Benkharakh.com

By Ben Kharakh

Andy Kindler can't stand bad comedy; he's practically made it his personal crusade to expose it wherever he can. Andy takes his fight not just to television or comedy club audiences, but to the industry itself at Montreal's famed Just for Laughs Festival. In 1995, Andy delivered a live rendition of the Hack's Handbook, an article he wrote for National Lampoon. The event was a huge success and Andy was asked to return the following year and The State of the Industry Address was born. "The festival's 25 years old and I've been doing this speech for 12 years," says Kindler, "So I'm only half as irrelevant as the festival. If the festival was a dinosaur, that makes me a wooly mammoth."

Since starting giving the speech in 96, who are some of the names, organizations, and programs that have popped up most frequently?
Early on it was all Leno all the time. I had all sorts of things to say about him. Whoopi Goldberg has made many appearances. Robin Williams was there from the beginning for me. In the first few years I'd talk to the festival people after giving the speech and they'd say, "Hey, can you maybe do a little bit less about Jay Leno next year?" I made a lot of Carrot Top jokes, but then, after a while, how many jokes can you make about Carrot Top? But things have changed. When I first started the speech, a lot of it was about how bad sitcoms were, but now there's hardly any sitcoms left on TV. I sometimes wonder, "What if there aren't going to be any bad things?" But then something like Last Comic Standing will happen or in the late 90's they gave Emeril Lagasse a sitcom and Bette Midler tried a sitcom. There's always great stuff like that to talk about.

What was so notable about Emeril?
Only in show business would you not need any previous experience. If I went to a restaurant and tried to get a chef's job, they'd ask, "Do you have any experience?" But not in show business. "Have you ever acted before? Come on in! It's just TV. You can do it."

There might not be as many sitcoms, but The Geico Caveman show must provide you with a dozen sitcoms worth of material.
I heard that they were re-tinkling the pilot. They replaced one of the leads, were re-shooting it, and concentrating more on the cavemen's back-story. I would have loved to have been there for that meeting. "Maybe we need to know more about the cavemen so we care more about them because something about this show seems very one-dimensional." Usually when you pitch a show to the networks they ask, "Where do you see these characters in five years?" Maybe they'll be slightly more evolved cavemen?

I actually got a hold of some leaked plotlines. In the first episode, Ungapotchie puts candy in Ug-Ug's club, so a routine night of clubbing his wife over the head turns into a piñata of laughs when candy flies all over the place. It's pre-hysterical! Every plot line is based on them hitting their wives over the head with a club. In one episode, Caveman learns a lesson about intimacy when he stops clubbing his wife and starts talking. In episode 405, Grouchy learns that he can get more flies with honey than with clubbing. He also finds that it's easier to sneak up on his wife when she's sleeping and clubs her over the head. Did you know that historically Cavemen were the first people to refer to their mates as their wives? How come the professor caveman can make a club out of a chunk of wood but he can't think of a way to get out of the cave?

Who are some of the newer offenders?
Wayne Brady. He does a show in Vegas where he Improvs the whole thing. I saw him do this on The View. He asks for a performer, and the audience says, "Rod Stewart," and then he asks for an occupation, and the audience says, "Electric Company Meter Reader," and he sings, "Have I told you lately, 'Hey, I'm here to read your meter?'" And that's the show that's currently selling out Vegas!

I know you talk about Dane Cook a lot. When did he first come onto your radar?
Last year I literally did twenty minutes on him. People would start telling me about him and I went to his website and was just fascinated. I love it when you visit a website and there's music that goes, "I wanna be on Danecook.com!" I was really fascinated by the bells and whistles. I started watching the clips and then I went crazy about watching Tourgasm. Last year I acted out all of his bits and mentioned all the traditional associations between comedians and orgasms. I'll never forget when I was on my Jizzerzise Tour, my Jerkoffapoluza. This year Sony is selling two of his rejected pilots for 14.99. If there's money in failure, I'm going to be rich! I've got tons of things that didn't go anywhere that I can release.

Dane Cook got huge using the Internet. How else does the web contribute to bad comedy?
Every technological tool that's been invented can certainly contribute to making things worse and often does. That's what's so great about technology- you can get horrible things quicker. If someone like Youtube starts up and you can put funny videos on it, then everyone's going to try to crack their brother over the head just because it looks funny. Like an Internet virus, bad comedy can get to people who like bad comedy quicker. It can also be used as a positive tool, but I haven't figured out how yet.

