Satiristas

  PAUL PROVENZA: How did it affect you professionally?

  LEE CAMP: There are people now interested in me because I tore them apart live on TV, but—and I was prepared for it—it also hurt my career in many ways. I do a ton of colleges, and now some of them Google me and think I’m too far Left.

  PAUL PROVENZA: There was a time when you’d have been inundated with offers to play to college crowds because you fought “the man.”

  LEE CAMP: Well, they’ve got their Student Activities Board, which I was on at my school, and it’s five or ten kids who know their advisor’s looking over their shoulder and who want to make everyone happy. So rather than get angry letters, they just won’t book a comedian who might offend some people.

  I definitely try and push their limits, though. Perhaps I don’t have the balls to go so far out on a limb that people walk out by the tens and fifteens—I always bring it back to something most or all of us can laugh at—but I definitely have moments where I insult things they probably don’t realize they’re loving. Like I’ll tear apart celebrity culture—and they won’t admit it, but they’re the ones who love that shit and follow everything Kim Kardashian does. So for at least that moment they’re thinking, “Why do I give a shit about Kim Kardashian?” That’s the nice thing about playing colleges—I feel like I open some kids’ minds up. I like mentioning things I didn’t know anything about in college. Like I’m doing something about how kids sit through whitewashed American history in third grade and if they can’t sit through it well enough, we pump ’em full of Ritalin. We’re fed lies, and then we take tests on the lies: “Was Christopher Columbus a great man?”

  And if you say, “Well…He did come and kill millions,” they put you in a special class. I never saw it that way when I was in school.

  I talk a lot about how we’re getting dumber as a country, about standing up for things, and about having opinions. I take on issues like the death penalty that I think just don’t get debated enough anywhere. I go after advertising and marketing, the death of media, how people don’t get news, they get entertainment about what used to be news.

  Maybe the underlying theme of everything I talk about is just “doubt.” You’re fed these things; don’t just take them for face value, doubt them. I don’t know that I ever say that specifically in my show, but that’s the underlying theme: “Doubt everything.” If you find it’s true, then accept it as truth. It probably comes from my anger at not having “doubted” more back in college myself. I’m ashamed to say when I was in college, I never showed up to a protest.

  PAUL PROVENZA: My theory is that most college students have already bought into the system. From the fifties on, kids have become a demographic and have been indoctrinated as good American consumers from a very young age. They don’t want to question or subvert the system because they’re already a part of it. Long before college, they’re already dedicated to succeeding within the system; they’re not interested in challenging it.

  LEE CAMP: Marketing may have succeeded in commodifying “cool,” so big corporations are now what’s cool. You’ll wear a Nike swoosh or Abercrombie & Fitch logo—why? It doesn’t say anything; it’s meaningless. But that age thinks what’s cool is whatever mega-corporation brand name I have on my shirt. So if “cool” is considered “rebellion,” and that’s what’s considered cool…Well, then there is no rebellion.

  PAUL PROVENZA: The wars, the economy, the protests against the IMF and corporations…are they not politicizing college students again?

  LEE CAMP: I don’t really see it all that often in college-age kids. I think that’s mostly post-college people. At twenty-five and twenty-six, you look back, as I did, and think, “What the hell is this about? Is this really what it’s about?”

  PAUL PROVENZA: Do you think you can make a difference?

  LEE CAMP: I’d love to make a difference, but it doesn’t have to all be onstage; I try in other ways as well, but comedy is one of the few places where you can really speak about things and people really come to sit and listen. It’s such a rare opportunity we’re given, so I don’t want to waste it; I want to use it for something.

  Comedy’s great because people can disagree with everything I say but still enjoy themselves. You can’t do that everywhere. No one’s at a Klan rally, going, “I’m just here for the hoods. I only like the hoods.”

  PAUL PROVENZA: You do so many different kinds of pointed, issue-oriented comedy on the Internet. It seems as though TV is almost irrelevant in getting your work out there.

