Comedian Interviews

Here are some comedian interviews in Harp magazine.

David Cross

“I still stand by Freak Show,” states Cross. “My poor attitude is partly to blame; I may not have been the easiest person to work with at that time. But Comedy Central can be blamed for the rest.”

Patton Oswalt

Asked to pinpoint where it all went wrong—or right, depending on your p.o.v.—Oswalt points to a scene from his childhood. It’s Sunday at St. Catherine of Siena, the church Mrs. Oswalt tried to get her son to swallow. Oswalt, not yet the ostensibly raging atheist with a shit-tipped blow dart for every pious prick, showed up in what you might call his Sunday Okay; he was lookin’ sharp, but not sharp enough for some. “There was an elder in the church that complained about me not dressing nice enough,” Oswalt recalls, “and it turned out to be Robert Hanssen, that spy that was selling secrets to the Russians. He was flagging me for not dressing nice enough, and he was trying to take out our country.”

Eugene Mirman

Mirman created his own “comedy” curriculum at Hampshire College, with his thesis a one-hour standup he wrote, performed, produced and promoted. “I never understood why anyone thought what I did was so impractical,” he observes. “We were all going to temp for several years until some of us gave up on our dreams.”

Flight of the Conchords

Clement and McKenzie were roommates in Wellington, New Zealand, when they began writing together around 1998. Clement had been doing comedy with the Humourbeasts and McKenzie was playing music, but at a time “when we didn’t have much work on,” Clement says they picked up guitars to learn David Bowie and Leonard Cohen songs. “We’d never remember them,” Clement says, “so we started making up our own songs.” Although these had funny parts, they weren’t necessarily comedy songs. They played them at an open-mic comedy night anyway.

And from the same issue - Rilo Kiley.