Review: The Ricky Gervais Show

by Dylan P. Gadino

The Ricky Gervais Show premieres Feb. 19 at 9 pm EST on HBO.

One of the biggest surprises about HBO’s The Ricky Gervais Show comes during the end credits of each episode. That’s where you find out that it takes 17 animators to bring to visual life, Gervais’ world famous podcast. It’s a surprise because the animation of the 30-minute weekly show is understated and largely static. However, we all know amazingly advanced animation does not necessarily make a great animated show.

For an animated show to be artfully successful, at the very least, the viewer needs to feel there’s a reason for the animation. The reason, however, for the animation in the case of The Ricky Gervais Show seems to stem more from logistical and financial reasons rather than an artistic one.

The three stars – Gervais, his writing partner Stephen Merchant and former radio producer Karl Pilkington – didn’t need to show up on set or at a recording studio, since the dialogue is taken from Gervais’ previously produced – and brilliantly funny – podcasts. Combine the relatively easy production process with the amount of cash the show will bring in – DVD sales alone will be huge – due to Gervais’ past successes with The Office and HBO’s show Extras, and you have a no brain business decision to create a new cable comedy show.

The audio content of the show itself is fun, light and incredibly entertaining. Honestly, though, it’s difficult to justify the animation. The majority of the show finds the trio talking into over hanging microphones around a wooden table. Periodically, the scene breaks to act-outs of the conversation, which bring to mind Comedy Central’s ill-fated Shorties Watching Shorties. Like the original podcast, the HBO version of the show would be better heard during a long car ride, treadmill jogs or on iTunes when you’re avoiding work.

After watching three episodes, the formula of the show wears thin. Gervais and Merchant provide the set up (a topic is introduced) and then the pair, with no subtleties, throw it off to the real star of the show, whipping boy Pilkington with a phrase like, “What do you think about that, Karl” or “Karl, you must have some comments on that.”

Karl, a likable and gullible chap, then happily takes the bait and begins philosophizing on all things from implanting babies into 78-year-old women, trying to convince Ricky and Stephen that the first monkey that went to the moon committed suicide or his beliefs in the story of a haunted tankard.

Ricky Gervais animated HBO show from Punchline Magazine on Vimeo.

Regardless of Karl’s level of stupidity on any given topic, Gervais and Merchant lay into him with equal fervor: Ricky says things like “I’ve seen [Karl] blossom from an idiot into an imbecile” and “You are brain dead. I’d rather have [a] monkey drive me home than you.” It’s funny the first few times, but since the podcasts have been truncated to 30 minutes, the continual Karl beatings get exponentially meaner and less funny.

The bottom line is this: the animation produced around Gervais’ masterful podcast doesn’t hurt its content. But it certainly doesn’t make it any better.

Bill Maher: Bill kills

by Emma Kat Richardson

A Barack Obama presidency has, in no way, slowed down Bill Maher’s attempt to deconstruct all that’s wrong with American politics. In fact, he’s got plenty more to say. The proof is in his new live HBO comedy special premiering on Feb. 13.

There isn’t too much that can be said about Bill Maher that hasn’t already been committed to a thousand pieces of journalism. We know him best as the pot-smoking pundit who, for almost two decades, has entertained and informed audiences with a sharply critical rhetoric on everything from organized religion to the toxicity of America’s food supply.

As his HBO ratings knockout Real Time prepares for its new-season debut on Feb. 19 as well as the premiere of Maher’s ninth HBO special, But I’m Not Wrong, which airs live on Feb. 13, here’s what America’s most outspoken social critic had to say for himself in a conversation with Emma Kat Richardson. (Portions of this interview and introduction were originally published in Real Detroit Weekly.)

Do you prefer doing stand-up or doing your show, and do the benefits of one outweigh the other?
Well, you’re asking me which one of my children I like better. But since I don’t have children, I’ll answer this question. I have to say, if I had to choose, stand-up. It’s the most fun I can ever have with my pants on. It’s very pure – I’ll put it that way. Well, pure in the sense that it’s just me, my jokes, and the audience. There’s no time limit; there’s no network; there’s no people sitting on the panel, you know, cutting me off. It’s all about making people laugh out loud continually for an hour and a half. There are very few places where you can go for that nowadays: there are very few places you can go where you can laugh until you’re exhausted, and that’s my goal.

How much of your stand-up act is really you and how much is an onstage persona?
Oh, it’s all me. I have no onstage persona. Once in a while, people will not quite know who you are but will know your face, and they’ll say, “Oh, hey, I know you, you’re an actor!” That’s the one thing that makes me kind of bristle. No, I’m not an actor; I’m the opposite of an actor. I’m not acting at all, I never say anything I don’t believe. I’m a comedian and I tell jokes, and jokes are not always about [truth]: the premise may be true, but the joke part is an exaggeration, but people understand that. I am exactly who I am, I think. Even when people who’ve known me through television first get to know me later, that’s the comment I’ve heard many times: “Boy, you’re not really that different from what you are on the air.”

It’s a good thing for what I do – it wouldn’t be a good thing if I was trying to be an action movie star. Then you’d want to be, you know, larger than life. Television is an intimate medium, and what I’m doing, what I’m selling, is keeping it real. So if you’re going to be the keep it real dude, you should be real. If I came in with a facelift next season, for example, I’d understand why the audience would peel away. [Laughs]. They’d be like, “Oh, this is the guy we thought was very authentic; we’d think he was never pulling a punch when he talks, and here he is now with a tummy tuck or whatever.”

Do you ever revisit some of your material from the ‘80s?
God, no. I had an HBO special in 2007; I wouldn’t even do a joke from that! I mean, maybe one: there’s a couple that if they fit, people will say to me all the time, you know, “Do that thing!” Once in a while I will do that, but people who come to see me when I do a stand-up show are seeing almost all new stuff, because jokes are not like music. In music, people want to hear the hits they heard 40 years ago, but as a comedy fan myself, I don’t want to hear that. If I go see a comedian, I don’t want to hear his old act: I know those jokes, and when you know a joke, it’s sort of over. With exceptions, as I say – some bits, you can hear more than once. But basically, I want to keep it as fresh as I can for them.

