Christian Finnegan has been doing stand-up in New York for almost fifteen years. Many people might recognize him as one of the longest-running regulars on VH1's Best Week Ever, a show that he left recently in what he says was "one of those things where I think I broke up with them." This weekend he'll be headlining at Comix as he gets ready for the upcoming airing of a new Comedy Central special that will also be released as a DVD this May. He talked with us about why he doesn't like griping about how New York has changed, his beefs with the alt comedy world, and how becoming a better comedian might mean "killing" less.
You just taped a new special for an upcoming DVD and now have a rare opportunity to headline here in New York this weekend. Did you develop material differently for these shows? Certainly. I'm built for this more than I am a late night Saturday crowd because what I do is more narrative to begin with. Certain comedians are made to be club comics, they are guys that know how to mix it up with people and handle hecklers. It's like they almost wait for it because they know they can tear the hecklers a new one. I look at comedians like that the way I would look at a sword swallower. I'm amazed by it, but it's not what I do. I admire people more like Bill Cosby and George Carlin who are putting on a show and it's obvious that they are doing so. I'm sick of the illusion of, "Hey, I'm just a guy up here talking, man. I'm just coming up with this off the top of my head." Bullshit, man. Or that you don't know what's written in the notebook. You know what's in the notebook! We all know that isn't true. This is something you've written and prepared. So I don't think there's anything wrong with giving it that one-man show quality.
Have you ever considered putting up a one-man show? Yeah, sure. I was a playwriting major in college and that informs a lot of what I do onstage. It's definitely something that I think about, but most one-man shows are awful. I hate when I see a comedian do their shitty comedy and then put black-outs in it and call it a one man show. A one-man show is a completely different animal, and if I was ever to do something like that it'd be its own show full of brand-new material that would not be stand-up. It would be its own thing. But it is certainly something I'd like to do at some point. I'd also like to write a play and have someone else direct it and produce it. At a certain point you have to go where the wave takes you and understand you're not going to be able to do all the things you want to do. If I can have 10 good ideas and I can follow through with 6 of them then I'll be happy about that.
You came to New York way back when to go to NYU? Yeah, I grew up outside of Boston and went to NYU. It's not cool to admit that you liked NYU. I loved the education that I got there, but I don't love them as an institution. You don't have to love Walgreen's, you just go there because they have Aspirin. That's how I think about NYU. I got a lot out of certain teachers I had, but there really isn't a campus so you don't get that unified feeling. NYU is kind of the place for people who want to jump-start their living in New York lives. You're not an NYU student, you're a New Yorker.
Having been here now for over fifteen years, is there anything you miss from the New York you arrived to in the early nineties? I refuse to answer that question because I hate ruining things for people. I hate it when you start a job and you hear, "Man, you should have been here a few years ago, it was awesome then." If you just moved to New York, focus on the fact that it's the best it'll ever be. This is a great city and it's always changing, but embrace that. Just understand that New York is an animal unto itself and it should be appreciated eternally.
I came here at a very specific period of time where the first 4 years that I lived in New York the avenue of acceptability moved one avenue east. First it was, "Don't go past 2nd Avenue" Then they pushed it to 1st, then Avenue A. Then a few years later I was living between C and D and it was no big deal at all. Now I couldn't afford to live at a place over there.
What are some of your favorite spots for going out around town? Bistro 33, it's a guy who used to be a chef at Nobu and opened up a place in Astoria right down the street from us. A place called Local, also in Queens. When I lived in the East Village, I used to go to 7B and Ace Bar.
Honestly, my favorite date night with my wife is to go out to dinner and go play MegaTouch at a bar. Our favorites are Magic Charms, Word Dojo, Hard Candy, Monster Madness and Photo Hunt (of course). We don't go out to as many shows as I'd like, because we're in comedy clubs so much that we get burnt out.
How about just favorite spots to get away to? Conservatory Gardens. It's all these manicured gardens and it's gated off from Central Park, you have to keep quiet when you're in there and it is very serene.
