John Pinette: Making Lite of Myself

by Nick A. Zaino III

There’s no doubting John Pinette’s ability to hook an audience. He always packs the house at the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal, and he’s as popular on the club circuit as any working comic. He’s gotten more out of making fun of his girth than just about any comic —  from Louie Anderson to Ralphie May. With Pinette, you know you’re going to get the most solid set of jokes about weight in the business, and that’s what his latest album,  Making Lite of Myself,  has to offer.

And therein lies the quandary. Pinette has an audience with expectations, and once you’ve found something that works, it’s dangerous to veer away from that. Would the crowds still be packed if Pinette suddenly dropped his “I say nay nay” callback and started doing political or absurdist comedy?

And if comedy is, at some point, about finding humor in who you are, would it be an honest change? Would any change be honest?

There are real honest issues on  Making Lite. Pinette is struggling with his weight loss; he’s noticeably thinner than he was even a few years ago. He even addresses how he lost 100 pounds in the first few tracks. He talks about going to the gym, chanting “raviolis and a nap” as incentive to finish his reps on a weight machine and trying the “Subway Diet.”

But some of the bits are overwritten, as when his trainer tries to get him to do sit-ups. “I don’t do ‘ups,’ he says. “I do ‘downs.’ Sit down, lay down, blackjack I’ll double down. Give me a cheeseburger I’ll wolf it down. Put on a little music I’ll boogie down.”

There are some laughs in the first, more weight-oriented part of the album, but it really starts to pick up when Pinette stretches a bit more into less obvious material.

He ruminates about his friends convincing him to go on a ski trip and quitting tequila because, “It makes me ski.” He talks about growing up in a poor household, “And not the kind of poor where you’d go, ‘We were poor, but we never knew it.’ I was certain of it. And I was not happy about it. Periodically I would say, ‘Hey, just want you to know that I know we’re poor.’”

Pinette has a great delivery and an affably sarcastic personality that can prop up some of his weaker premises, and he knows how to turn a phrase. He’s funny, and this latest album is often funny. But in the end, you wonder how much more mileage he can get out of the buffet.

Tom Papa: Our (Comedy) Hero

by Dylan P. Gadino

Having joined artistic forces with Rob Zombie, veteran stand-up comedian and longtime Jerry Seinfeld road warrior, Tom Papa enters the world of El Superbeasto and comes out ready to battle evil…sort of.

By Dylan P. Gadino

Comedian Tom Papa is not your typical hero. He’s not a really tall man; he also lacks those broad shoulders and booming voice that scare foes but comfort those in distress, and, as far as we can tell, he doesn’t pack a super-cool gun that scrambles its target’s guts with one blast.

The fact that the bicoastal comic possesses none of these things actually makes his new role that much funnier. He plays the title character in the forthcoming The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, a Rob Zombie-helmed animated comedy flick (also starring Paul Giamatti and Rosario Dawson), which Papa co-wrote. His character is a lazy, has-been of a superhero who gets dragged back into the game of fighting bad guys.

And although the clean-cut Papa and Zombie, a scraggly genius, seem an unlikely team, their friendship was sparked years ago, when Rob checked out Papa’s live stand-up. If you’ve seen Papa’s act you’d understand the immediate fascination.

Unassuming yet confident, Papa, who created and starred in his own NBC sitcom, Come to Papa, three years ago and independently released an album Calm, Cool and Collected in 2005, deftly balances his sets with classic punch line jokes, R-rated observations and even some dark ruminations. Punchline Magazine recently talked to the New Jersey native about his new movie role and, of course, his stand-up comedy.

From an outsider’s perspective it seems that you and Rob Zombie are, to say the least, a very odd pair. How did you guys even meet?
Originally, a friend brought him along to see my stand-up, and we became friendly after that. He’s in the horror genre for his films, but they all have a sense of humor to them. And he is a very funny guy if you’ve ever seen him on TV or anything.

Yeah, I have.
So he has a really good sense of humor. Once we started hanging out, we saw that we both had that in common. And then he originally asked me if I would be the main voice in the movie, because he thought my voice on an exploded superhero would be a funny take. And then when I got in, he had a rough version of a story that wasn’t really working. So he asked me if I would help write it with him. Then the two of us banged it out.

I think people would be surprised to know that he’s probably a lot more normal than he seems.
Yeah, it’s true. You know, you can’t be as successful as he’s been in music and in film and not be a very smart guy. And he is. He’s definitely a pretty impressive character.

Yeah, I bet. So how long ago was it that that you guys actually met and started becoming friends?
About two years ago.

How long did it take you to do the main voice work as El Superbeasto?
The voice work is quick. You get through it in like a week or so. It’s the writing of it and the editing and changing and the animating that all takes a long time.

The voice you use for the superhero— is it largely your voice unaffected, or are you putting on?
No, I’d say it’s definitely affected. There’s a little superhero deepness to the voice, but then whenever he’s in trouble it’s a little higher, like my real voice.

Can you disclose any information about El Superbeasto or the movie?
I play El Superbeasto, who’s a professional wrestler/superhero. He’s kind of retired, and just living off what’s left of his celebrity. He’s just kind of coasting. He wants to just eat hot wings and pick up chicks. But some trouble gets started by Dr. Satan, who’s played by Paul Giamatti. Originally my sister in the film, Suzi-X, who is a superhero in her own right, starts battling with him, and then I get reluctantly drawn into it.

And hilarity ensues?
And hilarity ensues. [laughs] There’s a lot of craziness. There’s a lot of skeleton Nazi bikers. A lot of strippers. A lot of monsters.

It sounds like an old-fashioned comedy.
Yeah, an old-fashioned, run of the mill, every day kind of comedy.

Speaking of which, I always thought you had an old-school charm in your delivery.
Yeah, I’ve read a review like that once.

Are you conscious that you have that type of style?
No, I don’t really know what it means. [laughs]

I guess that’s probably a good thing. You don’t want to be too aware of what’s working.
Yeah, I just write the jokes and say them the way I say them. What makes you think of my comedy that way?

The first few times I saw you, you were dressed up a little bit. You wear ties. Or am I making that up?
No, sometimes I do.

So you may have had a tie on, and I was like, ‘Oh, this guy’s kind of old school; he looks kind of dapper, and he reminds me of a different generation of performers where it was important to be presentable.
Right, right. I never caught on to the t-shirt and ‘maybe-I-haven’t-showered’ look.

Right, the oversized leather wristwatch look.
Yeah.

You should maybe try it. You know, frost your hair a little, spike it out.
It’s really nothing more than I don’t look cool in casual clothes. You know what I mean? It’s too much to think like, ‘What, now we’re all doing retro t-shirts with some kind of baseball cap that’s frayed on the edges? Jeans made by who?’ To me it was just always easier to just grab a suit and go onstage.

A suit will always look good.
And I always thought it’s funnier to see a guy who’s coming out who looks like he’s presentable, then starts acting like a moron.

What would you say is the biggest difference in the way you perform now from, say, 10 years ago?
I have a lot more confidence now, and for me that translates into giving myself more room onstage.

And in your case, what does ‘more room’ mean?
I don’t have to be up there rapid fire, talking out of fear of being judged by the audience. I know what’s funny. And now I have the room or the courage to play with pauses, and be more relaxed, and let what happens in between the jokes be as funny as what’s happening in the jokes.

It’s funny you mentioned that. I definitely picked up on that when I last saw you at Gotham [Comedy club in New York]. You went through a series of jokes, and you slowed it down, made a few comments, talked to the audience a little bit, and then after a minute or two, you were right back into material.
Right.

It breaks it up a little bit, and it’s nice to have that uneven pacing sometimes.
Yeah I don’t want to be up there just throwing fastballs all night. It gets tiring to listen to that. You start to lose the importance of what’s being said, or the clarity of it all. So I throw a couple curves in, throw a couple sliders, throw a couple fastballs. It’s mixed up. It’s very lyrical, too. You want to kind of change it up.

Do you have a strict writing regiment?
I try and write when I wake up. I try to do it before I do anything else, before I read; it’s coffee and writing. Because once I get to the point of the day where I’ve seen some newspapers, I’ve had some phone calls, I’ve watched some TV, I’m a lot less productive. When I’m first up and I don’t really know what’s happened yet, that’s when I can get some writing done.

You try to do that every day, or does it matter?
I usually don’t do it on Sunday. Sunday I usually blow it off— and sometimes Saturdays. It depends how busy the weekend is. If I’m doing a lot of shows during the week, I may tweak a little something, but I don’t actually sit down for an hour or two and write. I usually blow those days off.

That sounds like a pretty dedicated system.
Some guys can just go up and wing it onstage and be brilliant at it, but I was never that guy. I kind of had to sit and get my head around it and then head out that night and work on it. I always find if I don’t sit down and look at it and work on it, then when I get onstage I just kind of fall back into old patterns.

Do you sit down with pen and paper or do you bang it out on a computer?
Pen and paper.

See, you’re totally old school.
Yeah, who knew?

I bet you don’t even use pen. I bet you use a pencil.
It’s actually a little stubby piece of rock and some slate.