Have you ever had to struggle to make your act so prolific?
I just stop. After I do an HBO special, then I won’t do stand-up for a while. It’s like, after you harvest a crop, you have to let the field lie fallow, so you can grow more jokes.

So that’s what you’re growing in your basement: jokes.
Well, among other things, but we don’t have to talk about that.

Do you find audiences in some of the more economically depressed areas of the country to be more or less receptive to your material? How have they reacted to it?
Oh, they love it, because I think I’m voicing what I know a lot of people are feeling, which is a lot of frustration at the corporatist scant of America right now. Back when I was starting to get on Obama’s case, my own studio audience was booing me. It’s a liberal audience, and we all like Obama – I certainly like Obama – but people are turning to the point of view that I’ve been expressing for a while: unless he gets off his corporatist ass, he’s becoming a big disappointment.

This is not change that we can believe in, that we all thought we were getting. No public option in health care – he seemed to back down on that. No real reform for the banks that caused this giant economic mess that has caused such misery in Detroit and everywhere else in the country. People are getting very frustrated with this president. He seems to always be trying to placate the crazies on the right instead of rallying the people who voted for him. I think there is a level of frustration with continued personal affection that we have for him. But you know, he’s not our boyfriend – he’s the president.

Do you think a lot of his unwillingness to stand up to corporate interests has to do with his campaign funding?
I do. He got half his money from corporations. They made a big deal about the fact that he raised more money from small donations than anybody – that’s true. He raised $400 million just from average people, and that’s an impressive achievement, but he also raised $400 billion from fat cats and corporations. I think that tells you a lot.

Did you read the article in Time about comedians having a tougher time coming up with topical material in the age of Obama?
Oh, Christ. I’ve read that in every fucking magazine. Yes, they’ve been asking that, and they’re finally starting to stop asking that: you know, can comedy continue after George Bush? Yes, George Bush was funny, but, yes, it continued. Hallelujah!

I’m having more fun than ever with the material, and I think George Bush probably was the greatest comedic punching bag we’ll ever have, but anything gets tired after eight years. I mean, I was thrilled when he left office, because there was new stuff to talk about, and of course, if you want to, as many comedians do, just concentrate on how crazy the right-wingers are, they’re more crazy than ever. When they’re out of power is when they’re really scary. When they’re out of power is when they’re really funny, because they’ve completely gone batshit; they’re absolutely not connected to reality. Tea-baggers, and Texas threatening to secede, and the Glenn Becks and the Rush Limbaughs – this stuff is very rich, so comedy is just fine.

Since we got to see your childhood background with religion in Religulous, I’ve always wanted to know whether you had a similar experience with politics. Did you grow up in a civic-minded household?
Yes, I did. My father was a news guy – my father worked in radio news. News and what was going on in the world, current events, was always something that was discussed in my house, which is something that’s not that typical in America. I think that’s much more of a European thing. In Europe, there’s a cafe society – people sit out at night at cafes and they talk about what’s really going on. We don’t do that: we sit at home and watch television.

So, in that sense, it was always sort of in my blood, that interest in the news. On Real Time, we definitely have our audience, but it will never be a cafe society. This will always be a society that prefers diversion over education. American Idol will get 30 million people and Bill Moyers Journal will get 300,000. That’s who we are.

Do you think that there’s a natural kinship between righteous anger over certain issues and the ability to make them humorous?
Yeah, probably, but what I wonder about is, why aren’t people more angry? Considering how much they’re poisoned, ripped off, and lied to in this country, why aren’t they rising up? I thought Capitalism: A Love Story was [Michael Moore’s] greatest ever – it’s the perfect meeting of a man at the top of his game as a filmmaker meeting the exact right subject matter.

Michael has always been about corporations screwing the little man: this is what Roger and Me was about 20 years ago. So in a way, he’s come full circle in this movie, and it’s a brilliant movie. He seems to want people to rise up, and seems to be asking them to rise up, and the movie is sort of intimating that they are going to rise up, but I don’t see it. I don’t see people rising up; I really don’t. Maybe they should stop giggling and get angry. I think we’re doing a disservice by making them laugh. [Laughs].

Is it difficult sometimes to form jokes around serious subject matter?
Not for me. I’ve always been interested in it. There are some comics who love the trivial. There are a million comics who have tried to be Jerry Seinfeld, and Jerry is a guy who can make the trivial into something incredibly fascinating. He can talk about the socks in the dryer and it’s brilliant. But, unless you do that kind of comedy exactly right, I find it to be shallow and corny. It’s very hard to be Jerry Seinfeld, even though so many of them try.

But that was never the kind of comedy that interested me: I never talked about trivial matters, even when I was starting out. I was always interested in religion, politics – the big issues, the big meaty issues.

I’ve got to ask you about [disgraced former Detroit mayor] Kwame Kilpatrick. I remember when he was a guest on Real Time. Have you been following that scandal at all?
Well, I certainly know what happened. He’s doing time now, is he?

He’s out, and he’s now in Texas. But he was in jail.
Yes, I remember when he was on the show. He had a whole bunch of guys with him, kind of a posse, and had on this big suit. It did appear more like he was a celebrity than a mayor. If you didn’t know he was the mayor, you would have thought maybe he was high caliber. I don’t remember anyone else with that kind of presence – certainly not in politics. He did have more of an entourage than Jay-Z did – Jay-Z was on our show recently and he came in with just one guy.

Do you have any major career plans for life after Real Time?
No, you know, my big Moby Dick was Religulous. I always wanted to get a movie made about how stupid and dangerous religion is – it had never been done, and I had it in my craw for years and years. Finally got the right director, did the movie, and the movie did really good – people will stop me every day of my life, and probably for the rest of my life, and say, “Thank you for Religulous.”

