greg barris
written by Ken Carlson (May/June 07)
“Hypocrisy pisses me off. A lot of the stuff I talk about deals with hypocrisy. Everyone’s kind of a hypocrite. I don’t mind apathy so much. I don’t care about a lot of stuff. I’m not physically acting on stuff that makes me angry. But, why do some people care about the minutia? Why is that any of your fuckin’ business? There are people fuckin’ dying somewhere; there’s better things to worry about than ‘nappy headed ho’s’? There are better things to worry about than that! Why do you spend your time and energy on that? It’s bullshit.”
Time and energy are two items that Greg Barris has got. At 24, he’s making some noise in the downtown clubs with his distinctive style. His touring group of comedians, Heart of Darkness, performs regularly in the city and is making name for itself in California & Florida.
His disposition on stage is that of a haggard stranger who walks up to your campfire at night to tell you about the madman who still haunts these woods and throttles his victims with his bare hands. He’s a dramatic storyteller and possesses many of the qualities of Bill Hicks’ early work: confidence, belief in his message – that element of an axe to grind combined with the frustrated acceptance of absurdity that brings out his humanity and the laughs.
I sat down with him for a couple of beers at LOCAL 136 on the Lower East Side.
“Maybe I’m a little angry. Right now I’m really angry. I think I’m able to channel bad stuff from my life into my act. Maybe not immediately. Anytime I’ve been really depressed, the best stuff comes from that. You get drunk and you do some writing. All the writing, writing, writing clears your head out from all this crap to whatever’s funny about it.”
“If you have a tragic event, it brings you closer to your core. It brings you inward to take a look at all the shit. When it comes to writing, you wake up and try to write something to clear your head. You get some funny ideas that way; or at least get a better understanding. I’ve been pretty funny the last 15 days. In conversation with people, in doing shows, I’ve been hilarious. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism. You hit a low point and it’s like, eh, this is pretty low and it’s pretty funny.”
“Heart of Darkness show. Florida Atlantic University, 2006. My little brother was going to school there. We were trying to get a show there. I don’t know if he was having sex with one of the girls on the student council there, but he called me to say, ‘Dude, I got it.’”
“It was me and four other comics. Arnie Ellis was hosting it. We went down there. It was a black fraternity’s & sorority’s big end of the year party. About 450 people. It was put together so fuckin’ wrong. We get there; there’s all this food and everyone’s dancing. This little white girl gets up to say it’s time to start the show. Nobody’s paying attention. They start to boo Arnie and turn the lights on and off. There’s still dancing going on. Somebody unplugged the mic. Ricky Reyes gets up there. He’s been a road comic for ten years. He struggled. People are still dancing. I go up. I opened with a joke about getting my car washed at a presbyterian fund raiser. It felt awkward having my eight black people wash my car. It was a white guilt joke. About 300 people walked out at that moment.”
“I like universal things. Big social ideas that people can get on board. Think of all the stupid jokes you hear. Even if they’re funny, they’re not the kind of jokes I want to do. I’ll touch on stuff like white guilt or what it means to be a man. I find humor in everything, but if it has universal truth to it it’s funnier. Pop culture stuff, I’m not really into that.”
“Originally, I was going to wake up every morning and write three pages. Then I was going to watch TV, think about things and guzzle scotch and write funny things and review those things to make them into something. Now I just try to write a lot. I’ll talk to people to see what they think is funny and jot it down. I have some general themes that I try to delve into.”
“I’ve been talking a lot about being a man in America. I got this book, ‘Iron John’ by Robert Bly. Women have a bond with their mothers and friends. They do things together. They go shopping together. They have women role models. A lot of men grow up without fathers; are raised by their mothers. They see men through their mother’s eyes and don’t have a strong father figure. A lot of the time, they don’t have a mentor. We’ve gone through all this evolution. Now we’re losing a sense of what it means to be a man.”
“A lot of my stuff comes from my relationships with my dad. He says stuff, but he’s not crazy. He’s a good father. When I was six years old, he taught me to fight – ‘If you’re in a fight and someone’s trying to cut your face...” He would say some of the craziest shit. He’s not a tough guy. He was in the military. He lives in Florida and has a strong disposition towards everything.” 
