Will Franken has been hailed as one of the most uniquely talented comedians in the nation. His performances are a breathtaking display of comedic virtuosity, weaving absurd characters through a minefield of socio-political satire.
He was featured in the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival this past July and has recently moved back to San Francisco from New York. He’ll be performing in San Francisco on New Year’s Eve at Herbst Theatre in a night of unconventional comedy. www.nynnye.com
I emailed Will questions and he kindly responded with interesting and insightful answers, even adding his own stage directions.
Jill: When did you start in comedy?
Will: When did I start in comedy? Oh, Jill, don’t make me give away my age! [LAUGHS POLITELY] Well, Jill, I’ve been doing crazy things to make people laugh ever since I was a child. I had a few experiences in Missouri as a teenager, from 16 to 19 years old, performing at various comedy club, bookstore, and coffee shop open mikes. When I was 24, after getting my Masters in English Literature, I made the decision to move to New York City and try to break into the business. I ended up becoming a New Yorker instead. Some teaching work here, some commercial work there, and once in a blue moon, I’d make it down to a comedy club open mike; I was anything but consistent in my pursuit. I would say that it wasn’t until I ended up at the Berkeley Marina, living out of my car in July of 2002, that I seriously became a comedian by default. I performed every night, graduating very quickly from open mikes to booked sets. I wasn’t even planning on being a comedian when I came to California. I had the vague notion of getting my doctorate instead. Very soon, thanks to the Bay Area’s belief in what I do, I was reminded of my initial calling in life.
What’s your background?
What is my background? Oh, Jill, don’t make me give away my age! [LAUGHS HYSTERICALLY] Well, Jill, when I was really young, like around seven or eight, I was obsessed with the reruns of the 1975-77 seasons of “Saturday Night Live” that our local NBC affiliate in Missouri ran during the weeknights. I started to worry if I was gay, because I couldn’t stop thinking about Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase and Bill Murray. They were my introduction to the rock-n-roll aspects of comedy; the anti-authoritarianism of being funny. Being that young, I didn’t have a word for what it was that they were doing, but I think it was as far back as then that I wanted to do sketch comedy. I watched a lot of stand-up comedy also and, as a 9-year old, I even attempted to write a conventional stand-up set. But my heart wasn’t in it. I was much more interested in inhabiting characters.
The stand-ups I was drawn to were always those who excelled as characters — Richard Pryor, Steve Martin (the anti-comedian), and even Andrew Dice Clay. When I was around 12 years old, the new “Saturday Night Lives” no longer appealed to me. That’s when I discovered “The Young Ones” and “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”. Both of those shows appealed to my innate Anglophilia. I was especially drawn to “Monty Python” because of their rapid-fire transitions and overly-erudite presentation. There was a lot that I didn’t understand, but I knew that if I wanted to be able to show-off, I should at least pretend to understand it. So whenever my mother would walk in as I was watching an episode and Eric Idle would make an aside about Kierkegaard’s journals, for example, I would make sure to laugh extra loudly.
I wanted to do a one-man version of what Python was doing and add both an intellectual element and a fluid structure to what I had already learned earlier from “Saturday Night Live”. I rounded out my Anglo-diet with “Blackadder”, “A Bit of Fry & Laurie”, and anything else I could get my hands on from the UK–like the corpus of Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson’s work. This sustained me during what I call a two-year drought in which I would complain to my friends that there wasn’t any good sketch comedy anymore. That’s when my friend Matt convinced me in 1987 to watch an episode of a new HBO comedy series called “The Kids In The Hall”. I saw Bruce McCulloch doing “Cabbage Head” and all of a sudden, I had faith once more in the potential for absurdist sketch comedy.
When I went off to college to pursue my Masters in Literature years later, without knowing it at the time, I was merely solidifying the intellectual and literary underpinnings of my comedy. Finally, spending five years in San Francisco encouraged me to hone my contrarian skills as a political satirist capable of skewering the sacred cows of politically correct dogma.
