An Interview with Matt Kirshen
Today we have an interview with Matt Kirshen, a regular stand-up on the London circuit, who is probably best known for his impressive run on NBC’s Last Comic Standing. Here we talk about the stress and strain involved with putting on a show at the Edinburgh Fringe, how he got into comedy in the first place, how jokes translate in other countries, and much, much more!
H: When did you realise you were funny enough to be a comedian?
Matt Kirshen: As a student, I started writing for and then editing a comedy paper. I’d then watch people laughing at my jokes on Friday at lunchtime and got a bit of the bug. I didn’t know for sure I was good enough to do stand-up properly until a few months in, when bits of money started to come in for gigs. The amounts slowly crept up over the years until it was my job.
H: You’ve played in a pretty diverse spread of countries, how do you find jokes translate to overseas audiences?
MK: Often in places like Singapore or Dubai, you’re playing to ex-pats, so the audience isn’t that different to a gig in London. That said, my comedy very rarely covers pop-culture, and most of my political bits cover general themes or large issues that most people follow. The rest of my set is universal topics and personal stories, so my comedy isn’t country-specific. I don’t have to worry about, say, an American audience not knowing what happened in Coronation Street, because i don’t know that either.
Also, when you come in as a foreigner, you have a huge advantage - you get to explain to them how their culture looks to an outsider. It’s an angle a native just doesn’t get to have.
H: Related to this, you’ve done a pilot for Paramount Comedy in Spain, and appeared on Last Comic Standing in the U.S., how did these opportunities come about? Have you found success overseas?
MK: I’m not sure where you got the first one from, but I’ve not been to Spain since I was a student. Though it isn’t a rumour I’d mind spreading. I quite like the idea of telling people I’m huge in a whole load of countries they’re unlikely to check. At the moment it’s only really Croatia, where I sold out a show in their national football stadium and a line drawing of my face is their most popular back tattoo.
Last Comic Standing came about because the season I was on (5) just happened to go international. They did a showcase at the London Comedy Store. I went on, had a great gig and the next thing I knew I was flying to LA.
(* Note to self: When swamped with interviews to write, never forget to double check anything you read on Wikipedia)
H: What was the inception for creating Bigipedia? Unlike a lot of British shows, it’s written with a team of writers, how do you think this differs from the insular method that’s more common?
MK: Bigipedia was Nick Doody’s idea originally. He pitched it to David Tyler at Pozzitive Productions, who liked it, put it into the BBC and they gave him some cash to make a pilot, which I co-wrote. It is a team, but it’s a small team - not like US sitcoms with 15 people in a writers room. It’s just me, Nick, Sarah Morgan and Carey Marx in various combinations, plus at its heart it’s a sketch show, so different people can write different parts without it affecting the tone of each episode. Then at the end, Nick and I sit in an office piecing the whole thing together and writing the links. At its most basic, if it makes us both laugh a lot, it’s in. Then David pours over the script and makes us justify every line, which tightens the whole thing.
H: What’s your writing process like more generally?
MK: If it’s something like Bigipedia, I find it much easier to write with someone else. Stand-up I normally write alone, though a lot of my stand-up is developed onstage, so in a way, the audience is the co-writer there. It’s really useful to have a sounding-board for any comedic ideas. The longer I do this, the more honed my instincts get, but it’s amazing still how often I’ll take a new idea on stage, and it either doesn’t work, or, more oddly, the bit I think will work doesn’t, but a tiny nuance in what I think it the set-up gets a huge laugh. You then drop the second bit and work on fleshing out the first.
H: How do you go about collecting material for an hour long show? Do you prefer these, or smaller club gigs?
MK: For me, writing a full show is much the same as for smaller sets - I pace about musing over ideas, then chuck them at an audience and see what sticks. When a theme strikes a chord, I start improvising around it and expanding on it. Small sets can be great fun - when you can just go on at a high pace and smash out 15 to 20 minutes - but doing a full hour show where you can take an audience on a journey is a lot more satisfying.
H: Can you tell us anything about your upcoming Edinburgh show, Wide Eyed?
MK: I’d love to but I’ve sworn myself to secrecy.
(Though I can let it leak that it’s about hindsight, embarrassment and confidence. And Americans feature. They always do.)
H: You’re doing a pretty huge number of shows at Edinburgh, does doing the same show every night get tiring?
MK: Absolutely. There’s always a point around the two and a half week mark where I just have to sleep for about 12 hours. It’s not just that you’re doing your hour show every day, it’s all the other late shows, daytime shows, radio spots and so on - your stress levels don’t really come down for the month. But on the other hand it’s such a rare pleasure to be able to do the same show in the same room for so long. There’s no better way to both hone that show and become a better comedian in general.
H: You were recently on the Late Late Show, how did this come about? What was the experience like?
MK: It was a combination of a producer called Bart and an agent called TJ who first got me into a festival in Vancouver, where I did a TV spot that went particularly well. Bart is also a producer on the Late Late Show and when I got back to LA, he got me onto the show. It was a joy to do - Craig Ferguson is such a loose, improvisational host, which sets the tone of the show, so his audience felt less like a TV studio crowd and more like a late night comedy club.
