Lewis Black is actually kind of a sweet guy.  Granted, the comedian most famous for his “Back in Black” segments on The Daily Show and . . . his seven comedy albums, two HBO specials and four Comedy Central specials, has made a career out of being angry.  But, behind his stage persona is a man who genuinely appreciates his fans and cares deeply about the issues he exploits for comedic material.

Black – who recently released a standup comedy movie, Stark Raving Black, and is just about always on tour – recently spoke to Thriller about politics, his favorite comedians, and making anger funny.

Lewis, how are you?

It gets better every day, doesn’t it?  Hold on just a sec.  I’m leaving tomorrow and I’m trying to figure out this clothing thing . . . Alright, now we got it, you son of a bitch.

I usually talk to musicians, but music and comedy are so closely connected.  So, I’m interested to get your take on that connection.

*CLICK TO LISTEN* Essentially, comedy is its own version of music.  You’ve got certain rhythms, you’ve got certain [sings a melody].  It’s music with tension release.  You build the tension in the room and then you release it.  Given the choice, I would have liked to have been a musician, but I was a piece of shit when it came to that.

What did you play?

I played piano, but the woman who taught me – true story – had arthritis.  It wasn’t really meant to be.

Your style, especially, seems to be very rhythmic.  When you craft a joke, do you think in terms of the rhythm of it?

No.  God, no.  I’m thinking in terms of:  What’s the punch line?  Where’s the fuckin’ funny in this miserable piece of shit I’ve come up with?

It’s also interesting that you come from a background of the theatre.  Standup comedy and theatre seem to be really closely linked too.  In both, you’ve got words written that you have to perform in front of an audience, but the end result is so different.

Well, they are only different in the sense that it’s a one-person thing, rather than other actors.  And, really the other actor is the audience.  I ended up doing standup because it was a way that I could write and get the shit that I wrote spoken.  But, initially, I gotta be honest, I would rather have had somebody good doing it.  I was terrible.

It seems like starting out as a comedian must be harder than most other forms of performing.  With music, at least you’ve got other musicians up there with you and maybe some cool sunglasses to hide behind.  But, with comedy, it’s just you.  You don’t have other people up there with you.

*CLICK TO LISTEN* No, nor even the sunglasses.  I’ve always compared it to learning how to box with your arms tied to your sides.  The audience generally wants you to be funny – nobody goes in going, “Boy, I hope they’re a piece of shit.”  And, you know, you’re not that good, so the audience doesn’t give back, and they shouldn’t, until you’re just taking body blows, and you’re thinking, “Boy, if I just lifted my arm there, I could have deflected that.”  But, it’s just like taking shots with your head until you figure it out.

I’d imagine it is just as painful, too.

Yeah, it’s just psychically, which is its own form of damage.

But now, you’ve reached a point in your career where you’ve won several awards, you’ve done television specials, you can command large audiences . . .

I’m done [laughs].

I mention that because I wonder if that makes it harder to keep your comedic point of view.  Especially for someone like you, where your act is really based on a kind of angry, cynical outlook, does success change that at all?

Well, the only thing that you have to stay on top of is the fact that you become further removed.  You’re kind of in a bubble.  To me, it’s very similar to:  Gee, why doesn’t government work?  Well, it doesn’t work because these cocksuckers are in a bubble.  They have no clue.  They go to the airport – somebody drives them.  Outside of having to go through that line at the airport, they’re a bubble going into the airport, they’re a bubble coming out.  They go to places; they’re treated differently.  And you just gotta be aware of the fact that this is luck.  This is not entitlement.  I think it helped that it took so long for me to break through.  I think that made a difference in keeping my point of view, because I was broke for so long.

So, you never forget that?

No, you still think that they’re going to come and go, “Really, that’s enough Mr. Black.  We’re taking this shit away and putting you back on the fifth floor walkup.”

It seems like in the last decade or so, your act has focused more and more on politics.

It never really was the focus.  I mean, everybody gave me more credit for it, but it really was about twenty-five per cent of what I was doing at times.  I really tried to talk about other stuff, because it can’t all be about that.  And also, it’s what angers me, really for the last ten years – it started with Clinton.  It was like, “Really, this guy’s my age?  Really, this is the guy we elect who represents me, and he’s saying he doesn’t inhale.  Really?  And then the second schmuck comes along and he’s really even worse than Clinton.”  And then, people go, “Oh, boy.  I’m really glad Clinton’s the president.”  Well, without Clinton, you don’t end up with the other douche bag, OK?  I mean, you wouldn’t have Obama without Bush.  These people beget the next one.

Do you ever fear that you might be turning off part of the audience?

*CLICK TO LISTEN* I’m sure I do at times, but what I try to do is talk about how it affects them personally.  You can tell me what side you are on health care.  They don’t give a fuck.  You can’t tell me it can’t be made better.  You can’t tell me that this isn’t a piece of shit system.  And that’s got to be maybe ten per cent of the audience that thinks that.  Maybe.  And if it’s more, it’s really unbelievable.  Then, good.  I hope they get sepsis.

Do you have a philosophy on comedy or what makes something funny?

My philosophy is, it all starts with telling a funny story.  Everybody’s got a funny story to tell, and if you don’t have a funny story to tell, then it’s time to get a new life.  I think that’s where it comes from.  When you meet people for the first time, I mean, people try to make other people laugh.  That’s what you try to do.  And the people who drive you nuts are the people who give you a litany of the shit they’ve been through.  If you can’t make that funny, then generally you don’t spend time with them.