So that was like my big Moby Dick that I had to harpoon, and other than that, I’m content doing the show. Next year will be our eighth year – I mean, Politically Incorrect was on for nine years, but I never thought we’d do this one for as long. Between that and stand-up, that’s plenty for me. I’m happy to do that – I’m not going to do any more movies. People say to me, “Are you going to do more documentaries?” No; I had one subject that I wanted to do, I did it, that’s it, I think I made my point, so I’m happy to go back to what I really do, which is being a stand-up.

There’s nothing that you set out to accomplish when you started your career that you feel like you haven’t achieved yet?
Not really, no. I mean, I’m happy doing what I’m doing. I don’t want to be an actor; I was an actor in the 80s, but that was the right thing for when you’re young and don’t really know what you want to do. I’ve been on TV for… Politically Incorrect went on in 1993. We’re coming up on 20 years – that’s the big middle chunk of your life. I would never have predicted that we’d have such a long run. I’m just happy it’s lasted this long.

Do you ever think about writing a personal memoir?
Yes. I’ve thought about it. I don’t know; I’ve put out four books, and those are great, but it’s not really a book age anymore. People don’t read ‘em. It’s just different: media has moved on, people’s habits have moved on. Twitter is 140 characters, and that’s challenging for people. Everybody puts out a memoir, and it’s like, “Whatever.”

Bill Maher’s new HBO stand-up comedy special But I’m Not Wrong premieres live at 10 pm on Feb. 13. For more info on Maher, check out BillMaher.com.

Paul Mecurio: When comedy and sports collide

by Brendan McLaughlin

Comedian Paul Mecurio isn’t much of an athlete, but he knows where to find the humor in pro ballers, fighters and beyond. Turns out, you don’t have to look too far. The proof is in his new HBO web series Got No Game with Paul Mecurio.

As a founding writer for The Daily Show, Paul Mecurio has skewered presidential candidates, mainstream media and greedy members of the medical profession, winning Emmys and a Peabody award in the process. As a stand-up comic, he’s a stage veteran who’s covered pretty much every topic in pretty much every respected venue across the country. In his new HBO web series, Got No Game with Paul Mecurio, the comedian settles his focus on the world of sports. According to Paul, someone’s gotta do it.

A while back you produced a pilot called Sports Central. How did that show lead to HBO and Got No Game?
Well, I’m basically a whore. There, you got it out of me. You’re an intrepid reporter. Actually, HBO Sports’ Ross Greenburg saw it and liked it, thought it was a great idea, and with the help of Kendall Reid, and their digital media department, we were able to produce this series. And there’s just this feeling that this is a big part of our culture – sports – and nobody’s satirizing it. And who better to satirize it than a guy who failed at every sport he ever tried?

So you’re not at all athletic?
If you consider doing shots of Jack Daniels and smoking while you’re doing sports athletic, I am a gold medalist. Curling is my sport, because curling for me is nothing more than bowling for people who can’t bear to part with the ball.

Would you consider hitting the gym to be your sport?
No, I’d consider mocking people as they go to the gym to be my sport. Like, ‘Hey, idiot, why are you doing that when you could be doing what I’m doing, which is watching TV and drinking beer?’

You have a son, right? Are you a big sports guy when it comes to parenting?
My son’s into sports. At first he played soccer. First of all, parents whose kids play soccer are out of their minds. And kids who play soccer, at seven or eight years old, they’re like a bunch of drunk midgets. The ball hits them everywhere except in the foot. But the parents were the ones that intimidated me. Parents live through their kids when it comes to sports, especially soccer. There was this one guy, he was fine at first and then literally a minute later he’s going, ‘Kick the ball, Billy. Kick the damn ball! You’re an idiot! And your mother’s sleeping with the mailman. Kick the ball!’ A kid’s team lost a soccer game once and I saw the kid standing in the parking lot watching his father drive away with a kid from the winning team. That’s how intense it’s become.

And you know I’m a Red Sox fan. And you know, Ortiz has been outed on that list for steroid use, along with Manny Ramirez. And that hurts us as fans, and it taints the 2004 championship because they were both on that team. So now what does the city of Boston have? I mean, this is a city that was suffering for self esteem. The last time it felt good about itself was in the Coolidge administration. Now, what do they have to fall back on to feel good about themselves? Their claim to fame up to that point is that they were the last team in baseball to integrate.

The fact that Manny Ramirez is on that list, especially has to hurt.
My thing about Manny Ramirez is I’m not sure that he even took steroids because if he took steroids with the way he plays the outfield, he just wasn’t paying attention. He tripped, he fell, a needle ended up in his ass. It was an accident. He didn’t intend for that. Also, there’s this big mystery in Boston. You know, every time Big Poppy hit a home run he’d cross the plate, he’d pound his chest and he’d point two fingers up to the sky. And everybody’s like, ‘Who’s he paying tribute to?’ And now it’s clear that it’s his dead drug dealer.

So basically, these guys and guys like them have made it easy to mock sports. Take Plaxico Burress: his whole thing with the gun. [ed. note: Burress was indicted Aug 3. on weapons charges after accidentally shooting himself in the leg at a club in November. He had stuffed his gun down his sweatpants.]

First of all, Velcro! All he needed was a little Velcro and that would have solved his problem. And you know the NRA changed its slogan to, ‘You can have my gun when you uneasily unclasp it from my cold dead Velcro hand.’

And then you’ve got Michael Vick coming back, or maybe coming back. We don’t know. By the way, with Vick, they’re gonna get it out of him. They’re just gonna hook his testicles up to a car battery. He better not lose either because he’s gonna get put down, or at the very least, chained to a fence for a day. But you know you look at the news cycle in sports, and all of that came out over the course of five days. So there’s so much going on in sports and nobody’s satirizing it on a regular basis. That’s part of what we want to do, and also just have fun with it.

Like inhaling helium with ring announcer Michael Buffer? (see video below)
Wasn’t that great? It blew me away that he did it. Everybody was saying, ‘You’ll never get him to do this,’ and I was like, ‘I’ll talk to him, we’ll relax him and get him to do it.’ And he did it. He turned out to be a really cool guy. There’s another piece with Jim Lampley. He just went off. I had like a dozen questions prepared, and I got to two of them, three of them at the most. Just incredible, he was great. We’ve also got some sketches coming out—like did you ever wonder what’s going on in the replay booth during a football review play? And we’ve got another piece coming up about race in sports.

