An outsider looking in
Comic Jim Gaffigan mines Canadian culture for good-natured laughs
Comedian Jim Gaffigan has been bringing his standup act to Canadian audiences for 20 years. So when he challenged himself to film a special in a county with material strictly based around its culture and food, our home and native land was one of his first picks.
Filmed in Kitchener, Ont., earlier this year before the coronavirus pandemic shut down live performances on both sides of the border, Gaffigan’s latest comedy special, The Pale Tourist (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video), finds the comic making cracks about our affinity for particular food and drink, including the Halifax donair and the caesar cocktail, as well as our cross-country love affair with poutine.
Similarly, Gaffigan, 54, filmed a second special in Spain. He was planning to film a third part in Mexico when the pandemic hit, but he admits he was struggling with how far he would have been able to push his comedy in that country.
“As an American, doing jokes about Canada, there’s an ongoing familiarity and relationship that isn’t muddied by (U.S. President Donald) Trump,” he says in a Zoom call from New York City. “When I was going to do Mexico, there was a thought of, ‘I can pick on Canada, but can I pick on Mexico?’”
Since the pandemic hit, Gaffigan, who spends 300 nights a year in front of audiences, has been debuting new material at drive-in comedy shows, recording cooking segments for his Youtube channel and working on a script for an upcoming dramedy centring on late Toronto mayor Rob Ford.
Q Since you’ve been forced off the road due to the coronavirus, what has been the hardest adjustment and the easiest thing about this?
A The hardest thing is I typically want to be the first to do things. So, I was thinking I’d be the first to do a tour of parking lot shows. I have to sit there and think, ‘I don’t know that I need to be the first to do that. In fact, I shouldn’t.’ I’d say the easiest thing is, I’m normally a night owl. I used to go to bed at 3 a.m., but now I could probably fall asleep at 11 p.m.
Q Where did the idea behind The Pale Tourist come from?
A I was on a tour of Asia and I realized I had about 25 minutes that was specific to the country. The night before my Seoul show, I asked the promoter if we could film it. It wasn’t super-high production value, but it was rewarding to capture what observations I had acquired while visiting Asia. I knew then that I wanted to do something like that in different parts of the world.
Q One of the funniest things in the special devoted to Canada is the bit about the poutine perogies, which seems outrageous.
A There’s regional poutine throughout Canada. The poutine in Halifax has donair meat on it. There’s smoked meat in Montreal. But in Edmonton there was perogy poutine. It seems absurd; how many carbs can you have? But it was amazing because in the end, comfort food plus comfort food equals more comfort.
Q You are going to be playing late Toronto mayor Rob Ford in an upcoming limited series. What drew you to that role and what’s the tone of the show going to be?
A It’s Shakespearean, really. The show is really Ford Nation. It’s not just Rob Ford’s story. It’s really about this family dynasty. I was immediately interested because of the story and because he’s a guy who had an appeal. He had a charm and vulnerability that people responded to. He was this populist predecessor to Trump. But the show is going to have a serio-comedic bent ... When the announcement was made I had a lot of messages from people saying, “Why are you glorifying that?” but there were others who said, “That guy was a human being, so don’t treat him like a joke.” It’s not some movie-of-the-week thing … it’s going to be done right. It’s a very unique Canadian story, but it’s a universal story. Q You recently played a set to an audience at a drive-in movie theatre. Is that the future for standup comedy?
A The drive-in shows have social distancing built into them and there’s something appealing to them, but they are also imperfect. They are never going to replace a comedy club or theatre or arena because there’s a lot of cars involved. It’s much closer to re-creating a scene from the movie Cars than it is a standup experience.