That’s impressive that you have that kind of dedication. Which actually reminds me— why do you feel compelled when you’re headlining three shows at Gotham, to jam 10-minute sets at the Comedy Cellar in between your headlining spots? That seems psychotic.
I don’t know. I’m up, I’m out.

So Why not?
Yeah, what am I going to do? What else can I do between shows? Sit there and talk to somebody about the basketball game? I’d rather go do comedy. At Gotham I’m showing everyone the new hour or so, and then I could go down to the Cellar in between and work on my next short set, which is a whole different process.

I’d assume that most guys would give themselves a break if they were doing three one-hour sets a night.
Those guys are babies. [laughs] You know, a comedian’s life is pretty relaxed. I don’t know how much more relaxed I’ve got to get. That’s the great thing about being in New York– you can do lots of sets in one night. When I’m in the middle of Arizona, you do your set, and then you just sit up there and stare at the MC for an hour before you go on again. And try not to fall asleep.

You’re pretty much split evenly between living in both New York and Los Angeles. What kind of advantages does that give you?
It’s great because there’s definitely different influences and that results in people performing slightly different styles of comedy on each coast. You can see LA comics and know that they’re from LA for the most part, and New York comics and know they’re from there. Both have great aspects to it. So for me, it’s kind of good to mix it up.

A lot of people adhere to the generalization that New York comics are in it because they want to be comics and LA comics are in it because they want a movie deal. Do you find that’s at least partially true?
It’s partially true. I think that there are real comics on both coasts. And I don’t know any comic that hasn’t had some success in some other area that they didn’t take advantage of to then further themselves as comedians. You know, Chris Rock, Eddie Izzard, Jerry Seinfeld, whoever. Everybody wants to do something else.

That doesn’t mean that they turn their back on comedy. And there are some guys in LA who aren’t truly comics that get up and share the stage to try to host some reality show. But there are still a lot of guys in California who are true comics. Just because someone goes out on more auditions doesn’t make them less a comic than the guys in New York.

That’s very diplomatic.
Well, it’s true. I used to think that way as well, but then I got out here and found guys like Daniel Tosh, Paul F. Tompkins and Arj Barker. These guys are real comics. They’re not just out here trying to host the next round of The Bachelor.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Yes there is.

Is there anything bad about being bicoastal?
Anytime I’m in LA I’m needed in New York, and anytime I’m in New York there’s some big thing happening in LA. So that part of my plan is completely screwed up.

You mentioned Jerry Seinfeld. You guys are good friends, right?
We are.

What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned about comedy from Jerry?
How to be a successful comedian. You know, I was kind of adrift and I was doing my thing, but I never really had confirmation that writing every day and going up and telling jokes was really a good thing to do. And being with him, he kind of simplifies everything to just do the work, write everyday and the success will come.

When I met him it was like showing up as a freshman and seeing this guy who was like a grad student saying, ‘Yeah, this is exactly how I did it, keep doing this and you’ll be fine.’

You guys met while you were performing at a club, right? Or was there a connection before that?
No, there was no connection. It was at the Comedy Cellar. I never knew him. He saw me several times, and we just started talking, and had the same sense of humor, and became friendly after that. And then Colin Quinn was also around at the time and I think he quietly told Jerry I wasn’t an idiot.

That was nice of him.
Yeah. And then we just hit it off. We just really became friends more than anything else. It’s like being friends with somebody who’s also your mentor in a lot of ways.

And you guys constantly tour together.
Yes, we actually worked on Bee Movie together as well.

You have two daughters now.
Yep, five and two. I’m blessed amongst women.

And how does that generally work out for you?
Not very well. It’s like being invited to a game that you know you have no chance of winning.

Well, as long as you know that going in—
Yeah. it’s fine. You just try and figure out ways to cheat.

Does your five-year old understand what you do for a living?
Yeah, she knows. She has kind of a twisted view of reality, I think, because all our friends are comedians or actors, and everybody’s on TV.

Yeah, that’s going to be strange when she’s in second and third grade and starts realizing that everyone’s parent’s friends don’t have a TV show.
Yeah, she’s going to want to quit school pretty quickly I think.

You mentioned some comics you respect. Do you find yourself obsessed with knowing what’s happening in the national comedy scene, or do you kind of just ignore it because you feel it’s distracting to what you’re doing?
It’s kind of like this weird combination. I don’t like to dive too deep. I love comics; all my friends are comedians. But on the other side of it is that you get too mired into the who’s doing what and who’s got what and that kind of taints the fun of it all. So I like being abreast of everything, but I tend not to obsess on the business end of it.

I don’t need to get annoyed when I see some comedian I don’t respect selling out some theater somewhere. That doesn’t help my writing. That’s why I write first thing in the morning before I learn those things.

When you’re not doing something comedy-related, what are you doing?
Everything’s kind of comedy. [laughs] And then just, as Kurt Vonnegut said, a lot of puttering around.

Would you ever go back to working on a sitcom?
Yeah, I would love to. I just cut a deal last year to try to get something going. Working on a show is a lot of fun, and I would love to do it again. I’ve got a couple ideas up my sleeve.

Yeah? You said that very deviously.
It was supposed to be devious. That’s one thing I learned about being in Hollywood. A little devious never hurts.

For more info, check out www.tompapa.com.

Paula Poundstone: The mother of all comedians

by John Delery

Unlike most comics, who leave wake-up calls for dinnertime, Paula Poundstone typically rises before the son — and the daughters, too, for that matter. She needs every precious second to do her “real job — raising two lively teenage girls (Toshia, 16, and Allie, 13) and an aspiring drummer boy, Thomas E., 9.

By John Delery

Consider Paula Poundstone a momedian, the hilarious hybrid parent for these increasingly green times: Part ticked-off comedian, part hands-on mother, Poundstone runs on eight hours sleep and weekly booking fees.

“I get up way before noon,” she says at exactly 7 a.m. PDT recently. “In fact, I slept in a bit this morning. But usually I have to get up early just to look at my strategy map.”

On this morning in Santa Monica, Calif., she has to coordinate chauffeuring Toshia to acting camp and Allie to gymnastics camp without driving herself crazy. “Thomas,” Poundstone continues, raising her voice above the faucet running in the kitchen, “is starting high-adventure beach camp. There is no all-around camp anymore. You have to choose a particular interest and pursue that for a week, and then you can go to a different camp. So it’s a lot of organizing, trying to get everybody to different places at the same time of day.”

After more than 25 years in comedy, Poundstone, who grew up in Massachusetts, the same comic incubator as Steven Wright and Denis Leary, two of her peers, still dresses as though she had emptied her clothes closet onto her body.

And her act, coming to Austin, Texas on Aug. 31, and Maine and Connecticut Sept. 7-9, remains an amusing cocktail of current events and everyday occurrences, with a twist of sublime. The merry multitasker demonstrated she could joke and prepare breakfast for four while speaking to Punchline Magazine.

You don’t have a driver, huh?
Regrettably, I do not have a driver. For many years I’ve thought, If I were rich, I’d have a chauffeur, just to deal with the car breaking down actually.

After all these years you must have as much money as Leno.
It’s hard to believe I’ve been denied that little thrill, that little perk.

You haven’t been able to discourage Toshia from going into show business yet?
Believe me, she’s not going into show business. She’s quite the attention-getter. She’ll fall down in front of people and stuff like that. I’m forever saying, “You don’t do a show without selling tickets.” I wouldn’t mind if Toshia turned her acting skills toward the stage; when she uses them in the kitchen and the bedroom, that’s when it’s a problem.

So what’s on your mind these days? How have you evolved as a comic through the years?
I feel like I’m kind of at the top of my game in a way.

Do cats and Pop Tarts still fascinate you?
Well, I suppose they do, in a sad way. I talk about politics here and there onstage, not in a Rhodes scholar kind of way, not even in a fair-and-balanced kind of a way. I talk about raising my kids. I talk about the trials of just being a citizen, and there are many.

I’m so grateful I don’t live in Iowa because this thing of starting the [presidential] campaign, the political process this early — I can’t imagine you can even have a cup of coffee in Iowa these days without being assaulted by tens of candidates. I don’t think there was a break between the [2004 presidential campaign] and this one, which seems rather cruel.

I also talk about the public school system, which, fortunately, we’re in a fairly good one, actually.
I can’t say I’ve ever used algebra. You use it to help your kids with homework; that’s the only place you ever use algebra, unless you’re going on to higher math or going to work on the Hubble telescope. But kids need to know how to make change; that would be a little more helpful, a little more hands-on than what does “n” equal.

You once talked about a daughter you called Madame Justice, is this Toshia?
No, that would be Allie.

If I remember correctly, she was going to be a Supreme Court justice after serving eight years as vice president in Senator Peepers’ administration. That is correct. We used to call my son the senator, not the one I have now. It’s a different boy, a foster son I had a long time ago. I must say, I actually heard from his family, and he’s doing very well. So maybe there’s something in a name. He’s doing remarkably well, actually. Like, an honor student.

So different aspirations for Allie now, huh?
I don’t know what her aspirations are. The last thing she said she wanted to be when she grew up was
a fashion designer, which I think is some form of rebellion. It [fashion] is probably the thing I find least important in life.

Allie’s smart that way; she’s always known to do something I have no interest in. She plays the violin, and there’s not a lick of advice I can give. There’s nothing I can do to help her practice, other than to say, “Please practice.”