  LEE CAMP: With some wonderful exceptions, like The Daily Show and Colbert, there’s a lot of crap on TV that leads people to believe stand-up comedy is not supposed to ever say anything and should be this one, predictable thing. Certain comedy has always been viewed as dangerous by parts of society—like Carlin or Lenny Bruce—and slowly, eventually, it gets narrowed down. I suppose what’s allowed on television is one way of narrowing it down to a little window of “acceptable.” The Internet allows you to go places you couldn’t before. You can take more risks, and people can get to know you without that filter of somebody deciding what’s allowed and what’s not.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Do some people turn off to you as a performer as a result of your strong points of view?

  LEE CAMP: When I have trouble with audiences, I think it’s because they can’t bring themselves to doubt the system they’ve been sold, even just for an hour to laugh at it. It’s sold so deeply, it hurts them to think, “Maybe we are being manipulated.”

  Sometimes it’s a matter of having come up with a great idea, but I just haven’t made it funny enough yet and there’s still work to do. I’m working out this idea about how we create all these ways for rich people to avoid anything bad that everyone else has to deal with: you get through airport security faster if you fly first class, there’s now even “pay-to-stay” prisons in California, where if you pay $80 a day you can stay in a nicer prison…So I take that idea to the extreme: soon we’ll have rich churches and poor churches. Rich people will pray to the real God, and poor people will pray to Earl, God’s intern, because they don’t deserve the real God.

  It doesn’t work very well yet, and it’s possible I just haven’t made it funny enough yet, but it’s also possible that the idea puts people off. The idea that America’s not one society, it’s one society for the rich and one for the poor, is not what we want to believe of America.

  GREG GIRALDO

  STARTING OUT AT New York’s Comedy Cellar in the early nineties, Greg Giraldo felt, like many of his generation, that the comedy world had become stale and inauthentic. Giraldo has since made his name as a frequent performer on Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, and on Comedy Central’s celebrity roasts, dishing out sharp savagery. Making his aggressive brand of comedy a standout in today’s scene, Giraldo has carved out a style mixing raw, raucous laughs with tough, personal truths while still maintaining an everyman identity. After headlining the “Indecision ’08 Tour” and appearing regularly on Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil, he took some time out to deal with the conflict raging within him.

  GREG GIRALDO: I want people laughing, not agreeing with me or cheering me on. When I hear someone clap ’cause they agree with a fucking joke, I wanna smash them in the head with a bat. So much of what passes for what everyone calls “political comedy” is just sort of pied-pipering.

  My favorite jokes are always jokes that have some real insight into the human condition, in some way more so than about some specific current event, you know? There are things that have an impact that lingers, that stick with you for a while, and a lot of it’s self-revelatory or shows a lot of honesty about yourself onstage. Like I used to do a joke—which got turned into this techno/dance song that became a bit of a hit by the guy from Aqua with his side project, Lazyboy—called “Underwear Goes Inside Your Pants.” It was about this homeless guy who asked me for money and I was about to give it to him, but I stopped and thought, “But he’s just going to use it on drugs or alcohol.” And
then I realized, “Wait a minute…That’s what I’m gonna use it on!” You know, why should we judge this guy and do that “go and get a job” and all? The guy was wearing his underwear outside his pants, so I’m guessing his résumé ain’t all up to date, you know? And that joke plays with the idea of sorta confessing your own weaknesses, but in the context of some broader social statement. And to have said it in the context of my own alcoholism and addiction problems makes it feel like maybe something even more substantial. That feels like a substantial piece of something to me.

  You know, you can use comedy that highlights a broader, deeper issue that impacts society as a whole in what on the surface is just a funny little ballbag joke or something. And then it’s not just “Agree with me,” it’s “This is me; this is how I perceive the world.”

  PAUL PROVENZA: That’s one of those jokes where half the audience could think you’re making fun of homeless people and half think you’re making fun of yourself—and themselves, too.