I used to live on Jane Street and when I was walking up West 4th Street at four in the morning I believed that no better view of New York could be found. Those are the things I love about New York. It's not where I live now, although we have our places that we like. For a few years I lived up on 107th and Columbus and I also have a lot of fond memories of that place because it felt like my own neighborhood, it didn't feel like I was staying in a youth hostel. Everything may be in Spanish and you may not understand it, but you feel like you're a part of it. Whereas, when I lived on Avenue B and 13th I felt like an interloper, like all the other douche bags passing through.
Do you have a favorite "only in New York" story? About 8 years ago I was doing a show by Allen and Stanton at Surf Reality and when it was over I went to this pizza place on the corner. I was sitting there eating a slice when this diseased baby rat staggered up to me, it had obviously eaten some rat poison, it was fucked up, greasy and gross. The guy behind the counter walked out and whacked it with a dustpan like it was nothing. Two feet from my elbow and he doesn't even turn and say sorry or, "Would you like another slice?"
So tell me more about the shows at Comix this weekend. These are some of my last big New York shows before the DVD comes out. They are big because I'm making them big to drum up support, to get a ground swell of 14 people giving a shit so that when the DVD comes out maybe it will not drift off into the ether. You never know with these things. Some of them come out and make a difference and some of them don't.
I shot it in October in Philly at the Trocadero Theater. It's an old place that used to be an opera house and then was a burlesque theater. I was walking around trying to find a place to do my show and I saw this place and I really dug it because it was a place that used to be beautiful and wasn't anymore. It was like a classy lady that had fallen on hard times. It has the high-brow and low-brow mix that is like what I do comedy wise. I mean, yeah, I do dick jokes, but they are very intricately worded dick jokes. I talk about pretentious, philosophical things, but eventually I bring it back around to a dick joke. I don't do it on purpose, but that seems to be the way I operate. I just felt it was a good marriage of where I'm at stand-up wise.
I hate when I see a third-tier comedian doing their special in some 1,500 seat theater on Comedy Central and I'm like, "Really? You bussed a bunch of homeless people to make it look like you're a big fucking star." I've always hated how that looks. This place seats about 450 and we did two shows. It was nice and intimate. And the response you get at a taping is always different than a regular show. They are more consistent and reliable, but you never get the peaks that you get at a live show. They'll clap, but they are slightly reserved.
What's your personal standard for keeping your material honest? I think you're a hack if you can't answer in the affirmative when you say, "Would I laugh at that joke the first time I heard it?" If the answer is no but you still tell it, then you're a hack.
I've made a concerted effort to never lie onstage. Where you have to change it sometimes is with time frames and some specifics. For instance, I have a joke about meeting a guy that was a nudist and the truth of the matter is that the guy runs a nude comedy show and he'd asked me to be in it. And to get up there and talk about that would be a little inside baseball, no one wants to hear that. But we had this conversation about nudism in general, where I was saying that I would never ever want to do that. He said, "Well you're making it sexual. Nudity doesn't have to be sexual." And my initial feeling was that it should be. Nudity should always be sexual or what is the point of nudity? That was the kernel that I wanted to write the joke about, but to give it the explanation of, "Well I was at the PIT last night...." No one wants to hear about that. So you shorten it and it becomes a story about meeting a nudist. It feels self conscious and pretentious to me to maintain a verisimilitude to that degree. Just entertain. Get to the joke. If you believe in the point, get to it and don't sweat the details.
Sometimes I go to shows at somewhere like Sound Fix and feel like there's a vibe in the room where the crowd is almost too hard to please if that makes sense. When I do too many shows at places like Sound Fix and Slipper Room, I'm like fuck these people. This isn't reality. These aren't real people who have real lives and concerns. These are people that are in a massive circle-jerk who have a common uniqueness. They all think that they are so exotic and strange, but they are really all subscribing to an archetype whether they realize it or not. I find just as much homogeny in the New York alt-comedy scene as I do in St. Louis. It's just a different vibe.