So you said you’re not rich, but after all these years you must be doing well.
Oh, gee, I wish. It’s like I spend half my day trying to convince the children that we have no money and that they should just change their plans right now. We rent this house, but really no one else in their right mind would rent this house. It’s a bit of a hovel, kind of a low-end Addams Family house — with no Lurch.

Do you have an Itt, a Thing?
Well, we have 11 cats, a dog, a bunny, a bearded dragon lizard and an ant farm, so we certainly have
a substitute Itt somewhere in this house.

Are you touring a lot now?
I go out about eight nights a month, on average, and it’s not in a row. It’s a night here, a night there, and I’ve done that same schedule for years and years and years now. Sometimes the quality of job varies, but the schedule remains just about the same.

It doesn’t work out great financially, but it works out in terms of my being able to be home. I can take the kids to school, to camp or whatever they’re doing, and I pick them up. I’m lucky I don’t have to work 9 to 5 and no one has to be in day care or something like that; not that that would be the end of the world, I guess. I figured it out mathematically, but I think I’m there for my kids as much as the average parent who works.

Because I work weekends, I often miss the talent show, and that’s a drag, but the part where I have to bring the drums to the school for the practice, that I’m there for.

So you’re not a mother, you’re a roadie.
I do feel like a roadie a lot.

Any perks to that?
Front-row seats!

So where are you leaning these days politically?
I’m a Democrat, but I don’ know whom among the Democrats yet — probably any one of them is fine with me, to tell you the truth, just so long as it’s one of them. We’re lucky because we have a good spate of candidates. I don’t think there’s anyone on the Democratic side that would be troubling, so that’s good.

I’ve seen only a few minutes of one debate, and it was hard to see a lot of daylight between them. In fact, I wish there were a way that they could draw straws or something, so that they wouldn’t injure themselves before they’re actually running against a Republican opponent, because in their insistence on finding some sort of difference between one another, they’re going to muck it up.

But fortunately [chuckling], the Republicans have already mucked it up so badly, we do have a fair amount of wiggle room. But the Democrats do have a way of eating up wiggle room quicker than any other political group, really.

It seems so impossible at this stage, but then it always happens, doesn’t it? I say it onstage, but it’s true: One of the problems with the Democrats is that we often choose our candidates from Geppetto’s workshop: Dukakis, Gore and John Kerry had this oddly wooden quality, and yet people who know them personally swear they’re not that way.

Is it still fun after all these years?
Yes, oh, yes. In the past month or so I’ve had some reaaaaaaally, reaaaaaaally great jobs. I did an event honoring Mort Sahl, and the lineup of comics was so great. It was Albert Brooks and Richard Lewis and Jay Leno and Bill Maher and Jonathan Winters and Norm Crosby and Shelly Berman. There were all these really old managers, guys I hadn’t seen in a thousand years, and it was just delightful.

I was saying to my daughter — I brought one of my kids — that a night like that isn’t going to happen again, probably forever, because, honestly, by the time anyone could organize it, half of us will be dead. I love my job wherever I am; occasionally there’s a rough night, but really not too much.

Mostly the people who come out seem to already be fans, so I’m not proving myself very often – maybe on the Mort Sahl night, maybe when I’m just part of a lineup. But when I’m working by myself, then I’m just preaching to the choir, I guess, and I kind of like that job.

Is it almost surreal that you’re part of this pantheon of comedians?
You know, it is. You know it was just time and place. I started when I was 19 years old, and it was just the beginning of what we arrogantly refer to as the Comedy Renaissance, [in the late '70s and early '80s] when audiences became interested in stand-up comedy again, largely because of Robin [Williams], really.

He was the guy that everybody was looking for, and when they went out hoping to see him somewhere, they ended up seeing a lot of others of us. It was a really great graduating class of comics. But you know, it mostly just had to do with that I just happened to be there at that time.

And that you’re also funny.
I’m not bad. But I don’t know if I were coming up now I’d be able to do it. I’m glad I don’t have to [find out]. I hope I’m one of those acts. Like I had Cab Calloway on a show I did for ABC about a thousand years ago, one of the last shows he did, I imagine, and he was great, just fantastic.

But he was so old by that time that he was in a wheelchair. You just had the sense that his teeth knew the song, you know. And I want to be like that. I want to be welcomed to perform, and invited to perform, and able to perform. I hope my teeth know the jokes long after my brain has shut down.

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

Tom Green: Spinning a New Web of Comedy

by Dylan P. Gadino

Three years after MTV dropped his show, Tom Green –with backing from ManiaTV — installed a half-million-dollar broadcast studio in his living room. Hundreds of thousands of Tom Green fans now clamor each night not for their remotes, but instead for their keyboards and monitors.

By Dylan P. Gadino

For anybody else in the entertainment industry, hosting a nightly talk show from one’s living room would seem like an incredibly strange concept. And it’s not that Tom Green doesn’t own up to the oddity that is Tom Green Live; he does.

But after a few minutes of talking with the former MTV icon and star of cult-movie favorites Freddy Got Fingered and Stealing Harvard, you start to think that maybe he doesn’t think it’s as bizarre as most normal people would have you believe. Then again, you never know how seriously to take Tom Green.

Regardless, his live, streaming Web show is flourishing under the freedom the Internet affords him. Each night at 11 p.m. EST, hundreds of thousands of viewers log onto Denver-based ManiaTV.com and TomGreen.com to watch the 36-year-old host take unscreened calls from viewers and chat with celebrities — Ed McMahon, Brooke Shields, Thora Birch and stand-up comedians Norm Macdonald, Orny Adams, Joe Rogan, Judah Friedlander and Bob Saget are but a few of his past guests — from his Hollywood Hills home.

Ever since the show premiered last June, the number of loyal viewers has skyrocketed. Punchline Magazine recently talked with Tom about the direction of Tom Green Live, the problem with normal television and those pesky callers.

Obviously putting quite a unique spin on the traditional talk show. Is that because you feel there are some fundamental problems with contemporary television?
I think there’s perhaps a lack of spontaneity on television that used to exist back in the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s even. It seems everything has gotten overly scripted — even the talk shows and the 24-hour news cycle. You tune in to these things and everyone’s reading off of Teleprompters or reading jokes.

And that’s fine, but I just think spontaneity is something that may be missing from television, and I think the Internet is the perfect place to be able to do that – to, say, have one guest on a show for an hour and allow prank phone calls on the air and just allow everything to get a little crazy and not worry too, too much if it all goes to hell in a hand basket. Because that’s sort of the point, ya know?

When I think about my favorite stuff that ever happened on TV, it’s always when stuff went wrong. It gave you some real emotion, some real energy and real reaction from people, which is what we’re all watching television for in the first place – to see other people.

I liked it when Andy Kaufman got knocked out or when Crispin Glover tried to kick Letterman in the head or Letterman would get mad at some guest or when Cher called him an asshole. If you were a conservative thinker, all those moments would conceivably be the biggest disasters of the show.

I liked it when I was able to convince Jay Leno and The Tonight Show — and it didn’t take a lot of convincing, by the way — to let me get drunk on the show. We rolled out the bar cart and I said, “Hey, you guys got Jagermeister?’ And I started doing shots of Jager on the show. I proceeded to do 13 shots because each time I did one, I got a cheer. I literally blacked out on stage, I think. Pretty edgy. But it was cool that they were willing to go that far with it. I don’t think it was meant to go as far as it did, but there was something about that applause — I couldn’t stop.

A lot of people say that Letterman and Leno have lost their edge, that maybe it’s the viewers’ inability to handle off-the-wall material that made the shows a bit less exciting than in years past.
I don’t know if it’s the viewers’ fault. I don’t think those shows are necessarily trying to maintain what you would call an edginess to them. Most mainstream television shows I think are trying to amass a large audience. So if you really maintain a serious edge, you’re really not going to maintain a huge audience. Because when you really are doing stuff that’s edgy, it’s controversial and it splits your audience. So if you keep splitting it and splitting it and splitting it, it’s going to get smaller.

It’s not in the best interest for a mainstream talk show to be edgy. You’re just turning people away. But it always amazes me how many people don’t get certain things. Like when you make an anti-joke – like when you make a joke that’s funny because it’s not funny.

You would think that everyone would get that but really nobody gets that or at least it’s a small percentage of people that get it. So the more you use that technique, the fewer the people that get it, but the payoff for those who do get it is much bigger, and they enjoy it more. But you can’t get away with that kind of joke every night on a network talk show. You wouldn’t be on the air for very long.

Which is why what you’re doing has got to be so liberating.
This show is the most fun I’ve ever had creatively because you’re not sitting here going, “Oh, I want to have a really big audience.” The audience is so fragmented that you can’t really worry about the them. You’re more worried about staying honest about what you want to do in the moment. I want to be honest in the moment on the air and go on the air whenever it seems right and fun and not try to overproduce it. [ed. note: Tom can actually flip a switch and broadcast live any time of day, which he's been known to do.]

What’s the most challenging part of doing a show like this?
This is not really, in any way, a television show. You could say it’s a TV show because it looks like a TV show, so I guess it is a TV show in that sense. But it’s not made the way a TV show is made and not made the way any TV show has ever been made. I have one employee. It’s me and this guy, Logan. I’ve had Robert, I’ve had Bill — people come and go.