You come to sports with a stand-up background. A lot of comics say that sports can be a tough topic onstage. With the wrong crowd it can be like talking about a movie no one’s seen.
If you’re talking about a particular team, I can understand that. But if you’re talking about big issues in sports, which is really what I’m more interested in focusing on in this series – steroids, gunplay, salaries – everybody understands that stuff. You don’t have to follow sports to understand that. You know, Rashard Lewis from the Orlando Magic just got busted for using performance-enhancing drugs. It’s everywhere. If you go into Cincinnati and you start doing jokes about the Oakland Athletics, then yeah, there’s going be a disconnect.

You taped a few episodes in Las Vegas during that big fight week. What was the most interesting thing you learned during that trip?
The biggest shock to me was being in the arena during the Manny Pacquiao- Ricky Hatton fight when Hatton got knocked down, and the blood curdling desire from people screaming. It was a different kind of yell than at football games or basketball games. You know, at a football game if your team scores you go, ‘Yay!’ This was like, ‘Kill him!’ It was the closest thing to what I think it would have been like at the Roman Coliseum.

So it was like the Roman thumbs down?
Close to the thumbs down. I actually did get a bath with several other men just to get a sense of what it was like back then. But seriously, if you haven’t been, even if you’re not a boxing fan, go to one big-time match. It’s people from all different social strata. We’re talking rich people, poor people, people in the middle, and they all just go insane in a really scary way.

Like cheering when the bad guy gets blown up in a movie but with a real person?
Yeah, exactly! If they would’ve let the crowd into the ring to finish him off, they would have.

Well, it sounds like Got No Game is a fun show not only to watch but also to make.
Our goal is the 18-35 year-old male demographic. We want to get them to watch this just before they switch over to transvestiteporn.com.

Check out Got No Game with Paul Mecurio at hbo.com/gotnogame. New episodes premiere every Friday through Sept. 4. For more info on Paul, check out paulmecurio.com.

Jim Jeffries: From England with love, and hate

by Emma Kat Richardson

Jim Jeffries was born in Australia, honed his comedy chops in England and will show us the glorious results May 16 on HBO in his one-hour special I Swear to God.

For a man whose comic persona thrives upon so much fiery anger, Jim Jeffries is astonishingly modest. Humility seems no simple feat, either, for a brash, impassioned young Aussie on the verge of taking a nation defined by harsh judgment and skepticism (America, for you know-nothing wankers out there) by storm. In his first hour-long HBO comedy special, I Swear to God, premiering on Saturday, May 16, the thunder from down under, well, thunders unrelentingly about nearly every facet of existence, from religious bigotry to the joy of overweight sex.

A wide-scale American tour looms large, too, with prominent pit stops at Comedy Works in Denver, Caroline’s in New York, and the Crofoot in Detroit. Although his is a stage persona that is consistently fierce and fearlessly funny, Jeffries checks in with Punchline Magazine and portrays a surprisingly calm, polite demeanor. Will the special be successful, he frets.

Will he blow up big in America? If I Swear to God’s laugh-a-minute delivery and legions of fans worldwide is any indication, Jeffries may just be giving fellow Oceania jesters Flight of a Conchords a run for their American money.

Your act is driven by a lot of anger. Where does your anger come from?
A lot of its manufactured. The thing about comedy is that you have stage anger – like in a play – but in reality, things only make me angry for a small amount of time. [The trick] is to harness it and recreate it onstage. I’m not constantly angry, you know, walking around. I get pissed off about something when I see it in the news or when some religious group has kicked off a protest of some type because of Jesus or whatever, but I’m not angry all the time.

So is the stage your outlet for the anger that doesn’t necessarily come out in reality?
Yeah, it’s the same thing as if you’d go to therapy. You’re on a little couch when you talk to your therapist, you know, and the stage is a little forum where you can express whatever you’re angry about, whether it be religion or some crappy thing said by a family member or whatever.

Your HBO special delves a lot into sex and religion. How do you make these tired subjects fresh and funny?
I don’t know if I did. I tried to, but these are topics that have been done to death. But I think doing these subjects, or doing something like going on an airplane flight are all things that can unite us as people. They’re all things that everyone does, and I don’t like that quirky comedy where the people are talking weirdly and crap. You know what I mean; these surreal comics, and all of a sudden, that’s become the norm? We should be talking about the things that all affect us: sex, and getting on an airplane, all these things that have been called to attention for so long.

What drives an Aussie boy to take up stand-up?
The thing is, when I was growing up, stand-up comedy wasn’t actually very popular in Australia. It’s only really popular on television, and we never had the population to have a really thriving live scene. When I was young, there was a hell-of-a lot of them on TV, and there was this big gig that was on Channel Two every Saturday. I was always watching that, the whole time, and that featured comics from all around the world. Starting in Australia, it’s very difficult to get up and run because of the fact that there aren’t many [clubs] to play in. In Perth, there was only one club that on a Wednesday people used to go to.

That must have made for a very competitive atmosphere.
Actually, it was quite supportive.

Does making it as a performer in America mean something significant on the wide-scale entertainment field, or is that an ethnocentric misconception of the American media?
No, it does mean something. It does, yeah; it definitely does. If I made it in Australian stand-up out here, I’d probably be the first one to really make it [in America]. It does mean something, but I’ve never really chased it – it sort of seemed to be the direction that, after I went and did one show and started doing a bit of radio and stuff, it just seemed like the natural progression of going to America and trying my luck.

I was very happy in my career in Australia, but I think anyone who says they don’t care about making it in America is a despot. You know why? You always hear [British pop singer] Robbie Williams saying, “I don’t care if I ever make it in America.” That’s bullshit, man. Why do you keep on giving it a go, then? Why are you living in L.A. then, shithead? Go back and live in England if you don’t care.

