Emmett Montgomery
written by Eva H. Holman
It is the name of a professor. Or a Lawyer. Or one of those purebred aristocrats. “When I first started out, people would say, ‘Love your Emmett character. What’s your real name?’”
When Emmett Montgomery, 30, takes the stage, he is a character. He’s not the loving boyfriend, youngest of six boys from a Utah Mormon family, and welcoming but decidedly well-ranked chieftain of the Seattle comedy scene. Emmett has many, many stage selves and that, over appetizers and CEO martinis at his favorite happy hour, didn’t seem so strange to me when he explained them. After a few hours, all this madness seemed to connect to philosophy, to truth, to Mormonism. It was only later, when I looked at a quote I had scrawled in my notebook – “I found myself drinking beer and making puppets all day” – that I realized how easy it is to be sucked into Emmett’s world, nod along and have it all make sense in that moment – and then later wonder exactly what the fuck it was he was talking about.
There isn’t much of anything that Emmett wouldn’t present as being the de facto, self-explanatory stuff of life. Like when he mentions to me that “I have a unicorn suit in my closet that I can’t wear.” Because…it’d be weird? No. “Because I got too fat.” Statements like these define Emmett’s comedy – casually truthful, logical within the rules of that particular world. When I requested an interview with him, he politely thanked me and then included a link to the comedy show Get Lowded, adding, “This is the post-apocalyptic drinking game/prize giveaway/variety show I write for.” Thanks for clearing that up.
It is hard to define Emmett. At times he’s deadpan like Steven Wright, at others, a maladjusted man-child like Mitch Fatel. And he looks kind of like the Dude – to the extent that he has been known to elicit the statement “Fuck you, Lebowski!’” from particularly emboldened drunks.
With his solid build and shoulder-length light brown hair that frames his face in waves, Emmett does seem to channel a particular Dudeness. He’s a chill guy. Unfazed, unexcitable, slow and purposeful in his movements and in the rhythm of his jokes.
But wait – then there’s the angry Unicorn. And the clowns who eat children. And the dead boy and dead girl that are actually paper bag hand puppets who then make out. “He works that high-tension wire between the pure/lovey and the awful/wicked,” says Brendan Kiley, an editor for Seattle’s weekly paper, The Stranger. “That’s where comedy lives – in the tension between those two.” For the record, the unicorn suit was for a character of his, named Moondancer, a “bitter unicorn who hated all things joyous,” says Daniel Carrol, a comedian and co-founder of the People’s Republic of Komedy. The unicorn is angry at the world. And when he passes wind, “it smells like flowers and people want to dance.”
So depending on what night you catch him, his set could be either mellow musings or, as Carroll put it, “creepy and weird... and maybe super fucking creepy and weird!”
In dreary Seattle, one would think that a Wright-esque cynicism would rain supreme. Instead, the city is home to a thriving offbeat comedy scene and many a self-described “Post-apoplyctic beach party.” As one of the founders of the People’s Republic of Komedy, host of Pagliacci’s Pizza’s famous comedy show, and a writer of another alterative comedy show Get Lowded, Emmett has established himself as one of the kings of Seattle’s alterna-funny scene. “Emmett very much carries a veteran status within Seattle comedy,” said Chas Roberts, a co-producer of Get Lowded. “He is often looked to by other comics like the cool uncle to whom people go for advice on their jokes or premise.” Roberts also described Emmett as a “surreal storyteller who wonders flights of fancy on the backs of unicorns.” Here in Seattle, the two attributes are not contradictory.
The night before Emmett and I met, he had performed at the Seattle International Comedy Festival at the Comedy Underground (technically, it was international, as there was at least one Canadian). Emmett affected a nervousness that was quiet and commanding, beginning, as usual, with silence. “I was cleaning my apartment and I found a door to another dimension,” he murmured finally. “It was pretty convenient because my toilet was broken at the time.” Beat. “So, I’m pretty successful, obviously,” he transitioned with just a nervous laugh and just a hint of a pre-pubescent voice crack, ‘The Dude meets Mary Katherine Gallagher, I scrawled after his performance.
Emmett didn’t place in the competition that evening. He remained, however, an active audience participant throughout the evening, forgoing the barside chatter and mingling that forms the white noise of most comic performances. Just four years earlier, he had begun his comedy career at the very same club.