I built this studio in my living room. I essentially improvise a nightly talk show. It’s not what you would call a normal show. Normally, all shows in the history of television, for good reason, have many writers and producer, and they spend the week and days leading up to the show writing jokes and other material. I’m just sort of improvising. I produce it myself as well, but it’s different. I just try to set up
a set of circumstances each night that will either allow for some interesting conversation or for some strange kind of behavior.

And then I combine that by interacting with the real world by bringing in all the viewers from the computer on Skype, and on the phone — so it’s kind of a live-format thing. In many ways, it’s closer to doing radio than it is to doing a television show. I’m not doing a monologue. I don’t invite the guest to walk out from behind a curtain. It’s right in my living room. You sit down there for an hour and see what happens. It’s really fun.

Do you see anything changing on Tom Green Live some time soon?
I want to start to produce it and structure it a little more in the coming months and the coming year. It’s really budgetary right now. It’s something that I’m doing for fun with a very small budget. The sponsors have helped. Samsung has helped.

But as our viewers go up and our budget goes up, maybe I’d like to hire some writers and potentially do some more stuff on the show each night. For now, it’s kind of fun to enjoy the fact that I don’s have writers. When you have writers, the realities of doing a show are a lot different.

How so?
When you’re doing a real television show, it’s almost like you’re in an administrative position. You’re approving jokes and you’re having jokes read to you: “Ok, I like that one, I don’t like that one.” Then the jokes have to get sent up to the executives to get approved. Then he kills all the ones you liked and he wants to do all the ones that you didn’t like and then you argue about that. It’s not always a lot of fun.

But here, I have no one to argue with. There are no writers, no executives. I sit down during the show, and I have a bunch of people prank phone calling me live for an hour on the Internet with eight cameras covering it and dogs running around and parrots yapping away and celebrity guests that everybody has something to ask. Generally, something funny tends to happen.

Yeah, it’s actually really funny how a lot of times a few seconds into a phone call, you hang up on the person.
I treat it like it’s a fun game I’m playing with the audience. They’re trying to prank me as well. But I do feel we’re producing the show for the iTunes audience, which is not live and for future generations of Web-o-vision watchers. It’s not necessarily on the agenda of the show to be really courteous to the people calling in. It’s more about making it funny for the person watching.

So it’s almost fun to kind of hang up on these people calling. And I think all these people that are calling and getting hung up on understand that. I get e-mails from people saying, “Haha, you hung up on me last night, but I get it, don’t worry about it.” I don’t think anyone is ever really offended to the core.

Right, you’re not getting any hate mail.
No, people are into the whole game of it.

If someone calls with regular question though, they’ll be able to ask it, right?
Oh yeah, and they usually do. The biggest surprise to me is that on some nights, six or seven out of 10 callers just randomly taken from the Web have good questions. You could tell they’ve gone to Wikipedia and researched the guest and they’ll ask about something.

And I just hit the line, and we’re live. There’s no call screener. I had a call screener before, but I got rid of it. It started to become this TV type of wall between me and the audience. The fact that the phone is just ringing right there, and we’re just hitting it and anything could happen, is neat. There are nights when we’ve gotten like six prank phone calls in a row but that becomes kind of funny, too. Whatever happens, happens.

For more information, check out www.tomgreen.com and www.maniatv.com.

Doug Stanhope: Out of Darkness Comes Comedy

by Dylan P. Gadino

Comedian Doug Stanhope knows a thing or two about hard living and hard truths. But are the masses ready for his scathing brand of stand-up comedy? We’ll see who’s still standing after his new Showtime special, No Refunds premieres next month.

by Dylan P. Gadino I photos below by Heidi Kikel

Stand-up comedian Doug Stanhope is inside us all. He’s the part we keep in check until the weekends, the bad ideas we suppress to avoid arrest, the dormant habits we’ve laid to rest years ago in favor of a traditional life spent commuting and sitting in cubicles. He’s our hero.

Though to many he’s known as the co-host of the last season of Comedy Central’s The Man Show or as one of the faces of Girls Gone Wild videos, Stanhope is most valuable onstage, dissecting society within a shred of its existence. His jokes are defined by ugly truths, deft analysis and an Aronofsky-esque poignancy. In the end, Stanhope makes it all brutally funny.

For the first time ever, thanks to his new Showtime special, No Refunds — premiering Aug. 3 – Stanhope assaults the small screen, completely uncensored. For hard-core fans of the 17-year comedy veteran, it’s been a long wait; for those not yet schooled in the way of Stanhope, it’s going to be quite an education. Punchline Magazine recently caught up with the Arizona-based comic to talk about No Refunds, the state of comedy and tons more.

How are you these days?
Good. So you interview comics. That’s got to be a tedious living.

Not really.
Are any of the comics you talk to fun?

They’re usually pretty normal.
You’d figure that this would’ve been a far more interesting job in the ’80s and early ’90s.

Maybe.
Now everyone, they have an act, and then they leave right after and go back to their hotel and work on a screenplay. There’s very little fun out there anymore.

Yeah, you think?
There’s a lot of ambition and not a lot of adrenaline.

So that’s the problem — not enough adrenaline?
I don’t think so. But I think it spreads far beyond the borders of comedy. It’s life in general, but comics especially. That’s why I’m doing more rock ‘n’ roll clubs now.

Rock clubs and Showtime specials. Did you do anything differently to prepare for the Showtime special than you normally do for a regular show?
The problem any time you do a CD or a DVD, is that to some extent you have to know what the fuck you’re doing. I have 17 years of material to draw off of. Just to go wherever my head’s going is not going to work for something like this. It’s very hard for me to stick to a set list.

But usually, before a regular show, I figure out what I want to do — you know, jokes I want to open with or new stuff that I want to do, and the rest I can just go wherever my head’s going or wherever the crowd’s going. But when you’re recording, you don’t want to do stuff that’s previously released, so to some extent, yeah, I’ve stuck to a script of sorts.

Did you rehearse specifically for this show?
No, the day of the show I sit down with a notepad so it’s all fresh in my head. If I did it the day before, I’d forget everything I wrote down. Not that I’d forget the material, but all the segues and what bits I definitely want to get in. I didn’t treat it differently than any other gig. I still got hammered and smoked cigarettes.

How do you feel the Showtime special compares to a traditional Doug Stanhope live show?
Well, this is the first time I’ve ever done any stand-up on television that wasn’t censored. Anything I do censored sucks on some level — between sucks and really sucks. I have to consider my language. It would be like telling a Mexican guy, “Don’t use that accent.” When you’re constantly trying not to do something, then you’re not in the moment; you’re focused on other things other than flow and your jokes.

And censorship is a lot more than just dirty words. I did a half-hour special for Comedy Central, and during the phone call with the network censors, my jaw was just agape. I had a suicide bit and they said, “You can’t do that because if someone hears that and they kill themselves, we could get sued. And you can’t talk about drugs unless it’s negative.” So they’re censoring ideas. And that’s far scarier than saying you can’t say “cocksucker.” So yeah, this is the first time I’ve done anything that’s uncensored.

Showtime didn’t give you any parameters?
Nope, not a thing. I never even met with Showtime. In fact, the only notes I got weren’t even Showtime-related, they were for the DVD release of the same show. We talked about titles. Because they wanted to be able to sell it in box stores, they had to approve the title. Best Buy isn’t going to put just anything on their shelves.

Do you have any pre-show rituals?
It depends on if I’m doing more than one show. If I have two shows I wait until I’m on stage to drink during the first show, and then I continue to drink. That’s about my only ritual. And I try to stay away from people until after the show.

Why is that?
Because I’m thinking. I have no social skills until I’m drinking and don’t have shit to do.

What do you think about?
What to say on stage. Something new to amuse myself. Something in the moment. I can go on stage and have a first joke, something new or something that I actually think is funny, and it makes all the difference in the show. If I have nothing but repeating shit I’ve said before, it’s soul-wrenching.

On stage, you do a lot of dark material and say some pretty twisted things, things that aren’t normally reserved for a comedy show. What is it about your personality that people find likable?
I don’t have the slightest idea why people wouldn’t enjoy what I do. And I don’t spend any time trying to figure it out. People are really into self-help and self-analysis. You might come up with an answer — Well, it’s because my uncle touched me — but that doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s true. That’s just an answer you’re comfortable with. So if I try to analyze why I appeal to the people I appeal to, I just come up with some bullshit answer, but it’s not necessarily true, and I don’t give a fuck anyway.

I mean, I don’t mean to come off sounding like I don’t care about the audience, but if you focus on making it fun for you and amusing for yourself, that will show through. If you’re doing what you want to do, and saying what you want to say, and saying something that you’re passionate about, you’re going to find an audience. It might be a very small one, but that’s how you can continue doing it without wanting to kill yourself.

There’re acts out there that have done the exact same word-for-word fucking show since 1986 and they have no problem with it. I have some envy for that. They still draw audiences, and people want to hear it. And sometimes I wish I could do that without feeling my fucking guts turn upside down like I’m a complete fraud.