Is there a conception that American audiences will react to indifference?
I don’t know; there is a conception that American crowds are different and that sort of stuff, but funny’s funny across the world. I’ve played gigs in Holland where English is their second language, and [I’m] doing stand-up comedy to them in English, and they’re still getting all the jokes. Americans, sometimes when you talk about things… I think Americans can have very fixed opinions on certain subjects, such as religion, and sometimes when you’re in the clubs you will get a few more walk outs.

I’ve seen people who are pissed off, but they won’t heckle half as much as the British will. The British will really yell stuff out at you. But what I dislike most about American crowds has nothing to do with the crowd; it’s the fact that while you’re doing stand-up, you have waitresses going around to the tables getting drinks. Elsewhere around the world in clubs people get up to get their own drinks. It’s very distracting in America. Everybody’s getting their bill and talking loudly about it; it bugs the hell out of me, but I’m getting used to it. You have to adapt to your current situation.

Since your HBO special is your big debut over on this side of the pond, what one thing would you want American audiences to know about you before they watch it?
I would prefer it if they didn’t know too much at all, if they’re going to watch it, you know what I mean? If I have to entice them into watching it, then I’d like them to know that I’m a storytelling comic. A lot of the parts about me revolve around that I’m a finch; in my opinion, anyway. What I see are the stories; I’d like you all to know that. It’s more about the storytelling then about the events.

But if you’re going to watch it anyway, I’d like you just to go in there with no preconceptions. Go in there, have a watch, and see what you think. If you’ve seen the posters and you’ve read all the bios, you’re going to go in there and two things are going to happen to you: you’ll either be too shocked or not shocked enough. The amount of people who have come and seen me and afterwards have gone, ‘I thought it would be dirtier,’ it’s like well, I never said I was going to be that dirty. I’ve had friends who’ve told audiences that I’m really dirty, so they’ve gone in and braced themselves for so much filth, and then they’re disappointed in you.

Do you think that your act will translate well with American audiences?
I hope so. It’s been going well in the clubs; whether it goes well on TV or not, I won’t be able to tell until the 16th. I must admit, I’m quite nervous about performing on television. I just don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know if it’s going to come on television, that’ll be it and it’ll go – no one will remember it the next day – or it will cause a big splash for all the wrong reasons, and everyone will read into it the wrong way and be like, ‘What the fuck is this dude up to?’ I don’t know what’s going to happen; all I know is that I’m happy with it – I think I did a good job – and I think it’s a fine show.

What single experience can you pinpoint as a moment for developing your comic persona?
Developing it… onstage, or in real life?

Whichever makes the more interesting story.
I don’t know if I could pinpoint one moment, but growing up, my mum yelled a lot. Like, a lot. She still does; she’ll deny it, but she yells a lot, now and in my childhood, and I think that’s come out a lot in my act. Sometimes, she’d say some pretty funny things, and me and my brothers doing impersonations of her, I guess that’s really where the persona came from, as such.

Also, watching Eddie Murphy’s Delirious when I was eight; that was like a really big deal. I remember that was so bad for me to see that it was like pornography, and my brothers had a copy on beta max. Any chance I would get when I was alone in that house, or in a room or whatever, I’d put that on and I’d watch two minutes of it, or whatever amount of time I had. I thought it was awesome: he was swearing and messing around in, like, a leather suit, and if you watch my special, I’m kind of done up with a jacket and swearing, so I think Eddie Murphy influenced me a little bit.

Is Eddie Murphy somebody you would turn to for stand-up advice, if you wanted it?
Not so much anymore. You gotta remember, I was eight. Eddie Murphy hasn’t done stand-up for a long time, but I think if he chose to do it again he’d be very good at it. I bought Delirious and Raw not too long ago, and noticed that the stand-up routines are rather dated. If you watch Richard Pryor, you can still be able to watch that in 50 years time and still find it very funny; it’s an old recording also] but it seems to stand up a lot better.

Richard Pryor was more material-based, and Eddie Murphy’s Delirious – he was like 21 or 22 – and it just seems like it was all a bit more rock star-y than comedy if you watch it again. You had the audience yelling out ‘Eddie Murphy!’ and those pictures of him in a tour bus with all that stuff, but if you watch Pryor or George Carlin, it’s all about straight stand-up and less about the flash of being a celebrity.

Is that timeless, relevant quality something you strive for in your own stand-up?
I’d love for that to happen. Whether it will or not, I don’t know, and whether this special for HBO will stand the test of time— I think a lot of it will? I don’t know if all of it will, you know? I couldn’t tell you which bits will and which bits won’t; a lot of the stuff I do about smoking probably won’t make sense in 20 years, and some of it may seem very mild and the sex stuff might seem more outrageous. I think stories about my childhood should stand up and get recognition, because they’re stories about my childhood. You can’t write better stories about growing up, but you can write different ones.

Where do you see yourself 10 years from now?
Where I see myself and where I’d like to see myself are two totally different things. I will continue to be a good working comic; hopefully the special will go well, and hopefully I’ll get to have a crack at a lot more gigs in my line of work. I hope to get into movies – I’ve auditioned, but no one’s cast me for anything yet, so we’ll see, you know?

I’ll never give up stand-up, but I’d like to do some films. I don’t want to start off by being a major player in a movie; I’d like to get a second or third role, you know? If my career can go somewhere like where Flight of the Conchords career went, I’d be over the moon. Will that happen? I don’t know, but maybe. I don’t know what’s going to happen in 10 years; I don’t know what’s going to happen on the 17th.

For more info check out jim-jeffries.com or his official MySpace.

Kristen Schaal: Indie comedy goddess

by Emma Kat Richardson

New York-based comedian Kristen Schaal has quickly moved from bar room comedy gigs, to the national comedic elite. Starring on Flight of the Conchords and the Daily Show will do that.

It’s not often that a comedian can claim credit for preserving a dying breed of endangered bears (think polar), but Kristen Schaal is just such a lucky jester.

