The fact that stand-up comedy is pretty much the same everywhere — comedian, microphone, jokes, audience — is both its greatest blessing and its greatest curse. It’s universally translatable and takes very little infrastructure to put on a show. The corollary is that because it’s always the same in a general sense, it can be hard for the individual comedian to stand out.
When I was first thinking of trying stand up, Demetri Martin was one of the few comedians who truly stood out. His mix of sketchbook cartoons, visual aids, and mostly clean one-liners was miles away from the dumb dick jokes me and most of my friends (and most of comedy) was doing at the time. A favorite old Demetri Martin joke I remember was “here’s a graph of my ability to draw mountains over time.”
This was, of course, at least partly structural. It would’ve been hard to cart a giant sketchbook to a crappy open mic at a bar, and using a projector was mostly out. How did he hone a style that was prohibitive to pull off?
As Martin tells it, he was two years into comedy before he even started including drawings. The old adage that art thrives on limitations was true in Martin’s case, in a weird way. Being marginalized as an “alternative” comic led to stage time in more mixed venues, where changing up the traditional stand-up format was more feasible.
And looking back on it now, the fact that he isn’t content to stay within the bounds of one medium has seemed to define his career. My first reaction to the news that I was going to get to interview him was “I wonder what he’s been doing these past few years.”
But if it seems like he’s been idle, it’s really the opposite. Martin went from stand-up to TV writing (Conan, 2003-2004) to starring in his own TV show (Important Things, 2009-2010) to playing a dramatic lead in an Ang Lee movie (Taking Woodstock, 2009). Now he’s promoting Dean, about a cartoonist dealing with the death of his mother, opening this weekend, which he wrote, directed, produced, and starred in. If you haven’t seen him on TV every night, that’s at least partly because he’s still pushing the boundaries of what he was previously known for.
I spoke to Martin this week, who’ll be 44 this month but looks half that (it helps when your mop of thick hair covers everything above your eyebrows), about the challenges of directing and producing, ditching law school for comedy, and people thinking his career has fizzled out.
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Tell me about getting started in comedy. Were you doing cartoons and visual aids like at shitty open mics? How did that work?
No I didn’t do drawings, I drew as a kid and then I just stopped drawing around sixth grade I’d say, and then I started doing standup when I was 24. Probably about two years into it I started trying to bring some drawings on the stage. Let’s see… 2003 I shot my first half hour special, and in that I put some drawings. I had started in ‘97 so that’s six year into it I unveiled some of them.
So, how old were you for your first half hour?
24 plus six 30, yeah.
You probably get that you’ve seem younger than you are–
Yeah. I’m 44 this month, so I guess I’m 20 years into standup now.
Do you have a comedy origin story? What were you like as a child? Was that something that you always wanted to do?
No, in seventh grade my goal was to go to law school, and I did go to law school but then I dropped out after the second year. I didn’t really have any ambition beyond that. In New York where I was going to school [at NYU], there were a couple of comedy clubs nearby, one of them right across the street, behind the law school and the other one was down the street. The one down the street was the Comedy Cellar, that’s pretty famous now. The other one is gone now, but it was called the Boston Comedy Club
I’d walk by the Boston all the time on my way to class, and I remember thinking when I decided to go to law school in New York that I wanted to try standup before I graduated, just so I wouldn’t regret it, I should just try it so at least later in life I can say I gave it a shot. Then shortly after getting into law school I realized, I made a mistake here, this isn’t for me.
I tried to figured out what I want to do with my life. I liked joking around with my friends and stuff, I thought well I think comedy would be a good job if I could find a way to make a living doing that. That turned into yeah I’m going to be a comedian, and I just dropped out. I started doing standup the summer after my second year.
Where were you living before you came to the law school in New York?
I was in Connecticut. I went to Yale for college and before that Jersey Shore is where I’m from from, Toms River, New Jersey.
I know a lot of law students that drop out to sort of become writers or pursue comedy, is there something like about the, sort of like dullness of legal work that sort of makes you want to do comedy?
Maybe just law is school is more convenient receptacle for a lot of people who I guess don’t know what else to do with their lives and might be good at taking tests and stuff. There were people in my law school who seemed passionate about studying law and seemed like they found the right fit. I remember envying them and feeling like, Ah I wish I was as interested in this. I found it required a certain thoroughness or something that I don’t naturally have.
I don’t know, it’s maybe a little too grown up for me. It turned out creativity is a really important part of my daily life. I didn’t feel like for me law was the right outlet. That didn’t mean I was going to make a living, and I didn’t know anybody growing up who had made a living or was making a living doing, I guess you’d say creative things, writing, playing music, drawing, acting, singing.