Have you been able to take advantage of Youtube?
There's footage of me on Youtube making fun of Dane Cook at Vancouver. People commented, "Nice video quality." Like I planed it that way. "Let me do a three cell phone camera shoot." Another person wrote, "Don't quit your day job." Stand up is my day job, so I'll continue with that. Thank you for your recommendation.

Youtube certainly played a roll in the Michael Richards incident. That probably wouldn't have gone on for as long as it did if people couldn't replay that clip whenever they wanted.
Everybody was upset with Michael Richards, but where's Carlos Mencia's apology? Where's Lisa Lampanelli's letter of resignation. I love the way when he went into the rant and he realized that he's said something horrible that he tried to make it into a Lenny Bruce sort of thing, "Words, words, words," that made me laugh. What's sad about it is that he was such a brilliant stand up. The world has truly lost a brilliant stand up. After the Michael Richards thing happened, Andy Dick was at the Improv was making fun of it and he used the N-word, but people got upset and he had to apologize for it, but then I was thinking what if through out history comics had to apologize for their acts? Henny Youngman would have to say, "Henny Youngman would like to apologize to anyone who was offended by his joke. When he said, 'I got a fur coat for my wife and it was a pretty good trade.' He did not mean that he traded his wife for a fur coat. That was just a joke. He's very much in love with his wife and they are, in addition, both animal activists. And when Henny Youngman said that his wife tried a mudpack for five days and that she looked great, but then the mud fell off, that was, again, just a joke. Mrs. Youngman is a very attractive woman and she only uses facial products as directed."

Mencia certainly has a lot to apologize for.
He's always saying, "I'm just saying what everyone's thinking," yeah, well, that's what Hitler said too. That was his excuse. There was an article about him in LA City Beat about how it seemed like he was making fun of the mentally retarded because he does that, "Deet tee dee," noise. In the article he said that originally the joke was about regular stupid people, not retarded people, but then he went on to talk about how he was in a class where kids were slightly retarded and that they claimed that they actually do that when someone doesn't get an answer right. He conclude by saying that they're slightly retarded and they get it and that's all that matters. So, what he's saying is that as long as the slightly retarded get his act, he's happy.

What about the accusations of joke stealing?
I don't support joke stealing, but Carlos is already so horrible without the stealing just as an entity. I don't know who's watching him. Maybe it's all smoke and mirrors.

Did Larry the Cable Guy make an appearance?
I went after Larry the Cable Guy. I said, Spoiler alert: in the Larry the Cable Guy movie Delta Farce he thinks he's flying to Iraq but he ends up in Mexico. What's more hilarious right now than the war in Iraq and the painfully divisive immigration issue and who better to tastefully navigate those water than Larry the Cable Guy?

What do you think of Blue Collar Comedy?
I've always been a big fan of the categorization of comedy.

If you had to put yourself in a comedy category, where would you put yourself?
I'm Holier Than Thou comedy. Whenever I go out for an evening of comedy, I always say, "I want comedy tonight that comes from a specific region of the country." I relate so much to the idea of what the Blue Collar people are talking about. Where you're…if you live…what are they saying? I don't know. Are they still on the air?

I don't think they're making new episodes.
We said goodbye to a few shows this year, like King of Queens. We hardly knew yee. Well, we did know yee, but yee did not make us laugh. We won't miss yee and we can barely remember yee already. And we say goodbye to the show Scrubs this year. It's still on the air, but I'm saying goodbye to it.

The Half Hour News Hour was also canceled.
They really knew how to stick it to the non-man. They did a whole bit about the ACLU. Thanks for finally going after the ACLU! Those people trying to stick up for civil liberties, let's take them down. The right wing does comedy just as well as they invade countries that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Would you prefer for all the bad comedy to get canceled leaving you with less things to joke about or do you like having lots of bad comedy to mock?
I don't wish for bad things to happen, but if bad things stopped happening I wouldn't have as much to talk about. I do enjoy making fun of horrible things, so I kind of hope it never ends. Of course, I don't want to be known as the comic who only talks about other comics, unless there's a lot of money in it. In that case, bring it on!