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Dom Irrera discusses the Internet, Leno, Bill Hicks
Maxime Cote photo
Dom Irrera has done it all when it comes to comedy.
The veteran standup and Philadelphia native has performed on more television shows that I can count (including a little show called “The Golden Girls.” What’s up now, hipsters?!), not to mention festivals and movies. But he hasn’t performed in Austin for decades, not since a since a 1990 show at the University of Texas with Cher.
Wait, Cher?
Yup, he confirmed. “Me and Cher. A team.”
He’s returning to town (Cherless, this time) this Thursday through Saturday at Cap City.
And while it’s been a few years, Irrera knows the basics about Austin - cool oasis in Texas, big UT sports town. Oh, and he was friends with Austin hero Bill Hicks back in the day.
We chatted about comedy and his thoughts on the rise of podcasting and YouTube stars (the interview was edited for length and clarity).
I wonder if the money in standup is substantially different these days, because I hear guys talk about the 80s — that even hosts were paying their rent off club gigs and that comedy doesn’t pay as well now.
I haven’t been affected by it, luckily, but you’re right. I think the rich got richer. When I started out, I only (featured) a couple of times; I was very lucky. In San Francisco, I got $1,000 to (feature at a bar), plus air and hotel. It was only a couple hundred seater, so the guy was very generous.
(Nowadays) these guys, it’s amazing. I was working in West Palm Beach last year and these two guys drove from Omaha (to perform). Now, you know how expensive that had to be. And they had a place to stay, but they had no transportation, they didn’t get any transportation money, just $700 flat. That’s why a lot of the time it’s local acts (who perform before the headliner). But they think that what’s going to happen is that they’re going to get discovered.
I try to tell my friends who ask me about it: It’s about how many people you bring in. Because it’s numbers. Like these (club owners), they have to pay their bills — in their defense, it works both ways. But it’s funny to me because some of these (comedians), like at The Comedy & Magic Club (say), “This (club owner) doesn’t like me.” I go, “He doesn’t dislike you, he doesn’t care about you. I hate to break the news to you, but he doesn’t even have the emotion to have an opinion of you. What you are to him is, he knows that you’re funny on stage but you can’t make him any money.”
It’s not esoteric.
Right. I mean, God bless you in your artistic vacuum, but it’s not gonna help. That’s why he’s got some puppet act who’s headlining who drew people in.
Has it changed the way you do business, the rise of the Internet and clips on YouTube and all that?
Well it’s changed tremendously because there have been some guys who have basically become stars through the Internet. And a couple of them, once people (realized) that their strength was their computer, not their act — now it’s not all the time, sometimes there’s guys like Daniel Tosh and Russell Peters and guys like that who actually are charismatic and terrific acts. But there are other people — not to name anybody —they’ve been unmasked, as it were. (Mimicking a crowd member) “Wait a minute, this guy, he’s not as good as any of the other guys.” That’s pretty amazing to people, because they think of him as this big star.
That’s gotta be hard, if a kid gets famous off a few YouTube clips and then they’re asking him to headline and do a 45-minute or an hour headlining set. That’s a completely different skill.
Oh yeah, of course it is. And that’s why, when you come out to these clubs, they can be very misleading. Because everybody (performs for) 15 minutes and you may see somebody’s best 15 minutes next to (a veteran’s) worst 15 minutes or the 15 minutes that they don’t even have developed yet, and you think, “Geez, this (veteran) guy’s not that much better than him.” But then if you put them on the road for two-hour sets, there’s no comparison.
I remember that kid Dat Phan. Do you remember him? Really nice kid and he was one of those guys that was great to work with, because I was on a percentage and he drew (a good crowd). But he didn’t have an act. He told me, “Look I really appreciate you working with me.” I said, “Hey man, hopefully you’re making money because I know I am, it’s great.”
Because he drew big crowds.
Yeah he drew big crowds. And he told me, “Look, I only got 25 minutes. No matter how you cut it, I got 25 minutes.”
He was appreciative that somebody could fill the time and also draw (crowds) with him. It’s very unusual, because the fame was a higher level than the quality of what they could do.
That’s one of the things I love about standup, though. You still have to be able to do it, or you’re going to get exposed.