I just didn’t know anybody. None of the grownups I knew had those kinds of jobs down in Jersey Shore, so it was not accessible to me. I guess spending time in New York helped because it was around, so I felt, yeah I could try that.
Did you meet someone that was a comedian before you started or did you just sort of walk past the comedy clubs and think you could do it?
No I didn’t know any comedians, but yeah I just walked past them. I watched a lot of standup on TV — that was the 80s. I watched on TV at that time a lot of, if you flip through the channels you could find MTV 1/2 Hour Comedy Hour, VH1’s Stand Up Spotlight, Caroline’s Comedy, or Life in the Comics. There were just series of these different shows that were I guess you call them showcase shows, but you know five minutes spots for each comic. Then the HBO specials, those were on TV when I was a kid too. My access to stand-up was through TV.
How long were you pursuing it before you could quit your day job and what were your day jobs like while you were pursuing that?
Well my day jobs were temping in New York in various locations. I registered with some temp agency, and I answered phones. Did clerical work, and I trained to be a proofreader because somebody, another comedian, told me that you could get more money per hour if you’re proofreading rather than just answering phones. I trained to be a proofreader, and I did that in law firms, financial printers, and then eventually in an ad agency. Then they needed a full-time proofreader, they only had one on staff and this was during the dot com boom. I worked in a part of town in Manhattan, which they called Silicon Alley, which was Fifth Avenue near Union Square.
They brought me on as their full time proofreader. I did that until I’d say 2002 somewhere around there. 2003 I got hired as a full time writer, as a staff writer at Conan, so that was an official job in comedy. I think it was 2002 that I left and then I was piecing together a living from doing little things in comedy by 2002. From 2003 on, or 2002 I guess you could say I didn’t have to do other jobs anymore.
Did any of like the temp work, you know, like ad agencies and things, did that end up inspiriting bits of Dean?
Actually that didn’t. I talked to a couple of people from… I’ve run into people from when I used to work at this … proofreading at this ad agency. I was talking about it with them, and I said, I’m trying to remember how my story goes here, because that didn’t influence it, but I remember explaining to someone from my, let’s call it early career there, that I’m not taking a shot anybody at work. I did a couple ad campaigns, actually not too many. I think I have only done like two or three ad things ever since I got into showbiz. One of them was a bigger campaign, and I worked with just like boutique agency and there some real dude bros working there so that was based on that experience specifically. They didn’t have a treadmill desk, there is no details in there that are the same, but the feeling is like all those guys.
I think I was reading another interview with you where you said you actually have a treadmill desk? So it feels like a shot, but it’s really not that much of a–
No, yes I love my treadmill desk. I live in a canyon, and we don’t have sidewalks. All those years I lived in New York I walked a lot to write and brainstorm and just daydream about different ideas, mostly for stand-up material. That led into more narrative ideas, book ideas, TV pitches, movie ideas. Then I moved to California, to Los Angeles, and where we live we don’t have sidewalks. I couldn’t just pace around my house, or my backyard, which is small.
Then I thought, well I could get a treadmill desk, and I looked it up, I’ve had it for years now. I got it on Amazon for 1,200 bucks. Best money I ever spent. On a good day I can walk like five miles six miles.
At the end of the interaction [in the movie] I think the ad guy says something like “we’ll just copy the style” or something like that, because you don’t agree to–
Yeah they want to use my drawings, and I’m not interested.
Have you ever had an experience like that?
No not so much me, but I have seen friends, and I’ve talked to friends who have had bits stolen, or it was very coincidental parallel development where you just see something familiar in some commercial — who knows, you know? Then in stand up, people steal, they copy, and you can’t protect yourself, it’s just how it is. As far as I know there’s no intellectual property protection for stand up material.
That’s hard to prove it seems like.
Yeah.
So some people you meet in comedy, you meet sort of the misfit type, where comedy sort of feels like the only thing they could do and not get fired from. Then on other end there are people like you, or people probably look at you and think, Oh this guy could probably make a comfortable middle class living somewhere. Do you ever feel sort of judgment from some of the people that were in comedy as sort of as the last resort?
No I’ve never felt that. There is this surprising amount of kinship between a lot of comedians, certainly in New York when I was coming up. Some people are competitive, probably some sociopaths, people are messed up. I’m more on the nerd end of the spectrum, as you say kind of in a polite way, yeah I kind of have a regular middle class job.