I get nervous when people stay for the second show. Oh, you were so funny, we’re going to stay for the second show, like all of it’s off the top of your head. All I can think about is that person and their balloon bursting, and I completely dismiss the other 99 people in the audience, just worrying about the one guy who stayed for two shows. So I’m trying to change up my whole set in a drunken hour.

You moved to Arizona after living in LA for years. What was it about LA that you couldn’t stand to be there anymore?
First, traffic, as trivial as that sounds. And crowds. I mean you hear that everyone’s plastic. I don’t think they’re plastic so much as they are self-involved and ambitious. And when you live in that circle where their entire lives are their career, it’s just so dull to be around.

There’s very little in the moment that’s not narcissistic or self-serving or people thinking like, Where is this going to get me? What about fun? And when it’s even your peers, it’s not just new comics up and coming, it’s your peers. Like I’ll tell my friends to go to Costa Rica with me, and they’re like, “No.” [Dave] Attell won’t even fucking come to town without doing a set. Who cares about this business? It’s so ridiculous.

How long have you been in Arizona now?
Two years.

And how would you describe where you live?
It’s an old mining town of about 6,000 people on the Mexican border. It’s vaguely hippie — which is annoying to me — with enough minuteman element to keep it in check. It’s an artist community, but it’s really not my kind of art.

How do you mean?
There’re lots of big turquoise belt buckles and sculptures, and that’s not the kind of people you can work out your new fist-fucking jokes with over coffee.

But obviously something keeps you there.
It’s really quiet. There’s one stoplight in town, and because I’m on the road as much as I am, I really enjoy doing nothing when I get home. But I wouldn’ want to stay here for any long amount of time. I’ve been here for six weeks right after a tour. After two weeks, I’m starting to get itchy and scratchy to get the fuck out. There’s really no place I’d want to live forever.

You’ve said that it’s kind of sad that there’s so little social relevance in comedy. But if hundreds of comedians were trying to be socially relevant, wouldn’t that make what you do…
Moot? Yeah, sure. I don’t have a problem with it. I don’t think there’s a lack of social relevance in comedy, it’s in the comics that are popular. I blame the market, not the art form. There’re enough people that if you wanted social relevance in comedy, you could hand-pick them.

Right.
But I don’t think there’s a lot of social relevance in any media. The music is all fucking Pablum, as far as what’s popular. Television is all just dumb and dog shit. People have so many distractions now and so many toys. There’s so much attention deficit disorder, and I think that’s a bullshit disorder, but people are so distracted.

You’ve got fucking text messaging and cell phone cameras and instant messenger and MySpace and the 10-minute ticker and the news crawl. I mean, there’re so many things fighting for your attention that entertainment itself has become diluted, and people have become more stationary.

You hear stories about people going to see Lenny Bruce in the ’60s and catching a show at 3 a.m., and now you do a 10 p.m. show on a Friday and people are yawning and falling asleep in their chairs because they just fucking work too much so they could buy too much shit that they don’t need. But when I go over to London, you could fill a house on a Tuesday night for at a 1 a.m. show.

So you think the problem is more in the States?
All I know is they [the British] have four channels, and they all suck. We have 300 channels. People are fucking stapled to their couch here.

In other words, If you have fewer options at home, you’re going to go out more.
Right. And when you’re not presented with fun or entertainment, you go create your own.

Yeah, that’s got to be frustrating to deal with that mentality on stage. Do you feel like a lot of people just don’t get what you’re trying to do?
Now that I’m doing more rock ‘n’ roll clubs, I’m bringing in my own audience, as opposed to comedy clubs, where people just show up for a fucking bachelorette party with a balloon hat on and have no idea who they’re going to see. So I get a lot less shit –to the point where sometimes I delude myself into thinking that maybe I am relevant to the masses and not just to those people who already know what I do. But then I’ll shuffle into a comedy club to do a guest set, and I realize how much I don’t fit in the real world.

I just think people don’t care about [socially-relevant comedy]. People will say, “We came to the comedy club to get away from that.” And you go, “Well, you were never really involved in that; don’t act like that’s your fucking life, that’s CNN. The longest running fucking reality show on TV is the news. It doesn’t affect your life. You haven’t been out looking for missing kids all fucking week. Come on now. Your whole life is away from that. The fucking cubicle, crunching numbers and getting a bonus, that’s your life.”

Yeah, I guess people do act like they’re so embedded in what’s going on.
To the point where if you weren’t hyperaware, you’d think that’s your life. It’s being hypervigilant about homeland security and all this stuff, because it’s bashed into your head with a ball-peen hammer. The fact that they can sell fear that easily is because it’s easier than facing the reality that probably nothing of any significance is ever going to happen in your entire life.

You’d much rather believe that fucking immigrants are trying to take your job, and pedophiles are trying to fuck your kids, and terrorists are trying to blow up your Ford Focus in particular, than realize that you’re probably never even going to break a bone. You have a couple of kids with a woman; you settle for less and that’s it. You fucking have an embolism and die. So people want to believe that all this shit on the news is coming down on them. It’s the hand-sanitizer generation.

Why do you think people are willing to go to comedy shows when they don’t even know the comic? They wouldn’t do that for a movie or a band.
Well, when you look at the boom, comics were trying to be TV-friendly because of Seinfeld, Paul Reiser. And then when comedy clubs started dying, they tried turning comedy clubs into adult Chuck E. Cheeses; they’re giving away 20 passes, you fill out the comment card and we’ll bring you in on your birthday for free. You just pay for $9 pina coladas and we’ll take care of the rest. So they catered to those type of people.

They’d show up for their birthday party and wanted everyone in their group to be satisfied, so they have Las Vegas-like comedy that appeases the masses, and that’s how they sold it. And they did that for so long. Comedy is such a fucking silly thing, that it’s amazing it’s even marketable. People are paying me to make them laugh.

So you’re actually surprised that it’s even this popular?
I mean, when you look at the type of comedy that people are going to see generally in middle America — at the Funny Bone or whatever — it’s like, “You have to pay for that? Don’t you have a friend that’s that funny? It’s not a business that seeks out originality.

Yeah, I guess it’s risky for a club owner to book edgier acts. They want the majority of people to like it and to come back.
Yeah, but there’re lots of people who are doing alternative venues, which is really great. Todd Barry does a lot of them. Between satellite radio and the Internet, it opens up a whole new way to reach people and get crowds to your shows where you don’t have to Clear Channel-it-up for morning radio. I mean, radio’s fucking completely dead anyway. So you MySpace and YouTube and get the word out, and you don’t have to suck some club owner’s dick. You market yourself.

You’ve said before in reference to The Man Show that you’re not at all interested in doing television.
It would never be a focus for me. I wouldn’t do anything I didn’t want to do. They always blow smoke up your ass about one thing or another. “Hey, come do this E! channel show.” “All right. I can just sit there and talk? I don’t have to try?” I’m not going to be studying lines. I’m a fucking horrible actor, and there’s no reward in it for me. I have zero desire to do anything to be famous or known.

Television is work, and that’s the best thing about doing stand-up is you can go up and say what’s on your mind for an hour, hammer a few beers and a Jagerbomb and that’s it. The only work is really the travel. With television, you’ve got to get up at 6:30 in the morning and study fucking lines and rehearse and block it out and everything — all to do something that really sucks in comparison to what you do onstage. So what’s the payoff? I don’t need money. Once I have enough money for beer and cigarettes and my rent’s paid, what else do I need? I’ve never been motivated by money.

Yeah, for you then, it doesn’t seem worth it.
Yeah, I still sneak into LA to do something ridiculous. I don’t go out and audition. I have no agent in LA or representation trying to seek stuff out, but if someone calls and it sounds like it’s going to be fun to do, I’ll do it.

You’ve recorded three of your albums at the Laff Stop in Houston. Why did you decide to do them all there?
Yeah, back when it was a good club. Back when Mark Babbitt ran it. The guy that took it over is a tool. When Mark Babbitt used to run the Laff Stop, everyone was taping discs there, because he really cared about the art form, not just the comment cards and the chicken wings, and he wasn’t trying to exert authority over comics like a lot of clubs do. There were no power plays, like “If you work for them you don’t work for us.”

So many club owners are just douche bags. But Babbitt was just such a fun guy and really cared about the business. And he had the place wired so you could just come in and throw a DAT tape in and you’re recording. Literally, all you had to do is hit record, go on stage, and you had an album.

Do you have a better response in Houston than you do in other places?
Yeah, the crowds were good because he booked the comics that he liked rather than what comedy-club audiences might prefer – even if he was taking a risk, and even if he thought it would fail. That’s how you train an audience. It’s no different than a fucking punk-rock club. You throw a country-western band in there once a year to amuse yourself, it’s going to suck. You have to train them on a certain genre of comedy.

A lot of clubs aren’t willing to take those risks once a week or once a month or whatever it takes to train an audience.
Well, yeah, you have to stick to it. A lot of club owners want to bring me in just because they like me and they’ll try it.

In your act, you kind of talk at length about your frustration – whether it be with politicians or the government or just normal people. It’s clear that you have some anger. But what is it you fear, if anything?
Boredom.

Why is boredom so scary?
It’s more lack of desire really. You know, those days where you’re bored but there’s nothing you want? If someone asks you, “If you could do anything what would it be?” And you go, “I don’t know, I’ve done pretty much everything in my life I’ve wanted to.” But again, that just comes out of a sense of laziness. Getting too set in your ways.

