Jul. 21, 2010 - Issue #770: Draw It Yourself

Prevue

Hope against hope

Stanhope still pushing boundaries

Doug Stanhope has never minced his words. The brash stand-up routines and comedy he's known and acclaimed for is provocative, though that seems like putting it lightly: as a quick example, his contribution to the dirty joke biopic The Aristocrats was to tell his vulgar, descriptive tirade to a child. But Stanhope's work is also laced with moments of twisted smarts and blood-letting social commentary, if you can stomach the subject matter he uses to make his points. Not everyone can: Stanhope still sees walk-outs and booing at his shows, 20 years into his career. Not that he's phased by anyone else's opinions.

"For me, I don't give a fuck about what other people think. If it were all easy, it would take all the sport out of it," Stanhope says over the phone from Montréal, a few days before the Canadian leg of his tour brings him out west.

Stanhope's unfiltered opinion does pay the bills, but his attitude is far from put on: he's just as outspoken off stage. In a recent post on his website, he savaged an LA comedy class—and the concept of teaching comedy in general—harshly decrying what he saw as just another a method of parting fools with their money.

"First of all, you can't teach a person to have a sense of humour if they don't," Stanhope explains. "Comedy's such an individual thing: it's not like acting, where everybody's going for the same part. Everyone's trying to be unique, and trying to have their own voice and when you try to teach them, you're teaching them how to have your own voice."

The way Stanhope sees comedy, there's only one way to hone comic chops, and it isn't by attending a weeklong class: it's putting in the time to figure out what works in front of an audience, tweaking as you go.

"Trial and error, heavy on the error," he says with a laugh, about how his own development as a comic. "And failing, and seeing how I can still say what I wanna say the right way. I've had bits where it took me a year and a half to get the bit where it worked, because the point was something that needed to be said and that I wanted to say, and every which way I phrased it, it never worked. But I was tenacious and finally found the right way to word it."

And the "right way," to him, is figuring out how to root even his blackest bits of comedy in some level of accessibility.

"I'm most proud when I can make people laugh at stuff they would ..." he pauses, "I love the laugh that's a genuine, heartfelt laugh, followed by a, 'Oh my God, I can't believe I just laughed at that,' where it's too late. You're already guilty. Reason doesn't come into play until long after it's too late.
"Those are the big victories. Where you get that one but where you go, 'Ah, jeez … I've found an angle on the most morbid, tragic, awful subject, and it's going to work.'" V

Thu, Jul 22 (8 pm)
Doug Stanhope
With Rob Mailloux
New City (10081 Jasper Ave), $25
  vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus