the comic's comic

Dave Chappelle, live in concert

Pre-show ticket warnings be darned. Chappelle’s show in Boston would not be foiled! It did take an extra-long time to get into Agganis Arena, though, with two long lines that snaked from either side of the only two ways into the building, forced through a security gauntlet. Fans could keep their phones, just not use them (I did see security approach one young man during the show for apparently taking a cameraphone pic, leading him away for a few minutes, but the fan returned to his seat later). The stage itself, pretty ordinary, a stool with bottled water. A DJ did have a stand near the back of the stage, playing a mix of club dance tracks while fans continued to file in slowly but surely, until the show finally began at 8:07 p.m. (showtime advertised at 7:30 p.m).

Opener Joe DeRosa bit the bullet, coming out swinging. DeRosa talked about man drinks vs. girly drinks, birthday presents (funny premise: “How come they always tell you what they almost got you?”), on being adopted, and later finding out at age 12 that he’s half-Egyptian. Lots of frank sexual talk and profanities. DeRosa kept falling back on sex, with his theories on why gay men have it easier than straight men, and why older women are where it’s at. For a guy the crowd didn’t really want to see, he got a great response with much applause at the end of his 27-minute set.

Everyone, of course, wanted to see Chappelle. Chappelle showed he had done a little homework on Boston and recalled his previous trips here, talking about the city’s history and recounting a time he and his friends got into a fight (well, sort of) with a crystal meth addict.

Quotes and more after the jump.

Talking Beerfest with Broken Lizard

Broken Lizard may not be Monty Python, or even Kids in the Hall, but they prove they're darned funny in their own right with the release of Beerfest.

I had the chance to meet Broken Lizard members Steve Lemme and Erik Stolhanske earlier this month when they came through Boston on a special screening/drinking tour. In Beerfest, Stolhanske plays one of the two Wolfhouse brothers (the drunker one!) who discovers the hidden world where drinking games have become an underground Olympics in a German warehouse. Lemme plays the lab tech who the Wolfhouse brothers recruit for their American squad to reclaim the family's (and with it, the nation's) honor. Enough with the plot. What matters is that the film really gets going at this point, with madcap antics getting more madcappy until the finale (and even then, to a potential sequel sequence during the end credits). Mo'Nique and Cloris Leachman both turn in funny supporting performances, and it's by far the funniest Will Forte (SNL) has ever been. It's silly. It's sophomoric. But it works on a beer-gut-busting level.

While other troupes put silly characters in everyday situations, Broken Lizard tends to go the other route, with its members portraying regular guys who wind up in over-the-top scenarios.

Erik: "Our style is more playing in the natural world, it seems."
Steve: "We like to have sort of ridiculous situations but play it straight. As though it could really happen. We try not to make it unreasonable. Granted, Beerfest. Well, you know, there is a beer Olympics. It's not so far-fetched…"
Erik: "I think we're also pretty grounded in Everyman characters. Like, I'm from Minnesota, Jay is from Chicago. Paul is from Colorado. I sort of play Everyman Joe kind of characters."
Steve: "Certainly with Beerfest, we just wanted it to be, these are the beer lovers. As simple as that."

Is that the Broken Lizard staple then, or do they want to create stronger characters like Will Ferrell and Sacha Baron Cohen did earlier this summer (and before then, too)?
Erik: "That's a good question, because the movie we want to make is called The Greek Road. In it, three of us play Greek Gods. So when we make that, it'll probably go more in that direction."
Steve: "And the other two are Socrates and Plato."
Erik: "Yeah, those are larger than life characters. You know, it's just our style, I think. I don't know if it was ever drafted that way….that's how it evolved over time."

They also have lots of hockey players as friends. Why not enlist them for a hockey-themed flick?    Steve: "I'm reading a book called 'Zamboni Radio,' which was submitted to our production company, to see if there's anything we could do with it. I haven't finished the book yet. There are people who are jonesing to actually remake Slapshot, which I think is a bad idea. Because I hate when they try to go after the classics."
That led to a discussion of the Caddyshack and Blues Brothers sequels.
Erik: "I think there was a rumor around town that somebody was actually going to remake Caddyshack."
Steve: "In fact, didn't they ask us? I think somebody asked us if we would consider, if we wanted to do a take on that. There are a bunch of them. They're remaking Rodney Dangerfield's Back to School. They're
doing that."
Erik: "They wanted us to pitch an idea for that, too."