That’s what I love about it. Live standup is like playing basketball. You can’t say to somebody, “Well I usually score 25 points,” and the other guy goes, “Yeah but you haven’t scored at all tonight.”
That’s like saying, “I usually kill, but tonight it’s the crowd, they’re dumb.” You can’t “usually” anything. You either do it or you don’t, (comedy is) kinda pure. For want of a better word, it’s a meritocracy, for God’s sake.
(One of the Cap owners) was saying you like to travel with a pack of comics — Bill Burr and guys like that. Are most of your friends comics?
Not (all) my friends, but I have friends that are comics. I have a group of friends that I’ve been friends with since grade school and they’re in Philadelphia. Like one of them coaches Lafayette (College), up in eastern Pennsylvania. We all keep in touch.
But the comedian friends, it’s interesting how it’s developed for me. I never was conscious of it, but I tend to hang out with guys younger than me, just because we’re in the clubs together and they’re a lot more fun. The thing I never wanted to do is get into that bitter thing of, “Man, how come (Jerry) Seinfeld had a series and I didn’t ?” Well, maybe because he’s brilliant and he was with Larry David and God bless him, but I’m not gonna sit around and be bitter and talk about what I didn’t get when everything I have, I got through jokes.
Yeah it’s not cancer.
Yeah, I don’t think anything’s owed to me. I love it (that) a lot of college kids come and see me, for some reason. There was this one beautiful Asian girl in a place called The Stress Factory in New Jersey. And she was really laughing a lot in the front. She comes to say hi to me afterwards and I go, “How old are you?” She goes, “19.”
I go, “Did you know who you were coming to see?” She said, “Listen man, funny’s funny.”
That’s cool.
The thing is, that’s what perpetuates a career. If I had to depend on middle-aged goombahs to come see my shows, the guys from Brooklyn and South Philadelphia, I’d be dead in the water. I have to have some kind of appeal across the board to make a living.
Here in Austin, Bill Hicks is a legendary figure; he performed here a lot. Were you guys friends back in the day?
Oh yeah, we used to hang at the Westway Diner in New York, right around the corner from the Improv and had a lot of laughs together. We did the Rodney Dangerfield special in 1987 together. And it was cool because Bill was already good but he was nervous. And this guy, Rick Messina, who manages Tim Allen and Drew Carey, he goes, “Go talk to Hicks, he loves you. Go bust his balls, try to loosen him up.”
So I go back to Bill and I go, “Bill, you got your collar up, you got a cigarette. You can’t be nervous. It ruins your whole character. You, of all people, with your bravado…”
Then he starts laughing, and I start busting his chops, but I got him laughing. And then he was great, he was a great comedian.
It seems like there’s standup rebirth going on right now, with podcasts and other new media, I wonder what you’ve noticed.
I think so too. There’s so many outlets. I think Marc Maron has gotten a big break from (his podcast) lately. I love Marc and we did his podcast in Ireland two years ago, when it was just starting out, and now it’s like a real hip show. It gives people exposure and they don’t have to depend … the one thing I notice is the value of doing a late-night show is really diminished. I told Leno - and he got upset with me, but I told him at the time, “If I did every late night talk show in one week, one (Howard) Stern appearance would get me more people.”
Why is that? His fan base is more likely to go out?
No I think it’s partially that he’s popular — but I mean even now, he’s not nearly as popular (since moving to satellite radio), I was talking about when he was on regular radio. Now it wouldn’t have the impact. It would have some impact, certainly better than doing Leno’s show. Leno’s show has no impact.
It seems like back in the early 80s, 70s, if you had that one shot on “The Tonight Show,” weren’t you pretty much made as a comic?
Yeah, it’s completely different now. And first of all, it was Johnny Carson, not Leno. I mean, when’s the last time you heard a group of comedians go, “Did you hear what Leno said last night? I was on the floor!”
To me, I do Craig Ferguson. And my favorite ones on TV are Ferguson, (Jimmy) Kimmel and (Jimmy) Fallon. I think Leno and Letterman are just - they’ve just kinda had their day.
Dom Irrera
When: 8 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m. & 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday
Where: Cap City Comedy Club, 8120 Research Blvd.
Cost: $9 general admission, $12 reserved
Information: For tickets, call 512-467-2333 or visit capcitycomedy.com.
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