I fear cops. I fear the IRS. Airport security. Traffic. Morning-radio-show audiences. Criticism.

You don’t seem the type of guy who would care about criticism.
Well, it’s tough with the Internet, where everyone’s a pro bono critic, and you don’t know who it is. If some fucking goober in overalls fucking hates my abortion bit at the Funny Bone in Des Moines, I can look at that guy, size him up, know who he is and know about his life. But when you have that self-doubt in the back of your head, and you get an e-mail that says, “You fucking suck,” then you picture the worst possible person that you could be getting that from.

It’s the same way if your girlfriend fucking doesn’t call, and you know she went out with her fucking ex-boyfriend, you make the worst possible image in your head of what’s happening right now. You picture that e-mail coming from the person you respect, the person whose notice and recognition and support you long for, and you think that’s your crowd. And it’s probably a 15-year-old kid who only knows you from The Man Show. But in your head, it’s a comedy connoisseur who’s seconding the voices in your head that say you suck.

So it’s anonymous criticism that you fear.
Right. But it all goes with the roller coaster of your day, too. If you wake up and you feel good, and you took it easy the night before, you don’t have a lot to do, and you’ve got a bunch of shit happening later that’s going to be fun, and you have self-confidence — then all right, that e-mail? Delete. Who cares?

But if you wake up in a fucking spiraling hangover after six weeks on the road, and you don’t think you’re funny anymore, and you’ve said your jokes so many times they don’t make sense, and you hate yourself, then that e-mail can destroy you.

You’re constantly compared to people like Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks and Richard Pryor. Are you comfortable with those comparisons?
Well, obviously there’s a fine line between a comparison and being called derivative of someone. Someone like Hicks, I just never saw the connection between me and him, other than having topics that were of a relevant nature.

Bill Hicks was a sober guy who was very deliberate and paced and well-spoken. I’m a fucking drunken rambling idiot. The styles don’t seem very similar at all. But there’s worse people to be compared to.

Comics always talk about how their lifestyle doesn’t allow for the most normal romantic relationships. But you’re married now?
No, no.

Oh, you’re not married?
No. Even when I was married I wasn’t really married.

Really?
Yeah. We called ourselves married. We had a ceremony that was just mocking the institution of marriage. But it wasn’t legal at all. It was a big party with a lot of debauchery and drugs and nudity and ingesting of bodily fluids – naked Elvis. You had to be there.

I guess so.
It was a complete Sid-and-Nancy relationship. Or maybe a Hank-and-Wanda, Bukowski fucking Barfly relationship — two great drunks that didn’t go great together kind of thing. But I’m in a relationship now.

How does your road lifestyle affect your current relationship?
It works out fine. She comes out occasionally, and she’s got her own life and her own shit to do and her own projects, and that makes all the difference. She’s not needy of constant attention, and she works fine on her own when I’m away.

Sounds like a good situation.
A lot of times people would just assume my girlfriend would be angry or jealous because I’d do Girls Gone Wild or Stern or whatever dumb shit I’m doing. Like it’s so common for people to be in relationships where one person is intolerant.

Like, “Oh, I can’t go to strip bars anymore, I’m married.” Why would you fucking marry someone that wouldn’t allow you to be who you want to be, so long as you were loyal? It’s just baffling that that’s so commonplace in our society. They settle for less, and then you have to be in relationships where you have to pretend to be someone you’re not. It’s fucking mind-boggling.

Yeah. It’s very common. Comics, they’ve got to go outside and get in the car from the nightclub to pretend they’re in their hotel room when they call. You’re just out drinking!

You turned 40 not too long ago. How has that affected you personally as well as your comedy?
Well, I’ve been depressed about 40 since I was about 33. It really didn’t make a difference. I haven’t really grown emotionally or spiritually at all, so the number really doesn’t matter, it’s just the amount of time I’ve done things. You get to a place where you go, “What the fuck can I say that I haven’t said in some fashion before? What topics are left?” Any time you do that it’s because you’re being lazy as a human being and not doing enough new shit with your life.

So you didn’t go through that cliched crisis when you were days away from turning 40?
No. I mean, with my lifestyle, every morning is a waking crisis of mortality. It has nothing to do with aging. It’s not like I’m worried about a prostate exam when I wake up and don’ know what town I’m in and who I should apologize to. [laughs]

So age doesn’t really affect you.
Well, I never have any of the mile markers that other people have. It’s not like I have kids and I’m watching them graduate middle school. It’s just the same shit – staggering from town to town causing trouble and trying to find new and inventive ways to amuse myself.

In your live shows, you don’y really shy away from talking about drinking and drugs. To what extent do those things influence your comedy and your writing process and your performances?
Alcohol is definitely something that enhances my stage show. I don’t want to use the fucking cliched performance-enhancing drug line, but yeah, I’ve credited alcohol, tobacco, and narcotics for my career. I think I used the line in the Showtime special that drugs have expanded my imagination enough to think of some weird shit, and cigarettes give me the patience to write it down in a comedy-friendly format, and alcohol gives me the courage to come up in front of a group of judgmental pricks and say it into a microphone.

You’ve found a winning formula there. You need all those things?
Yeah, working together. Of course, now I’m fucking 40 and coughing up phlegm all the time.

I’m sure that’s a lot of people. You’re not alone there.
I know. I immediately assume that it’s my lifestyle doing those things. I don’t remember anybody’s name, and “Where did I meet you? Oh, we did that thing? I don’t know, it’s been 17 years.”  Then I go, “Wow, it’s all this fucking drinking and drug use over the years.” And then I talk to my friends that are my age that don’t party every fucking night, and they don’t remember anything either. And I go, “OK, a lot of this is natural. I’ll stop beating myself up.”

That’s right. Don’t be so hard on yourself.
Right. Let’s have a cocktail.

For more information, check out www.dougstanhope.com. For a complete schedule of Doug’s special, check out Showtime’s official site.

Ty Barnett: Wise beyond his (comedy) years

by Jessica Agi

He may have only five solid years of pro stand-up experience behind him, but Ty Barnett — season four’s Last Comic Standing runner-up — has already made many lasting impressions.

By Jessica Agi

Although he’s been a full-time comic for just five years, Chicago-native Ty Barnett has plenty of bragging rights. Since winning first runner-up in the fourth season of NBC’s Last Comic Standing, his career has skyrocketed. Barnett’s appeared on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and starred in his own Comedy Central Presents.

At 18, Barnett joined the Army and was relocated to Seattle as a pharmacy tech in the base hospital. Five years later, he was out of the Army. He made the rainy city his new home and took his longtime interest in telling jokes to the stage. “I had always toyed with the idea of comedy,” he says.

“I remember going up [at the Comedy Underground in Seattle]. I had never been that nervous. It was a really small crowd, but I still got laughs. It was cool enough to where I said, “OK,” and went back the next night. But I had gotten cocky that I had got a few laughs. The next night was nothing, I mean, like crickets. It felt like it was a one-time thing, so I didn’t pursue it as much for a few months.”

Then after a close friend’s untimely death, Barnett says things were really put into perspective for him. He figured: “You’ve got to try, and really put effort into it. It’s not an overnight thing.”

Barnett spent his first five years in the comedy circuit while working full time at a hospital and raising his two daughters, now 13 and 9.

“I’ve paid a lot of dues and logged a lot of miles,” he says. “At the time, there were only two comedy clubs in Seattle — Giggles and the Underground. You really had to fight for stage time. I volunteered to host and just kept going; I hit some shitty bars. I’m being nice when saying they were shitty. Imagine a strip club on a Sunday morning – probably the most disgusting thing you’ll ever see in your life. And the strippers aren’t good strippers; they’re like C-list strippers, with bullet wounds or they’re pregnant. That’s what these clubs were like.”

But Barnett stayed focused

“Once you figure out, ‘OK, I can make people laugh,’ you have to ask yourself: ‘What am I getting out of this? What do I want to talk about?’ You never really know your voice until years into doing stand-up.”

Nearly a decade after his start, Barnett anchors his live shows with socially relevant material — relationships, his daughters and the world-at-large are big targets for him.

“I don’t want to be the preacher comic, but I do have issues about society,” he explains.

Onstage, Barnett is calm and cool and often laughs at the sheer absurdity of some of the things he says. He doesn’t put anyone down or touch on major tragedies in his act. Instead, he puts a unique, often goofy, spin on classic topics. Though he claims race, religion and politics are three of the more difficult things to joke about and get consistent laughs, he never backs away from the challenge.

“Saying, ‘If you don’t like somebody because of the color of their skin, you’re a fucking idiot’ is probably not going to make the crowd sit down and watch the show. So I say, “If you’re going to hate someone, why would you pick what they look like? Pick a reason that makes sense, like what sign they are. I know people from a lot of different cultures, but that are the same sign, who are a pain in the ass.’”

He admits that finding the balance between what he finds funny and what will make a crowd laugh isn’t easy. He walks me through a joke he’s working on, the premise of which is based on seeing an albino dwarf for the first time and not knowing how to react. “Do I make a wish?” he asks. He dives deeper, testing the waters, wondering whether to call him a “midget,” “dwarf” or “little person. “At least midget sounds magical,” he says.