Dave Chappelle talks to Anderson Cooper

Dave Chappelle hasn't been doing much press for his current stand-up tour. Perhaps he doesn't want to answer the same questions over and over again about Africa and Comedy Central. Or perhaps he figures his appearances on Oprah and Anderson Cooper 360 earlier this year were enough. Either way, it'll be interesting to see how the crowd takes to him. And it'll also be interesting to see what it's like at the gates, considering the ticket warning issued by Ticketmaster/Live Nation. Then watch this video to hear Chappelle explain it for himself...

Robert Kelly, before taping his CD in Boston

So yes, Robert “Bobby” Kelly has quite the homecoming this weekend, as he’s taping this weekend’s shows at the Comedy Connection in Boston. Kelly is from nearby Medford.

Kelly talked to me in the morning, something he finds himself doing a lot more now that 1) he’s hitting another level of success, and 2) spending time talking to radio buddies Opie & Anthony on their morning show. As he told me the other day, “You want success so bad your whole career, but then you finally get it, you have to work? When I was a nobody, I got to sleep, I got to play games. Then I look at Dane (Cook). I remember when Dane used to do what I do now. I loved the fact that I’d be milling around and go to sleep while he was on the phone nonstop…now I’m doing it…oh boy!”

Kelly stopped in Vancouver, B.C., earlier this summer to film a cameo in Cook’s upcoming movie, Good Luck Chuck. No, not the weekend that Cook had problems with a guest set at Yuk Yuk’s. Anyhoo. Kelly says of his cameo experience on set, “I got to go to my trailer and just sleep. I’m in my trailer all day, sleeping, eating, then I went in his trailer because his trailer was so much better than mine. I fell asleep eating candy bars. I had every candy bar known to man lying on my chest!”

Cedric the Entertainer, on TV, onstage

Cedric the Entertainer talked with me upon the arrival of his latest HBO special, Taking You Higher, which he helped promote with a club tour. He had a brief stint on the small screen a few years ago with his 2002 sketch show, Cedric the Entertainer Presents. He has another TV deal in the works. But first, he has to figure out what kind of show he wants it to be.

“It does make it very hard to think of how do you approach television in an environment like today, where it’s all reality-oriented, and produced reality at that,” he said. “The sitcom has suffered.” Sketch, too. “Even though Chappelle’s Show is very successful, I don’t know if sketch can succeed outside of cable.”

Would there be singing and dancing, staples of his previous big stage productions?

“I love those elements, but I’d want to do it uniquely different…I’d probably step to a different format. I’d try to figure out how to naturally integrate it.” He mentions a previous role. “Like Eddie from Barbershop, where it’s a neat fun character with a unique point of view and I can have fun doing it from week to week.” Or…”I see Flavor Flav is having guests this year. Maybe I’ll just do that!”

Why are you playing clubs instead of theaters?

“Just doing the special, it’s all about developing new material. I have to start working again. (In the clubs), the crowds are tight and intimate and you can have a good time working with them. Even though it is a bigger room, it’s still fun and they’re usually comedy-sophisticated,” he said. “You give away an hour of material for television. So now you have to get back on the bicycle and work away at it!”

Sierra Mist predicts the future?

One of the funnier Super Bowl commercials this year featured comedians Kathy Griffin and Jim Gaffigan as airport security workers, giving Michael Ian Black the wand treatment over his Sierra Mist bottle. How could they have known that seven months later, you couldn't get soda pop through airport security?

A little eerie, eh? So...is this funnier now that life imitates art? Or just eerie?

This just in: Dat Phan, still unfunny

Dat Phan (you remember him, the Vietnamese-American kid who came out from nowhere -- well, actually out from under his desk and his job working at the Improv -- to win the first season of Last Comic Standing) finally got another chance at primetime TV.

So what does he do?

Five minutes. At least three minutes of which were in a faux Asian accent. And at least four minutes of which contained zero laughs.

Who is Dat Phan trying to fool?

Will Ferrell gets into character

Will Ferrell is a really nice guy. Looked me in the eyes during our introduction a couple of weeks ago at the Ritz, delivered a solid handshake. Enough to unnerve a lesser civilian. But after a playfully simple opening question, we were off and running in a discussion to promote Talladega Nights.

So, is there a real-life RB that the fictional Ricky Bobby and Ron Burgandy are both based on?