The breakout star of comedic television gems like HBO’s hipster hit Flight of the Conchords (where she plays the musical duo’s number one super fan), Schaal has spent the past few years morphing into a crush-worthy darling for the indie comedy set.

And with a star-making role as the Senior Women’s Issues Commentator on Comedy Central’s little news show that could, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Schaal has burst into the public spotlight by repeatedly lampooning political notables like Sarah Palin with a wry, insightful edge that even Tina Fey must be envious of.

Exactly as sweet and adorable as you’d expect her to be, the curly-coifed comedian checked in with Punchline Magazine just days before the Jan. 18 season premiere of Flight of the Conchords to discuss the nature of alternative comedy, why she’s similar to Andy Kaufman and how making fun of Wasilla, Alaska’s biggest star was actually beneficial to the environment.

What called you into the world of comedy?
I definitely knew I always wanted to perform. I think that comedy called me because people were laughing at me when I was trying to be serious.

So was it a childhood trauma thing that propelled it?
Oh, no, I was, like, pleasantly surprised, and I figured out how to use it to my benefit.

You’ve been associated with the term “alternative comedy” a lot. What, in your words, defines alternative comedy? What differentiates it from “traditional comedy?”
I think alternative comedy just means that there’s more comedy than usual. And I think that that word is probably going to become a mixture again, because alternative comedy was a word that described comedians who weren’t working in the bigger clubs in New York— people who were doing shows for no money, like on the Lower East side and in Brooklyn, so we became the “alternative” to the clubs.

Really, because the work that we produced was more experimental in the fact that the audience wasn’t paying just to see a joke, so we didn’t have to please a booker or an audience. [Laughs]. So it was just a different way to explore all the different ways to make people laugh, other than just telling jokes; but, they call comedians who just tell jokes “alternative” comedians, too, so I think mainly that word was created because of location, and not because of content.

Do you mean regional location, as in, around the United States?
No, I mean it’s like the difference between performing at a stand-up comedy club and performing in the back of the bar.

Do you prefer improv or stand-up, or is there really no comparison?
I don’t know if I prefer one over the other. I find improv more relaxing, and I look forward to doing it because it’s something that I don’t have to prepare for, so you just go with the flow. With stand-up, it’s the most stressful thing that I do because it all depends on me – whether it goes good or not. So, you know, I’m running the whole show and it takes so much preparation; but, when you walk away from a stand-up set that goes really well, compared to an improv set, you’re of course going to be more proud of the stand-up set.

Bill Burr: ‘I’m a functioning psycho’

by Brendan McLaughlin

With the release of an album, DVD and the premiere of his one-hour Comedy Central special, Why Do I Do This? it’s a busy month for one Boston-bred comedian– especially for a self-professed ‘pyscho.’ Welcome to the honest — if not, slightly frightening — mind of Bill Burr.

Over the past five years, few comedians have been more exciting to watch grow as an artist as Bill Burr. Through his work on Chappelle’s Show, his Comedy Central Presents special, HBO One-Night Stand, stellar debut album Emotionally Unavailable, and most importantly, his road work headlining the country’s better comedy venues, the Boston native has become one of the most highly-respected and sought after comedians.

But it’s only getting better for Burr. His new album Why Do I Do This? – deeper, darker and even funnier than his first – was released Aug 5. An hour-long Comedy Central special version of the album premieres Aug. 31 at 11 pm EST while the DVD will be in stores come Sept. 16. That’s a powerful triple shot for the 40-year-old comic.

Punchline Magazine recently chatted with Burr about the new special, why therapy doesn’t work for him, what it’s like living as a “functioning psycho” and much more.

A lot of your new material seems to deal with “the imp of the perverse,” or the notion that at any given time there’s a devil in your ear urging you do or say exactly the opposite of what’s socially acceptable.
Yeah, that was more sort of the ending chunk I was doing— that whole fucked up thought things. I think I was always conscious of that voice. Just like when you’re younger and you sit there with a friend and say, ‘Hey, you know what would be funny? Blah Blah Blah.’ You think it’s just kind of an immaturity, but it never stops. I think you just ignore it when you become an adult or something like that, but as a comedian, you notice it more often. I think a lot of it comes out of frustration.

Do you think the audience has to like a comedian to find them funny?
Oh absolutely. If a crowd hates you, you’re done.

But you have a lot of material where you seem to risk that. You talk about thinking, saying or doing horrible things. And you seem to get away with it.
I don’t feel like I’m getting away with anything because I don’t mean anything maliciously. And I call myself out on not being the most well-read person a bunch of times. One of the worst onstage personas is the all-knowing being. I could name, maybe five senators in this country, never mind the ones in my own state, you know what I mean? I just try to say what I think is funny, and what I think is right, knowing full well that I have access to about 2 percent of the information I need to make a truly informed decision.

There’s been some buzz about you having a show where you talk about the issues, but with the twist that all of your opinions are really uninformed. So, you don’t see yourself going the Dennis Miller route, with your comedy evolving into a straight-faced political talk format?
No, no, no. I could never hang with Dennis Miller or Bill Maher. They’re just really smart, really informed people, and I’m not. I’m informed in like, just weird random shit. Certain parts of history, I can kind of hang in the conversation. But like, on Bill Maher, that guy is just so smart and so with it. I couldn’t do that. I mean, I could go on the show and talk about some of what I think.

But you’re more about being funny then making a point.
This is what it is: I definitely want to get my point across but I have more of a regular guy approach; I can’t explain it. I kind of go more with my gut. You know, when it comes to that stuff, 80 percent of it is I don’t like reading, and I’m lazy when it comes to that shit. And like, Dennis Miller— he does more talk stuff on his TV shows now. But you gotta give it up: he was a beast back in the day.

You talk in your material and on your web site about having moved to LA from New York. Where do you weigh in on the East Coast vs. West Coast question?
Yeah I moved out here. The opportunities out here are ridiculous as compared to New York, I can tell you that. But you have to be at a certain level where you can get to those opportunities. ‘Cause I lived out here 10 years ago and I was fuckin’ miserable. I wanted to develop more as a comedian and New York is the place to do that. And me going to New York and developing as a comedian is what allowed me to come out here. Of course as soon as I moved out here, there was a writers strike.

