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My LAist/Bostonist Interview with Comic Tommy Tiernan

Published by tomdog March 22nd, 2008 in General and Interview. 1 Comment

This interview ran HERE and HERE first, get to the soundfile HERE.
tommytierson.jpg
Tommy Tiernan has won national comedy awards and contests in the UK and Ireland and he’s establishing a beachhead here in the States. If you didn’t get to see him during his three week run in 2006 at UCLA’s MacGowan Little Theater, we’re going to get another chance this year. He was on Letterman (for the second time) just last week and was given a nearly 10 minute slot which is huge - Bill Cosby got maybe about that amount of time on the show a couple weeks before. He has a new CD and DVD out this week and tomorrow (Friday) night, Comedy Central is premiering a special of his work at 11:00pm. LAist had a chance to talk to Tiernan just before he heads back to Ireland but he will be back in the States this Fall and Winter. In the meantime this philosopher-comedian has left us plenty of material to get us amped for his return.

LAist: This week the CD and DVD of Something Mental were released. On Friday, is the Comedy Central special the TV broadcast version of Something Mental?

Tommy Tiernan: Yes it is, Comedy Central is going to have to ‘bleep’ it I’m sure so I think I’m going to end up sounding like a life-support machine. It does get fairly fruity in places.

LAist: Regarding your appearance on Letterman last week, I think that gone are the days of icons like Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson who used to bring a comic out and really help establish and set a career, while Jay Leno maybe doesn’t fit in that space, perhaps Letterman does?

Tommy Tiernan: That’s very hard to tell, not living here. The best you can hope to do is establish a relationship with the program. You can always hope “what if?” But that’s an uninteresting way to live your life. I wouldn’t try planning more than 4 or 5 minutes ahead. I hope that people respond to the material, not just people in the audience at the show that night but people that could lead to other shows on TV. But if it doesn’t happen, life is enough of an experience to make up for that [not happening], not to shrink your life down to that happening. I’m not afraid of success or anything but I know that I can’t control it.

LAist: One of your influences is Lenny Bruce, have you had the opportunity to visit some of his haunts on your travels throughout the United States?

Tommy Tiernan: The Hungry I in San Francisco, which is now a strip club. I stood outside that and didn’t go in because at the time I was there I was with a film crew who is doing a documentary about my coming to the United States and they wouldn’t let them in with the cameras. A few years ago I did a show at the Village Theater in New York and found out that was a place he would regularly play. It was all part of the whole reason of coming to work in America was because when I started out listening to stand up, there were people that I found funny and there were people that I found interesting as I was growing up, there were things on TV, like “The Cosby Show” was funny but in terms of somebody who really caught my imagination, Lenny Bruce was the first. I find him endlessly interesting.


LAist: Stylistically, [Lenny Bruce] had a proclivity to tell stories and [bring you into them] and you do this as well, I’m not saying you are exact parallels. But there’s a big difference [in comedy] in doing that vs. being the guy with the one-liners or the funny walk.

Tommy Tiernan: I think in Ireland we have a different style that is a more discursive or rambling style. We’re all influenced by different things but I think to get a true, muscular response from the audience, to get them rocking back and forth in their seats, it has to come from somewhere authentic inside you, you can’t fake it. Even though I’m a huge fan of Lenny Bruce, Eddie Izzard, and Billy Connolly, I also love Dmitri Martin, Dave Attel, I love Patton Oswalt. But when you go onstage you do your own thing - when I go out there I do something that’s physical but there’s a literacy to it. I had heard about a play who’s name I thought was fantastic but it was about John Belushi and I thought if I change the name to Lenny Bruce it would work: “The Ghost of Lenny Bruce Flushed My Toilet”. I would listen to him a lot and I’m interested in him stylistically.

LAist: For someone who says they’re not as fit as they’d like to be, you do seem to have a good anaerobic threshold [as evidenced by the physical nature of your act, lots of high jumps and energy, etc.]