  GREG GIRALDO: That’s kinda what I’m getting at about not preaching to the choir. But you know how much shit we have to write to get something to work? That’s where I think the lack of commitment to some point of view hurts. You just have to write what you want, because when you’re trying to get stuff that’s gonna kill, that the crowd is going to love, while still tweaking certain elements of the crowd, you’re trying to do a lot of things in very few words. When everyone agrees with your worldview it’s a lot easier to do, so it doesn’t feel like much of a challenge.

  I always hear people say they started stand-up because they saw George Carlin or Richard Pryor, and, “I knew that I had to do what those guys were doing.” To me, that is the most extreme arrogance. I realized I can never do that. But I watched Evening at the Improv and I thought I can definitely do that. I can definitely be funnier than those shittier comics—and they’re on TV! They must be making money. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do except that I wanted to be on stage. I know I wanna sleep all day, I wanna get laid a lot, and I wanna drink for free. These were the reasons; there was no big fucking “high art” going on at the beginning. I didn’t come into it with any lofty ideas, I got into it to fucking have a weird, cool life. That was it.

  What I found most appealing about stand-up at the beginning was the musicality of the words and rhythms and the performance. I used to love coming off stage with my neck hurting from talking so aggressively, that feeling of exhaustion after really rocking it. But it wasn’t like I had something to say that I thought was so important. Over time, I guess what’s happened is, as you know, you get respected by your peers, and you realize that you can do this for real. So I’ve started to care more about the insights of each joke, but I’m also at that crisis point of, like, “Fuck it. What am I afraid of? Why don’t I just really commit to a satirical point of view, stop talking about my balls, and start focusing exclusively on headier shit?”

  PAUL PROVENZA: Or at least focus on just one ball.

  GREG GIRALDO: Yeah, on the one with the growth on it that I’m a little concerned about. But I’m told that’s normal at my age.

  But everyone acts like comedy is this purposeful, conscious, calculated artistic effort—but I’m just throwing shit up; I’m, just, “Go on stage and don’t bomb.” I’m not purposely doing anything. I guess a real artist would, but I’m just going on stage trying to be funny and making people laugh. I do appreciate the jokes I write that I think are smart and interesting and clever and satirical, but I don’t sit down and write anything. I write an idea, I go onstage and do it five, six, seven times in a row, and eventually it coalesces and becomes…something.

  I was actually thinking about all this just yesterday, because I realized that I’ve stopped trying to kill in the way I used to. I used to wanna just pound, pound, pound, and just crush all the time, you know? But I’ve started doing a lot of stuff that doesn’t feel like that rolling kind of killing all the time, and I realized that everyone’s listening for long stretches now. And it’s okay, because they’re being entertained anyway, and I guess being challenged more in some ways, too, now.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Is there a difference?

  GREG GIRALDO: That’s a fucking great question. God damn.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Are you conflicted, being at a place where you can “do this for real,” as you put it?

  GREG GIRALDO: I feel conflicted about everything. I can barely function day to day. That’s part of it.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Is this conversation about more than just your comedy right now?

  GREG GIRALDO: Yes, that’s true for sure. I broke my hand one night at Gotham. I broke, like, four bones in my hand punching something.

  I talked about some of my issues on a panel on Conan recently, and they were, like, “That was a little dark.” I had done Conan sixteen times already, but they fucking freaked out. I was, like, “Really? That was dark? Talking about my addictions was dark? What the fuck?”

  On Root of All Evil, I was on the “Viagra vs. Donald Trump” episode arguing that Viagra is the root of all evil, and I said the real problem is that people are starting to use Viagra with illegal drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine and that increases the use of illegal drugs, because that counteracts cocaine’s built-in deterrent: you couldn’t get erect. You’d look down and see your horribly shriveled coke dick and think, “Maybe coke’s not so great.” I said that I would end up spending the next four hours telling a stripper how misunderstood I’ve been as an artist. And I closed with, “I also have other arguments, which are not just painful personal memories.”