“I try jokes out on a minimum of five different audiences before I even think to keep going with it.”

Between Barnett’s unique perspective and sharp wit onstage and his sensibility and dedication offstage, it’s no wonder why he was so successful on last year’s s Last Comic Standing.

Though he ultimately finished second to Josh Blue, Barnett loved the experience, which gave him great exposure and left him with some new friends, namely fellow LA resident Chris Porter.

“When we first met, I didn’t know if we were gonna connect. Chris is more like a rock star, country dude, and I’m not. I’m more jazzy and kind of laid-back. But now, people put together tours and put us on the road together. They’re trying to mesh the two different demographics, and when people see us perform, they say we make a great team.”

Barnett tours coast to coast, and he recently wrapped up a stint at this year’s Just For
Laughs comedy festival in Montreal (the same fest that had already named him Outstanding Performer). He’s already passed his original goal “to make a good living telling jokes,”
and he doesn’t plan to slow down.

“Now I want to act, I want to write,” he says. “But the base of everything I do still comes to stand-up. I’m developing a reality show. I’ve got to keep it moving, trying to be an entrepreneur. It’s 2007; you have to do it. America’s attention span is pretty short, so you have to make sure people will remember you.”

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

Behind the Scenes at LateNet with Ray Ellin: Comedy’s evolution is in full effect!

by Dylan P. Gadino

When the late-night talk-show format meets stand-up comedy and the Internet, a new breed of variety show is born. And with the help of Gilbert Gottfried and Fran Drescher, hilarity ensues.

by Dylan P. Gadino | Photos by Kevin Duffy

Since its launch, DailyComedy.com has been treating comedy a bit differently than most Web sites. Its founder Ray Ellin, a New York City-based stand-up comedian, wanted to establish a place where professional comedians, amateurs, open-mic types and fans of all the above could come and hang out, write some jokes and network with other joke tellers.

His plan seems to be working as the site continues to prosper. But Ellin’s not done using his comedic prowess in novel, hip ways. In May, DailyComedy.com and PalTalk, the Internet-video-community service, joined forces to produce LateNet With Ray Ellin, the first-ever live, interactive online-comedy variety show.

Shot at Comix comedy club in Manhattan, the production presented the first time a talk show was simultaneously put on for a live audience as well as millions of viewers over the Internet. Comics, guests and even audience members could interact with folks in their living rooms around the world.

“I had hosted a TV show a few years ago and loved doing it,” Ellin says. “I always thought it’d be cool to incorporate the Internet; that way, I could interact with the viewing audience in real time and also expand my audience to include people from all over the world. So once I got DailyComedy.com up and running and the partnership with PalTalk was formed, I realized that my idea for a show that combined a studio audience and a Web audience was technologically possible. So fellow comedian Dan Naturman and I fleshed it out.”

Recently, Ellin and friends produced LateNet’s second episode, this time at the famed Gotham Comedy Club in New York City. The show included guests Fran Drescher, Gilbert Gottfried and performances by comedians Russ Meneve, DC Benny and comedic hip-hop group Cracked Out.

For a show in its infancy, that’s a stellar lineup. “We have a budget but it’s not very big,” Ellin says. “So you find yourself doing a bit of everything, from production to promotion to marketing to guests to writing and then hosting it. It’s a lot of work but a lot of fun.”

Punchline Magazine was there to catch the most recent show as well as some behind-the-scenes moments. The next LateNet show airs July 31. Until then enjoy some of the images and happenings of the previous episode.

2:54 pm: With little more than five hours until showtime, LateNet host Ray Ellin sits at a corner table at Gotham Comedy Club, calmly talking into his cell phone and at the same time reading over the script for tonight’s live broadcast. He’s been at the venue since noon. The club’s stage has been minimally transformed into your typical late- night-talk-show set: a simple but classy desk, adorned with a flat-screen monitor — currently just showing an electric blue face — perches on the raised platform. Larry, the teleprompter guy, calls to Ellin asking what version of the script he wants running through the teleprompter. No less than five crew members crisscross the club’s floor constantly testing and repositioning lights that hang from the ceiling.

3:02 pm: A microphone comes to life as the first sound test begins. A young crew member scales
a 1,000-foot ladder to move one light six inches to the right.

3:11 pm: Ray gets behind the desk and makes edits to the script; he eats some lunch.

3:17 pm: As he keys in edits to his opening bits directly into the teleprompter software, Ray runs some of the monologue’s jokes by a visitor. In the end, most of the jokes stand up; but he substitutes “John Travolta” for “Tom Cruise” in one circumcision-themed gay joke.

3:56 pm: Ray and his Paul Schaffer-equivalent, Dan O’Connor, take to the stage to run through a few entrance cues and some loosely rehearsed banter that will later hopefully feel unrehearsed.

4:19 pm: Kim Weinstein, the show’s makeup pro for the day, arrives and consults with Ray onstage.

4:46 pm: Ray runs through the opening monologue rather smoothly but stops each time to discuss musical cues with Dan.

5:39 pm: Musical guest Michael Lanning sound checks.

7: 17 pm: Guest Gilbert Gottfried sits quietly with a glass of Diet Coke in Gotham’s downstairs lounge, which is occupied only with Cracked Out (Brett Gelman and Jon Daly) reviewing their script and Kim. Gottfried gladly chats with the few people that know he’s there. If you’re wondering, no, he has a normal voice. He’s actually extremely soft-spoken. Ellin’s now in a well-tailored suit. He talks with Gilbert about how the show will play out.

7:28 pm: Fran Drescher, also a guest on tonight’s show, walks down the stairs with a huge smile on her face and heads directly to the small green room.

7:41 pm: Kim treats Ray to a bit of makeup.

8:00 pm: The show starts. Hilarity ensues.

The next LateNet with Ray Ellin will be broadcast July 31. For more information, check out www.dailycomedy.com/latenet.

Patton Oswalt: Werewolves and Lollipops

by Nick A. Zaino III

Patton Oswalt’s career is exploding. He’s  the lead voice in Ratatouille, Pixar’s latest surefire hit, he just ended a nine-year run on the popular King of Queens and he’s near ubiquitous in any cool comedy project, either as a writer or as a character actor. And now he’s releasing his latest CD/DVD, Werewolves and Lollipops on Sub Pop (out July 10), which means a lot of people are going to find Oswalt at his most brutally effective, doing stand-up comedy.

It’s part of a comedian’s job description to take things one step further than normal people might, and that’swhat Oswalt does better than anyone else. From his perspective, KFC’s “Famous Bowls” aren’t just a ridiculous, gas-inducing marketing scheme, they’re  a crisis of individual self-worth, each one a “failure pile in a sadness bowl.” The payoff for “The Miracle of Birth,” in which parents who had a child at 63 explain sex to their kid, is disgustingly vivid and hilarious.

Oswalt has a way of internalizing pop culture that removes it from the tacky, sterile realm of gossip and voyeurism and makes it a personal struggle to maintain standards and sanity. He doesn’t  just say the  Star Wars prequels sucked, he dreams of going back in a time machine and preventing George Lucas from making them, and the conversation he might have had with Lucas had they met before the world was bored to tears by Darth Vader as a child. He’s politically sharp, re-imagining the Bush administration as one unending episode of the  Dukes of Hazzard. Even his personal stories avoid idle navel gazing and resonate as if he were an old friend you hadn’t seen in a while.

Werewolves also includes a DVD, containing a full-show shot at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Ga. At one point, one fan pees on another’s shoes in the audience. Many comedians would exploit that kind of chaos on film; only Oswalt would film an introduction urging fans never to pee on anyone at any show — not a rock show, a comedy show or a poetry reading — and actually mean it.

Oswalt seems to get stronger with every set. Compare the bits on the DVD to the same material on the CD, which was recorded months later, and you won’t see massive changes. But a few words here and there can make the difference between a really funny thought and something that makes your stomach cramp from laughing. Oswalt understands those crucial subtleties, both as a writer and a performer, and that’s what’s  going to make him fun to watch for years to come.

Patton Oswalt: Comedy Compels Him

by Dylan P. Gadino

Before Patton Oswalt was Spence on The King of Queens or a rat in Pixar’s Ratatouille, he was just a stand-up comedian. Fortunately for us, his new album Werewolves and Lollipops, is proof that will never change.

By Dylan P. Gadino

Comedian Patton Oswalt is in the fortunate position of having the respect of a large group of underground stand-up comedy fans as well as the eyes of mainstream entertainment consumers. Although his nine-year role as Spence on The King of Queens has come to an end, Patton’s secured his position in big-budget Hollywood by voicing the lead part of Remy in Pixar’s Ratatouille, which has — as of press time — earned $67 million. He’ll also be seen in August’s Balls of Fury, a comedy based around the sport of ping-pong and penned by the writing team of Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant. This fall he’ll even be taking a dramatic turn in All Roads Lead Home.

Most important, however, the Comedians of Comedy tour founder’s new album, Werewolves and Lollipops, will soon be out on Sub Pop records. The album, his second, is an amazingly funny mix of Patton’s observations on U.S. politics, societal ills and his personal life. Punchline Magazine caught up with Patton on the Fourth of July to chat about his new album and everything between.