I think in Ireland we have a different style that is a more discursive or rambling style. We’re all influenced by different things but I think to get a true, muscular response from the audience, to get them rocking back and forth in their seats, it has to come from somewhere authentic inside you, you can’t fake it. Even though I’m a huge fan of Lenny Bruce, Eddie Izzard, and Billy Connolly, I also love Dmitri Martin, Dave Attel, I love Patton Oswalt. But when you go onstage you do your own thing - when I go out there I do something that’s physical but there’s a literacy to it. I had heard about a play who’s name I thought was fantastic but it was about John Belushi and I thought if I change the name to Lenny Bruce it would work: “The Ghost of Lenny Bruce Flushed My Toilet”. I would listen to him a lot and I’m interested in him stylistically.tommytierson3.jpg

Tommy Tiernan: You should see me afterward, I’m like a deflated balloon afterward, totally punctured, spent, I’m over, I’m yesterday. It’s not premeditated though, it’s instinctive, I’m not being clever.

LAist: In your personal history, you were raised Catholic and you’ve addressed that edifice before in your work and it was a religion you actively studied, what do you think about it now? This week they added another half dozen deadly sins!

Tommy Tiernan: If I were to be studying religion these days, I would be looking at the individual Christians, the mystics. But I am on a bit of a comedy diet lately. Yesterday I managed to pick up a book by Mark Twain on the Bible, it’s some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever read. The challenge of comedy is to be funny. There are some high profile comedians who are overly serious, they confuse comedy with polemicism, they’re too moralistic and judgemental, they end up being kind of witless. For people like Mark Twain or even Chris Rock, whatever point they are making, they make it hilariously. That’s the challenge for me. Being serious is easy, the challenge, the work is to [actually] be funny.

LAist: From what we see in your performance, based on your style and topics which are widely applicable [and accessible], you are more of a comedian that happens to be Irish vs. being an Irish comedian. For example, the Blue Collar Comedy Tour wouldn’t do so well overseas in any shape or form but what you do does translate.

Tommy Tiernan: I think that if something’s funny it’s funny. It’s easy to be dismissive of a type of comedy based on the crowd shots but I think what’s funny is funny and has to be appreciated for that.

LAist: Can you give us an idea about when you are coming back to the States?

Tommy Tiernen: It looks like I’ll be working in Ireland through July and then I’ll be back here in the Fall and Winter.

LAist: Are you working on the idea [outlined on the DVD] you had of your show being more than just yourself on stage doing standup?

Tommy Tiernen: If I can achieve something like that it would be fantastic. I’ve been talking to some people about it but the odd thing about it is that you have to come to these people with a finished product… by giving them a script about the way the show is going to be happening here night after night. I think about Andy Kaufman in that famous Carnegie Hall performance of his where he brought dancers on and a flying Santa but you need to be able to play theaters in a way where you would be giving people a rich theater experience as well as a comedic one. It would be a beautiful thing to do….[Pause] I have this idea for it, it sounds so stupid, but I have this idea of this giant backside on the stage and I’d come flying out between the cheeks, something as stupid as that, and then start quoting Becket and Oscar Wilde and really confusing people.

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LAist: I had this wild idea that you were talking about a Cirque du Soleil of Comedy but without the homoeroticism.

Tommy Tiernen: That’s it, you’ve nailed it there.

Friday, March 14 11:00pm Tommy Tiernan: Something Mental. World Television Premiere on Comedy Central
www.TommyTiernan.com
Tommy Tiernan’s MySpace
Tommy Tiernan’s Something Mental on CD
Tommy Tiernan’sSomething Mental on DVD
Photos via Tiernan’s website

My LAist Interview with Actor/Comedian/Writer/Director Bob Saget

Published by tomdog March 7th, 2008 in General. 1 Comment

Bob Saget
Bob Saget will perform at 4th & B in San Diego on March 7, The Grove of Anaheim on March 8 and The Joint at The Hard Rock in Vegas on March 21 as part of his national theater tour and we’re lucky to have another chance at him.

Bob Saget is known to most people for all the wrong reasons.The cookie-cutter personas of “Full House”’s Danny Tanner and the “America’s Funniest Home Videos” host that Saget played are network TV ‘product’ in the most capitalist sense of the word but this commodity isn’t Bob Saget and it’s not where he got his start. There’s a lot of buzz about the “raw” Bob Saget who has “surreptitiously surfaced” over the past decade on Howard Stern, in cameos in Half Baked and “Entourage”, featured in The Aristocrats, and in his HBO Special that aired last Fall. What’s behind the buzz is that Saget’s act is so incongruous with the goody-two-shoes characters he so adeptly played so long ago. Some people are shocked (shocked!) at the language in his act and have expressed disappointment or even, the horror, disillusionment - somebody, please, keep these people away from razors or other sharp implements, and BTW, Iraq did not attack the United States on September 11th, 2001.

