Andy Kindler can find something funny in anything. Just standing around waiting for an elevator or in line at the supermarket, the everyday world reveals a cavalcade of humor for Andy that goes unnoticed by everyone else. Andy has shared his observations on HBO, Comedy Central, and every year at Montreal’s Just for Laughs festival, where his famed State of the Industry Address draws standing-room-only crowds. His knack for making any situation funny and for making funny situations even funnier has earned him the role of correspondent for David Letterman, who’s sent Andy to space camp, to a life coach, and to spend the entire week at the 2008 Republican National Convention. In this Buzzine Q & A, Andy turns an ordinary phone call into a freewheeling romp through hilarity.

Ben Kharakh: How are you?

Andy Kindler: I had a bad cold. Did you hear about that?

BK: I did not. What sort of symptoms are you suffering from?

AK: It’s over now — lots of congestion and not just the usual Judaism-inspired congestion.

BK: What is this “Judaism-inspired congestion”?

AK: I don’t want to make any generalizations, but Jewish people have a long history with phlegm. The Hebrew language has a lot of khaa khaa sounds, which are aided by phlegm.

BK: I’ve got two of those sounds in my own last name.

AK: Exactly, and I’m a comedian who’s now entering that time in my career where I have to stress my Jewishness. I’m going to be bringing up a lot of the old saws about Jews — congestion and phlegm. I don’t want to use the word mucus because I don’t go blue, Ben. You go blue, Ben. You’re in line with the stuff that all the kids like — the low brow. What’s the current Farrelly Brothers film? Who makes movies like that now? American Pie seven through nine?

BK: The Epic Movie guys.

AK: The guys who make a parody within six months of a movie coming out. How long are these movies?

BK: I’ve never seen them, but I’ve seen the trailers, which is enough for me.

AK: It’s like, “Here’s our take on the movie you just saw.”

BK: Yes, but it’s also, “Here’s the movie you just saw in our movie,” since they like to take jokes verbatim from other films and use them in their own.

AK: That’s another thing. I never saw Walk Hard. I’m a big fan of criticizing things that I’m not familiar with. It wasn’t clear what they were parodying in that — the biopic of musicians, like Walk the Line or Ray? A lot of the jokes in Walk Hard are take-offs of the biopic, but wouldn’t you want to make your parody so that it’s a take-off of a genre that has a rich tradition so that everyone knows what you’re talking about? Did that make sense? Can you, in general, take things that I say and make them coherent? That’s what I would like.

BK: I just run it straight.

AK: Are you worried that I’ll sue you for personality infringement or incorrect paraphrasing? I don’t want to do that. Let’s not get into that. I don’t know how we got off on this tangent, although I’ve never been on a regular point long enough to have a tangent. Don’t you think you need to be making a coherent point to be able to say, “Oh, he’s going off topic.” Since I’m never on topic, I can never go off topic. That’s my pledge to you. Why am I giving pledges?

 

 

BK: Ever give money to a pledge drive?

AK: Absolutely, but not for a long time. When I was a kid, I actually gave money to the Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon. I’ve given to PBS on a couple of pledge drives.

BK: What program got you to pledge?

AK: I love them all. I’m not in the car enough to justify satellite radio, and I’m not going to come home and listen to satellite radio because I’m multi-platform. Once I’m out of the car, radio is over for me and I’m on a new platform. You might listen to the radio on the computer. Not me, my friend. Not me. I also can’t listen to AM talk radio because it’s all right-wing nut cases.

BK: When you say PBS, you mean NPR, right?

AK: Right.

BK: Okay, because I had just come up with a whole slew of questions about Keeping Up Appearances and Fawlty Towers.

AK: I never saw Keeping Up Appearances.

BK: The main character wants to be amongst high society and tells everyone her last name is Bouquet but it’s really Bucket. That’s one of the many ways in which she’s keeping up appearances.

AK: Is this a British show?

BK: Yes.

AK: It doesn’t sound as good as Fawlty Towers.

BK: Did that little excerpt put you off?

AK: A little bit. “My last name is Saucé, but people keep saying Saucer.” See how quickly I came up with another example of that? “No, no, it’s not Saucer like cup and saucer, it’s Saucé.” Good?

BK: Yes!

AK: Can you get me a job writing for that, or should I create another show like that? I want to start to cash in, Ben. I’ve done many of these interviews and I keep hoping that they will help me cash in.