  And the producers freaked: “Are you really going on TV telling people that you couldn’t get it up with a stripper?” And I was, like, “Well, if you had done a lot of blow you would understand the point. If you didn’t, then it doesn’t matter, you might think I’m kidding. It doesn’t matter. You tell me.” They were, like, “Do you not care that your wife hears this??” I go, “I don’t know. I guess I care.”

  I thought that was actually the least of it, to tell you the truth. Let me put it this way: a week ago, my wife’s shrink—who met with me just so he could tell her what to say to me—called me psychotic, violent, and suicidal. I’m telling you this on purpose, for dramatic effect, so you can just cut and paste this right into my obituary.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Do you feel like you perform a little bit better when you’re in turmoil?

  GREG GIRALDO: I used to. But then I had a lot of months when I wasn’t. When you start breaking your hand on things and smashing your face into things…

  But you know what? It’s a pussified piece-of-shit world nowadays. The reality is artists used to be cut slack for shit, but now you gotta be such a fucking tool. You ever hang out with young bands nowadays? They’re all such fucking pussies with their MySpace and their street teams and their fucking merch tables.

  To be famous and successful now you need to be a fucking torpedo. You need to know what your market is in today’s world. You need to stay consistent. A consistent point of view, consistent voice, message, look, package. It all has to go driving forward like a shark in the water to make you successful, you know? If you have any qualms, soon as you start feeling successful and people start appreciating you on a certain level, if you’re the kind of person who goes, “Fuck that, I’m going a different way,” you’re fucked in today’s world.

  Plus, stand-up comedy is the most extremely subjective art form I’ve ever seen. You’re watching one person walk onstage and that person could remind you of someone that kicked you in the face when you were in third grade, or someone who fucked your girlfriend before you did, and all that affects how you judge that one individual. It’s more subjective than anything else I’ve ever experienced. I’ve had people who were exactly my fucking demographic: my best friends, my brother, other comics I think are brilliant—and they don’t like all the same comics I do. There are guys who all my friends think are hilarious that I find intolerable. I don’t know why, I just know that’s how
I feel.

  So yeah…I’m conflicted. I guess I’ve always been. But about everything, not just comedy. I was in rock bands in college and wanted to be a musician. Then I went to law school and that didn’t work, so I thought fuck it, I’m gonna be a rock star, but of course, I couldn’t be. So I didn’t know what I wanted to do—

  PAUL PROVENZA: But you actually practiced law?

  GREG GIRALDO: I worked in a big law firm for a year. It was ridiculous. A nightmare. The whole thing was retarded. It takes me—I’m not exaggerating—an hour to leave my house some days because I can’t tell which sneakers to put on. I can’t even find my wallet, literally. I’m not kidding.

  I know this is almost trendy now, but when they first started coming out with that ADHD stuff and they had those checklists, on every single one of them I was off the charts. How are you supposed to function as a lawyer with that? But I was so young, I thought, “Maybe I’ll mature into it.” I thought I’d mature into wanting to be a lawyer! I don’t know what I was thinking. My brain is so fucked up, and here I was trying to believe for a minute that I was going to be in charge of someone’s serious legal issues? It was such a joke. I had to do all the legal work for this really huge deal to buy a jet for Rolling Stone magazine. I didn’t file any of that shit. There are planes flying around out there completely undocumented; with fucking nothing! To this day, there are huge shopping malls and all kinds of shit out there with all the wrong paperwork filed on ’em.

  I was clearly not cut out for it. Plus, I always see both sides to everything—and that’s maybe what comes up in terms of “political” comedy for me now, too. As soon as I see one side of anything, I try to balance it with another side of it just to hit every angle. With law shit, especially these big corporate cases, both parties are usually fucked-up wrong, so I could never seriously advocate one side knowing full well there were all these other arguments to be had.