What got you interested in comedy?
What got me interested in comedy? Oh, Jill, don’t make me give away my age! [LAUGHS ECSTATICALLY] Well, Jill, my father was sort of an emotionally dead person with occasional outbursts of violence. My mother was a frightened, chattering, and nervous rabbit always seeking shelter from the storm. One of my first impersonations was of my dad complaining that the rest of the family was talking during dinner when he was trying to watch an episode of “M.A.S.H.” My sisters and mother laughed hysterically and that was most likely the psychological impetus for me to pursue comedy–first, as a therapeutic balm for my fragile childhood psyche and then later as a vocation.
You’ve performed in a number of cities, how would you describe Bay Area audiences versus others?
How would I describe Bay Area audiences verses others? Oh, Jill, don’t make me give away my age! [CRIES PROFUSELY] Well, Jill, I always tell people that San Francisco was the best place in the world for me to get started. They were extremely receptive to the sort of experimental stuff I was doing — more so than I would have ever anticipated — and consequently, they rewarded me quite well.
Bay Area audiences, contrary to the stereotype, do laugh at political incorrectness. I believe this is because they’re strangled with it constantly and without even understanding the need to free themselves from its shackles, they find a comforting rebellion in crossing the lines of social acceptability. Sex and violence are fine as topics. Religion is okay; although if you’re going to take on Islam, it does require a good deal of intelligence and finesse to be able to pull it off. Christianity, however, is like shooting ducks in a barrel. San Francisco audiences, in this respect, are quite similar to New York audiences. Both love the crossing of the PC and conventional stand-up barriers and reward the performer who undertakes those challenges with laughter.
Los Angeles is a bit more geared towards the presentation of industry-acceptable comedy, being a media town, so they can be somewhat reserved at times. They may respect experimentation just as much as a San Francisco or New York crowd, but I think there’s an unspoken attempt to reconcile what they see on stage in a club with its relative potential to be presented on television. In all fairness, New York City is a media town as well, but it also has a punk rock history and an experimental theatre aspect that encourages freshness from performers. San Francisco, meanwhile, isn’t tied to any media complex, and I think that’s a very freeing concept, both for the performers and the audiences.
What do you think about performing with Moshe Kasher and Brent Weinbach? What do you like about their comedy?
What do I think about performing with Moshe and Brent? Oh, Jill, don’t make me give away my age! [TWITCHES SPASMODICALLY] Well, Jill, I’ve known Moshe and Brent for a good number of years now. In many ways, Moshe and Brent are polar opposites. Moshe is a comedian who excels at making the conventional form of stand-up his own thing; he brings a variety and uniqueness to the medium that others don’t. Brent, meanwhile, is a performer who’s very comfortable with exposing his subconscious. I would have to say that I think Brent is even more at peace with the idea of “not making sense” to an audience than I am. Even in the context of my own absurdity, I still feel compelled to retain a storyline or a framework in my delivery. Brent’s exposition of his id is much more naked and I don’t know if he has a desire to wed his outbursts to any form of linearity. It’s not so much of an arc as it is an unspoken faith in his desire for psychosocial symbiosis.
For someone who may not have seen you before, how would you describe your comedy?
How would I describe my comedy? Oh, Jill, don’t make me give away my age! [VOMITS] Well, Jill, the quick answer that I’ve honed over the years is: I’m a one-man “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” episode. My transitions will take the audience from point A to point Z to point D to point 15.2. My pieces are always multilayered. The audience can laugh at one layer or another layer or all of the layers at once. Yet it is my intention to not only make the audiences laugh, but to blow their minds into different pieces and then reassemble those pieces in strange and unearthly configurations. That speaks to the absurdist element. As to the satirical element, I aim to expose via multi-character sketches and monologues, the many gods and goddesses that postmodern society worships. Sometimes using a subtle chisel, other times a loud sledgehammer, the goal is to break away the cold armor of political correctness, media brainwashing, and cultural assumptions–leaving only the pure and holy individual beneath.