LAist interviewed Saget via a hilarious cell phone call that took us from his hotel room at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas, down the elevator, through the casino, and into a Cadillac Escalade that was driving him to an engagement. It was, as Saget said, “essentially [an] interview like a commercial for the iPhone and AT&T’s wireless coverage in Las Vegas.”

LAist: Bob Saget, thanks very much for talking to us in advance of your upcoming Anaheim show. I think your HBO Special was really great and don’t understand what people are so uptight about(?)

Bob Saget: Well thanks for that, that’s very flattering. I think a lot of people have a problem with the swearing which I think is off because there are so many other comedians out there who really do swear a lot more than I do. It’s true that I do curse a lot in the special and I don’t curse that much at home although I do really like to say the word “fuck”, it just makes me feel good - “FUCK!” you know, but the fact is that I have three daughters and I don’t just walk around saying “fuck” all day. Now there are people I do know that somehow don’t swear or curse at all and I just don’t know how they can exist like that, it’s inconceivable. I do have to say that there are some people in my family that I have disappointed with the swearing, like an aunt of mine, who just can’t stand that I’m doing that in my act. After the special it was a goal of mine to write cleaner material for this tour but I’m not sure about the success of that effort now that I think about it.

LAist: There’s also the history of your career, “Full House” watchers are people that didn’t know you were a comic with an act comprised of strings of very funny and subconscious tangents usually capped by a few innocently strummed but subversive guitar songs [Note: Amazon reviewers of Saget’s HBO Special DVD seem to think he just picked up the guitar onstage recently, not 30 years ago].

Bob Saget: Yes, there are those people. While it was great to be working on a show with such reach, that was a while ago, and I was a different person. There have been the times when I go outside to take the trash out and somebody will yell out the car window, “Hey, it’s Danny Tanner!” and I’ll say “No, I’m a guy named Bob”. But here we are, years later, and I think I’ve changed a lot, I’ve had experiences and gone through changes, people have died, and those kind of things change you. I think I used to ‘care’ a lot more, and now I don’t hold back as much. I do a lot of self-deprecating. Rodney Dangerfield used to tell me, “Insult yourself before someone else does” so I jump right on that in my act: “How could someone say these things? Who could be so sick?” I feel like I’m really riding the razor’s edge, I could go down easily in one way or another but I get on a roll and the crowd start clapping, yelling, even standing up to keep me going, it’s incredible and I’m really thankful for that.

LAist: Your act really is, and this is even true for what you were doing 25 years ago, a series of peaks, where you go on these runs of stream-of-consciousness connections, with really, some awful ideas [like admonishing audience members to not engage in bestiality], and then apologizing for the idea, letting slip another one, as if you can’t control it, and just build and build until you reach an obvious peak to let the audience recover and then you begin again. You don’t just come out on the stage, with some kind of crutch like a funny voice, or a one-liner repeated endlessly, or some long anecdote, or props - what we get is you revealing what are connections that most people probably have but think are unmentionable.

Bob Saget: [Laughs] You’ve really been paying attention and that is what happens and it’s a thrill to be on what is a roller-coaster with the audience. I just don’t know how it’s going to turn out.

LAist: So you knew Rodney Dangerfield? I know you were on the HBO documentary about Don Rickles, and hey, last week I saw your “Full House” cast-mate John Stamos sidestage when Rickles was on “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson”. Obviously you have a lot of respect for these pioneers of comedy.

Bob Saget: Oh yeah, I was fortunate enough to be a part of a class of comedians that Rodney brought to HBO through a show that was filmed at his club. Sam Kinison, myself, oh, and Rita Rudner who is performing right down the street [in Vegas]. And Don Rickles is still out there, never backing off, he’s playing The Grove next month, you should see him. He’s just been so supportive. Let me tell you this story, this is several years ago, I finished doing a gig and I get into a car with Stamos and we head over to Dean Martin’s widow’s place, to meet up with Rickles and his wife, and who else is there but Bob Newhart and his wife. Rickles and Newhart are best friends and they travel the world together and everything. So we sit there and hang out for the night with Rickles and Newhart, it was just incredible to be there with these guys, geniuses.