BK: Maybe if you can come up with a few more of those on the spot, like two or three.

AK: It took me disregarding what you were saying for 30 seconds to come up with it. “My last name is Stíck; it is not Stick. It’s Andrew Stíck. Yes, it’s spelled S-T-I-C-K but it’s German.” “I am not an Idiot! My last name is Idiót.”

BK: When you said Stíck, I was wondering if that’s an actual thing so I looked it up. It’s a racket sport invented in the 19^th century.

AK: How do you spell it?

BK: Stické.

AK: I knew that. “My name comes from a racket sport invented in the 19^th century. It is not based on something as common variety as a portion of a larger tree.” Are you excited about the anniversary of Spike TV? Is that one of your favorite channels? Do you know what that is?

BK: Yeah, that’s supposed to be the TV channel for frat boys or something, right?

AK: Yeah, their branding must be working! That’s what they are, and they’re saying, “We’re not your brother’s Spike, your father’s Spike — we’re the new Spike.” They have a show called Manswers instead of “answers.” I’m trying to come up with my own shows for them — “Mandle with Care,” “The Man Man Show,” “Mankle”… I don’t know what the show would be — guy who hurts his ankle? “Mandrew Weil, MD” after that guy Andrew Weil who’s a holistic doctor. So he’s like the holistic guy, but he’s a tough and in-your-face doctor. He’ll kick your ass!

BK: These also sound like possible vehicles for Charles Manson.

AK: Why not that show? “The Charles Manson Show,” “Manson,” “Charles Manson’s Show.” “Hi, I’m Charles Manson.” You can’t get more male-oriented than that. How about that demographic? Men who try to kill people. They’re not being serviced by Spike TV.

BK: Does Spike TV really refer to themselves as “not your father’s Spike TV?”

AK: No, I made that up. But there was a channel called Ion and they actually said, “We’re not your momma’s Family Channel anymore.” I’ve never even heard of them and they’re already changing their brand. They’re not the brand you never knew about before. “We’re not who you thought we were when you didn’t know who we were. We’re not that anymore.” I read an interview with the head of Spike. He said, “In regards to the off-net CSI,” and off-net is when a channel sells its shows to be syndicated on another network, “it may seem incongruous, but that property was actually acquired while we were still TNN. It brings a tremendous number. Is it the perfect Spike show? No, but that doesn’t mean it totally conflicts with it either.” They run re-runs of CSI, people watch it, and he’s trying to justify it. “That’s sort of like a man-oriented thing.”

BK: What if they had a show where they have two bros solving crime?

AK: Two bros? That’s probably what they would want. You’re thinking like a programmer now. You’re thinking now like a person who’s moving up in the world. Did you know I’m going to be covering the Republican National Convention all next week on Letterman?

BK: Ohhh.

AK: Are you okay? “Ohhh. Ohhh.” Are you an Ed McMahon type now? “Ahh. Ohh.”

BK: See, I wouldn’t know exactly what an Ed McMahon type entails because I never got to watch Carson.

AK: A kid like you — you want to learn about the business or do you want to hang around in La-La Ville?

BK: See, I know so little that there was a part of me that thought that maybe you were doing a Johnny Carson impersonation right now!

AK: People are always confused during my impersonations because I do them so badly, do you know what I mean? Why do I keep saying, “Do you know what I mean?” I’m very annoying. It’s starting to get worse with me.

BK: How do you see yourself becoming more annoying?

AK: I see myself becoming more like The Friars. Once, my father asked me, when I was first starting in comedy, “Hey, do you want to become a member of The Friars? I’ll help you with the dues.” I told him I didn’t think there were a lot of deals going down in The Friars’ Club. “Hey, Jack Carter, come over here and listen to my idea.” I feel like I’m becoming more like an old-fashioned comedian. I wear big shoes. I don’t know what the Vaudevillians wore.