"Maybe we have to think of another RB if we're going to continue these movies," Ferrell said. "No. It just happened. You're giving us way too much credit. We're not that smart."

Any similarity, though, in how you developed both characters?

On Anchorman, he said, "I was watching this documentary on this guy -- former newscaster who worked with Jessica Savitch. And I heard him kinda talk, and that kinda set me off. Plus, just listening to all newscasters talk. Truth is with Ricky Bobby, it definitely wasn't...I didn't watch interviews with race-car drivers, but we knew we wanted him to be kind of Southern. I didn't have any sort of blueprint for him. Other than, as we started writing, within our writing, we usually, Adam (McKay) and I improvise our scenes...we actually sit there and play the characters and say, 'Oh, wait. What'd we say? Write that down!' In that case, Anchorman, I kind of had him more in my head so I could drive the writing through what the character would say. This was more of the opposite."

Was there someone or some class that helped mold you into such a strong character-driven comic?

"We did crazy characters with the Groundlings. So I think in a way that was probably the most influential place in terms of just allowing your mind to just kind of go free. We would have exercises, where they’d throw crazy things at you — You are the King of Cheese. Write a monologue. Five minutes. So you would have to just, it didn’t matter if it was good or funny or not. But it just, what it did. It allowed you to shed that, what would he say, you just had to dive into things…and so, probably that’s helped me the most."

You’re also really strong at staying in character. Why is that?

“I used to do that in my personal life. When I was in college, one of the more fun things we would do, is I had a group of friends we would take a road trip to Vegas, and instead of doing the typical, ‘let’s gamble!’ and ‘let’s try to pick up ladies!’, we were kind of geeks in that we liked sitting at a blackjack table and leaving a couple of chairs open and allowing people to sit in between us but pretending that we didn’t know each other. I’d be a businessman from Chicago. And my other friend would be…We’d in a sense be playing characters and trying to interact with the people in between us. That fostered a certain level of commitment and being able to stay in stuff. It was so much fun and kind of exhilirating to not be outed.”

“Chris Kattan and I were at the Groundlings together. One of our fellow castmates who was in one of the shows we were doing…everyone obviously had other jobs. He ran a small PR firm. And they were in charge of supplying, it was in Pasadena, they were in charge of supplying or hiring a Santa and his elf for this outdoor kinda old-town, this mall. We needed the money, so I was Santa and he was my elf for four consecutive weekends. It was really hard but kinda fun to just stay in character. We would just wander in and out of stores, it wasn’t a typical sit-on-sleigh and people come and take pictures, we wandered around…it was a fun thing to try to stay in that for that long…The best part was Chris was really into doing his little elf character and then I could see that by the second day, he didn’t care anymore because no one cared about the elf. They'd go ‘Santa!’ And he’d say, ‘Here kid, have some candy.’”

Ever think of switching so he could be Santa and you’d be the elf? "No. that never came up. Yeah, we shoulda switched. We should of switched it up…”

Sacha Baron Cohen is in the movie with you, and he’s also such a dominating character comic. How did that impact or influence your performance?

“In a way, a lot of times, when Sacha’s character is in the scene, Ricky is almost the straight man. So I kinda had to adjust that way. Because he’s so outlandish in a way. So I always had to pull it back. But it was kinda fun, too. We welcomed that. In these two movies, we obviously liked doing more ensemble stuff with multiple hopefully funny characters. Those are the films that resonated with us. The Animal Houses, and the Stripes, the Caddyshacks of the world, where you had a lot of funny characters throughout the film. Why did that go away? Why can’t that still be? So Sacha just stepped in and hit the ground running with us, even though it was probably harder for him, because the stuff that he’s in, he’s in control of…so he probably had to give in to us in a way. Which we were thankful for. He had to relinquish some of the control that he was used to having…that’s what happens when you’re a hired gun. We try to a decent job of sharing the wealth with all of the characters.”

What about your comedic influences?

“I, definitely, the people that you know, probably the single biggest factor influence for me was watching Saturday Night Live, and the two guys that I gravitated to the most were Dan Aykroyd and later Phil Hartman, because I loved their versatility, in that they could be the funniest person in a scene, but they could also just be support. And be the ballast. The straight man in the scenes and still be funny when they were doing that. And I always thought, oh, that’s like the coolest job in the cast in a way, because you’re assured of being in a lot (of scenes). And yet, they were no less funny than any other cast member.”