozing, have you? Suckin’ back on grandpa’s old cough medicine?”

“That’s one I hear a lot. I improvised that line, it’s kind of like a tribute to my grandfather,” he explains with a snicker. “When we were kids growing up he liked to have a drink, but he didn’t want to do it in front of us, so he’d yell for my grandmother to bring him some of his cough syrup.”

Like many great comedians, Williams can usually chalk up some of his best film work to spur-of-the-moment inspiration, but his stand-up writing process is far different. He admits he’s not part of the school of funny story telling; rather, he crafts individual jokes each with a life of their own.

“My style is like trying to write a hit song. I don’t keep a joke unless it’s a hit,” he says. “So it’s slower, but it’s the way I work. Then I do a lot of improvisation and crowd work, you know to fill in that void and make sure I don’t get stagnant. It keeps my energy hot, tasty and cinnamon-y”

That same attitude that allows for Williams to craft one-liners out of nowhere is what keeps him performing on stage, despite his big screen successes.

“I’ve always loved the idea of testing myself and putting myself out there, exposing myself and scaring myself,” he says. “It’s not something you can do in real life, you know like walking into the DMV dressed as a robot juggling manatees. I push my own outlet, it’s good for daddy.”

And for some reason not even the prospect of failing or even hearing a deafening silence from the audience can deter Williams from taking this route. “Sometimes I actually like bombing,” he admits. “It’s usually because I’m experimenting or trying something new. It kind of feels good afterwards, cause I’m pushing myself. I guess I would have been great in World War II cause I love bombing, not for the people’s sake, but for my own.”

 

LORD OF THE JOKE; AND OF THE FOREST
Williams, 44, the son of an attorney-cum-Ontario’s solicitor-general father and a marriage counselor/travel writer mother grew up with four sisters in the middle-class, suburban Toronto neighborhood of Willowdale.
He made his stand-up debut at the city’s famed comedy club Yuk Yuk’s during an amateur night in 1982. But when he moved to the States 16 years ago, his career began its steady ascent.

His comedy club spots in Los Angeles – his current home – helped him score appearances on Late Show with David Letterman as well as small but memorable roles in films like The Whole Nine Yards, RocketMan and There’s Something About Mary.
But before he made the jump to performing – and after quickly deflecting his father’s suggestion that he use his Catholic school education to become a priest – Williams seriously considered a career in forestry.

“It was a hard job to leave,” says Williams of his time spent as a junior forest ranger, where he perfected various animal calls. “I know it sounds cheesy but comedy was my inner calling. One of the real special things about wilderness is you’re so alone and you can channel your thoughts and spirit. I communed with the planet. Now I know it sounds like I should be eating trail mix and yogurt, but I promise you I’m not into wearing Birkenstocks.”

Williams’ desire to be one with the planet and to extend his reach to all kinds of people is what led him to the world of children’s literature; he currently writes and illustrates his own series of stories, which includes titles like Lickety Split and The Kid with Too Many Pets.

As a youngster himself, Williams remembers enjoying the classic Where the Wild Things Are, albeit to a different beat. “That was my first children’s book, but I read it while listening to some old Doors’ 45s I won at a local strawberry festival,” he says. “I imagined I was hanging out with Jim Morrison for the evening. Those are some weird songs.”
Williams has even fostered his hobby for drawing and painting as evidenced by his art posted on his official website. And he still turns to rock-and-roll for his inspiration. “I like heavy metal when I paint. I like to blast Iron Maiden or Black Sabbath,” he says. “It gets the demonic out of me.”

Williams, who also designs T-shirts and greeting cards, enjoys the idea of working in many different mediums, and allows one to inspire the other. “My stand-up is based more on the adult world, but I like the idea of innocence and leaving something in the world like that,” he says. “I’m an uncle… of all of Angelina Jolie’s children. So it’s very busy changing diapers in the day and going to Cambodian classes at night. Damn little angels.”

Following his own personal whimsy has opened Williams’ career up even further. He recently began the painstakingly long process of directing his own animated DreamWorks film, Route 66, about a roadside golf-ball statue that sets out to find a giant blueberry named Betty— the statue’s true love that goes missing. “This is like my little baby. I showed some of my artwork to Jeffrey Katzenberg recently, and he really loved it,” he says. “But it’s a lengthy process and it’s all kept pretty hush-hush. It’s not even slated to come out until 2010.”

Even with so much work pushing him forward and in different directions, Williams is not above going back to one of his most popular projects. He said that both he and Dave Chappelle have knocked the idea around of doing a sequel to Half Baked, but their schedules have not allowed for much more than idle musings. “The idea has gone away and come back, and blah blah blah,” he says. “We’re getting to the point where we’re almost too old.”

