Andres du Bouchet

Chief Magazine: So where did you grow up and what kind of things were you interested in as a kid? Where did the big influences lie?

Andres Dubouchet: I was born in Brooklyn, but I grew up in a town called East Brunswick, New Jersey. Imagine a series of lawns separated by driveways that lead into garages connected to homes in which live mostly awful people who are only concerned with how their children's grades and/or careers reflect upon them. Presto! You are imagining East Brunswick. Seriously, fuck that place.

As a teen, my influences included the typical geek angst fare of comic books (X-Men, Hulk, and Silver Surfer were my faves - any heroes who were loners, outcasts, or misunderstood - any comic fan could probably psychoanalyze me pretty accurately using that info), Dungeons and Dragons, and any computer game in which I could type things like “Go North” and “Get Sword.” And as for comedy, it was all about SNL, Monty Python reruns on PBS, and Letterman in his NBC days. The 1985 (I think) season of SNL, when Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Christopher Guest and Harry Schearer were all cast members, was probably the single most influential thing comedically, in my life. Heck, my Francisco character is basically a rip-off of Billy Crystal’s Fernando character, but with fewer funny catch phrases and a lighter accent. Martin Short’s "Jackie Rogers Junior’s $100,000 Jackpot Wad" remains my favorite sketch of all time. Not sure how it holds up today, but it definitely set the tone for what I think is funny: a tone of broad silliness with smart, clever writing performed with commitment.

What was your family's reaction when you decided to pursue comedy?

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Sadly, I think they worry so much about me that it overwhelms any vicarious pleasure they could possibly glean from the fun I'm actually having. The more it became apparent to them that I really had chosen to pursue comedy as my actual life, the more they let their concern and anxiety tune it out, I think.

They haven't seen me perform live since about 2000 or so, but they do laugh at tapes of my shows that I bring home. Heck, I'm doing comedy and I have a roof over my head, so I'm happy. I wish they would get that and let in all of the odd details of my life I could share with them. When I visit them, we get along great and I enjoy their company, and they ask "How are your shows going?" or "How's comedy?", but I don't think the information I relay to them really sinks in in any meaningful way.

For example, I’m not sure they could tell you the name of the Tuesday night show I hosted for four years. If I ever make a living at this, I think they'll be able to identify with it more, as comedy would then be my actual career. For my parent’s generation, that’s what it’s all about – what’s paying the bills? Okay, then that’s your identity. Until I make my money being funny, they're relieved I've at least got the secretarial job to pay the bills and provide me with health insurance. My dad was far more excited when I got a job with health insurance than he’s been for any of my comedy achievements or recognitions.

Though the NY Times article struck a good chord with them, because again, that’s something tangible that older suburban folk can identify with – The New York Times! “We’ve been getting calls from our friends because you were in The New York Times!” They needed to see it in print. Hard evidence. That opened their eyes a bit to the fact that I’m not just twiddling my thumbs here.

As a character named Francisco Guglioni from the country of Boliviguay, you hosted a weekly comedy show at Rififi, called “Giant Tuesday Night of Amazing Inventions and Also There Is a Game” for four years straight. In all that time, overall, was everything orchestrated by you, or did the other comics in the show contribute to the sketch ideas and the writing?

I was “in charge” of GTN and molded the general sensibility of the show, but overall the show was very democratic - everyone in the cast contributed writing, and everyone had a say in how each show was put together. Specifically, Mark Douglas and Michael Reisman were the guys who really shaped the show - they wrote a lot more than anyone else involved, including myself. My greatest contribution to the mix was to show up each Tuesday wearing a tie and prepared to yell enthusiastically for 90 minutes as the host. I also periodically came up with sketches about farting, such as The Guy Who Farts When You Shake His Hand, or The Guy Who Shakes Your Hand When You Fart, or The Endless Sketch Loop Resulting From The Guy Who Farts When You Shake His Hand Meeting The Guy Who Shakes Your Hand When You Fart. I like to think GTN was much greater than the sum of its parts, much like R.E.M. before their original drummer had a brain aneurism.

Sadly for those that haven’t seen it, this week was the final performance. After four years of work, how was your final night?

Aside from the huge, overenthusiastic crowd, the final show was pretty much just like a regular episode, complete with flubbed lines, missed sound cues, and misplaced props. We included a few bits that we wanted to see one last time, like the Joggernauts vs. The Miami Jog Machine sketch, but otherwise didn't make a huge deal about it being a series finale, probably because deep down we know we'll be doing it again at some point in the distant future. By the end of it, I was relieved, but also very touched by the crowd's overwhelming reaction - the next day I had a sinking feeling that I'd taken for granted the ability to try out sloppy sketch material in front of a supportive audience every week. There were more GTN fans out there than I thought.

Why end it now?

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Basically, I'd gotten tired of it, and hadn't felt inspired creatively in a long time. The Francisco character I hosted as was getting more and more tedious to play, especially because the format of the show had evolved to the point where I was a perpetual straight man, just sort of pivoting in place for 90 minutes yelling at crazy characters to "get the fuck off my stage". I was getting by far the most stage time in the cast, but having the least fun. Plus, I just didn't think putting so much work into producing and performing a live show was paving the way to an actual career in comedy the way I wanted.

I'm 35 years old. I don't want to be a 40-year-old secretary who just happens to do comedy at night. I want to be a 40-year-old guy who got super rich by being hilarious, or at least a 40 year old who makes his living being funny. The 9-5 thing is killing me. With 40 hours of my week already taken away by my day job, I need to make the few hours I write and perform to really, really count. So I think I'll try my hand at making videos for a while. If I can crank out a ton of hilarious short films that all say "written by Andres du Bouchet" in the credits, maybe that could lead to something. And if, some day, maybe, hopefully, I have my time more to myself, I can bring back GTN simply for fun's sake.

Will you miss the weekly routine of doing it?

Yes and no. Yes, because doing a weekly show forced me to at least try to come up with new stuff every week - not that I always did. However, because of the time constraint, whatever I DID write was invariably sloppy and half-baked. And then when it would go over well anyway by virtue of the friendly crowds, well...it led to what I would call a Lazy Prolific-ness. I haven't written anything I'm really proud of for a long time. I need the time to do that, and I need to get back out there performing for a wider variety of audiences to get my comedy chops back. But I will miss drinking for free.

Looking back, Can you tell us a time or two that really sticks out? Like a moment where you were either on stage or watching from slightly off stage, where you really thought, “This is why I do this. Somehow, inexplicably, this is us at our finest.” Like the planets were aligned, and even the musical cues misfiring or flubbed lines seemed to make everything even better?

We did a couple of shows back in the Fall of 2005 that were really gratifying: Drunken Hamlet, in which we performed a truncated version of Hamlet while wasted, and a Katrina benefit in which we did an entire episode of GTN in about 15 minutes. Both shows were the epitome of the spirit of our work at its best, and fun to boot. It’s a feeling we attained several times over the years, a sort of controlled chaos where we’re all just having a good time and feeding off of each other’s silliness, where it’s not quite apparent to the audience where the scripted lines have given way to sloppy improvising (most things were pretty tightly scripted, but how much we remembered our lines was always in question). One sequence of sketches that I was always really proud of involved the rest of the cast constantly “douching” me (“You’ve been douched!” Was our version of pranking or “punk’ding’ or whatever), in ever-sillier ways. In fact, I usually had the most fun when the bit involved the cast either tricking me or giving me the finger or making me eat or drink something I shouldn’t.

Was there ever a time when you censored yourself or one of your performers? You all seemed pretty comfortable with taboos and pushing the envelope with creative cursing, but were there any times where you found yourself saying "No. Just no way. I can't have that associated with my show." Did you ever find yourself burdened with those feelings of ownership?

Censorship was never an issue for me. I'm one of those people that feels that words are just words, and if you're offended by something then that's your business. “Being offended” is the responsibility of the listener, not the sayer. If something doesn't get laughs, then I might reject material based on that, but I'm not worried about vulgarity or edginess. I was probably the guiltiest of being offensive in my show anyway, so I never felt a need to tell anyone else "no, you can't do that." However, if one of them told me they wanted to do a bit where they poop on a puppy and then kill that puppy with a hammer, well, I would tell them to lose the part where the puppy dies, and to seriously reconsider the poop part. Too offensive. And if anyone, ANYONE ever tries to harm a puppy in my presence they will have to fucking go through ME. You can print that. I am pro-puppy. Except for cocker spaniels, which I find repulsive.

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I noticed that over the years the format changed slightly, from there being a rotating group of regulars and special guests to more of a "Cast of GTN" feel. How did that come about?

It was an organic process. Originally, the show was basically me hosting, Reisman and Jonny Fido doing bits, and 5 or 6 standup comics as guests. Slowly the number of bits increased, the number of comics decreased, and more and more people just sort of stuck on with us, people with similar sensibilities. Just a snowball effect.

Eventually, there were so many of us, that in order for everyone to have stage time and get their sketches performed, we just didn't have room for standup comics. Plus, I wanted the show to be more of an actual show, and less of a showcase. I wanted to push it in the direction where eventually it could be TV show. A regular format with recurring characters and bits.

After four years of weekly shows, do you feel you would you ever seek out another show where you're the front man again? Or are you looking forward to the freedom of being a free agent, open to doing more random engagements around the city?

Yes! Free agent! Mercenary! Tom Clancy's du Bouchet: Splinter Comic Ghost Recon Force! That's what I'm looking forward to for a while. Independence. I don't want to be roped into the position of host or front man, and I don't want to be a part of an ensemble for a good long time. It's too frustrating. No matter how talented the other people are, and how much I like them, resentment and disappointment invariably set in for me, so I think I'll be better off putting my money where my mouth is and trying to succeed as a solo entity, where my failure and/or success can rest on my own tense shoulders, period. And if I do get back intro the group thing eventually, it'll probably be to bring GTN back, or something else with the same group of people.

Being that you've hosted a weekly show in the city for years now, and even before then, were a weekly contributor to different small shows around the city, have you ever really toured the country doing stand-up? Do you have any interest in that, or was that a bullet you were more than happy to dodge?

I haven't really performed outside of New York City - it's not something I've intentionally avoided, it just never materialized. That's kind of how my whole comedy career has gone - I just focus on writing and performing, and whatever opportunities have come along as a result of that are few and far between, and some of them pan out but most don't seem to. I never really proactively pursued anything, including touring. I'm a walking, talking lesson in how not to manage a comedy career, I guess, since I'm still slaving away at a 9-5 day job.

But I'm so short-sighted and so-scatter brained and so extremely averse to kissing ass that I've come to accept all I can really focus on is the writing/performing part, and eventually, if I can crank out enough funny stuff, something, SOMETHING will fall into my lap.

That's what I'm going to do until I die. In 2016. By the way, I'm not suicidal or self destructive, it's just that a meteor is going to kill us all in 2016. And yes, it will be George W. Bush's fault. So yes, I wouldn't mind performing outside of New York at all, but any chance of landing a writing job in TV or getting cast in something probably are higher if I stick around the city. And if not, then hey, like I said, I’ve got a roof over my head, an easy dayjob and I get to write and perform comedy. Not a bad life.

Are there any comics who've gotten famous but that you hadn't found to be all that funny? Feel free to pepper your answer liberally with the word "Dane" and the word "Cook." Although slamming "The Cook" is pretty common right now, it still feels good to encourage it. (He's always kind of felt like the guy that would be all fun and games at a house party, and then end up date-raping my sister.)

I will say that I think Dane Cook was a very good host on SNL - he's an appealing actor with great stage presence. But as far as his standup goes, I'm no fan. Most successful comics are deserving, like Jim Gaffigan or Patton Oswalt, etc. When I see them I laugh a lot. And as for successful comics that ostensibly suck, well…someone IS laughing, otherwise they wouldn’t be successful. They’ve found their audience, so more power to them.

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How tight-knit is the jumble of East Village and Lower East Side performers, and will you continue to make appearances at other shows now that your fans won't be able to get their fix at Giant Tuesday Night?

Pretty tight-knit. I will definitely still do spots in their shows from time-to-time. I need to get my fix too. Even though I want to focus on making videos, nothing feeds the howling abyss at the core of every comedian better than some good, old-fashioned, live applause.

I know that infrequently, you'll make an appearance on national television. What kinds of sketches have you done on Conan, and what else have people had a chance to see you on? Would you like to get more involved in acting?

On Conan, I've been everything from a guy at a urinal with no lines to a guy with no pants and no lines to a guy getting a fake beer bottle bashed over his head with no lines to a guy in kabuki makeup with one line. It's generally a fun experience, but it can be trying on my patience. I'm a very short-fused person with ADD, and having to sit around doing nothing for several hours before my 30 seconds of screen time can be maddening.

However, I would definitely like to do more acting. You know what I want to do? I want to be a detective on a show like Law and Order. I want to sip coffee out of a styrofoam cup and stare grimly at a corpse while muttering orders to my fellow officers. And then, when that creep who thinks he got away with that thing, says some stuff to my partner in that room, you know the place, the one with the chair and the table, I'll be the guy who grabs the thug by his shirt and shoves him against the wall telling him like it is and stuff. And then we'll see what his story is. Yeah. My grandfather was a NYC police detective, so I think I still have that in my blood.

What's the last movie that you've seen in theaters that was genuinely funny? I assume a lot of comedians would just say Borat and be done with it, but c'mon surprise me.

