Laugh Lines: Conversations With Comedians (50 page)

Corey: The show I saw, the crowd was very enthusiastic. Do you try to avoid hanging out with them after, when they try to buy you drinks or get you to smoke a joint with them?

Mitch: I do like it as long as the people are cool. I just don’t want to be put on the spot to have to be the funny guy. If I go out with people, I just want everyone to be laughing, having a good time, just like any other hang. For the most part, you’ll find they are hanging on your every word trying to fish some more jokes out of you. Some comics are good just going into a bar with some fans and making them laugh all night. I get quieter off stage, I think. As long as they’re laid back and shit. You get a lot of offers to do shit, and sometimes it’s impossible to do everything. For a couple years, I pretty much went back to my hotel room every night. Lately, I’ve been going out; it’s fun. It’s good to meet the people that come up to see you. Sometimes talking about this makes it sound like ego. They just seem like they’re grateful to talk to you and stuff. That’s cool.

Getting stoned is another story. If I got stoned with everyone who wanted to get high with me, I would die from marijuana poisoning.

Corey: You’re definitely popular with the college crowd. And since a lot of your material is shorter, I’ve seen your lines end up as e-mail tags. Do you worry about not getting credit for your jokes?

Mitch: That’s all right with me. I don’t go on the Internet much, but if I do and I look up my name—which I guess I do occasionally—I’ll see my tag lines on stuff. That’s cool to me. It’s just cool to see some things get out there. You always hope that 100 years from now, when you’re dead, that there’s a quote, and your name is below it in some book. When people say a line from me, usually they credit it. Sometimes when people talk about me and they say, ‘Who is he?,’ they tell a joke and they say, ‘That’s not funny.’ I’ve heard that a million times, too.

Corey: Kind of a slippery slope. Your official Web site is Mitch Hedberg dot net. Why not dot com?

Mitch: I had dot com for a while. I made the bad choice of having a fan up in Canada run it, and he accidentally forgot to renew it and I guess the traffic to the site was enough that someone stole the name. I don’t know how that works. They just put up some soft porn stuff. I tried to get it back, and he wanted $2,500, and I balked at that. Six months later after my profile had increased, he wanted like $15,000 for it. I guess if I go to court, they say I can get it back. I guess dot net is working now; when you type in my name, I guess dot net comes up. I do miss the dot com, boy. At least it ain’t dot org, or dot ‘ed-you.’

Corey: You mention on there something that happened at a show in Phoenix. Can you talk about that at all?

Mitch: I had a tour; this was like the second week. When this tour got started, I got so excited about it, I really did. Sometimes when I get excited, I like to party, and I drink a lot. We were at the show in Phoenix, and I was supposed to go on first this night. About 15 minutes before show time, I found out I was going on second. I got to the theatre, and I had like an hour and a half to hang out. I wanted to party. I was hanging out, drinking vodka—a lot of vodka.

Then I went onstage, and I was really hammered already. I was doing OK for a half-hour; the last 20 minutes I blacked out, and it went ugly, and I guess a lot of people got mad. Someone threw a pill onstage, and I swallowed it. That pissed a lot of people off. I think it was just a Vicodin or something. Blacked out. Only in the sense that I don’t remember much of the very end. I was still standing and telling jokes, and I do remember people laughing. I guess there’s a certain contingent there that didn’t like it. I try to keep stuff like that down to a minimum. That’s what I said on the Web site once. I hope you don’t hold that against me because that’s not how I’m going to be, but every once in a while, I’m gonna slip up, just like anyone.

Corey: I read you’re getting into some voiceover work. You did ‘Home Movies,’ and you’re doing some Jimmy John sandwich shop commercials.

Mitch: Yeah, that’s always weird. It’s not like doing a voiceover for animation, where it’s pure funny. It’s also selling a product. That always feels weird for a little bit. The jokes are in there. I did a bunch of spots that I didn’t write. Now Jimmy John’s wants me to write the spots. That feels more natural. I never enjoy telling other people’s jokes too much. Most of the animation stuff I’ve done, it’s been improv stuff—you get to come up with your own shit. ‘Home Movies,’ a lot of that is improv. ‘Dr. Katz’ is improv. If I do voiceover work, and it’s for commercials, hopefully I can put some of my say in there. Once you start talking about how fresh the cheese is and how crisp the lettuce is, you start to feel like an idiot a little bit.

Corey: Remembering back to when you were a kid, did you always tell jokes this way, like when you were trick or treating?

Mitch: I was really bad at telling jokes. I was horrible. I tried to be funny. I don’t know what I was doing. My dad was good at telling jokes. When I was telling them, I know halfway through, people were turning their heads and shit. I tried not to do that.

Corey: I was wondering if the movie you made, ‘Los Enchiladas!’, really existed, because I couldn’t find it on eBay, and you can find everything on eBay.