There is a lot of debate about what is considered “alternative” comedy. What are your thoughts on this?
What are my thoughts on alternative comedy? Oh, Jill, don’t make me give away my money! [SLIGHT CHUCKLE, THEN GRASPS HIS CHEST, POUNDING AT THE TABLE] Well, Jill, I have to say that I’ve long suspicioned that “alternative” comedy is simply a hip moniker for what is, in essence, the new mainstream. I’ve heard comedians with pink hair or facial tattoos being described as “alternative”, yet when I’ve seen their act, it’s still conventional stand-up. Sometimes I’ve felt more comfortable in the presence of “mainstream” comedians versus so-called “alternative” comedians because I don’t feel that with the mainstream comedians there’s this desire to “one-up” the others in terms of originality or weirdness. Originality and weirdness are innate. One either is alternative or is not alternative. It’s a different thing to try being mainstream and failing than it is to try being alternative and failing. There used to be a time when comedians would have shied away from being labeled “alternative”. Nowadays, the trend is reversed. When I first started doing comedy in San Francisco, I wanted to be mainstream. Gradually, I became convinced that I belonged more in the alternative camp. But even within that framework, I still found myself in the privileged–albeit lonely–position of being the alternative to the alternative. I predict in a few more years that just as mainstream comedy is derided by the alternative crowd for its predictable set-ups and punchlines, alternative comedy will also suffer a similar fate for its own predictability.
What do you think about performing at Herbst Theatre?
What are my thoughts on performing at the Herbst? Oh, Jill, don’t make me give away my secrets! [ALIEN BURSTS OUT OF HIS CHEST] Well, Jill, I have always loved theatre. When I perform at a traditional stand-up comedy club, I always aim to bring the theatre with me in my performance. But when I perform in a theatre, I don’t bring the comedy club with me, because there’s nothing that needs to be added to theatre. The highest expression of comedic performance still comes from the theatre as opposed to the comedy clubs. As far as the Herbst, I have never performed there before, but feel extremely privileged that I am finally going to. When I walked onto the stage the other day, I felt that I was home. The vast ceilings, the balcony seating, the polished stage, the gels and fresnels, the unamplified acoustics. . .all whispered to me in one ghostly voice, “Welcome home, my child. Speak to me. . .breathe life into me. . .” Yes, my soul awakened from a slumber when I passed through its doors.
What’s the most exciting/interesting thing that happened for you in 2009?
What’s the most exciting thing that happened to me in 2009? Oh, Jill, don’t make me give away my last cigarette! [NURSE TAPS I.V.] Well, Jill, I would have to say the answer to that question is an amalgam of making my debut in Montreal at the 2009 Just For Laughs Festival, deciding to move back to San Francisco via train, and getting my long hair sheared in October in the hopes of meeting a lady.
What are your goals/aspirations for 2010?
What are my goals for 2010? Oh, Jill, don’t make me give away the answer to that question! [RISES FROM THE DEAD POLITELY] Well, Jill, I suppose the first thing on my list would be to undo all the emotional, moral, and financial damage I inflicted on myself and others throughout the years 1973 to 2009. Following that, I’d like to continue writing and performing.
Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?
Do I have any New Years’ resolutions? Oh, Jill, don’t make me give away a kidney to the dying boy! [LAUGHS AND CRIES BIPOLARLY] Well, Jill, it’s not so much a New Years’ resolution as it is a resolution for the Season of Lent. I aim to give up cigarettes.
Any other thoughts?
Any other thoughts? Oh, Jill, don’t make me call my cousin Jimmy! [LIGHTS A CIGARETTE WITH HIS SMILE] Well, Jill, I think the only other thought I have at this time is that I’m hungry and have to go make myself a sandwich of bologna and cheese and pour myself a cup of Mountain Dew and that will involve me getting up from my chair and walking into the kitchen. But first I’ll have to uncross my legs.