The ideal jester for the digital age
Chris Fleming’s no-budget viral videos have netted more than 21 million Youtube views
Gayle Waters-waters barrels through her suburban living room clutching a pair of vacuum cleaners, her purse-lipped face venting furious desperation.
“We’ve got to clean the house now, now, NOW, people! I want this place looking like Disney on Ice in one minute,” she barks. “Get rid of the couches. We can’t let people know we sit!”
The high-stress, alpha-mom caricature, which has helped the “Company is Coming” video net more than 6 million views on Youtube, is familiar to anyone who has suffered at the hands of an unhinged neat freak.
As played by 30-year-old Chris Fleming, Gayle’s default setting seems to be a mixture of rage and vanity, which has provided enough fodder for 40 episodes of the “Gayle” series on Youtube since 2012.
Less familiar is Fleming, the Pasadena, Calif.-based comedian behind Gayle Waters-waters and other bizarrely hilarious, no-budget viral videos, including “I’m Afraid to Talk to Men,” “Polyamorous” and, for advanced viewers, the aggressively weird “Frenchin’ the Bat.”
“I pretend it’s not Youtube,” Fleming said over the phone recently. “I pretend I’m uploading to Netflix every time I put (a video) online.”
Indeed, part of the appeal of Fleming’s work, which includes semi-improvised rants in his car about vegetables, theater kids and Jimmy Buffet, is their homespun feel, hinting that Fleming could say or do anything at any moment.
That’s no accident. Despite having the sort of momentum many comics would
use to launch a conventional showbiz career — with 130,000 Youtube subscribers, 21 million views, and positive press in Forbes, Huffington Post and The Boston Globe — Fleming has little interest in climbing the industry ladder.
That’s partly by choice, and partly because his hyper-verbal, seemingly stream-of-consciousness humor is too alternately goofy, harsh and specific for a broad audience. Fleming also stands out visually thanks to his shock of long, curly hair, oversized eyeglasses and lanky frame.
He was one credit shy of receiving a minor in dance at Skidmore College, so it’s not surprising to see him throwing his entire body in comedy sketches, whether he’s imitating a creepy fan during an after-show meetand-greet session, or improvising disco moves in the music video “Polyamorous.”
Some of Fleming’s tricks are as old as vaudeville — ill-fitting wigs, burlesqued authority figures, wild pratfalls — and some are decidedly modern, such as whiplash editing, crude synth backing-tracks and other techniques that proudly flaunt their digital seams.
That, too, is only partly intentional. Other than his “Gayle” creative partner Melissa Strype, musical collaborator Brian Heveron-smith and a handful of others, Fleming mostly works alone, which necessarily suppresses his production values.
“I worked with a manager for awhile, and by ‘worked with’ I mean she seduced me into moving out to L.A. and took me out for pastrami once every eight months, so I learned rather quickly that wasn’t going to help me out,” said Fleming, a native of Stow, Mass., who started doing stand-up in high school. “I just prefer doing things without any of those fat cats or suits, and that’s the only time things have ever worked out for me.”
In fact, Fleming admits to deleting most of his emails when peo- ple reach out to him professionally, even if they might lead to paid work in commercials, bit parts in TV shows or films, and other bread-and-butter acting experiences. He once starred in a Loctite glue commercial directed by cult comedy team Tim and Eric (with whom he shares some sensibilities) that aired during the Super Bowl. But for the most part, he avoids open casting calls.
“I don’t want to waste time with things that might not go somewhere. I just want to set up the tripod and make something,” he said. “I’ve had so many false starts, especially earlier when I first moved (to California), just waiting around for something to come.”
Fleming is a full-time comic these days, having quit his job as an SAT tutor about four years ago. Since May 15, when his “Showpig Tour” launched at Portland, Ore.’s Aladdin Theater, he has played nine dates in theaters across the country. He has a few more planned before the tour wraps this month in Dallas, including a Wednesday, July 12, show at Denver’s Oriental Theater.
“The only people I really work with are these promoters who booked me at the Wilbur Theater in Boston, and we’ve just worked together ever since,” Fleming said. “They had access to my (online) analytics, which ranks the cities where I guess I’m popular, so they’re just like, ‘In Tuscon there’s a CVS branch that’s a fan of yours!’ ”
Fleming is referencing a familiar debate for artists: remaining pure and true to their art — while potentially holding back their careers — versus broadening their appeal with a professional savvy that allows them to reach more people.
Fleming isn’t against the latter, and neither is he daring people to laugh at him, in the provocative way that Andy Kaufman once did, or Adult Swim’s “Eric Andre Show” still does. He’s simply doing what he finds funny — absurdist wordplay that ignores the usual punchlines on the way to delightfully surreal, confusing coves of humor.
His favorite targets are the smug and the obliviously trendy: tech bros, fitness couples, intolerant vegans, pretentious artists. His rants are equal parts inspired and exhausting, but refreshingly, he’s never afraid to look or sound like a complete fool — the ideal jester for the internet age.
“The real sign of a lunatic is that they don’t know they’re a lunatic,” Fleming said. “I realize I’m really bad at music. It’s me smashing my forehead against the keyboard and making the most unforgivable sounds. Some people I work with are legit, like Brian’s music for ‘Frenchin’ the Bat,’ which is this great, ‘80s soft-rock type of song. I was really horrified when nobody enjoyed that (with 32,000 views, it’s one Fleming’s least-popular videos) but if you don’t love me by now you’re never, never, never going to love me.
“I just love this factor when I’m watching something of ‘Why am I being shown this?’ It’s a fine line to ride, but for things to get passed around online it needs to have this factor of some sorority girl saying, ‘This is me!’ And you can’t do that for ‘Frenchin’ the Bat.’ ”
Fleming’s path is not the smoothest or most efficient to a career-sustaining audience. But if you’ve got the stamina, it’s one of the most ecstatic expeditions in contemporary comedy.