David Cross was one of the first wave of performers to work at the Un-Cabaret, also one of the most honest and darkest. The stories about his father that he refers to below are one reason why we started doing theme shows.
In our first year, we happened to book a show that happened to fall on Father's Day, and happened to feature David, Bob Odenkirk and Dana Gould all of whom had... let's call them 'strained' relationships with their dads.
What followed was so disturbingly scathingly funny that it scarred several audience members for life - one had unwittingly brought his father for a night of fun comedy - and made us realize that we had to harness that energy consciously in theme nights like 'Daddy Dearest', 'It's a Mutha', 'Bleeding Hearts' (Valentine's Day), etc.
David, who with Bob Odenkirk, wrote and starred in Mr. Show, has become emblemmatic of a transgressive no-holds-barred style of alternative comedy. He was recently interviewed by Todd Jackson of the excellent comedy blog Dead Frog and was originally posted here. It went a little something like this...
A favorite of comedy geeks, David Cross recently wrote the book I Drink for a Reason, a collection of funny essays. He has also gone on tour to support the book, giving fans outside of the coasts a chance to see him perform stand-up live for the first time in five years. (You can check out David Cross’s upcoming tour dates here.) I talked with David about the differences between writing a book and stand-up, why he turned off his Google alert and how his family life is off-limits on stage, at least for now.
What were the challenges you found in writing a funny book as opposed to writing a bit of stand-up or a comedy sketch?
Well, I guess the ideas don’t flow as naturally or prolifically when I’m sitting down to write because you’re writing in a vacuum. When I’m writing stand-up there’s such a give and take in the energy. Plus I’m talking out loud. I never talk out loud when I write.
It’s all my interior voice. Ideas, whether they’re good or bad, come easier to me when I’m talking on stage. That’s sort of the way I write on stage. I have the idea and I just sort of riff the idea until I’ve done the set a bunch of times. And I pick and choose what I say and then that becomes a bit.
I’ve never met somebody who sat down and just wrote jokes. So that genre doesn’t come easily to me. But it was nice to be able to have the idea written down on a piece of paper and be able to edit it there once it was done.
Like if you set up a bit of stand-up wrong, then you’re in that place and can’t go back and fix it.
Yeah, but then I can comment on that. “Oh I fucked that up” or whatever. It’s just so different because you’re communicating in a completely different way.
I just find it to be very hard. I’m amazed when I look at old National Lampoons with Michael O’Donoghue and Doug Kenney and how they’re able to make me laugh out loud. It’s very difficult. You rely on the readers’ sense of timing. You have to figure out how to get that comic pacing in their head.
Well, I probably do have the benefit, if people are familiar with my work, of assuming that the voice that you have when you’re reading it is my own. You can sort of hear my voice in it. I’d be interested to talk to somebody who liked reading humorous books, who’s not familiar with my work at all, to see what they thought of it. Because they wouldn’t have the benefit of knowing what cadence I use. And that’s another huge difference. You don’t have the benefit of pausing and gesticulation and intonations and cadence. There’s no performance to it.
...and later...
You were very prolific earlier in the decade and I was curious about why there wasn’t a third album or another special or anything like that?
In the space of three years I basically burned through 200 minutes of comedy and I just got burned out by that. And those tours are fucking grueling. At least the way I did them last time. This time I’m doing theaters. I’ll have a tour bus or fly if it’s too long to drive. It’s not going to be me with a band in a van setting up and dealing with all that shit.
But I was also doing other things. After those CDs, I started doing Arrested Development and I did a few more movies than I normally do.
And also, I wasn’t very good. After that second CD came out, I did three or four sets… I just didn’t have passion for it. And if you don’t have passion for it you shouldn’t be on stage. And I just had to realize the hard way that I needed to take some time off. And approach it not as a job or an obligation but as something I’m passionate about so if it’s not coming to me, don’t force it. Because I was not funny for a year and a half after that. I was trying but eventually just stopped. When those things write themselves, you find yourself back on stage, enjoying it more and getting more material.
...later still...
I read the AV Club review of your book. And it was interesting in that they kind of wished you’d written a different one. They wanted you to do more of a memoir. I reminded me of when I interviewed Brian Posehn about breaking his back. I asked him why he never used that for stand-up and he told me that he never found it particularly funny. And I was wondering if that was what you thought about the stuff with your dad. You don’t find it particularly funny?
I don’t think a memoir has to be funny. But I just feel that it’s self-indulgent at this point. I’m too young. And it just doesn’t feel right. The time isn’t right. I have no problem with talking about this stuff or writing about it. But in a long, linear 250-page memoir or whatever it would be, it just feels a little premature.
And also, it wouldn’t just be about my dad. I haven’t talked to him since I was 19. That part of the memoir would be short-lived. But there are other people who I am sensitive to writing about right now.
It’s funny. Because your comedy is personal in that it’s yours, but it’s not necessarily about you as a person. It’s a lot like [George] Carlin. He didn’t talk about himself on stage either.
No, he didn’t. Except for Catholic school.
That’s probably it. It was never, “My wife said…” or “I was talking to my kid…” So the family stuff has never been personal grist for your stand-up.
I have to correct you in one sense. Although I haven’t talked about it in stand-up sets, I have talked about it extensively on stage in Uncabaret and those type of shows where you’re not supposed to do stand-up and you’re supposed to tell personal stories.
Click here to read the full interview on Dead Frog