LAist: You’re on this comedy tour this year but over the last several years you’ve had a lot of pokers in the fire, with just “Entourage”, The Aristocrats, Farce of the Penguins which a friend of mine mistakenly rented for her kids, and “How I Met Your Mother” as just some of the stuff you have going on.

Bob Saget: “Pokers in the fire” is what I call it too. I’ve known some of the “Entourage” writers for years, even worked with them on a script before, and they had written the neighbor character to be pretty tame to start with but with some adjustments we made it edgier and that’s what people got - it was a lot of fun. The story behind the penguin movie is just unbelievable by itself. I had this idea, kind of as a joke really, to just re-voiceover March of the Penguins and a friend of mine got me a meeting at Warner Brothers where I said, “I want to redo The March of the Penguins with me as the narrator instead of Morgan Freeman and it will be R-rated” and incredibly they called me back for a second meeting!! And at that meeting, of course, they said “This is a joke right?” So I decided to do it myself and just bought every piece of penguin stock footage out there, except for National Geographic which we couldn’t get a hold of. And with “How I Met Your Mother” I’ve known Neil [Patrick Harris] since he was a kid, and so many other people on that show, since I’ve had that long network experience.

LAist: So how do you feel about your upcoming Anaheim show, bringing your Saget-unbound act to the West Coast and beyond in 2008?

Bob Saget: I love doing my shows in these old theaters like The Grove - they’re just beautiful and I think they provide a great experience for the audience. These shows have been really great, and I feel so fortunate to be getting the reception that I have, which is overwhelmingly positive. To tell you the truth, I’ve never enjoyed performing more than I am right now and I thought that just wasn’t possible. I do want to mention that I’ll be back in LA next month, hosting a fundraiser that I’ve helping put together for a cause I actively support which is the Scleroderma Research Foundation. This year we got John Mayer to perform as a musical guest along with many others, so it’s going to be a great show for a great cause [Wednesday, April 16th]. Thanks for doing this interview with me, you guys really know your comedy.

Bob Saget performs at The Grove of Anaheim on Saturday, March 8th. Doors @ 6:30pm, Show @ 7:30pm

My LAist Interview with Comedian John Mulaney

Published by tomdog February 5th, 2008 in General. 0 Comments

Get to the original post AND audio interview HERE

John Mulaney - talent reel

Comedian John Mulaney is taking SoCal by storm, check out his schedule for the first part of this month (he’ll be back in LA at the end of the month also):
Feb 5 2008 8:00P - Comedy Death Ray @ UCB LA Hollywood
Feb 6 2008 8:00P - The Improv Hollywood
Feb 9 2008 8:00P - The Improv Hollywood
Feb 11 2008 9:00P - Garage Comedy
Feb 12 2008 9:00P - The Improv Brea
Feb 12 2008 10:00P - The Improv Irvine

You may have seen John Mulaney on Conan or CollegeHumor.com and now you have several chances to see him in person and you shouldn’t miss out. He’s a reserved and polite fellow one-to-one and his stand-up has a notably direct and non-caricatured delivery. He saves his caricatures for his hilarious “historical” bits (see his video reel above for some prime examples).
LAist had a chance to talk to Mulaney where he was resting up in New York before embarking to California for a month of shows across the state.

John Mulaney: Yes, I think it’s affected everyone hasn’t it? Even as a non-Guild member there’s a lot of areas that I would feel uncomfortable working for - for a struck network or any other struck conglomerate. There’s a lot of avenues that are a little sketchy in the writing realm so it’s been good [to avoid any conflict]. Did I book myself more than before the strike? I don’t know, it’s just seemed to work out this way.

John Mulaney
LAist: How has your style of comedy worked out in Our Nation’s Heartland?

John Mulaney: I’ve been very successful in different regions than I would have expected. I’m kind of a paranoid person so I built it up a bit much. I had a week in Houston and I’d never been there but after a week there I figured out that it was just the same [as being on the coast], it’s not that different. I’ve been at colleges and in other situations where I figured out that I wouldn’t jibe with everyone. I feel like every region has been exposed to the same media so they’re exposed to the same comedy as everyone else. I’m sure there’s some areas where there’s reasons why I really wouldn’t work out but I feel very happy that I’ve been able to do so well in markets other than New York.