I’m let’s say a relatively high-functioning person who could have let’s call it a regular job. You’re drawn to your kind of similar folks I guess in the comedy community, but you also end up having a lot in common with people you wouldn’t have anything else in common with because you’re comedians, and you do two years, five years, 15 now 20 years in for me there are people I’ve known for a long time who are really different than I am.
When we see each other, usually if I go to New York, I stop by the Comedy Cellar even if I’m in town for something else, or I only have a couple of days there I love to go by the Cellar, because there is the upstairs area where comics just hang out and you can stay there to like 2:00 in the morning or whatever.
It’s great just to catch up with people, talk about the road, whatever. I never really felt that [judgment], but what I did feel was that there was a time in New York where there these factions. I guess you could call like the club comics, the straight ahead traditional whatever you want to call it comedians, and then the alternative ones. I was lumped into the alternative group — not really by choice, but it was hard to get stage time when I started.
The clubs they wouldn’t give me a lot of stage time so I would have to go into other rooms that weren’t comedy clubs. In those rooms you’d find people who were doing things that were more experimental. Like maybe they had a slide projector, a guitar, a keyboard, doing a sketch or having a plant in the audience. Comedy clubs aren’t designed for that, they are just not built for it.
They have a brick wall and a microphone. Go up, tell your jokes. The alternative rooms, and this is like late ’90s/early 2000s, they were more of an experimental kind of hotbed, I’d say, of people trying different kind of comedy. Yes, someone like me was branded alternative by some of the guys, some of the club comics. Ironically, to me I was doing some of the most old-fashioned comedy there is because they are just jokes. I mean jokes and stories I don’t know what predates that. It’s pretty simple.
Well there is also the old sort of SNL dichotomy where there is the like the Ivy League writer, so you kind of fall into that. Was that in the subculture? Was that one of the categories?
You know, I sidestepped that because I didn’t… I guess I did have the writing job at Conan, but I didn’t go to Harvard and even though I went to Yale, there actually is a little bit of a difference there because the Lampoon is a really established vetting mechanism, I don’t know what you want to call it but they staff a lot of shows.
There is no analog at Yale, not when I went there. I wasn’t part of that Harvard mafia, and I really chose to do stand-up as my ambition and that’s what I wanted. When I got the writing job at Conan I was thrilled but that was in a roundabout way, because I had been doing stand-up comedy for a while, and still I identify myself mostly as a stand-up.
What’s your experience of your current level of fame? Like you seem like on the one hand you’re sort of a thousand times more famous than most comics but then you’re not quite like a household name either. What’s it like being in that sort of middle ground?
It’s like being under mild surveillance. Like I just don’t know when somebody knows what I do or anything and then they surprise me on a plane or something after we’re landing, who turn to me who I’ve been sitting next to, it’s like hey I liked your special or whatever. I’m just like ah, you got to tell me that. Just tell me, give me some signal you know who I am before we take off so I know I’m being watched.
Mostly when I had this Comedy Central series a while back I got recognized more, and I was kind of in the zeitgeist and then that went away, and I’ve kind of fizzled back down to my pre-Comedy Central days. Which is quite comfortable, actually. I have two kids and a wife and I’m pretty happy where I’m at.
Whatever level I’m at people who know me are usually the only people who like what I do, because they are seeking out the material or somebody told them. Regular non-fans don’t know who I am or care what I do, you know what I mean? Like if you’re a reality TV star you have a lot of people who know you who don’t like what you do or whatever.
Right, I’m sure there is a graph that you can explain this.
Yeah there probably is. I’m not so famous but, yes, it is interesting that if you get fame it certainly can help a lot of things, but it does seem like a lot of constraints come with that. I’m not chasing that too hard.
You say you’re like less famous now. Do you ever find yourself… I guess you probably wouldn’t feel the need to explain, but I mean now you’re doing movies where the release cycle is much different. Like you need to tell people, “No I’m just work on a thing that takes a lot longer, and it’s harder.”
Yeah, definitely and I don’t feel like I need to tell people what I do or explain or give my credits or any of that stuff. It’s nice having been around for a while because I like making the stuff that I make. Some of it takes longer that I would like. I’m just not fast enough. The movie took a while. It’s a small movie, but it was challenging. I hope people like it, it would be great if it was some big surprise hit or something, but I’m up against Guardians of the Galaxy, Wonder Woman… there’s all kinds of gigantic things that are going to bulldoze my little thing right to the side.
But maybe some people will find it, then I get to make another one. When I focus on the process more, I often end up feeling a lot happier than when I focus on results.
How happy were you with the way the movie turned out?