“I’m a civil libertarian. I don’t really know what it is, but it sounds pretty cool. I’m like old school conservative. The modern conservatives have changed in the last few years. They’ve become more God-related. Less on small government, more big government. Big business with think tanks to control them. Fuckin’ military complex to control how things go. I’m more for small government. Every man for himself. We should stockpile weapons in case we need to rise up against our government some day. That kind of shit.”
“Heart of Darkness – the idea was that I wanted to produce a show under our terms and not have it be the kind where it costs fifteen bucks with a two-drink minimum. I didn’t want 20 comics, or even 8 comics up there. Here’s four comics doing 20 minutes. That way, the people can really get into the comics. Here in the city, there aren’t a lot of 20-minute sets unless you’re going to the big clubs and seeing someone do an hour. Little people like me aren’t doing twenty minutes. That was the main idea. Me and these guys who I like performing with had the idea of taking the show out there and do music venues wherever we can. There’s me, Ricky Reyes, Aaron Bowden. Mike O’Rourke has become a big part of it here in New York. Dan Curry & Pedro Lima host a lot of the shows. The idea is to take a base and hold it. We’ve done LA. It took four or five times to sell out. We just did SanFrancisco and drew 45 people. Not the best, but it’s all right. Let’s keep doing it ‘til we sell out. Let’s do Philadelphia this year. Once a month in New York. Twice a year in Orlando. Boca Raton again. Let’s keep adding big places. Find a friend who lives somewhere who says, ‘Let’s do it here.’”
When I first started doing it, I kind of felt that my work for the group was getting in the way of my career. There were a lot of repressed feelings about it. Ultimately, it is my show. I’m not hosting it. I’m performing in it. I think it’s awesome that I’m doing the show. I’m doing LA. I’m doing it here several times a year. I’m working on a CD. In promoting the show, I’m also promoting myself. It’s nice to have a big, popular show that people want to come see. Otherwise, I’m doing other people’s shows as well, but there aren’t a lot of shows where I’m doing 20 minutes and making money off it.”
“Bookers are my least favorite people in the world. There are the bane of my existence. That’s how it is for everybody. It’s the nature of the beast and it’s their job. ‘I sent you a tape. Oh, you never watched it. I’ll keep calling you every week. Maybe I’ll stop by with another tape even though you’re not going to watch that one. I was doing Stand-up New York once a week and Nick was there. I went to California & Florida. Two months later I come back and Nick’s gone and Mark’s there. Mark wants a tape and six months later I audition for a twice a month spot. Mark’s not there anymore. The next guy’s got his own people. I send a tape. First he says he’ll put me up in two months. Then he’s not putting up new comics for four months. There’s so much of that. That’s why you need a manager. I’ve got the big show and people are coming to it. I’m also wary of doing this show at a big club like Gotham. Of course, it could help me get more slots if it does well.”
“When I started out, I was awful. I used to do these sketches. I was doing a lot of improv and characters. It’s what I knew. I went through a period of doing a lot of rape jokes. A lot of it was shock value. Some of it was so stupid that it was funny. It became a game where some of these audiences were so offended over the first joke. But you do a second or third and they’re laughing their asses off. ‘See, look at that shit! Oh, I’m offended, unless it’s funny. Then, I don’t have morals and everything’s OK.’ I used to like that idea a lot but I got tired of it and moved on. I’m sure there are people who haven’t seen me in a couple of years who’d say, ‘Oh yeah, rape jokes!’”
“I like what Mike O’Rourke is doing. There’s George Carlin of course. He writes a lot. Zach Galifanakis is one of my favorite guys out there. Louis CK is really funny. There’s Mike Dobbins. It’s certainly a little bit to the left. I like it. He’s so unoppressed by the judgments or thoughts of anyone when he’s on stage. He’s so loose. That’s admirable to me.”
“I go through periods of being more or less disciplined. Maybe at this point I’ll write more or just read. If I’m going out and doing a lot of shows, or partying a lot, it’s hard to keep doing that. I might have problems and stay drunk for twenty days in a row.”
