Demetri Martin is nerd comedy at its best
“I like jokes. I usually do 100-plus jokes in my show” says funnyman
Comedian Demetri Martin exists in that rare juncture where celebrity meets anonymity: people who like him, really, really like him.
But to everyone else, his career has the same resonance as a tree falling in the forest. Does anyone hear?
“I’m not a bona fide celebrity or a movie star or any of that stuff,” the 44-year-old New York native points out on the phone from Los Angeles.
“I feel like I’m under at best ‘mild surveillance.’ Typically, there will be one guy at the airport who turns around and recognizes me.”
And yet, his stature continues to rise: award-winning comic, past writer on Conan O’Brien’s “Late Night,” contributor on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” writer/director/star of the film dramedy “Dean,” esteemed symbol of cerebral New York wit in a sea of dysfunctional, self-obsessed, profanity spewing, verbally flatulent comedy windbags.
“I saw a sign that said ‘watch for children’,” he posited in a trademark witticism that garnered big laughs. “And I thought ‘That sounds like a fair trade.’”
“I used to compete in sports a lot, but then I realized I could buy trophies. Now I’m good at everything.”
“I think the worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of charades ... (deadpan pause) ... especially if your teammates are bad guessers.”
“If you want to sound like a creep, just add the word ‘ladies’ to the end of things you say. ‘Help, I’ve fallen into a well and I can’t get out ... ladies!”
It’s not just that he’s a thinking person’s comic — in the R-rated world of modern standup, it’s as if he’s from a different planet.
“The longer I’m in comedy and the more comedians I know, the more I realize there aren’t that many who got good grades and were student council president,” he notes with a heavy dose of understatement.
“A lot of them dropped out of school and didn’t obey so much. That’s what makes them great comics.
“I’m more at the nerd end of it. I like palindromes and drawings. I’m more of a daydreamer.”
It’s an unusual career choice for a guy who wasn’t beaten, abused or ostracized as a kid, had no obvious link to show business and attended law school for two years before dropping out. Wait, law school? “I was saying from age 11 or 12 that I’d be a lawyer,” he notes, recalling his longtime fascination with the world of high stakes courtroom jousting.
“I remember thinking ‘corporate lawyer’, not knowing what that was, but it sounded impressive.”
This was the ’80s, he notes, when shows like “L.A. Law” glorified the idea of sardonic eggheads in suits mouthing off in defence of the little guy.
“I thought ‘Great, that’s my plan!’ And suddenly I found myself in law school and it took about three weeks to suddenly have a crisis and realize, ‘Oh boy, I don’t want to do this!”
Comedy seemed a natural alternative, he says, given his penchant for making his friends laugh.
Which, frankly, seems like pretty slight accomplishment on which to hang an entire career.
“I think it’s great if you get good grades and do well in school,” he offers, gauging his sudden career reversal. “But it can trap you, because you’re safely locked into this path that’s paved for you.”
But seriously, who gives up a swanky career spiked with elitist perks for the dilapidated trenches of standup, fending off an array of half-soused hecklers in grungy nightclubs for minimal pay with no job security?
“What’s great about standup is also what’s a little bit lonely about it,” notes the New York native, as serious and grounded in interviews as he is cerebral and witty onstage.
“You’re on your own and you really feel it when you’re on the road. When you’re in New York or L. A. there are other comedians around and multiple rooms I can go into to do comedy. It can be pretty social.
“But you go on the road and you’re just a travelling salesman. You get to town and rent your car and find your hotel and go to the gig.
“You’re not talking to anybody. Nobody knows you, really. And you’re just kind of a drifter dude bopping around. And showtime comes and now you’re the only one who talks ... for an hour.
“And then it’s over: back to hotel room, wake up the next day, return the rental car.”
“Jeez, Demetri,” I interject. “This sounds horrible — like Willy Loman in ‘Death of a Salesman.’ I want to hang myself just hearing about it.
“No wonder you ventured into TV (‘Important Things with Demetri Martin’) and film (‘Taking Woodstock’).”
”What I loved about that process is that I got to collaborate with other people,” he admits of his sojourns to alternate comedy turf. “So it’s not just you.”
On the other hand, he admits, “I like jokes. I usually do 100-plus jokes in my show. It’s almost oldfashioned, but it’s what drew me to comedy, to share them with other people.”
After 20 minutes on the phone, my sense of Martin — who comes off less like a comedian than the guy down the street who lends you a rake — is that whatever inspires his art has less to do with ego or inner demons than a whimsical, slightly obtuse notion of what’s funny.
This would explain comparisons to director Wes Anderson, comedian Steven Wright and “The Far Side’s” Gary Larson.
It also explains his use of music and sketch pad doodles to deliver deadpan one-liners described by New York Magazine as “elegantly assembled pipe bombs packed with explosive absurdity.”
“I have seen some of my jokes ripple into the larger culture,” he notes when I ask about his place in the expanding standup pantheon.
“I have an old joke about how glitter is the herpes of craft supplies: you get it on you, you can’t get rid of it. It’s just kind of there.
“I was watching a show and the topic of glitter came up and I said ‘Someone’s going to steal my joke right now.’ And it was the host and he was like, ‘You know what they say about glitter. It’s the herpes of art supplies!’”
He laughs. “It’s kind of a compliment, as irrelevant as I pride myself on being — because I’m a fringe comic — when sometimes your jokes seep out into a larger conversation.
“You feel like the whole world is like ‘Hey, that’s a Demetri Martin!’”
He sighs, candid without being resentful. “And then you realize no one really cares. So you go and do your show and do your best.”