I liked Borat, but it wasn't the orgasm of hilarity I was expecting based on reviews and word-of-mouth. I think my expectations were raised so much that I would have laughed a lot more if I went in not knowing anything about it. Still, I laughed plenty, and I appreciated it on a level where you just know you're watching a brilliant performer in Sacha Baron Cohen. He'll be putting out great stuff for a while, you can just tell.

The two recent movies that really do it for me are Anchorman and Talladega Nights. Adam McKay, Will Ferrell and that whole team of people, in my opinion, have really tapped into a wonderful, hilarious, absurd vibe that just gets me giggling nonstop. "60% of the time it works every time." C'mon. That is the single greatest line of dialogue ever written. Oh, and I LOVED Nacho Libre. A lot of people didn't, but for me, it was like watching a great Daffy Duck cartoon. I was laughing the whole time.

Do you watch much TV? What does your DVD collection look like?

To give you an idea of my multimedia tastes, I'll just list what I got for Christmas. For my X-box 360, I got the new Lord of the Rings game, the new Star Trek game, and Gears of War (another sci-fi shoot 'em up game).

On DVD, I got Nacho Libre, Talladega Nights, Young Frankenstein and the original Star Wars trilogy. The ORIGINALS, pre-CGI dicking around. My girlfriend and her family know me well. I watch plenty of TV, but mostly just sports and sports highlights. For me, it's the best way to turn off my brain and just zone out. It's a great anxiety-reducer, a great way to bring order to my otherwise freaking out, scatterbrained... brain. Collectively, pro sports on television are 'The Andres Whisperer'.

Sometimes I'll catch an episode of a show like Lost or 24 and get sucked in to that world, but then I'll get frustrated because I'll miss the next three episodes and lose track of what's going on. My DVD collection is pretty small, but full of the things you'd expect. The Simpsons. Family Guy. All three Lord of the Rings flicks.

So, yes, I am a frequent reader of aintitcoolnews.com (I call it ainteverythingcool.yes) and stuff like that. That's my vibe. Did you know Robert Downey Jr. is going to play Tony Stark in the Iron Man movie, to be directed by John Favreu? That's the type of information I make a point to learn as soon as it's available. That's how I roll.

We’ve been reading your blog for a while over here, you seem to be pretty on top of it. What's your take on the Internet's impact on helping comedians get discovered and stay connected to fans?

Blogging is a great way to generate rough material - the knowledge that there is an audience reading it online spurs me to write stuff in the first place, and then I can refer back to the blogged material and polish it up for live use. Also, I like to post entire sketches and monologues that I've done. I don't know why. I just find that it calms my anxieties, in Rain-man fashion, knowing that there is a permanent repository of the crap that comes out of my brain. A place where it can exist on its own without me having to remember it exists. Not sure if that makes sense.

As far as the Internet's effect on how comedians network and stay connected to fans, I actually find it overwhelming. I'm at the point now where I barely pay attention to the dozens of different show announcement e-mails I get every day, even though most of those people are plenty funny. I just start to shut all the information out. And on Myspace, I can't read the bulletins anymore. Too much information. But I'm glad those types of resources exist in case some people want to seek my stuff out online or find out where I'll be performing live.

How has your act changed over the years?

I think it's evolved from very structured, memorized character monologues that I would do word-for-word verbatim every time, into something that is a little more loose and closer to my own personality. In fact, I think I've reached the point now where I'm going to drop the characters, accents, etc. and just be myself. Not necessarily stand-up, but at least using my real name and real voice. It's taken this long to feel semi-comfortable as me on stage.

You seem like a pretty literary guy, and lately there has been a market for books written by comics. The Daily Show writers released America (The Book) and, not too long ago, Chris Elliott came out with his own debut novel. Well, there must be a better example than Chris Elliott, and there is, the new book by Bob Powers. (Which we're still excited about over here.) Do you have any interest in writing?

If I were to ever come out with a book, it would probably be a collection of sketches, one-act plays, fake scripts, etc. Like a 'Complete Works of Andres du Bouchet', as if I was some sort of really famous influential playwright, but most of it I would just make up for the book. I'd probably never get around to writing something like that. Good idea though, huh? Shit. And also, Bob Powers is a good friend and a brilliant writer; I’ll be buying his book later today. Go get it!

Do you see yourself as a "stand-up" comedian? Do you like doing traditional stand-up? Are the audiences/pay offs big enough for less traditional comedy, or does that not matter?

