Al Lubel on Al Lubel Matthew Tallon sits down with the stand-up comedian Al Lubel to discuss childhood, his approach to comedy and the importance of pushing boundaries onstage.

“I feel that talking about myself is what makes me different from all the other comedians out there today. Because they almost never talk about Al Lubel”. This was Al Lubel’s opening joke when he first did The Tonight Show in 1991, and it remains an apt description of his act. Self-involvement is inherent in most comedy, but Al takes this quality to its absolute zenith: in one joke he dissects his own name for over five minutes, going deeper and more obsessive than one would imagine possible. This style challenges audiences, but the mastery with which Al pulls himself out of the holes he digs creates some of the most memorable and hilarious comedy you’ll ever see.

Al started out in L.A., performing alongside comics such as Jerry Seinfeld, Judd Apatow and Sarah Silverman. He has made numerous appearances on Letterman, and is revered by many in the stand up community. He currently lives in London. This an edited transcript of a conversation we had on November 6th, while Al was in Ireland for some shows.

Matthew : Which show do you think went better last night?

Al: I think the second one did. I was a little looser. Also I did more time on the second one, I did like forty minutes. Whenever I have less time, I feel more pressure to try to fit things in.

And with some of your jokes, even you don’t know when they’ll end, right? Like the singing bit [a joke which involves Al persistently commenting on whether the audience is laughing at his persistent commentary on whether the audience is laughing]?

Well I kinda know, because it is all written out. The singing bit– well, it’s like improv in the beginning about whether they’re laughing or not, but later in the routine, it’s written out. Although I do have some extra jokes I can throw in if I want. I could conceivably go on and on if I wanted to.

Do you think of it as a challenge with some of those jokes, like “The longer I can do it and still have it funny, the better it is overall”?

Yeah, well I think it’s psychological with me. I like testing the audience’s patience. I think that comes from being an only child, and, with my mother, testing her patience all the time, being a spoiled kid and testing her. So I do want to get laughs, but I also want to test people’s patience.

When you’re deciding which material to do in a set, do you select jokes that you’ve done a lot and you know are going to get a good reaction, or do you do the jokes you’re really excited about in that moment?

Well luckily, most of my material is for me anyway, because I just like it. I have a certain amount of material that feels from the heart, even though it’s not new material. When I’m getting paid I feel a lot of pressure not to do too much new stuff, because I wanna do well. I wish I didn’t have that feeling. Ideally, I really like the nights where you can completely take chances and get into a hole– I wish comedy was like that more, where it was okay to get into a hole and then come out of it on a paid gig. But there’s a lot of pressure to do the job when you’re getting paid. I’m definitely obsessive compulsive, and I’ve gone too much to the extreme of wanting to have everything work. Even if you want to have everything work, it’s so rare that everything will work, so why not take a few chances? Plus, taking a few, even little chances, loosens you up a little and makes you okay with things not working, and then makes other things work better, because you don’t feel this incredible pressure to have everything work, you’re actually having fun. And fun is important. Because if you’re having fun, the audience is having fun. So I’ve realised it actually helps to try little things.

At what point did you start feeling that impulse where you want to push the audience away and draw them back in? Presumably starting off you just wanted to be able to draw them in?

Yeah, in the beginning, I did, because I was scared, I didn’t know who I was. I guess I kind of got bored, after a while. A lot of the laughs I was getting, I didn’t really care about the jokes. For example, I was a lawyer for a couple of years. But I say “Lawyer’s business cards are wordy. Like ‘Attorney at Law’, do you need to say ‘at law’? Do other occupations do this? ‘Waiter– at Denny’s'”. [That] was one of my first jokes. And it’s a good little joke, but it’s not from the heart. I don’t give a damn. But if I had to sit around and just tell good jokes all day, I wouldn’t wanna be a stand-up. For me it’s an experience of seeing how far I can go, and how silly I can get, how crazy, trying to test boundaries.

Your style of delivery seems very focused on condensing words down. Is that something you do in editing, or is that just the way you process information, to limit it down to its smallest amount?

Yeah well, in the beginning I had a lot of too many words– “A lot of too many words”. Right there I’m doing it. But then I remember I really liked Seinfeld. I was amazed how good he was, and how everything seemed to fit and everything was perfect. And I remember him saying you need to get the most words out you can, like shave it down. So I was inspired by that. And that helped me a lot. But on the other hand, sometimes you don’t wanna take out something, because it makes it more natural, and it flows, and it’s more you. Like you wanna be you, so if you do talk a little bit more, then maybe it’s okay to have some of the extra words. You wanna get the bigger laugh, but you also wanna be you, so it’s a compromise.

Were you ever afraid to have such egocentric jokes compared to other 80s comedians? I mean “ahead of its time” is thrown around a lot, but I do feel like you maybe had more in common with the 90s alt-comedy boom, where the comedian kind of comes to the forefront over the act.

Yeah, you’re right, I mean that’s a good point. In fact, [a comedian Al asked to remain nameless] once tried to get me in with the alternative crowd that started happening in the 90s, like David Cross. But she told me those guys didn’t like me. And she goes “I don’t get why some alternative comics, they insist you have to be like them for them to like you”. Like there’s different styles of people being different. And they have their own style, it’s like that sardonic, super sarcastic–

And like very very detached.