LAist: How did you get your start in stand-up?

John Mulaney: I’ve been doing comedy in some form since I was seven. I was in a sketch comedy group when I was seven called ‘The Rugrats’ and this was way before the Nickleodeon show. I don’t remember how my Mom heard about this, but a theater in Chicago, where I grew up, was putting together an improv and sketch review program for kids. Some friend of my mother’s told her that they were starting this up and that “your weird kid might like this”. I think I did it for 2 years, we would do improv games and then work on sketches and then do a performance of the sketches for the parents. The program was run by this woman, Mrs. Doyle, who said that she had been in the movie “Bright Lights Big City” but she hadn’t. She would call Michael J. Fox “Mike Fox”, she told us about the scene was she in but she wasn’t in it. In some ways she was the greatest actress of all because she tricked a bunch of kids into thinking she was in “Bright Lights Big City”. The genius of it was that this wasn’t a movie that a group of seven year olds would have access to because if she said “I had this part in ‘The Never-Ending Story’” we would have said “no you’re not” and caught her.

[John Mulaney’s Los Angeles run starts up TONIGHT at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theater in Hollywood] photo by Anya Garrett

My LAist Interview with Composer/DJ Cheb i Sabbah

Published by tomdog February 5th, 2008 in General. 0 Comments

Get to the original post AND audio of the interview HERE

Cheb i Sabbah - Devotion
Artist: Cheb i Sabbah
Album: Devotion
Label: Six Degrees Records
Release Date: 01/29/08

Devotion CD Release Party @ The Temple Bar - Saturday, February 2nd

The incomparable Cheb i Sabbah has produced Devotion, his seventh release for Six Degrees Records, once again inviting us to enjoy his updated presentation of the timeless music of central Asia. San Francisco-based Cheb i Sabbah traveled to India to record the vocals for several tracks with superstars of the genres he seeks to teach us about. Devotion features three distinct traditions of religious music representing Hinduism, Sikhism, and Sufi Islam.

All the songs are in the ethnic fusion/trance style that has been Cheb i Sabbah’s calling card for the last 10 years or so and these are at least as beautiful as songs from what are considered his “classic” albums, Shri Durga and Krishna Lila. There are tripped-out kirtans and gurbanis, a trance-inducing version of “Kinna Sohna”, a tune written by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and “Qalanderi” (listen above) a qawwali sung by Riffat Sultana who will be performing with him at the Devotion record release party on Friday. One of my favorite tracks is the incredibly dubbed out “Haun Vaari Haun Varaney”, a 10+ minute devotional recitation whose text that Cheb i Sabbah leaves unadulterated out of respect for its religious origins and meanings.

What amazes one about Cheb i Sabbah is his longevity in music: as a DJ, manager, impresario, and producer, he’s been providing musical connections for over 40 years. You can find him on YouTube, throwing down tunes in a record store, and transforming it into another place on another continent; he just returned from doing several gigs at the Sundance Film Festival, and he’ll be touring all over the world performing sets up to six and more hours long with his dancers, drummers, and fellow performers - he knows how to create inspirational environments.

Where does he get this energy? It was incredible to talk to someone who is so grounded and centered, who could patiently explain his sources for inspiration to an ignorant person like myself. Cheb i Sabbah regards himself as a conduit for music - not someone who is a universal “creator” of what we end up hearing. He is a talented custodian that takes the sounds and themes and nudges them in our direction. The end result is that we don’t end up with ego-driven music stamped with the voice and personality of one mere human. Cheb i Sabbah’s goal is to behave according to the Vedic spirituality that he practices - it’s no wonder that some consider his shows to be a kind of religious experience. Cheb I Sabbah
LAist: Regarding your presence and longevity in music, what is your inspiration and philosophy to stay so engaged? Is it religious-based, is it something you actively practice?

