Dave Da Dude

Just for Laughs exclusive - Dave Attell interview Part 2 - Class ...

CAC: One of the things you do incredibly well is that you have these trademark comparisons, for example, the night I saw you in the Cellar you made a comparison with a guy in the crowd who walked by with his friend and said, "Oh look, a male model, and the guy that does his website," you've described Insomniac as " Wild On for ugly people," and when you did my podcast before you said it was "Like Comic Con without the costumes."   DA: Analogies are for people who don't actually have time to write jokes, that's what I do. "Hey, you look like a whatever," that's crowd work, it's all that is.  There's no science to it.  I guess that's just from the New York scene.  All the clubs in New York are loud and all the people are moving around and talking and stuff like that.  If you go on late you see a lot more of it.  That's not just New York, that's being on the road all these years, you see all these different situations and you kind of have to make the best of it.  But the problem is that eventually people want to hear what you have to say and then you're like, "Ut oh, I wish somebody would yell something."  But it does break up the flow and I like that.  I kind of got used to that it's never going to be people sitting there like a recital and that you have to make the best of the situation.  Now these kids are better at being quiet, they're on their Droids and Blackberries the whole time, so it's kind of different.  They're quiet, but they're networking and doing something else while they're there.  So you feel like you're holding them there, it's weird.   But that's cool you're into Comedy, man.  4 years in is tough.  That's like the make or break year.  How old are you now? DA: Alright, well as you keep doing Comedy you'll think about all those other jobs that are slowly... You know you get too old for the other jobs.  For me it was like, "Alright, I'm 26, I can still join the Navy, and maybe take like the police test."  And then you get to 36 and you're like "Alright, I don't know, I can maybe go to Devry or something.  I may be too old for those city jobs I was hoping for.  I definitely can't go back to school, that would just be weird." DA: I think that people are trained in their minds to see what people look like in a movie.  As ugly as we think we are, we're not.  In movies, whenever you watch movies you're like, "I don't understand this woman's problem, she's really hot," or, "This guy could never be alone, look how hot this guy is."  I guess we connect with them somehow, because they're the best of us.  We can talk about movies all day long, but that's not gonna help us get in one.  I was never into acting, so if you're going out for acting, it's a lot of driving to an audition to where you get to see people who you've either done Comedy with or have seen on TV, and it's really weird to sit there waiting.  It's like, "Oh my God, that guy has to audition for stuff? Wasn't he on Welcome Back Kotter?  or House, or something?"  Hollywood is great for like 35 people.  Everybody else is struggling their asses off all the time.  And for movies and stuff like that, I don't know how people do them because not only do you do the movie, but then you have to promote the movie for a whole year if you're the star of the movie.  If you're like a loser, like me, a guy who gets 2 lines, you can kind of walk away, that's great.  But for people where it's their movie they gotta promote it and keep talking about it and talking about it.  It really is like reverse therapy.  It's hard to be a comic there too, there's only a few clubs.  But Chicago, back when I first started, working Chicago is always great because it's a great drinking town, you got Zanies, the Improv... the Lakeshore Theater was really cool. The cool thing about Lakeshore was that they never knew if they could pay you because they're struggling to keep the club open.  It was kind of cool because you never knew if you were doing a show or a benefit.  Chicago is a really good Comedy town.  It's rare that I got to perform in Chicago.  I give you credit man, it's hard to start in a town where there's only a few clubs.