Detached, right. So that’s not me. I do feel I was bucking the trend. There’s one comic, I don’t want to mention his name, but he said “Al Lubel will never get anywhere with that act, that self-involvement and stuff. No one can like him”. That was the late 80s he said that. So yeah, I do think I was blatantly trying to be myself, and who I am is self-involved. I mean there are different forms of self-involvement. Richard Lewis, Woody Allen– I didn’t invent self-involvement, but I maybe, I did go more just “Me me me me me” for a whole act.

You started [doing stand-up] in L.A., didn’t you?

Yeah, Newport Beach, it’s an hour south of L.A. I went to law school in Miami, Florida, and I wanted to go to L.A. to start comedy. My friend Bobby came out with me, and for some reason we both decided we wanted to go to Newport Beach. I remember thinking maybe it would be too hard to start comedy in L.A., too many comedians. They had a local comedy club, the Laugh Stop in Newport Beach. So I’d gradually go up on Open Mic nights in Newport, not at the comedy club; there was a club called “Bilbo Baggins” that had a thing for singers, but the occasional comedian would go up. So I’d go up there and bomb once a week, cos it was a tough crowd, it was loud and tough. But I didn’t mind, because I sucked. They sucked and I sucked, so, it didn’t matter.

When did you start doing the gutsy, crazy stuff as opposed to the jokes? I thought the thing you said about crawling on stage– [When starting out, Al once spent the first minute of a set crawling slowly to the mic. When he finally reached it, he stood up, turned to the crowd and said “My name is Al Lubel, I’m a struggling young comic]. That was really inspiring.

That was at the Laugh Stop in Newport Beach. I thought it’d be funny, it got nothing. But my friend Bob came with me to that show and he said to me “You have balls”. So he thought it was courageous too. But, I got so scared when they didn’t laugh that I rushed into my act. And my act wasn’t good back then. I remember I had a joke, I was doing a play on the word herpes, and I said “The Greek god Herpeles“. For some reason I thought that was funny. Yeah, “Herpeles” was funny, like “It’s not Hercules, it’s Herpeles!”. It got nothing– (laughs) So that was my sense of humour, like a five-year-old. A five-year-old would find that funny.

If you have a really weird whim, or you’re afraid to try something, do you think it’s important to try it every time, and possibly alienate people?

Yes. I think so. I mean not every time: if you’re getting paid, and you want them to actually pay you. I don’t know, maybe it’s even better to do that. Maybe go your own path– I mean Bill Hicks went that way, did whatever the hell he wanted to do. I remember I opened for him thirty years ago. I middled for him a whole week, I got to know him, and I remember the club-owner told me “I can’t book him at other gigs because he’s inconsistent. He’ll kill one night and do bad the next”. So I think I’m always intrigued and wonder should I go that route of just being my complete self? But I don’t do well broke. I was completely broke in L.A. I had nothing, literally zero. I had 10 cents. And I don’t do well with that feeling. It’s tough to be hungry when you’re older and exhausted. It’s okay to do when you’re 25, maybe, but I don’t know if I can go that route.

I think as much as you can, try, take chances. I had a bit back then that I haven’t done in a long time. I would say to the audience “I’m not good at impressions, but I’d like to try one for you right now. I’d like to do one of the famous actor Jimmy Stewart”. So then I would do this thing that is nothing like Jimmy Stewart. I would start screaming like a lunatic, and I would crawl on the floor in spasms, for like a minute, a minute and a half. And then I’d say “Look, I told you I’m not good at impressions”.

(laughs) That’s great.

Yeah. It was a good joke. Y’know, now, my hip is bad, I’m avoiding hip replacement. Crawling on a floor is not something I look forward to. But if I’m gonna do it, I wanna do it all the way. I was like a nut, I’d be screaming on the floor for maybe two minutes!

And the audience is never gonna see anything like that.

I might go back to it. I think I just enjoy testing people, and like forcing them to laugh, For me, a spoiled only child, testing boundaries with my mother, I’ve come to find that I like that.

On your episode of WTF [podcast with Marc Maron], you talk about how you always wanted to cling to being a child. But when you depict your childhood onstage, you paint it as this vitriolic war zone. How do you resolve that ambivalence within yourself?

Well, I’m addicted to the war zone. Addicted to being a brat, to getting my way from my mother, and her yelling at me. I was like a king at home– but a king that had to yell at his slaves. The slaves wouldn’t just do what he wanted. So I’m addicted to yelling and being a king, and in a lot of ways adulthood will never match that. Because in adulthood, y’know you can’t be a king. So I do look back fondly at having been a king.

Do you think that the instant gratification you get onstage, the feeling of getting a laugh immediately, provides you with that instant gratification you got from your mother as a child?