Mitch: I know. You can’t get ‘Los Enchiladas!’ I tell you, man, this is the hardest thing for me. This movie does exist, but they cannot find it. My management company had it and somehow or another, they cannot find it. And this is scaring the shit out of me, because it’s a great movie and I really like it and want to get it on DVD. They told me it’s out there. I’m gonna call them today. I’m glad you brought it up. I’ve been asking them for six months. If they lost it, man, I don’t know how much I can sue them for, because that’s a lot of pain and suffering—a lot of lost revenue. That’s crazy, man. It is out there, and I think it will come to the surface eventually. It’s just being held underwater by my management company.

Corey: Was that a good experience, making a movie? Would you do that again?

Mitch: Oh, yeah. I just read today that in the newspaper, a little excerpt on Sundance, that’s the first thing you want to do. I gotta write a script. I want to do another one. You got to have a hell of a script. I will definitely make another one, if not a few. That movie by Zach Braff, ‘Garden State,’ that’s another one that inspired me to write. Hopefully an idea like that comes along that’s good and solid.

Their comedy styles are slightly different. Dave Attell might be describing waking up next to a transvestite he mistakenly thought was a real girl after a night of Jager-bombs, while Lewis Black will make his point with fingers jabbing the air and an increasingly louder voice—talking about how the country is ridiculously going to hell.

Attell and Black toured together, and I was able to catch up with both prior to their show at The Pageant, the greatest live venue in St. Louis.

Corey: Is Comedy Central taking care of you guys this trip, or are you sharing a room with Dave?

Lewis Black: No, I wouldn’t do that. Don’t ask me to share a room with that goon.

Corey: Is there anything special for the second show?

Lewis: The audience gets drunker, more crazy to deal with.

Corey: Do you have problems with drunken hecklers?

Lewis: Yeah, still. On this tour, it’s sometimes 2,500 to 3,000 people, so some of these people have never been in a theatre. It’s one thing in a club, but when you’re paying this kind of money to have somebody just bellowing at will for no apparent reason, it’s just beyond belief.

Dave’s really good with them. He’s like the drunk doctor. Depending on what level they’re at, I just snap and tell them, ‘If you don’t shut up, the audience around you will stand as one and just stomp you.’

Corey: I heard a report that with the holiday shopping season the economy is better, and they’re expecting people to spend 10 percent more this year.

Lewis: We’ll see those numbers. They expect who to spend 10 percent more, the people who have money—which is how many people? There’s a huge amount of poor people in this country. They’re not going to be spending 10 percent more; they’ll be stealing 10 percent more.

Corey: What do you think about people using ‘The Daily Show’ as their only source of news?

Lewis: I don’t care, as long as they’re not buying guns. It’s amazing to me that people think college students are supposed to watch news. When was that a thing? What college student watched news? People say, ‘I can’t believe these kids.’ ‘Fuck you. I was in college with you, asshole. You weren’t sitting home at 6 p.m., you dick.’

They’re unbelievable. The good thing is it introduces people to a way of looking at news. The only difference between our show and another show is we did the work you do normally. You sit there and go, ‘This is insane!’ and we go, ‘This is insane.’ And we kind of show why. That, to me, is really the only difference.

Corey: What were some of your former professions before stand-up?

Lewis: I was a Cardinal. I was in theatre. I wanted to be a playwright. And I was until about 15 years ago.

Corey: Have you considered going back into that?

Lewis: I’m weeping because the money was so good. I can’t wait to get back to that. I’d be better off being a migrant worker. Now they’re interested in my plays. I’ve got a play being produced in Los Angeles in February.

Corey: What is your definition of freedom?

Lewis: No assholes.

Corey: So, we’re not there yet.

Lewis: We’re not even close. Freedom is also not being afraid that somehow another opinion will change your fucking life. Jesus. It’s interesting, as you grow older, it doesn’t change at all. These are the same arguments over and over again. You’d think at some point, they’d just say, ‘Shut up. We don’t have to discuss it.’ I can’t wait to discuss abortion when I’m 100. They’ll be so many new thoughts on the subject.

Corey: When does the tour wrap?

Lewis: When one of us goes into detox. It’s gonna be Attell.

Corey: Do you have any favorite jokes right now?

Lewis: My favorite joke as of late, because I can remember it, is, ‘If a man speaks and a woman doesn’t hear him, is he still wrong?’ I love that one.

Corey: Is there anything I didn’t bring up that’s pissing you off this week?

Lewis: (pause) The holidays. What is it, Dec. 2? How come it feels like it’s been Christmas for the past two years? It’s exhausting.

Dave Attell isn’t the kind of comic you would call adorable, but he does seem like someone you’d enjoy sharing a shot—or six—of whiskey with. His skanky sex chatter and tales of drunken debauchery have riled us and had us rolling for years. His TV show, “Insomniac,” showed us what nightlife was like for a comedian after last call. Dave was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when we spoke—even though the sun was out.

Corey: Are you through filming this season, or is there more to do?

Dave Attell: We’ve got three more to do.

Corey: What do you have left?

Dave: Charleston, West Virginia; Montreal and then New York again.