So New York is the place to develop artistically, and L.A. is the place to advance your career once you get some cred.?
For me that’s how it was. There’s other people who might have just the opposite experience. But yeah, just so much of the business is based out here; I can go for meetings and do auditions on short notice without having to get on a plane. The only thing that has sucked has been when it comes to doing shows because most of the comedy clubs are East of the Mississippi.

In the special, you mention going to therapy, but you can’t take advantage of it because you keep having the urge to make jokes about the shrink’s advice and your own problems. Do you ever feel like being a comedian, and always having to find the humor in everything interferes with your ability to be a normal person?
No. Humor is a defense mechanism. That’s what people don’t understand, like when people get offended, when a tragedy happens, and comedians make jokes about it, it’s a form of coping with it. I’ll start to get a bad feeling, and to deal with that tension I’ll make a joke about it.

Like songwriters who only write when they’re depressed.
Yeah, but I don’t create from there. That’s a formula, like, ‘If I’m happy I won’t be able to feed myself.’ I don’t want to have to deal with that. But yeah, with therapy I was just kinda frustrated with it. You know, it can be a frustrating thing, trying to figure out why you’re so fucked up.

Do you consider yourself a well-adjusted guy, or do you have demons?
Well, both. I’m a pretty well adjusted guy, but like I said in the special, I’m a functioning psycho. I mean I don’t rob liquor stores or anything like that. But you know. Everyone’s a little fucked up I guess.

There’s a great bit in the new special where you make fun of a movie about racism in swimming. Do you ever seek out stupid things just to get material?
No, because I have very little patience. I just saw the trailer for that movie. But it was like, ‘We’re down to swimming?!’ I get it, we’re evil, enough! I was just talking to somebody about that joke. The thing is, everybody in those movies is either 100 percent a good guy or 100 percent a bad guy, and that’s just not how people are in the world.

There are definitely bad people. But you know how those fuckin’ movies are. It stops being about making a good movie and starts being about making something they can sell. Like, the studio guy going, ‘Okay, that’s good, but could you make the white guy even more mad when the black people try to get in the pool?’

You have a good thing going in your shows where you can go from talking about really dark, deeply personal things, to just making fun of the superficial.
I’ve always liked the comics who could talk about whatever they wanted to. And you basically establish the ability to do that by doing that. Some people seem to approach it as more of a business, like, ‘I do jokes about bathrobes.’ And then he comes to town and everybody’s like, ‘Hey! It’s the bathrobe guy!’ I’d kill myself if I were in those shoes. And, you know I’d love to sell the tickets that the bathrobe guy is selling. But I like the idea of talking about whatever I want to talk about.

You were responsible for a famous incident in Philly – at the Opie and Anthony Traveling Virus tour two years ago – where the crowd was heckling you so you turned your whole set into an attack on them and their city (see video below) and by the end of it, the crowd respected you. What’s your advice for dealing with hecklers?
Well, you know, the great thing about the thing in Philly was that it wasn’t at all a planned thing. It just happened. It was just the right crowd meeting the right defensive psycho comedian. But as far as just handing the people in the crowd, I’ve always been against using the kind of standard stock lines, like ‘Hey, I don’t go where you work and knock the dicks out of your mouth!’ I learned a lot from just watching the other guys who were great at dealing with the crowd.

I remember watching Greg Fitzsimmons; he was already in New York when I started, but he would come to Boston and I would open for him. He was just great with the crowd. And he’d give me advice on dealing with the crowd. He’d say just ask them questions and eventually they’ll say something stupid. But just being really in the moment helps. Instead of trying to cover, say how you feel when they start interrupting you. It comes from being comfortable onstage, like when you get as comfortable onstage as you are off.

You know, when you’re sitting in traffic and someone yells at you, you don’t have stock lines. You just go off on them. And a lot of times if someone’s walking down the street watching you yell at someone they’ll start laughing. And a lot of times what you’re saying isn’t even funny, it’s just funny that you’re doing it. That’s just the zone you try to get in. Like, I wasn’t trying to be funny when I was saying that shit, I meant everything I said. I wasn’t having fun. I was pissed; I had a headache at the end of it. I got off stage and was nervous that Opie and Anthony would be mad that I wasn’t doing my job.

I would just say when you’re getting heckled, just really go with what you’re thinking, because even if it isn’t funny, it’s going to be something hateful. If you just really tapped into how sad that person was making you, you could turn it into something. There’s no formula for it. I would just go with what the hell you’re thinking.

Is the Bill Burr we see onstage really you or a character?
It’s just an amped-up version of me. It’s me in a bar with a good friend. That’s who I am onstage. You know, you don’t walk around your apartment like that. You don’t walk into church and say, ‘Ya know what fuckin’ pisses me off?’ I chill out when I’m not onstage.

But you know, if someone does piss me off, I do become that guy that’s onstage. If someone’s being a dick to me in a customer service kind of way, that adrenaline does get going like it does onstage. But you know, I don’t walk around my apartment with a mic stand.

Bill’s new special, Why Do I Do This? premieres Aug. 31 at 11 pm EST on Comedy Central. The album version is out now and the DVD version of the special is out Sept. 16. For more info, check out BillBurr.com.

Bo Burnham: Barely legal comedy

by Daniel Perlman

A year ago, not-yet-legal Bo Burnham was just a scrawny kid from the suburbs who had a knack for writing funny songs. But now, millions of YouTube views and a record deal with Comedy Central have made the kid a star.

If you spend a lot of time on YouTube, chances are you’ve heard of Bo Burnham. Since his first video postings –wherein Bo is seen performing funny songs in his bedroom (see clip below) — in December of 2006, the self-described “YouTube addict” has, himself, become an Internet sensation.