Yeah, it’s– I don’t remember making my mother laugh, but I remember sometimes laughter in the family. Occasionally my father and mother would laugh. I never saw them kiss each other, or hug each other, I never saw love between them at all. So I think laughter was the only good thing I saw when I look back on it. Because there wasn’t warmth. I think that’s why I’m attracted to comedy, because that was the one good thing. And yeah, the instant gratification of a laugh, although I do resent having to work hard to create jokes that get the laughs. But it does feel good to get the laugh up there. In therapy, someone told me I’m kinda like a child narcissist. Like there are adult narcissists that wear gold chains and have lots of money. You’re like a little child narcissist, you just want attention, you just wanna be a little boy. That’s why I think I like comedy. I feel like a little boy up there, making the relatives laugh.

And so the audience is like your extended family?

Yeah, but no they never laughed. I can’t remember my father ever laughing at me. I didn’t talk that much to him: he slept during the day and worked at night. We played sports a little, but I don’t remember ever making him laugh, or even trying to– well no, I remember one time trying to and not getting a laugh. My father had bladder cancer, but they didn’t tell me cos they wanted to protect me. But then he went into the hospital for major surgery, and I said “C’mon, be honest: is this really cancer?”. And he goes “No. It’s not cancer”. But they took his bladder out, and he had one of those– not a colostomy bag but it’s for a bladder thing. They had a bag. And I remember there was a pamphlet, showing even with this bag, you can play tennis, right? And I remember I said to my father, “Well, that’s great, cos you can’t play tennis. So now you can play tennis”. (laughs) And he did not laugh. But y’know it’s the wrong context, I didn’t know the guy’s dying of cancer. He’s not the right crowd for that joke.

I read about getting Garry Shandling’s number and calling him after his Tonight Show appearance. I was wondering how you met him initially.

Back in 1980, I was in law school. And I won like the ‘Funniest Comedian of the University’, not just– it’s funny, there’s my ego. “Not just the law school, the university”. I had been doing stand-up a little, once every three months or something. So I won the contest, the prize was to go out to L.A to perform at the Comedy & Magic Club. But I was playing basketball, and I pulled my back out really badly. So I didn’t end up performing at the Comedy Magic Club. I ended up going to a health restaurant– and I used to be very brazen back then. There was a hot-looking woman from across the restaurant, and I was sitting like here, one end of the restaurant. I started hitting on her from a distance, from my table. I can’t believe some of the shit I did. Across the room. She was talking back to me, we were joking around. I didn’t know that Garry Shandling was sitting here. I’d seen him do stand-up; in the summer of ’79 I went out to L.A. I used to go and watch comedians, and I really liked Shandling. So, he started chiming in when I was hitting on this girl. And I remember him getting big laughs, and I remember thinking, “What I’m saying is outrageous and getting laughs, but what he’s saying is really clever”. Anyway, so I did get the girl’s number, but– she was living in Palm Springs, and I remember not driving out there. I think I drove halfway and then realised “I’m not going”.

But I got Garry’s number. He said “Whenever you come out to L.A., give me a call”. So a year later, I moved out to Newport Beach. And I happened to see him on a rerun of the Tonight Show. I called him. Back then I thought you needed a hook to be famous. Dangerfield was “I ain’t got no respect”. Joan Rivers was “Can we talk?”. So I said “Do you think you need a tagline, Garry? Do you need a hook, you don’t have a hook”, and, he goes “No, I think you just have to be yourself”. Then I got to know him a little– I remember he took me on his plane, he was doing a charity gig in 2002 for Seinfeld. I was moving back from L.A. to New York, so Garry let me go on the plane. So I got to know Garry there in New York. I used to play basketball at his house all the time, he had weekly games.

Do you remember any advice he gave you?

Well it was always about being yourself. I got cast on this show in 2002, it was a reality series about Bill Walton, I was the one fake piece in it. So Garry saw that, he said “I think you’re more you in there. You’re doing a great job. You’re just yourself”. Whereas back even in 2002, I think I was still a little more performing, rather than being me. Because I was still more nervous. It took me years to get less anxious, where I could be more myself onstage.

Do you think you’ve reached that?

Garry once said to me about himself, I said “Garry, how did you ever be you?”, he goes, “Well I still think I’m being me, I’m becoming me”. So I still think I could get more me.

How do you go about trying to be yourself onstage? That’s something I think a lot of people really struggle with onstage, I know I’ve struggled with it.

I think not caring so much where the laughs are, and just saying things, is one way to be more you. Because in life, y’know you’re not always funny. But on the other hand, I do like to try to get a lot of laughs, cos I like laughs. It’s a compromise. I think a lot of it’s just being more and more comfortable from doing it more and more, that you can be more yourself.

I remember in New York, I was getting a lot of spots in the early 90s. You could perform a lot in one night, because clubs were so close. And so on a Saturday night once, I actually did seven spots, in one night. I started at like eight in the evening and ended up like two in the morning. And my friend Dan came to see the last spot at two in the morning, and he was amazed how good I was, because, I had had six shows where I was on constantly so I was so relaxed by the seventh, that it was completely just me, and completely killed because I was completely fearless. So, no matter how much you think “Oh, you’re not that scared”, and I’m not really scared anymore when I go up there, but, you could still be even less scared. Because unconsciously, you’re somewhat scared.

Watch Al perform here.

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