Jan. 24, 2006

All's fair
Cable special takes comic 'Beyond Pale'
By Mark Brown
[original article]

Jim Gaffigan already has more catchphrases on more T-shirts than most comedians get in a lifetime.

Perhaps the fan favorite is "Annnnd Cut!" which reflects Gaffigan's onstage wish that he could treat everyday life as a movie director.

Whenever someone's story got boring or his wife got mad at him, "Annnnd Cut!" would wrap the scene and get him out of it.

After observational humor got so passé that comedians made jokes about observational humor, Gaffigan, 39, brought a fresh twist to it that made it funny all over again. To wit:

"I watch a lot of T.V., I drink a lot of coffee, but you know what's really addictive? Heroin."

"You ever read a book that changed your life? Me neither."

"My wife has gotten really lazy, or as she calls it, 'pregnant.'"

Gaffigan has had specials on Comedy Central before and has a couple of CDs out, but he hits his stride on Sunday when his new hourlong Comedy Central special, Beyond the Pale , airs.

The title refers to a running gag through Gaffigan's career - his blond, pale appearance.

"Bald, blind and pale. I'm like a gigantic recessive gene," he says onstage. "My father was from Sweden and my mother was Elton John."

One key to Gaffigan's act is that he does a devastating running commentary on how the show is going, done in the voice of a female audience member. "Oh, that joke wasn't funny," he'll whisper sotto voce.

That device evolved over the years as he developed a character who was "someone who was just critical of everything . . . it's a fun way to improv elements of the show. It keeps the jokes I've done for years really fresh," Gaffigan says from his New York City apartment.

Gaffigan began making his living as an actor and comic in the '90s, long after the boom (then bust) of comedy clubs nationwide. Also, the observational humor that Gaffigan has mastered had pretty much been done to death by then.

"The observational thing is something that can be really vanilla," he admits. "You have to be an observational guy who's a little offbeat."

Gaffigan rarely uses profanity in his act, which makes it all the more funny when he does drop one once in a long while.

"I wanted to do jokes that could be funny without a curse word," he says. "I don't want to be portrayed as 'the clean comic' . . . cursing can make a story more interesting at a party or make a joke better in a comedy club. But it's nonetheless a crutch, a lack of enthusiasm. As a writer, you understand the construction of the piece is something you should take pride in."

"Occasionally I'll get an e-mail from a teenager saying 'Yeah, not enough cursing on your album.' The irony is on my last album I was encouraged to curse. I was like 'Really?' They said 'Yeah, it'll have greater appeal.' That's when I decided I'm gonna do my own thing from now on."

His acting appearances include everything from That '70s Show to The Ellen Show ; as well as the comedy Igby Goes Down to the George Clooney vehicle Three Kings .

While he's one of the funniest comics around, his current big project is Stephanie Daley , a Sundance Film Festival entry that has him playing the father of a 16-year-old girl whose baby dies.

Gaffigan believes comedy is doing better than ever; while clubs aren't as pervasive as in the '80s, the sheer number of outlets has grown, including the Internet, Comedy Central, satellite radio, late-night shows and MySpace.com, where Gaffigan and fellow comics have built great followings.

"We're going to look back and consider this a real kind of golden age of stand-up," Gaffigan says. "With Comedy Central, there's an entire generation that has been watching consistent large amounts of stand-up comedy since age 12 . . . people are exposed to so much more stand-up they can weed through the mediocrity and recognize when someone is doing something a little different."

About eight years ago he finally had enough success to quit his copy-writing job for an ad agency.

"I was angling to get laid off. In stand-up you go from making no money to making barely subsistence. Then, hopefully, you can make a living where you support a family. Then you're Larry the Cable Guy and you're a cajillionaire," he says. "I didn't want to be so dependent on doing some one-nighter in some drunken bar in New Jersey. I definitely took my time. In my peer group of comedians there were a lot of guys who got things way before me. I was the last one of the group to get national television shows. But when I finally did I was more than ready. I did Letterman and it led to Welcome to New York " (a short-lived sitcom that David Letterman produced, starring Gaffigan in 2000).

"I enjoy working. I enjoy writing. It's definitely a lot of minutiae that some people don't have to. Some people can write down an idea, do it onstage and the joke is set. I'm rewrite guy," he says. Honing his ideas is definitely more of a challenge now that he and his wife have two toddlers in their apartment. "Two kids, which might as well be like 30 kids, it's just chaos."

Beyond the Pale is getting the first national roll-out of Gaffigan's career. The Comedy Central show airs on Sunday and the Beyond the Pale CD and DVD (which expands the show from 42 minutes to a full 68) are in stores the following Tuesday.

"Those Blue Collar guys and Dane Cook have really changed (the landscape for selling comedy). It has changed what people purchase," he says.

Up next is a national tour of theaters that includes a tentatively scheduled date at the Paramount Theatre in Denver April 28. But that date could go away if a television pilot he did for a TNT series on hostage negotiators gets picked up.

Jim Gaffigan: Beyond the Pale

• When and where: 9 p.m. Sunday, Comedy Central

• Information: www.comedycentral.com

Mark Brown is the popular music critic. Brownm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2674