Standup Comedian: An interview with Demetri Martin | The Laugh Button

Watching your shows and seeing your specials, you remind me a lot of Andy Kaufman. I’m sure you get that a lot. Was there ever a big challenge getting material like that through?

I get that sometimes, yeah. I like Andy Kaufman, he was a great comic. When I started in the comedy clubs in New York I just wanted so badly to perform in the clubs. A couple of them just told me, “you’re too low energy and cerebral so we can’t use you.” Or it’s too weird or whatever. I’m not as experimental or artistic as Andy Kaufman and he was doing what he did back in the 70’s and early 80’s. At the time I started doing stand-up, a lot of that stuff had been done. People had deconstructed and deconstructed the deconstruction of stand-up already. If you think of Kaufman and Steve Martin and Albert Brooks, that was the golden era of stand-up of guys experimenting and trying different things with the form. I’m such a later generation. I’m not doing anything too “out there” or that weird, but because it’s a low-key presentation that’s a harder sell to the clubs. Basically they’d say, “We need high energy acts.” They want someone who’s got high energy and is a crowd pleaser. I just have my style and it’s kind of laid back and I’m trying some different things.

But I’m lucky. I get to go around and audiences show up. I usually get to go to a theater and not a comedy club and people will come and they know what they’re coming to see. I get to do a bunch of new material and I don’t have to worry about my audience getting a two drink minimum, or following a guy who does 40 dick jokes. I get to have my own vibe. But early on it was just hard to get stage time and it was a challenge to get my stuff out there. But it’s such a big country that you can find your audience. If you get the stuff out there and enough of it out there, it seems like you can find an audience no matter how specific your thing is.

Demetri Martin: Standup Comedian premieres tomorrow at 10/9c.