After garnering millions of views online (his songs “3.14 Apple Pie” and “My Whole Family” have nearly two million views each) he signed a deal with Comedy Central Records and recorded a six-song E.P, Bo Fo Sho which was released last week on iTunes and as of this writing is ranked the number two comedy album, just behind Kathy Griffin and still beating out four Dane Cook releases.

It’s a busy time for Bo, who turns 18 in August. The Hamilton, MA native just graduated from St. John’s Prep, an all-boys Catholic school in nearby Danvers. He’s prepping to perform at next month’s Just for Laughs comedy festival and he’s set to start studying theater at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

But the young comedian recently took some time to chat up Punchline Magazine.

Was there a change in your daily life after you started getting millions of views?
Yeah, I guess it has mostly just been numbers on a screen. Like I still go to school and my friends treat me the same way. My life really hasn’t changed. I mean, I guess I’ve seen different numbers, different friend requests on Facebook and MySpace and stuff like that, but I’m really living the same life. That might change if the record does really well. And I’ve started to do some live performances. I’ve performed in London.

Are you getting recognized a lot now?
No, no I mean, I get an occasional look, but nothing anywhere near bodyguard status.

Have you had to directly deal with anyone who said they were offended by your songs?
I used to perform at a local place, and would get kicked out. Every week, the high schools would get together and the bands would play. And the woman once told me, “You can go up and make fun of gay people, that’s cool, but don’t joke about abortion, which was a little terrifying. And I don’t really make fun of gay people, but apparently homophobia’s cool in this town, just don’t bash the feti.

Which were the first two videos you posted?
“My Whole Family Thinks I’m Gay” and “My Little Secret.”

Did you obsessively read your video comments at first? Do you still?
Oh yeah, I spend a couple hours a day reading comments and responding and stuff. It’s a good ego boost for a bad day.

Are there any memorable comments anyone’s left about your songs?
The best comment I ever got was from a person, where all they wrote was ‘Go go gadget faggot.’ That was the best one. And early on, after I’d posted my first video [“My Whole Family Thinks I'm Gay], I was at the mall. And nobody really knew me, but one kid had apparently seen it, and across the movie theater shouted, ‘Hey, that’s the gay kid!’

Since your success, have you had the chance to meet anyone you’ve admired?
I got to talk to Tim Minchin. I saw Chris Porter, who’s a great comic. I got to hang out with Joel McHale. I really like him a lot.

Was there a specific inspiration that compelled you to start writing comedy songs?
It kind of happened as I was teaching myself guitar and piano. A big influence of mine is Stephen Lynch. People tend to think I’m more influenced by him than I actually am. Tim Minchin, an Australian comedian, is an influence as is Bill Bailey, who’s a British musical comedian. I don’t know, I guess I started writing jokes and I realized the jokes worked better as a song. Like, I naturally wrote with a rhythm.

How complicated is your song-writing process?
It takes me a little while to find a subject that I think there could be a lot of jokes in. But once I get a good subject, usually the lyrics flow pretty well. I tend to write pretty systematically. I take a word or a common phrase that’s sort of funny and I’ll break down the roots and see what word fits with it.

Like my songs lately have used much more wordplay and puns and stuff like that. And as far as that goes, I’m naturally much better at math. So I think I actually write – even though it’s music and it’s considered more of the humanities — more mathematically. I recently posted a song, called “New Math” so I think that demonstrates it.

How would you describe the style of your videos?
Well, before I described it as pubescent musical comedy. Or maybe a sacrilegious, vaguely homoerotic kids show. I’m not gay, just to let you know. If I keep it ambiguous I feel like the jokes thrive, like a Petri dish of androgyny. Is androgyny a noun?

Are there any other performers in your family?
Not really, there’s a few athletes though. I have an older brother and an older sister both in college.

You don’t play any sports?
No. I play golf some. I used to play basketball, baseball, football, but then I started doing theater in high school.

What kinds of plays would you do?
A lot of classical stuff. The Odyssey, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Were you generally the lead?
Yeah, I got good roles.

So how then did you develop your interest in comedy?
I always wanted to be a stand-up comedian. I didn’t think it would happen as soon as it did. I’d listen to George Carlin, Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, Andy Kaufman. I like Chris Rock, also.

Then it was summer of 2006 before my junior year of high school that I started writing these songs on the piano, and played them for my friends. And I wanted to show my brother, who goes to Cornell. My friend suggested posting it on YouTube so my brother could watch it. So I posted two songs and it sort of leaked out from there. A month later it was featured on Break.com and it got like a million views in one day, so I just kept making them. And here we are.

Was that one of your first live performances?
Well, I’ve performed a couple times at Boston’s Comedy Connection. I performed once at World Stands Up in London. That was for around 600 people, with a lot of other comics, like Ty Barnett and Jay Oakerson. I got to open for Joel McHale in Philadelphia. I haven’t done a lot of live performances, but they’ve been fun.

Do you ever do straight stand-up, or has it been only musical comedy?
I’ll do the songs, and I might do a transition in between. But my act right now, is pretty much musical.

Do you watch comedy on television much?
I watch Comedy Central a lot. All the Comedy Central Presents, Live at Gotham, Last Comic Standing. I watch all the HBO specials. Louis CK’s Shameless is one of my favorite specials.

How has your family been about all your success?
Vaguely hesitant at first, but they quickly supported it. And not just because of fame, or anything like that, but just because they’ve all got a good sense of humor.

Despite your deal with Comedy Central, will you keep posting stuff on YouTube?
Well, I took about a nine-month break before the last one. I’m sure I’ll never completely give that up.

I would hope that I could — maybe not put away the guitar, but I would like that if I ever have a huge comedy special — like to do a bit of stand-up and a bit of music. I’d like my stand-up show to be very diverse. I’d never say I want to stop playing guitar or stop the musical comedy, but I want to push myself to see what I can do.

Do you have anything in the works with Comedy Central for something like that?
We’re trying to pitch around a show — maybe a scripted half-hour, like sort of a Flight of the Conchords thing. But I’m trying to book some college dates also. Hopefully if this E.P. takes off, it’ll open up some doors.

For more info, check out boburnham.com.