Well, I’m happy with how it turned out for what it is. If I judge it against what I thought I was making, then it gets more complicated because the realities of making a small movie really intervened. Where I thought, “Oh cool! I wrote the script, and I’ll shoot this I’ll shoot that, we’ll have this sequence, and it will lead to this, and I can do this.”
You learn quickly, “Oh! We don’t have the kind of time to do that, and the location didn’t work, and I’ve got a 20-day shoot and now I’m like you do the math, and you realize oh my God! 20 days for a full feature film. You’re shooting this many scenes per day, you can only move this quickly from one location to another, so then you have to kind of change the locations. It’s just a very sobering reality check for a lot of it.
How much did stand-up help you in that regard? I mean, you have an idea of what you’re going to say, and then you go in front of the audience, and they don’t like part of it. Having to improvise on the fly, did that experience sort of help when you’re making the movie?
Yes and no. Yes, and as far over time stand-up is such a great laboratory because you have an audience telling you, this immediate feedback loop every night, no matter what size venue. Even in front of five people they are giving me information, they are teaching me. “We like this, we don’t like that, we think you’re funny this way, we don’t buy that from that.” For better or worse they kind of put you in some sort of a role.
I mean like oh, okay because I thought I was this, but they are telling me… This many audiences have now clearly told me like they don’t, no, I’m not that to them. They are judging me. I look a certain way that I don’t realize… You know, things like that. It’s great they help you develop. That’s helpful when you want to try to write a movie, or a TV series where you want to put yourself or that comedic part of yourself into a story or something, you can say well, audiences have told me over time that they’ll accept me as an illustrator guy or comedian-is-my-job guy. Maybe a guy who works in an office, probably not as a quarterback or an action hero or hang gliding instructor. Certain things maybe if I could be better as an actor. But the shortcut is okay, these are some good options to tell a story with. But it’s also not very helpful because doing a film feels more like making comedy in a vacuum or telling a story in a vacuum because of the longer feedback loop, and the release schedule you’re talking about and how much you have to do before you even get in front of an audience.
Did you find it harder having to be the boss? Stand-up is kind of like the ultimate job where you don’t need other people, you kind of go up there with an idea. And then on a movie it’s like you kind of got to be the guy who moves everybody. Was that a challenge at all?
Yeah, that was really difficult. I enjoy directing, and I like the daily work of directing even more than I thought, so that was a pleasant surprise. Producing, I found exhausting and that’s what kept me up at night. Logistics and managing people and worrying about how much money we have and where we are going to pack the trucks and this actor schedule has changed and now they are not available for this and what are we going to do and that kind of stuff was just for me very difficult.
Probably part of why I’m not a lawyer is because that stuff I don’t naturally enjoy it or feel the kind of satisfaction when I solve those problems that other people do probably who do those jobs. The creative problems to me, and it’s not even fair to call my problems the creative ones, because I learned that people who do line producing, they are in charge of the budget and allocating the money. A creative line producer makes such a huge difference.
When I had my TV series, the first season I had one line producer in New York and the second season I had one in LA. The one in LA was so much more creative. She was such a great problem solver, and it had such a tangible effect on the quality of my show or at least the number of options I had when I got to the edit. I just had more footage to choose from, and it was specifically because of her.
I don’t have that kind of creativity is probably a better way to put it. But I can do fart jokes and also set up shots and work with actors and stuff. That stuff I liked, and it was nice because it’s an opportunity to collaborate with other people. I love standup, but it’s also solitary, it can be very lonely. You get what you want in standup and what you get is that you’re a traveling salesman.
It’s fun when you’re on stage, but you’re packing up the bags, getting the rental car, waiting in line, GPSing on your phone, trying to find a hotel, thinking do I have enough time to go to the hotel before sound check, but nobody is with you, nobody cares. If you have an entourage, I hope you’re making a lot of money because I can’t afford an entourage, so it’s just me alone. But with a movie I got to have collaborators, which is cool.
Right, you get to be on a team.
Yeah, and it feels like at its best some sort of summer camp or something when you’re on a movie. You get a group of people together, and you have this special experience and then it’s over.
Even to a certain extent, even if the final product… If you could get a good-enough team mentality you guys can sort of live in your own creative bubble and even if the movie ends up not being good everybody is still kind of high-fiving each other.
Definitely I’ve been involved in that kind of thing, it’s nice.
How long ago did you write this movie?
It’s definitely been five, at least five years ago. Because I started writing it, then I put it aside, I tried to write something else that was too expensive and then I went back to this because this was the first time I wrote something specifically to get it made and shoot it myself. I’ve written and sold other screenplays. Those were sold to studios, and I didn’t worry about budget or practical constraints on that the way I did on this one.