But, there is a big difference between someone who can tell a funny story and someone who can turn that into an act and perform it in front of an audience.

Yeah, but the only difference is that we then spend time crafting.  We had a bunch of funny things we used to talk about, and we take them and string them together, and then you start to learn how to do it.  You’re also immersed in a world where you’re watching others.  I mean, when I started, it was Kevin Meany, and Dennis Leary, and Mario Cantone, and John Stewart was around, and Dave Attell was around, and Kathleen Madigan, and my friend John Boehman, who opens for me.  And I watched them, going, “Oh, that’s fuckin’ what you do.”  And, a lot of it becomes instinctive, the same way that somebody who does music – I had a good friend, he could hear a song and then sit down and play it without a piece of music.  It’s like, “Fuck you.”  But, that’s essentially it.  You have an ear for it.

You talked about the group of comedians you came up with – what was that scene like?  Was there a lot of jealousy or politics involved?

Not when I was coming through.  That was a good group.  The group I worked with – when I first went into these clubs, I mean they didn’t know me from Adam, and they were terrific.  If somebody’s funny, it’s like we’re in a weird kind of fraternity.  There are not a lot of us, and if somebody makes you laugh, or you enjoy them on stage, there’s a bonding.  Most of the time, if there’s jealousy, it’s like, “Really?  That guy?  There are fifty people you could pick, and you pick douche bag.”

As cynical as your act can be, it seems like there is an underlying feeling that all is not lost.

It’s true.  My act is about the fact that I think things should be better.  I mean, I have to wake up every day my whole life, and it’s gotten nothing but worse?  It’s silly.  When I was a kid, in my neighborhood, when summer came, I had a place run by the county where I spent eight hours a day playing softball and fuckin’ around, from the time I was eight until I was 15.  And then I got a gig there.  Those don’t exist.  They don’t exist anymore.  They don’t exist.  We ran out of money, because people wanted more shit, or wherever the fuck it went.  I have no idea.

You write in your books about being a product of the ’60s and coming of age in that generation.  It seems like that period was huge for comedy especially, because you had guys like Lenny Bruce who were pushing the envelope of what you could say and get away with.  Were you cognizant of what was going on with comedy at that time?

Yeah, I was.  I was cognizant of Lenny Bruce, and Richard Pryor, and a guy named Paul Krazner, who doesn’t get enough credit, who had The Realist, and George Carlin.  I mean, you go through Lenny Bruce, and then they turn around and say, “You can’t say it in a club.  OK, now you can say it in front of adults in a club, but you can’t say it in front of adults on television.”  Well, at what point can’t you?  They do it in other countries. They’re not flipping out there.

It’s interesting that you seem to have become a critic of your generation for its failures.  Do you feel that way?

Well, more so now.  There’s a chunk of my act that is about it.  Now there is a big chunk, bigger than it’s ever been, about what a group of fuckin’ failures we are.  It’s appalling.

It started with such promise.

Yeah, it did.  And most of us didn’t even enter rehab, and we couldn’t do it.  It’s unbelievable.  And I don’t think it’s just our fault.  I think these people who are supposed to have been representative of our generation win the presidency, and they’re not representative of our generation.  They’re representative of – there’s a status quo line, and these guys want to protect it.  And, as much as they can tell me that Obama wants change – and I believe he does – I think that basically he’s done the same thing.  He wants to move the status quo a little further, but really not much more.  He’s cutting deals with banks and insurance companies.  Please.  We don’t have time.  We’re in charge; they’re not

Do you really believe that we’re in charge?  I mean, we’re supposed to be in charge, but in reality, it certainly seems like banks and corporations are in charge.

They’ve let them be in charge.  Because every time they try to say, “Well, maybe the government should do this,” it’s like, “Oh, no!  Government can’t do that.”  Well, yeah it can.  It’s us.  You know, “Boy, it doesn’t work.”  Then we don’t work.  You can limit government all you want.  I can get that whole concept of trying to cut back on government, but government is allowed to tell people, “Fuck you.  You can’t pull this shit.”

Do you think comedy can change that in any way?

*CLICK TO LISTEN* No, what you can do is hopefully give people a way to step back from . . . you know, there’s a river of shit, and it’s rising.  Hopefully you can get them to not worry about the river of shit for five minutes.  And then, you say, “Goodnight,” and the river of shit goes right up their nose again.

You had a great bit after September 11^th where you said that the reason comedy is so important is that the terrorists – and extremists of any kind – never laugh.  You said that they have no sense of humor, and that people need a sense of humor to stay sane.  So, you must feel like comedy has some effect.

If comedy had a real effect, then we wouldn’t have done what we did.  I’ve never been someone who can see the future, but I stood and looked out my windows and watched the buildings after the planes hit – I’m fifty blocks from where this is happening.  And, all I know is, I said, “They’re going to go back to exactly what they miss the most.”  They’re going to go right back to the mentality of the ’50s where everything is black and white, and we went marching right back into it.  They found an enemy, and they said, “We gotta go punch somebody.”

Speaking with you, it is clear that you take these political issues very seriously and that your anger over them is real.  How do you take that real anger and make it funny anger?

Well, because that’s where my funny starts.  I get angry, and I become funny when I’m angry.

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