In the meantime, Williams is content to keep him and his audiences entertained with his aww-shucks attitude, and zany creativity that ensures a sneaky joke is just around the corner. “I usually eat breakfast at night to trick myself into thinking that I woke up at 7 p.m.,” he laughs. “But I get confused because NBC news is on when I wake up.”

For more information, visit www.harlandwilliams.com.

Zach Galifianakis: He Tells a Joke. He Moves On.

by Benjamin Cake

In the past decade, stand-up comedian Zach Galifianakis has been inching forward with good jokes and bad movies (we won’t get started on the television shows). With the release of his new DVD, Live at the Purple Onion, people are beginning to take notice of his strange brilliance.

By Benjamin Cake

He tells a joke—something like “Have you seen this show on Lifetime about that woman?” And then there’s that look, that thousand-mile stare, his brow furrowed, his mouth pursed as if he just realized he forgot his mother’s birthday. It’s not the look you expect.

He tells another joke—something like “When you look like me, it’s hard to get a table for one at Chuck E. Cheese.” The crowd laughs, and Zach closes his eyes. He lays his head on the piano, runs his hand through his hair. He seems weary, like each joke exhausts him, like he wants to be by himself. It’s almost like he’s trying not to engage the audience. But his deadpan reticence has the opposite effect; it brings you in closer—the same way Mitch Hedberg could bring you in closer by staring at the ground.

What’s he doing?

“I know what you’re talking about,” Zach says. “But I don’t really know what that is. Maybe I’m basking in the awkwardness. But I think it’s sort of like, There’s a joke. Accept it if you want to. I’ll wait and then move on.”

That makes sense. In his pursuit of humor, Zach goes to great lengths: At a recent show at Irving Plaza in New York City, he stripped off his clothes to reveal a Little Orphan Annie costume, in which he lip-synched “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow” while shuffling through written jokes on a drawing pad like “I call my balls the Bush twins.” But despite this willingness to go all out, he doesn’t pander; his act can be seen as a testament to courage, not desperation—a willingness to try anything and disregard failure.

Patton Oswalt, who included Zach in the Comedians of Comedy productions, has said: “Zach is probably the least needy of all of us. It’s not so much that he’s in his own world, but he’s so formed in what he thinks is funny. It’s almost like a guy who is so comfortable in what he’s doing that it naturally draws people in.”

Perhaps this resolve is the result of years spent struggling in New York, where he got his start in the back of Hamburger Harry’s, a small place on West Forty-Fifth street. He spent years bombing with jokes like A girl told me I could sleep on her futon. I’ll tell you what I told her: I don’t sleep on anything that rhymes with crouton. On good days, he’d make fifteen dollars for a set, five of which would go toward rent, three toward two forty-ounce bottles of beer, and the rest toward food. On the side, Zach worked as a busboy in a strip club. He also worked as a nanny for a child that demanded things by threatening to fabricate stories of how Zach molested him.

Through all of this, Zach told jokes, let people accept them if they wanted, and then moved on. After a few years, he moved on to Los Angeles, got a part in Boston Common, got a few parts in bad movies, moved on, kept telling jokes.

The moving-on part is key. Although many well-known comics are happy to coast through with the jokes they’ve been using since 1992, Zach refuses. “If a joke has been seen on television or wherever,” he says. “I won’t do it as much—or at all.”

Instead, Zach writes new material—on napkins and matchbooks—and at the end of the day he empties his pockets and arranges what he’s going to try out.

Two weeks prior to the Irving Plaza show, he gets an idea while waiting for a train from Brooklyn to Manhattan. “It’s so dumb,” he says. “The train was late this morning, and I felt this urge to yell out to all these hipster kids in Williamsburg—just yell out like a little kid—‘The choo choo is coming!’ Maybe I’ll do that. I don’t know.”

When he tells you about it, you’re not sure how it’s a even a joke. You have your doubts. But sure enough, partway through the Irving Plaza show, he begins, “Sometimes when I’m waiting for the train…” and you know what’s coming. You’re even a little nervous about it as he describes seeing the first glint of light from the headlamps down the tunnel. “Here comes the choo choo!” he shouts. The voice is more a cartoonish hillbilly than a little kid. And he grabs his penis when he shouts it—to show just how exciting the train is.

It works. Heads in the crowd tilt backward almost in unison, cawing their amusement to the rafters. Three girls in the VIP balcony exchange looks as they shriek with laughter. The stone-faced security guard by the door smiles and shakes his head—as if he doesn’t want to think it’s funny but can’t help himself.

Of course, not everything works. At a recent show in Los Angeles, a comment Zach made provoked audience members to throw ice cubes at him: “I was kowtowing to this one table,” Zach says. “And they were eating it up. And I’m not going to tell you what I said, but basically right after I’d won them over, I turned it around and said something completely horrible. So they started throwing ice cubes at me.”
Either way, he tells a joke, lets you accept it if you want, and then moves on.