Is it hard having to sort of discuss feelings that you might have had five years ago and sort of be the press agent for this past incarnation of yourself?
No, it’s kind of nice. It’s taken so long that I haven’t thought about it in a while. The movie sold like a year ago. That felt like a finish line and then it was out of my hands. Then CBS Films now said okay here is the release date, we are going to start doing press. It was almost like reactivating the whole project or something.
But enough time had passed, so I thought, oh yes, this nice I can look back on it and I have a little more perspective, and I don’t feel kind of wrapped up in it. I want it to do well, and I care about it and everything, but it’s finished in a lot of ways.
But then it’s like the logistics of set-up, punchline are so different. Like Google Glass is not a thing since the movie came out, which probably there are other things that you might have skewered if the movie had been written more recently.
No, there are a couple of jokes yeah. I mean I’ve seen people wear Google Glass since the movie came out. I mean it still exists.
I remember it at least.
But the movie is older. There is this joke about vampire TV shows that made more sense when the movie was made but yeah. Most of my stuff is pretty evergreen. I don’t do topical stuff too much. I usually get away with a little bit more of a window than folks who do specific pop culture things.
You have Rory Scovel playing your best friend; do you ever worry that that was like too many guys with round hair in the same movie?
No, I never worry about that at all. He was the only guy I knew before the production because he’s a stand-up. Everybody else I auditioned. No, I think there’s only one beard in the movies or two, maybe two beards. I did pretty well on beards. I think it’s only two comics… Oh no! Kate Berlant’s a comedian. There are a few stand-ups in the movies. But I didn’t really know anybody personally except for Rory a little bit, before we started production. I was happy he came in and audition and he did such a great job I was like great, but I didn’t know Reid Scott, who I think is great. I didn’t know Gillian Jacobs.
Were most of those first choices?
I didn’t have people in mind. Kevin Kline I certainly had in mind when I finished the script. Because I thought jeez! I’m a fan of Kevin’s but also he’s one of those actors, I’d say one of the few who can really give a dramatic performance and also have such a unique specific way of being funny that I find funny. That was kind of a fantasy to get Kevin Kline, to play that part.
When you make a movie that’s set in Brooklyn and LA, do you worry that someone in like Iowa is going to sort of just tune it out? Like, “Oh it’s another Brooklyn dramedy?”
No I don’t even know if someone in Iowa is going to see the movie, you’re giving it way too much credit.
That’s true.
That’s a great problem to be worried about. If I’m lucky someone in Iowa will know about the movie. I mean there is the internet, so it’s not like Iowa is in a different era or something but yeah. Plus, you just want to tell a story about something that you know. Especially if it’s a first timer, yeah it’s made sense to me because I’ve spent time in Brooklyn.
You’ve done so many different things, TV and now with the movie, was there anyone whose career that you sort of wanted to emulate when you started out and has that changed at all where you are now?
Yeah, I think that’s an interesting question that makes me think about my time in comedy and how things have migrated a little bit in my head. When I was younger, I loved Steven Wright. I still do. He was a big influence on me, and I’ve mentioned him many times in interviews because I think he’s just great and very original such a great writer, such a funny comedian.
I love Gary Larson — The Far Side — I don’t know if I thought I wanted Steven Wright’s career or anything like that but the idea of being a comedian, making a living doing it and then being able to headline was a fantasy of mine.
Along the way, I started thinking about movies and TV shows, movies then became a big fantasy for me. I discovered Woody Allen‘s work much later in my life than a lot of my friends did who were comedians. When I talked to other comedians, and we talk about, some guys were listening to comedy albums when they were really little, and they are real comedy nerds.
I came to things a bit later, and I think I’ve been doing standup for a couple of years before I knew Woody Allen had been a comedian before he was a filmmaker. Woody Allen, Albert Brooks, Steven Martin, Andy Kaufman, then a second wave of people who really inspired me after I started doing comedy. I don’t know if there is any specific career I’d want, but the idea that I could make films and then still do stand-up, specifically in direct flight markets, that would be really nice.
That’s kind of the fantasy now, writing books. If people still buy books I’d love to write some of those. I do like drawing, I’ll never be great at drawing, but I do like it as a way to communicate ideas in a different way, rather than telling them to people. You can draw it and if that can make people laugh just on paper I think that’s interesting. If I can kind of rotate those crops and hopefully I’ll make money for long enough, if I live as long as I want to, then I’ll be okay.