BK: We’ve come around full circle because we started off with you saying that you’re trying to focus in on your Jewishness, and now…

AK: See, I refer to my Jewishness every 20 minutes — almost like a nervous tick. When you first start comedy, you tend to rely on whatever it is that’s true about you as a person. Let’s say I had a head the size of a house, then your first joke would be: “Hey, I know what you people are thinking, ‘That guy’s got a head the size of a house! I wonder if that guy’s got people living in his head.’ I know what you people are thinking, ‘That guy should rent out his head as an apartment for extra cash.’” See how funny I’d be if that was my particular affliction? Jews love to talk about being Jews, accuse others of being Jewish, mock others who are Jewish… It’s like an inside joke amongst Jews to mock themselves and the religion. You never hear anybody proudly go, “Oh, yeah, I’m a Jew!” Hey Ben, if you ever hear anybody say, very enthusiastically, “Whoa, whoa, wait a second. I’m a Jew!” very happy about it, that’s when I’d get nervous.

BK: I’d say our chat here has definitely brought readers inside the mind of Andy Kindler.

AK: Is that the angle you’re going to take?

BK: That’s the angle I’ve always taken with you.

AK: Let’s open up the floodgates and see what comes out.

BK: Yes. I did have questions prepared.

AK: A few of them?

BK: Yes, because I write them in such a way that I am able to make the interview flow even without the answers being provided.

AK: So when you’re done with me, you’re just going to ask them to yourself?

BK: I’ll save these for next time, but here’s a taste: I was going to ask if Andy is short for Andrew.

AK: It is. When I was in college, I wrote poetry. I thought, “If I’m a poet, I think my name should be Andrew Kindler — a poem by Andrew Kindler.” Because who’s going to take Andy seriously as a literary figure? If I say, “Here’s a poem by Andrew Kindler,” it sounds pretentious. That should also indicate how awful of a poet I was. I wrote like I was trying to be T.S. Elliot. “A shoe, a shoe dangling on a string. What terror is this that befalls me? What unconscionable lie has the world enveloped me in? Oh, to think…” I like my poet voice. “Oh, to dream…” maybe that’s too Shakespearean. A couple of those lines could have been in Elliot’s The Love Song of Jay Alfred Prufrock. When I first started writing poetry, I thought you were supposed to write in a style of some sort, but then I came to realize that the worst style of poetry is the one where you’re trying to sound lyrical.

BK: So if things had gone a little differently, I could be talking to Andrew Kindler, the famous poet.

AK: That would have required me to be good at it, which I was not…and for poetry to be the sort of field that would require you to be on the phone for Buzzine. “This week in Buzzine, Poet Andrew Kindler talks about his Existential feelings about the changing seasons. Hey, coming up on Buzzine…” I don’t know why there’s a host on Buzzine that makes it sound like you’re an FM DJ. “I’m Ben Kharakh and I’m your Buzzine host.”

BK: How long did you pursue that?

AK: First year of college. That’s when I thought I’d one day end up smoking a pipe, wearing a scarf, and drinking herbal tea. I was an English Lit major. I like poetry a lot. Maybe I could write it now.

BK: Did you graduate before pursing your career in entertainment?

AK: I did. It’s not like poetry teams were trying to draft me, trying to get me to go pro. I loved college. I was in bands, theater, and when I left, I came to LA to actually be a musician. I went to Binghamton University. Have you heard of that — big school in New York?

BK: I am not familiar with it.

AK: Harvard? Would that be better? Princeton? I did my undergraduate at Harvard, my postgraduate at Princeton, and my doctorate at Yale. No, just Binghamton. That’s why I progressed so fast as a comedian. I tell kids, “Get that diploma.”

BK: What should someone who wants to be a comedian major in?

AK: Major in hilarity with a minor in satire. Make sure to take a lot of classes on puns.

BK: I’ve heard a few comedians look down upon puns.

AK: I understand that. I think that, in general, that’s a good thing. I like puns, but when you go into a coffee place and see “Thanks a latte” on the tip jar, that’s when you want to end wordplay as you know it. “It’s bean very good serving you. I can’t espresso how much…” Although, I have a joke where I say, “I’d like to open up and manage a club. I’d call it The Gammut. That way, when people ask me what I do, I can say, ‘I run the gamut.’” I think that, as a rule, we know it’s not going to go well, but in the hands of a master like me… Don’t quote me on that. Instead, use italics. 

 

Watch Andy’s three-night report on the Republican National Convention on Letterman starting Tuesday, September 2nd. Then tune in Wednesday at 10:30 pm when Andy appears on Lewis Black’s The Root of All Evil on Comedy Central. And if you happen to be in the Vancouver area September 18th through 20th, swing on by the Comedy Fest and see Andy live.

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