“I’m really undisciplined when it comes to taking notes and putting it in a script form. It depends on the show. Sometimes it’s this finished (show bullet points). I’ll take those sentences and remember what’s funny about them. In a show, I’ll focus on the jokes that are more worked out. But if you go to a show with 8 comics and four audience members, I’ll work from the sheet. Sometimes it’s word-for-word. If you’re doing a tight five at the Comic Strip or a Montreal audition, it’ll be verbatim memorized. But, if you’re doing 15 at Bar None where everyone’s drunk and heckling – it’s a fun little show, you work on the new stuff and expand on it. No big deal. It’s good to be loose and work on it. You have to work with other people who are good at it. It’s like going on a diet or jogging ten miles. Aggh. Why? To write something in a script form could take me a year.”
“I’m not at a point where I’m doing all one theme. There’s a lot of non-sequiturs right now. I want people to think that it’s funny; really funny. I want them to go home and masturbate to it. It’d be nice to change the world. It’d be nice to say, ‘These are the problems in the world. Here’s how you’re being stupid. Let’s all laugh about it. Now, you can go and maybe your mind will be a little more aware.’ Does that always happen? No. Sometimes, sure.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time working on my shit. I know it’s going to be good. I have an obligation to make people laugh. I’m upset that there’s this idea that 99% of the shows I’m doing are unpaid guest spots. I don’t know how that all came about. Why do people think that’s OK? Probably because there are so many people who need the stage time. To make people laugh is work.”
What about when a set’s not going well? How do you react to silent moments. “I’m ok with that sometimes. I can embrace it. It sucks when it’s an important show. If it’s an audition spot at the Comic Strip and you’re not connecting right, and people are quiet, oh fuck. Most shows aren’t that important. You can go back and try to figure out what happened and address it. It depends how strongly I feel about it. If I think something’s funny and the crowd’s not into it, that’s one thing. If I didn’t explain something right, I’ll say, ‘Wait a second. Wait a second! Listen! Because it’s funny! Here’s why!’ Maybe it’s a new joke. Maybe the Germans talking about new tanks over breakfast isn’t all that funny. I don’t know. I guess I am a bit morbid.”
“Greg is incredibly original. His style is seemingly simplistic but somehow always makes a poignant statement about personal, social and political issues. He’s different because he sits on the edge of cute and cuddly and total darkness. To truly get Greg's material, the audience has to use their imagination. If they don't, the beautiful thing is, Greg doesn’t care. He’s honest and for real comics that's the only way to be.”
– Aaron Bowden, comedian
“I think it’d be great to have Heart of Darkness at Irving Plaza with 300 people. To have me and a couple of other comics. I’m not ready to bust out with an hour and a half on my own. I’d love my own show. I pitched MTV an idea which they shot down, probably for good reason. It was Greg Barris’ Revolution and it could be anything. Maybe some sketches. Maybe me addressing the nation. Maybe me talking with a middle class family in the midwest with a father who works in a cubicle and a family that communicates through cellphones. They’re oblivious to the world and I camp out on their lawn for a week. Maybe in the future, something like Bill Maher’s show could happen for me. I also have one man show, but I haven’t done that in a while. It’s me and a band doing long stories.”
We’ve finished our beers at this point and are heading toward the F Line. At the corner of Allen and East Houston, we’re waiting for the walk light and just talking when he recalled another moment with his father. “I was always interested in things that were funny. My dad sort of encouraged that. ‘Here are all my tapes of people who did stand-up on HBO ever!’ Carl Reiner hosting at Catch a Rising Star for Jay Leno’s first television appearance. That sort of thing. There was a weird thing by Robin Williams. His first special. I guess it was supposed to be totally improvised. He brought John Ritter out of the audience to come improv with him. I was 12 when I saw it. It was awful, awkward, and bad. A ton of tapes like that. My dad inadvertently pushed me in that direction – to become the greatest comedian ever!”
“We (comics) are on the verge of being illegal. ‘You said that? We’re going to blacklist you.’ It’s really dangerous. This art form is one of the last forms of spoken word where you can just say in a lot of places whatever you want. But there are a lot of places, like a Bonker’s or Funny Bone in Columbus, Ohio, where you can’t. I’m fine with the audience walking out on an act. It’s when your told what you can say and what you can’t. ‘This subject is never funny.’ Bullshit. Everything in some context is funny.”
For more on Greg, visit GregBarris.com.