I don't see myself as a stand-up comic - sometimes I do stand-up, but I'm not particularly good at it. My strength is as a sketch writer/performer, and when I do perform alone it usually takes the form of something akin to one-man sketch. However, as I write this, I realize that a lot of what I've done as a comic is just stand-up but with an accent. And lately I've been dropping the accents. So, maybe I am a standup? I don't know. In my opinion, the best comics ARE stand-up comics. People whose natural personalities are so in tune with their comedic sensibilities that they can just go onstage and seemingly 'just be themselves' and rip an audience to shreds. I am far from that - I need the shield of a premise or a character to get by. For me, the greatest high is getting laughs by performing alone something I've written, regardless of format or crowd.

What kind of crowd would you see at Giant Tuesday Night, and what kind of audiences check out the downtown comedy scene in general? The New York Post claimed that, in the audience of your show, "hip, young nerds abound." Fair assessment?

Yeah, that's pretty accurate. Just look back at my description of the movies, etc. I identify with, and you can see I AM a nerd. Therefore it follows that nerds would dig my stuff and my show. I like to think the small subset of people who frequented my show were a bit more down-to-earth than the typical “hipster” mindset associated with the Lower East Side. I think they were, since my comedy and my show's comedy was more about embracing the confusion, frustration, and doubt in life than distancing ourselves from it with the detached irony of a hipster.

What's the worst or oddest crowd reaction you've received during any comedy show?

I did a show a few weeks ago, where one table of audience members loudly booed me the whole time, even though the majority of the crowd was enjoying my stuff. Apparently the mere fact that I had mentioned 9/11 and Hitler (at different points in the set) was too upsetting for them, regardless of what the context was.

However, the context in this particular case was indeed that I was pro-Hitler and pro-9/11, so that table was completely justified in booing me. I have no idea why the other 200 people were laughing. I was also giving the audience the finger for the entirety of my performance.

Who are you really into and respecting right now? Who's doing something really sharp? Anyone just regularly pushing really interesting shit out there?

I love the sketch group Elephant Larry, and there are several other performers right now who I think deserve a lot of attention, like Nick Kroll and John Mulaney, and Kurt Braunohler and Kristen Schaal. All four of those people are great as individual comics and as their respective duos. I've already reached out to all of the above mentioning that I'd love to write for them if they ever got a TV show. That's proactive! The aforementioned Bob Powers and Todd Levin are also on my 2007 HOTWATCH LIST!

Do you have any interesting holiday memories that you'd like to share?

My holiday memories are vague and hazy, but I do remember one Christmas in particular, when… ah, seriously, fuck East Brunswick.

What do you have on the horizon? Any specific plans on what videos you’ll be working on or anyone you’ll be working with soon?

Other than just going out and doing solo spots at other people’s shows and trying to re-sharpen those skills, my goal is to make as many funny short films and videos as I can. I want to take a bunch of my old sketches and monologues and turn them into video pieces, as well as write new stuff. Some will be more sharply produced and edited, and some will be just me talking into a camera, shirtless, smoking and drunk. My people (me) are currently in talks with Jack Kukoda’s people (him) to work together on a website that would feature videos by both of us, with the ambitious goal of posting a new video every week. If we can get it up and running, it should be a great way to spur us to make videos. Also, if I can come up with more monologue material I’m really proud of this year, I would probably try to do another one man show. But basically, my comedy plans include the same old routine of writing, blogging and performing as I’ve always done, minus hosting a weekly show. And plus videos. Incidentally, I miss my pal Prajan Nilapul and his little video rental store, “And Plus Videos”, which used to be just around the corner from my apartment. I liked his method of organizing all films by sexiness, regardless of genre.

As a final question; tell me a quick story about a time that you thought you were going to be killed or a time that you pulled of some shit you'd love at least one more person to know about. It's random I know, but we we're all fuck ups at one point or another and everyone's got this story. Let's hear yours.

Oh man, I've pulled some serious shit. Where do I start? The Miami story? The cliff-side threesome? The tale of Pissman and his Nuclear Vendetta? Hmm.

The fact is, I lead a tame life. For example, right now I'm answering these questions while I sit in a bar adjoining a movie theater megaplex in Toledo, Ohio, while my girlfriend and her family watch the latest Will Smith movie. The fact that I consider the notion that I delved deep into my reservoir of cajones to even mention the possibility of watching football alone in a bar instead of joining them to see ‘The Pyrsuit Yf Happyness’ and risking their ire to be an “action man” moment is proof enough that I am a milquetoast. What? No, I'd rather not rewrite that sentence. There simply isn’t time.

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Websites

www.andresdubouchet.com
www.myspace.com/andresdubouchet

Photos

Nick Chatfield-Taylor
Jonny Fido
Lisa Whiteman

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