In addition to his consistent willingness to try new material, Zach also enjoys interviewing members of the crowd. “It’s much more interesting to go off the written material,” he says. “It’s kind of selfish, but that’s what I enjoy doing.” The without-a-net openness of this kind of interaction yields moments of brilliance as well as tormenting awkwardness. In his new DVD, Live at the Purple Onion, you see both kinds of moments.

Of the DVD, Zach says, “I wanted to capture a more typical show. I wanted something less polished. Although I’m never polished anyway.” To this degree, the DVD is a success; there is nothing polished or sterile about it. Zach doesn’t “vomit out jokes” the way he said he had to with his Comedy Central Presents performance from 2001. Instead, the shows, which contain a balance of recent material and typical crowd interaction, are broken up with footage of Zach offstage. There’s a scene in which he’s introduced to perform while he’s still at a restaurant down the street; there’s a scene in which his van breaks down. You get a full glimpse of Zach’s disheveled charm.

But there is also a more sobering side to the presentation, signs of premature deterioration. Zach has gotten fat. When he takes off his sport coat during a performance, his polo shirt resembles a trash bag filled with sand. You have to wonder if he’s at risk for diabetes. He jokes about it: “Great shirt selection,” he says, pointing toward his sagging torso. “I went to the shirt store and asked, ‘Do you have anything to highlight my alcoholism?’” The crowd laughs, but you have to wonder, especially as the DVD continues and there’s scene after scene of him drinking beer, then wine and empty glasses of various shapes and sizes on the piano. At the Irving Plaza show, he alternates between a glass tumbler, a wine glass, and a coffee mug.

There are moments in the DVD when the crowd work drags on. The more it does, the more he begins to insert self-conscious narration. He assumes the voice of a viewer, “Yeah, we went and saw Zach. It was good at first, but—I don’t know—he’s losing his fucking mind.” Then there’s a cut to a scene in which he comments on the precariousness of his sanity, the “fragility of the human psyche.” You have to admire his decision to include this footage. It makes the DVD more complex—gives it the feeling of a documentary rather than some kind of effete greatest-hits compilation. There is a powerful authenticity to it.

Also edited into the mix are clips of an interview that NPR’s Brian Unger conducts with Zach’s twin brother, Seth. To create this character, Zach shaves his beard into a mustache and takes on the persona of an effeminate high school football coach and youth minister from the South. He’s great at it because he’s been playing the character for over 20 years. “Me and my friends growing up would all do these Southern effeminate guys,” he says. “There’s something funny about it because Southern culture is emasculated in a lot of ways. I used to do that character all the time for my dad, and he would just laugh.”

In high school, Zach developed the character even further, into an effeminate racist. “There was this black guy named Antoinne in my art class, and I used to do it for him, and he told his friends to bump me in the hallway. So they would bump me in the hallway to release this character, and I would go on this diatribe with the black kids about black people, and they would just die laughing because they knew I was making fun of the rednecks we were surrounded by.”

When asked why he thinks the character gets such a warm response, he says, “There’s something funny about someone who’s effeminate and who has probably been made fun of and been discriminated against to go and discriminate against other people for their differences. It’s such a weird, layered juxtaposition.”
The majority of Zach’s characters seem to spring from this fascination with juxtaposition, with how opposing motivations and insecurities can create absurd, conflicting behaviors within a person’s identity. He has the Timid Pimp, the Pretentious Illiterate, the Self-deprecating Nuclear Physicist.

On a greater scale, paradox is a theme that runs through his whole act: the way he pairs a joke like “My grandma treats me like a rock star—I guess that’s why she let’s me sign her tits” with grave vamping on the piano; the way he finishes each joke with that vacant stare; the way he can lip-synch “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow” while shuffling through a joke like “I hope Dick Cheney’s faggot daughter…gives birth to a faggot daughter.”

And this extends even further, to Zach’s own conflicting intricacies—intricacies you’ll never understand: There is nothing simple about the way the crassness of his humor doesn’t flush with the number of references he makes to his family, the stories that involve him telling jokes to his dad or putting on performances with his cousins in his hometown of 2,000 people.

In the same way, it’s difficult to reconcile the knotty logic of statements like “If people really like me, I like to turn on them.”

At another point, Zach says, “When my friends bomb, it’s one of the greatest things. I love to watch.” But then he moves on to describing his close friendship with a 92-year-old man named Albert: “He built this one-man band and would come over and entertain me. He’s done the Jimmy Kimmel show with me. He’s 92 and feisty and very touchy-feely with women. But he’s just the greatest to have around.”
It seems as though Zach’s always trying to fight the momentum of situations—hedging the ebb and flow—by turning his back on the obvious, easy things and pursuing avenues he’s not sure about.
After the New York City show, Zach is backstage drinking wine when fellow comedian Eugene Mirman stumbles into the room and says, “That was really, really amazing.”