That's a pet peeve I have with these people that think of themselves as arbiters of what comedy is. They don't know anyone that doesn't live in New York and don't realize that there are lots of cool people that live in other cities. The people in Minneapolis are just as cool, they just aren't as media savvy. Our filter is so thick for media bullshit that a lot of time what we're laughing at is somebody making fun of stuff. There are a lot of people in this country that are very smart and cool, but wouldn't find you making a joke about somebody getting a .8 hilarious. Lots of people have real lives that aren't involved in the entertainment business but are very smart. I just don't have the delusion that this is the only place where smart people live.
Is part of the problem that those rooms have too many people who are comedians themselves in the audience? Yeah, that's part of it. Say you want to be a comedian, but you find most comedy abhorrent and loathsome. Which was certainly the way I was when I started. I hated stand-up with a passion. If you'd asked me in college what I thought of stand-up comedians, there were not enough curse words I could have given you. I was very comedy saturated person on some level. I loved comedy when I was a kid, but I came of age in that awful jacket-with-the-sleeves-pushed up era, you know. It was all slick and no substance and then it became a lot of substance and no slick. I don't think there's anything wrong with a little bit of slick. Especially because a lot of the times when it is "all substance," it's not all substance. It's horseshit passed off as substance. I really think it's too many people here work in TV or in advertising and they're obsessed with it. We're all so weened on parody of cliches that it is hard sometimes for a lot of New Yorkers to just appreciate something organically. Which is why I really admire people like Louis CK who can just break through that and be like, "I'm going to talk about my daughter." Which on the face of it, what could be lamer to a New York audience? "What, you're going to talk about your kids? Eww." But, fuck it. I'm going to do it anyway and the sheer force of my talent will win you over.
I remember seeing Greg Giraldo go up at UCB in front of a room full of people who were just not predisposed to liking a sort of classic stand-up comedian. But by the sheer force of him being so funny they were just dying by the end of the set. He gave them permission to just put away their hatred of stand-up for a minute and just enjoy. He's just that good. New York is like a dog that has been beat too much. New York audiences are very defensive with anything that feels like a shitty relationship. We're all so defensive.
I'm the same way when I'm seeing someone and I say to myself, "Really? Are you really making this joke? I hate what you're doing right now." But I aspire to be more open, to see someone and what to hear what they have to say. Maybe seven times out of ten I'm going be disappointed and think they're some tired hack that doesn't have any job skills and wants to try stand-up because they have nothing else to do, but three out of those ten times I may enjoy what this person is saying.
You talked to us about four years ago and said that you felt like you were still discovering yourself, becoming comfortable with who you are as a performer. Do you feel like you've arrived there by now? I feel much more comfortable in what I want to do. To the extent that I sacrifice a couple of good sets every now and then. I feel like I spent the first 7 or 8 years doing comedy learning how to just do well. And the more I kind of isolate what I want to do specifically, and what I want my comedy to be like. That might not appeal to as many people on the broad sense, but the people it does appeal to it will really appeal to. I was playing at this club in Marco Island, Florida this past week and there was a table of eight Ed Hardy t-shirt wearing douche bags. And 3 or 4 years ago I would have had the material I could have done to make them like me, but fuck them. I don't care now. I'm going to do what I do. There's enough in what I do for them to enjoy it, but it requires them coming to me a little but more. I don't feel like going to them as much, at least in terms of the topics I'm talking about. I would much rather have a premise that you may not find funny on the base and make you think it's funny, rather than be like, "What are these people going to laugh at?" That's the evolution of a lot of comedians. At a certain point liking yourself is more important than doing well.
Other than being snatched out to LA for a job, are there any other conditions you'd consider leaving New York? No. If money somehow became a non-issue, maybe I'd be somewhere else but still have a place here. Maybe I'd live in Austin for a quarter of the year. Everyone there seems smart and relaxed, which is so rare. You get either realized stupid people or smart, tense people.
I have three goals. One is to surround myself with people I love and respect and to work with people I admire. Two is to have a career and do work that I respect. And three is to fly in private planes. I'm finding that the third is hard to reconcile with the first two.