Emmett did not grow up thinking that he wanted to do comedy. He developed his stage rhythms and beats as a spoken-word artist in Salt Lake City. His mother first nurtured his offbeat sense of humor, and perhaps why to this day he uses his comedy to return the favor to his loved ones. Last year, Emmett’s birthday present to his mother was a web video entitled “Clown Car” which he performed in a stripped-down form at the Seattle International Comedy Competition. It is a puppet show and homage to his mother, whom he likens to the vehicle (“She’s kind of like a clown car, just a cute tiny little vehicle that popped out one hideous freak after another”) and then thanks her for being a great mom. Emmett’s soft side surfaced many times during the interview, whether he was making plans with his girlfriend (“I love you….see, it’s on the record now.”) or describing a particularly intriguing member of the audience (“there was a baby that was so exciting. How often can a comedian perform for a baby?”)
In 2002, he moved to the Pacific Northwest, spending time in Bellingham and the San Juan Islands before settling in Seattle – carrying with him ‘a bag of books and bag of clothes.” He had few means of supporting himself and a questionable living situation. “I lived in what I guess you could call a crack house…I mean, because there was a crack dealer there,” Emmett recalled. It was at this time that Emmett hit an impasse, living behind the strip mall where he worked, feeling lonely and frustrated, and making himself various puppet friends. True to a pattern that helps him through writing blocks to this day, visual art became the inspiration for change. He knew he had to do art. “I gave my boss a copy of Siddhartha* with my resignation letter…and then I was unemployed for two months.” A short time later, he tried his hand at his first open mic. By then, he was working 70 hours a week and the stage gave him “three minutes to vent,” he recalled. “I wasn’t funny but it felt really good. Like, this is a failure that I can do.”
The former audio geek eventually found work at Pagliacci Pizza in Seattle, working the night shift answering phones before eventually moving up into management. “the ultimate golden handcuffs,” observes Emmett. “They are ok with the fact I am consistently trying to find ways to quit my job.” Emmett hosts the comedy night at the local chain’s Broadway location.
In 2005, Emmett formed the People’s Republic of Comedy with Kevin Hyder, Daniel Carroll, and Scott Moran. Hyder hosting a rock show at Seattle’s Sunset tavern which eventaully became the monthly comedy show Ballard Follies. They then began a show called Laffhole, eventually calling themselves the People’s Republic of Komedy as a cross promotion of Hyder’s coffee shop, the People’s Republic of Coffee. Emmett, like Hyder and Carroll, “took turns booking and hosting and doing longer sets at our shows that we were being offered at comedy clubs,” Carroll recalls. They have produced over 130 alternative comedy shows in venues around the Seattle area and the comedians experiment with unconventional material. Kiley, who has covered PROK in The Stranger, describes them as “fundamentally altering the landscape of comedy in Seattle,” playing bars instead of theaters, telling “intellectually engaging” stories and anecdotes onstage instead of the “wocka-wocka-setup-punchline formula most comics shove down their audiences’ throats.”
In 2007, Emmett responded to an ad put out by Chas Roberts for another comedian in his show Get Lowded, a comedy show started by him and Jackson Lowe. Emmett simply plays “the post apocalyptic Emmett Montgomery,” Roberts said. “While he has the ability to play the classic standup role of the joketeller, his strongest suit is the surreal storyteller who wonders flights of fancy on the backs of unicorns. His humor is a teddy bear with a human face.”
What does the future hold for Emmett? The future for Emmett a few days out from our meeting included “a drag show where I play the king of the future.” But he has no intention of leaving his “comedy home” any time in the near future. “I went to this punk rock drag queen show” recalls of his first week in Seattle. “Art was everywhere....it seemed like a city where I could do something.” Now, he can perform comedy in Seattle seven nights a week, though he has played New York and even returns to Salt Lake City to perform comedy. For now, though, he continues be an elder of Seattle’s alterna-comedy scene, or at least chief unicorn, and to amuse audiences and inspire their reverence. Perhaps it is put best by Bengt Washburn, fellow Seattle comedian and longtime friend, puts it: “Like rednecks in the MOMA standing reverent and sheepish in front of a Damien Hirst. They feel like they are probably outnumbered so they shut up and behave.”
Eva H. Holman is a writer from Seattle. Visit her website at EvaHolman.com.
For more on Emmett, visit myspace.com/emmettcomedy.