So, it’s the Fourth of July. I thought you’d be out celebrating our country’s birth. Why do hate America?
You just totally exposed it. There’s no way I could defend myself. It’s embarrassing.

How do you maintain that balance between the mainstream success you’ve had in television and movies and the more underground success and respect you’ve gained in your stand-up comedy career?
I think it’s because it’s pretty clear that all the mainstream success that I get and pursue is so that I can keep doing stand-up the way I want to do it. I think people can understand that. It’s hard to make money doing stand-up these days. It’s harder to travel. So why not do stuff that’ll help that along. I think people know that if they’re stand-up fans of mine, there are other things of mine they don’t need to watch. Then there are people who like my mainstream stuff, and they’re  smart enough to understand that my stand-up is a little bit more adult.

Do you ever hear from your stand-up fans that you’re a sellout?
No one’s ever said it to my face. There are people that will say it online anonymously. But then someone will point out that he’s not doing TV and movies in the mainstream so he could sit back and live in a big house and drive a nice car. He spends it on doing more Comedians of Comedy tours and putting out his own albums and stuff like that.

There’s not really much of an argument. If someone says something like that it’s either they’re very young and immature or they’re very old and bitter. It’s like saying ‘I can’t listen to Richard Pryor ever since I saw The Toy and Superman III.’ Well then you’re a fucking idiot because he’s really funny. That’s just silly. Not that I’m comparing myself to Richard Pryor.

That’s a strong argument.
I’m not making an argument. Other people are making the argument for me. I don’t really care either way. In the long run — and I know this sounds kind of crass — I don’t care what people think of me. When I was just a comedian, I didn’t care. Now that I have “quote, unquote” mainstream success, that hasn’t changed.

Also, mainstream versus indie is like Red State versus Blue State: it doesn’t exist. You get to the age where you just like everything, ya know? Or you just find value in everything. There is no mainstream and there is no independent and street cred goes sour very quickly. There’s no shelf life to it, so I don’t worry about it.

So if it’s good, it’s good, and if its bad its bad. Enough with the labels?
Exactly. How many so-called little indie films have you gone to see and they’ve fucking sucked? Then you go see some big-budget movie like Speed or the new Die Hard and they’re much more entertaining and fun. So who gives a shit?

Your new album, Werewolves and Lollipops, has a strange title. Where did it come from?
The title came from me trying to think of a title for the album and having every single one rejected by Sub Pop. Then, I finally threw my hands in the air and said, “Fuck it!” I just came up with that, and they said, “Hey, we like that. That’s good.” It was like the worst title I could come up with and the one that had nothing to do with the album.

What were some of the titles Sub Pop rejected?
There were so many. Comedy Costs You; I wanted to call it My Penis for some reason. Yelling was another one. Those are the ones I could remember.

Maybe you could do a limited edition, unreleased track album and call it My Penis.
Yeah, I’ll do a Billion Dollar Babies cover and everything.

How has the ending of The King of Queens affected you?
I miss going in and working with everyone there. I had a lot of friends there, so that was a lot of fun. But I was only on like every third episode, so I would only work a couple weeks a month. So it wasn’t that much of a shock for me as I think it might have been for other cast members. And I worked really hard to establish other stuff that I was doing, so it wasn’t like, “Fuck, now what am I going to do?”

You’re a big Food Network fan, right?
There aren’t actually a lot of shows that I watch on Food Network. I like Top Chef on Bravo. Anthony Bordain’s show is on the Travel Channel. I do like Good Eats on the Food Network; that’s a great show. I just like good food shows. I’m not loyal to a network.

If you ever had the chance to do your own food show, what kind or show would it be?
It would be like a dinner-club show where me and bunch of friends sit around and go to different restaurants and talk so it’s not just on me to carry the show. I like to interact with people. So I’d have different friends of mine on and we’d go to different places and eat food and talk.

You’d talk about the food?
Anything. We could let the food lead us into certain subjects. And let it lead us back out of certain subjects. Who knows?

Sounds like you’ve thought about this.
Well, they did that Dinner for Five show and Daniel Boulud is doing a similar show, so the thing is I don’t want to rip anyone off.

I just watched the Balls of Fury trailer. It looks like a spectacular film.
I have only one scene, but it was a lot of fun to do.

So what’s your role? In the trailer you’re licking what I assume is a ping-pong trophy.
I’m competing with the hero and then taunting him.

I assume you beat the hero.
Who knows? You’ll have to see the movie.

How would you describe the state of contemporary stand-up comedy?
I think right now, its great. I can’t believe there are so many good people doing it right now — especially the younger comedians coming up. They’re just fucking fantastic. It’s really fun right now.

What comedians do you especially like?
There are so many: Dan Mintz, Michelle Biloon, James Adomian, Anthony Jeselnik, Natasha Leggero, Morgan Murphy. There are just so many right now. Comedy is in a great place right now. There’s a super-strong new wave.

A lot of comics think the opposite, that it’s becoming overexposed on television and the like.
I don’t think so at all. Right now, the good part is that these really good young comedians are being left alone to develop on their own. They’re just so much more savvy as to what to do and what not to do so they’re developing in really good directions. Especially, with the Internet, there’s so much more access for people to do what they want to do. It’s great.

You’re 38 now. Are you the type of person to stress out about turning 40?
No. Age has nothing to do with anything. It’s just whatever you’re doing with your life. I just don’t think age matters.

So there will be no midlife crisis?
I don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe I will; maybe I won’t but I don’t sit there and look at my life like it’s on some kind of schedule. “Like, well, I’m this age, so this must happen now.” That’s a really silly way to think.

How’s married life?
Good, it’s really fun.

Does your wife share your interests of comic books and all things sci-fi?
Nope, she doesn’t She’s not into any of that stuff. Which is kinda cool. I don’t want someone exactly like me. That would be boring.

How long did you know each other before getting married?
Two years.

How did you meet?
We met at Largo. She was there to see a show, and I was on stage. I was doing the show, and we just started talking afterward, and it just really happened.

Was she familiar with your stand-up?
No, that was the first time she’d seen me.

In your act, you dedicate a decent amount of time to your feelings on our government and the war. Are these things that concern you a great deal or just things that are easy to mock?
No, it’s stuff I really care about and stuff that I’m really frustrated about.

What frustrates you the most?
Willful ignorance — the aggressive ignorance that people use so that they feel better about themselves and feel better about things. That kind of drives me a little crazy. And people cleaving to party lines rather than listening to logic on both sides gets a little frustrating. And just the state of discourse — it’s all yelling and catchphrases. It’s frustrating because you know nothing’s getting said or discussed or decided. It’s all jingoism.

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

Jim Norton:Happy Endings: The Tales of a Meaty-Breasted Zilch

by Dylan P. Gadino

Whether you like stand-up comedy or not; whether you’re a fan of comedian Jim Norton or not and — this is important — if you can suppress judgment on a man who not only enjoys being defecated on but also likes writing about it, you must read  Happy Endings: The Tales of a Meaty-Breasted Zilch.

Known best these days as the third mic on the wildly popular Opie & Anthony radio show (broadcast on both XM satellite and terrestrial radio throughout the country), veteran stand-up Norton takes his amazingly honest live comedy tone and puts it all in black- -and-white in a journal-style memoir.

To say Norton, a former alcoholic with a severe sex addiction, has a humble way about him would be to grossly understate the way he looks inward. Throughout Happy Endings, he paints a vivid self-portrait, replete with stories of his shamefully eating fatty desserts while trying to lose weight, getting terrible blow jobs from terrible-looking hookers, getting great blow jobs from great-looking hookers and just generally stumbling through his days trying to keep his disappointments in life to a minimum.

The former Lucky Louie cast member even takes time to explicate embarrassingly sophomoric poems he wrote, letters to and from girlfriends and a short story of fiction he penned years ago based around a real-life ex-girlfriend, wherein the protagonist (“The Man”) schemes to pay back a $400 debt to his friend L’il Kinney, “the leader of the G-Rajes, a vicious gang of black rapists.” The Man incurs the debt after L’il Kinney gives him the cash to have anal sex with The Man’s girlfriend and rather than follow through, The Man spends the loot on Ozzfest tickets, beer and lap dances.

No doubt, the stories Jimmy tells about his sexual encounters are hilarious, but even the more mundane, microscopic slices of life he relates are equally entertaining. About snot, he writes: “What better feeling than to scrape your nail into one and slowly guide it out? It looks like a cornflake with bloody porridge on it. Most boogers taste salty and have the consistency of rubber cement. I hate when you pop a nice one into your mouth and it gets caught in your teeth; it totally takes the joy out of eating it. Instead, it makes you feel like a vile, disgusting adult who’s destined to spending eternity picking nose dirt our of their molars.”

Beyond what memoir traditionalists would consider “shocking,” Norton also deftly navigates some more G-rated waters; not to worry, though, as he finds a way each time to make it great.

By the end of the book, hardcore Norton fans will be deliriously happy with what the author’s decided to include in this wholly entertaining collection. We could only hope that those same fans will slip the book to a loved one — their mom or their sister — look them straight in the face and say, “Hey, I just read this memoir. It really changed my life. I think you should read it.”