“Thanks,” Zach says. “We’re gonna go drinking later,” and then he points to the back room. “Everybody’s back there.”

Eugene picks up on the fact that he’s interrupting an interview and says, “Yeah, we’re gonna go in there.” But then he lingers a moment.

Zach says, “How long is it gonna take you to go back there?”

Eugene smiles. “Slightly too long,” he says, and then starts stroking Zach’s hair. “It was really good. Really funny. I’m proud of you. So, so proud.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Zach says.

Eugene continues, “Proud of you.”

“All right, Eugene,” Zach says, swatting at Eugene’s hands.

Eugene steamrolls through Zach’s attempts to deflect him. “You made…you made”
“You’re such a drunk,” Zach says.

Eugene goes to leave, but now Zach has thought of something. “I really took it to Dane Cook,” he says in a sarcastic way. (In the show, Zach had joked “I saw Employee of the Month the other day…it wasn’t as good as I thought it was gonna be.” Then he ended the show with a drawing board that read “Kill Dane Cook.”)
Eugene agrees. “Yeah, I hope he myspaces you.”

Zach says, “I think he knows I do that bit, ’cause I met him and he was like, ‘So, we officially meet.’”

“Really?” Eugene says, “He talks like Darth Vader?”

“Yeah,” Zach says. “He does. And he has the same skin as Edward James Olmos.”

Eugene doesn’t say anything, doesn’t have anything malicious enough to trump that. He stammers, “Uh, well. Let me—”

Zach lays it out there again, slower, “Edward. James. Olmos.”

“Okay,” Eugene says. “Sure. Good luck.’

Zach says, “All right, Eugene. Hey, do you want to sit in on the interview?”

“No…no,” Eugene says, and then goes into the back room.

The second time he says “Edward James Olmos,” Zach looks for recognition. You could chime in with the name of some other pitted icon. Bukowski maybe. Or Tommy Lee Jones. But you don’t want to. Zach is better than that. Taking shots at Dane Cook is cheap and pointless and trite. Like hipsters complaining about Starbucks. Or a yuppie complaining about hipsters.

But as soon as you’re ready to be bothered by it, you realize Zach’s moved on. He talks about a 60-acre farm that be bought in North Carolina. These days, he’s grooming the land, and many of his new jokes come to him while he’s driving his tractor, chewing tobacco and daydreaming. His goal is to put cabins up and start a nonprofit writers’ retreat, maybe even a music school.

When asked about his motivation for doing it, Zach says, “Since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to have some kind of cult.”

There’s a good chance he’s only half joking.

A twentysomething walks into the room and starts telling Zach about his favorite joke. Zach laughs and says, “It’s so dumb.”

In a second, he can shift gears from having cult-building confidence to extreme modesty—almost a shyness from praise. When you talk to him, he prefaces almost every successful joke or new idea by saying, “It’s so stupid” or “It’s dumb” or “It’s just sillyness.” In the same way, he denies the altruism behind starting this nonprofit organization: “It’s selfish,” he says. “It’s therapy for me.”

The conversation ends, and before you leave, you turn back one more time. Zach’s moved on. A photographer is there taking pictures, asking Zach to stare at himself in a mirror. Zach does as he’s asked, then moves on to the back room to be with his friends.

Then it’s off to what’s next: He’ll finish off his month in Brooklyn, then tour across the country, then head to his farm in North Carolina. He’ll appear in two movies later this year, one about people who explode, and another that’s directed by Sean Penn; he’ll write new jokes, perform them at colleges and clubs, work on a movie about Fat Jesus; he’ll keep moving on.

For more information, check out www.zachgalifianakis.com.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT ZACH
Matt Belknap, founder of apecialthing.com, one of the Internet’s most popular comedy communities and A Special Thing Records has this to say about Zach: “Zach might be a comedy savant. His jokes are at once perfectly simple and marvelously clever, and they never cease to surprise me. He’s essentially a prankish kid trapped in a bohemian artist’s body. Instead of fighting it, those two personalities have found a way to coexist in his act. How else do you explain a guy who plays classical piano pieces while telling fart jokes?”

On why Zach’s popularity has grown but why he hasn’t hit the mainstream yet, friend and fellow Comedians of Comedy star Maria Bamford says this: “The reason he’s so popular is that he has a B.A. in Comedy Publicity from Santa Monica College and he knows how to put himself out there! He’s also sponsored by a very powerful Garfield the Movie Fan Club. The only thing that’s keeping him from becoming the most well-known and admired comedian in the world is his stubborn refusal to join the Bath Party and his ‘pro-partial birth’ stance on abortion.”