Taking stock of his funny business
Posehn featured in Yycomedy Festival
His last comedy album is titled The Fartist.
The previous one? Fart and Wiener Jokes. So. Brian Posehn, ladies and gentlemen!
“But I’m taking a turn,” says the omnipresent and insanely talented actor, writer and comedian. “I’m going really political on the next record.”
No. No he’s probably not. Thankfully.
It will no doubt be business as usual for the gentle, deadpan giant the next time he immortalizes his wry observational standup in recording.
It will likely be just as anatomically/politically incorrect, equally as geeked out, just as hilarious and entirely, utterly as Brian Posehn as those in the know have come to know and love over the past twoplus decades, through his work on comedy club stages, as part of the groundbreaking sketch comedy series Mr. Show, as a cast member of The Sarah Silverman Program or through his many wonderful TV and film cameos.
Local audiences will finally get the opportunity to appreciate what he has to offer in person when he performs his standup show Thursday at the University Theatre as part of the YYComedy Festival. It will be his first return to the city since walking the red carpet at the Calgary International Film Festival in 2011 for the première of the cityshot LARPing comedy Lloyd the Conqueror, and his local standup debut.
Posehn will be part of an evening dubbed The Nerd Show, which he’s quick to point out the redundancy of.
“Even when it’s not a nerd show, it’s still a nerd show,” says the noted metal head, sci-fi fan and comic book lover, who actually pens the Marvel Comic Deadpool (he’ll do a signing Thursday afternoon at Redd Skull Comics — 720A Edmonton Trail N.E.).
“Whatever it says on the bill, I’m still talking about Star Wars no matter what.”
Star Wars. Flatulence. Floppy bits. Extra hair. Less hair. Manboobs.
All of it is on the menu when it comes to the work Posehn is doing in front of comedy audiences these days, with an even greater turn toward the self-deprecating, which has come naturally as a result of being a funnyman in middle age terrain.
“I’m actually trying to lose weight and stay alive for my son, but a lot of it I really go after myself ...,” he says. “I think it’s relatable for any guy going into 40s and there are all of these sudden changes that you were or weren’t prepared for. And in my case I wasn’t so I’m surprised by all these body changes.
“It’s a lot of body humour. A lot of base stuff. But if I do a fart joke I try to do a take that you’ve never heard. That’s super-important to me, that even if I am being juvenile I try to do it in a way that makes me laugh.
“And I’ve heard everything at this point. It’s got to be original even if it’s a bit more lowbrow.”
Actually, that’s a pretty apt description of Posehn’s career in general, one that he has, of late, been able to take stock of thanks to that age and opportunities or anniversaries that have allowed him to appreciate it.
Take, for example, the documentary The Comedians of Comedy which introduced him and several of his friends to a wider standup audience. Filmed 10 years ago next year, it followed a Posehn, Patton Oswalt, Maria Bamford and Zach Galifianakis on a small club tour of the U.S. and all but announced and defined the alt-comedy movement that has since exploded with the likes of Funny Or Die’s summer Oddball Tour.
“It really helped me develop an audience, I’m really happy that we did that,” Posehn says.
There’s also Mr. Show, the brilliant HBO comedy series. Posehn was an ensemble member on the show, which was the brainchild of David Cross and Bob Odenkirk and featured other upcoming, likeminded funny folk such as Silverman, Janeane Garofalo and Jack Black.
Next year marks the 20th anniversary of that show, and this year Posehn joined Odenkirk and Cross for a series of dates across North America which he’s still basking in.
“It made it hard to go back to being by myself on the road, because I had so much fun with those guys. We were doing standup mixed with sketch and I miss sketch so much. I miss writing and I miss performing sketch so that was a blast ...,” he says.
“And honestly I miss those guys. We’ve been friends for a long time and we don’t get to see each other that much, with Cross living on the east coast and Bob and I being insanely busy all the time, so it was a blast, man.”
Posehn admits that the reunion got the three “talking about doing something” again, perhaps, in the very near future.
“It’s like the Comedians of Comedy, with those guys, if they ever want to do anything, I’m ready to go,” he says.
Until then, he’ll continue to make the TV and film mediums much better with guest appearances in everything from traditional sitcoms such as The Big Bang Theory and New Girl to the more subversive or cult-friendly fare such as the late, loopy NewsRadio, Just Shoot Me! Community and, of course, The Sarah Silverman Program, which pushed boundaries and broke barriers on Comedy Central from 2007-10 before being unceremoniously axed by the network.
“I thought we got off at the perfect time, honestly,” says Posehn, who played one-half of the most realistic gay couple television has seen.
“When we went away it was like, yes, it’s disappointing that I won’t have a regular 9-to-5 thing for a little while and I’m going to miss those friends but we kind of at that point hit every taboo subject.
“That was the whole premise of the show, not giving a s--t about those taboos and trying to destroy them and at a certain point you’re going to run out of taboos and I feel like we kind of did.”
The fact that he was a part of that and still has no problem showing up in Anger Management or The Big Bang Theory speaks less to the mercenary aspect of working in Hollywood than it does his place in it. Posehn admits that these days many of the roles he’s offered were written for him or offered to him straight-up by the friends he’s made over the past decades, writers and directors who know him and know his sensibilities.
And, in the case of New Girl or, especially The Big Bang Theory — both of which he’s scheduled to make return visits this season — he’s happy to appear knowing that it will get him and his talents in front of a much larger audience.
“It is the most popular sitcom so how do you really say no to that?” he says of the Chuck Lorre nerdiest.
“Just doing two episodes there, I get recognized by people who might not have known the more alternative stuff I’ve done — and still don’t.
“People who’ve never watched these other things I’ve done that I’m more proud of.”
That doesn’t mean he’s putting all of his focus and skills towards those five- or 10-minutes of memorable screen time in other people’s work or even returning to those past successes.
Posehn admits that he’s actually got his sights set on doing his own thing, something that he’s planning on pitching this year.
Not surprisingly, it’s a project that straddles both the world of traditional network comedies and the fringe fair, with him describing it as a mix of the autobiographical and fictitious and a cross-between Louis C.K.’s Emmywinning Louie and Ray Romano’s more mainstream Everybody Loves Raymond.
“I’ve been trying to get my own thing going, forever,” Posehn says. “I’ve been dragging my feet, but this is the year I’m actually going to focus and give it a shot.
“And if everybody says no, then I’ll, uh, do it in my backyard.”