Cheb i Sabbah: It’s something more than philosophy - it is something that we call the Vedic way of life which comes from the Vedas which is pre-Hindu and pre-everything. It seems that Vedic culture has been proven so far, even archaeologically, that it has influenced every great civilization from the Middle East and Near East [and beyond]. When you talk about European languages, there must be a good reason why they are called Indo-European languages - it seems that these languages come from Sanskrit. Hinduism is a misnomer.. there really isn’t a Hinduism in India, there is a Vedic culture and everything springs from there, it is the inspiration. It includes everything from astronomy to astrology to martial arts to the five elements and this went to China and Japan and Europe and continued to go on from there. So the inspiration is from Vedic culture.

LAist: How do you maintain the energy and continue to be so prolific? 7 releases in 8 years in this current phase of your career is impressive.

Cheb i Sabbah: As I’ve said more than once, (late great jazz trumpeter) Don Cherry was one of my mentors, having met him when I was in The Living Theater, and then ending up actually performing with him, and he was the first one to really conceive that a DJ could be a part of a band so I used to perform with him live as a DJ and I ended up also being his manager. He always said that music is a gift given to you and that’s why you have to share it. But it’s only a gift given to you - you’re not doing much, you’re doing something that already exists, but you are just putting you’re own interpretation on it, you are modifying it with your own two cents, you are the conduit for this blessing that has been given to you.

LAist: What will the record release party be like? Will it be like your 1002 Nights events that you create regularly?

Cheb i Sabbah: Yes, I usually have a DJ opener and live performers. This weekend I will have Riffat Sultana, daughter of the great classical Pakistani singer, Ustad Salamat Ali Khan, one of the two famous Ali Brothers. So basically she will open the show with an hour and a half of qawwali in a trio, with tablas, and acoustic guitar. After that I come on with tablas, dhols, dancers, and Riffat does three or four songs with me because she’s featured on the album [and then we’ll see what happens.]

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It was a privilege to speak with Cheb i Sabbah. I hope you have a chance to listen to his interview in full and have a chance to get your little paws on Devotion. After going to many Cheb i Sabbah shows over last several years, I highly recommend going to the record release party for Devotion at The Temple Bar this Saturday - it will be an inexpensive journey to another side of the planet, if not to another planet entirely. Photo of Cheb i Sabbah’s from his MySpace page

My LAist Interview with Comedian Greg Proops

Published by tomdog February 5th, 2008 in General. 0 Comments

For the original post AND the audio of the interview go HERE

Greg ProopsThe always dapper Greg Proops is at the Hollywood Improv 8:00pm on Friday; Saturday at 8:00 & 10:00pm. Whose Line Is It Anyway? was the mass media vehicle to inform all of us that Greg Proops is a gentleman and a scholar but that show and his innumerable appearances on shows like Ugly Betty, Last Comic Standing, Just Shoot Me, and all the late night talk shows require that Proops corral his wit and personality to something that is less than threatening and more acceptable to a lower denominator of the public. These encumbrances are relieved at his live shows so get ready for the real deal. Proops jokingly enjoys not being “burdened by [his fellow WLIIA] castmembers, ‘those people’ who keep standing in my light.”

His stand-up act, honed in his native city of San Francisco “over the last 740 years” is both peppered with gems and is highly topical. Unabashedly liberal, neither the leaders of the established administration nor its many hopeful replacements will be safe from him. Not only had you better be able to find more than a few countries on a map, you’d better be up on your history - per our conversation, Proops predicted that our current Bush is working on creating “his own version of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution” with the current US/Iran boat shenanigans. What really opened up our discussion was mentioning MLB’s Mitchell Report. Proops is a huge fan of baseball with a million anecdotes and facts easily at hand. He’s an ardent defender of all players, either named in the list or the ones yet to be impugned. Proops proposes that “the players issue a report on the owners…. who are consistently wrong about everything in baseball…and who have colluded in attempts to essentially ruin the game for the last 70+ years”. As Proops tours the country he is frequently invited to go on the local sports radio shows because his combination of knowledge along with informed and hilarious opinions are so compelling.

You can get a taste of Proops live on his most recent CDs, Joke Book and Houston, We Have A Problem as well as his tour schedule and his many other local appearances (he _is_ an LA resident after all) at his website GregProops.com or hook up with him via his MySpace. If there is someone who can get us through these January doldrums it’s Greg Proops at the Hollywood Improv this weekend.

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