Greg Proops

0:01Hi, hi, hi, hi! Greg? Hello, Matt. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Thanks for doing this. My pleasure. So you're up in here doing stand-up. I wonder what you're acts like. Because you're like, you're an actor's actor coming from the improv. Well, because you know the stage is your home. You're not, film must be very different for you. I like life performing best, yeah. Yeah. I think you get the most honest reaction and I think it keeps me honest as a comedian because you can't fool them all the time. Mm-hmm. Is it, I wonder the improv mind. Is it always on? Gosh, I hope so. Especially for the purposes of this interview. Right? No, yeah, it obviously it shuts down sometimes. But I'm, you know, I'm usually generally free associating. Or, Jordan, as I just said.

0:46Jordan, sometimes I use Jordan instead of sort. It's okay. There's no fair guessing on that. What is your act like? What are you talking about? You're talking about world circumstances now? Yeah, well, yeah. I talk about politics and being in Canada and Canadian and... Canadian. Canadian and winning the gold medal and all sorts of things. Mm-hmm. Are you going to come see it? Of course. Okay, well, of course. Well, you've married 20 years now. I have been, yes. I'm sure that creeps up into the act as well. No, it doesn't. I never talk about my wife. I never talk about my personal life very much. I'm not a confessional comedian. I mean, there's a lot of comedians that are like, you know, Margaret Cho or people that talk about their own lives a lot on stage. And I've just never, that's never interested in me.

1:32How come? I'm not confessional in that way. I'm private. You'll get where I'm coming from by the jokes I tell and what I do up there. That's the end of our relationship. Fair enough. We'll be very intimate on stage. Then you won't know anything about me. That's all right. Well, it's good. But you'll know a lot, if you know what I mean. Yeah. It's never been funny to me one to make fun of your wife, having said that I adore wife jokes. And it's just not been some way that I was bent. I would never talk about, you know, comics could have been talking about having kids or being clean and sober and everything. That's just not for me. I don't begrudge anyone in them in some material. Less than another comedian should see this and think, well, fuck you, Grug. But it's just never been where I was coming from.

2:20That's all right. Well, you got your act next to you working well. Do you remember those first records or was it records or was it stand up? Like what got you into stand up? Well, I loved stand up records when I was little. I had Bill Cosby, you know, like everybody that's from my generation from the 30s. And we memorized those records over and over. And then, of course, George Carlin in high school in Chichen Chong, which are prior. I think it was a golden age of albums in the 70s because so many genius comedians were making albums. Later Robin Williams, Lily Tomlin. But I'm a fan of all of them. And I watched all movies, MTV, The Marks' Post and whatnot. And then we got the pythons came to the American about when I was in high school, which was well after they were on in England. But that was very exciting for us to the non-sequitur,

3:06abstruse humor that could be conceptual and completely open ended. And Saturday Night Live came out about the same time. And there was something in the air then. I had to test the word zeitgeist because it's overused and misused. But there was something in the air then that there needed to be more calamity in the comedy, I think. And a little more information and a little more reflection, I think, of what people were about. This took place over a long period of time. But I think the 70s was a big culminating factor. Obviously, when you end up with people like George Carlin and Richard Pryor who are so explicit about drugs and law and death and sex and poverty, those are the big comedy topics. And not everybody wants to, not even I will go there all the time.

3:52And then later I think Bill Hicks, when I was a comic in San Francisco, I'm a little older than Bill was. But he was very influential, I think, on a lot of comics because he was so scathingly honest on stage. Brutally hilarious about the first war against Iraq, things that no one was touching and abortion and Jesus and all that. And he was tremendous about that, very funny. And so I've always admired his comedy too. I saw Bob Newhart in Los Angeles last week. I went to him speak. He's 80-something and he's a new book out. And he was still dead funny. And I adore his style of humor closer to Stephen Wright or right now there's a few guys pursuing it.

4:37And I'm going to blank on the name and I'm going to feel like an idiot. He's from San Francisco, Brent Weinbach. Brent Weinbach does a low key dead pan. Margaret Smith used to do it. Laura Keitlinger does it. I can't do dead pan. I'm not very good at it. I can be a straight man and I can set up other people. Obviously I'm a team player of that I love that style of dead pan comedy where the next thing is a big surprise. Jake Johansson does it somewhat, that style. Ellen DeGeneres always did. It seems like you're still a big fan of comedy too. Well I do have comedy, yeah, most of the time. Well I don't, you know, so I think comics, you know, this is my pretension and I'm a pretentious guy in some respects.

5:23When you're starting it's okay to talk about anything because you don't know anything. Or if you're really young, you have no experience. You have been in a relationship, you haven't had, you haven't lost a job, you haven't fought a fight and you know what I mean? Well you're only one. Obviously they don't have a world to talk about other than the world of the mind or as big a world. Let me put it that way. Obviously Eddie Murphy was a fairly good comedian when he was 21 years old. True. But again he was only talking about scatological stuff and sacks. Men tend to talk about their penis to the exclusion of everything else and that's where I get bored as a comedian watching other comedians. If you're going to talk about masturbating and watching pornography you have to understand that the whole world world doesn't live alone like you do and that the whole world isn't interested in that. There are women and couples and relationships and other things in the

6:10world that you can sort of spread out. And also lots. And awesome lots. So that's not true. You don't actually own one. I own heard of us a lot today. They're just africy little cats. Little cats. They'll bite you. You know they're they're peppy. Don't turn your back. Going from San Francisco must have been not easier in a way to get into the comedy world. But I feel like people would be more open to accepting jokes about various subjects rather than in New York where they might be harsher. I think you're probably generally right. I mean when I started in San Francisco in after World War II it was a boom time in San Francisco. Robin Williams was our Elvis. He was the already the big one. He'd made it and gone to Los Angeles. But his style which is based on a lot of Jonathan Winters style

6:59which is a completely contemporaneous using the stages that platform for anything in the moment. He put it right in the act. The thing that him and Winters share is absolute total recall. Instantaneous total recall which is why sometimes you think what is he doing up there. He can remember everything that he's ever learned and heard and spit it back out in a second. So like in the giant rolodex if something happens he goes right to and within a second he's coming up with a new idea. There's something of that in the style of San Francisco comedy that I was raised in in my 20s. My very good friend who passed away Warren Thomas I think was the king of it. We just called it riffing. You know and jazz musicians call it riffing too. Meaning you start with your material but then you

7:46go right off the rails and try to free associate. And because we're from San Francisco we're insular and provincial, parochial, self-referential and tried to be as obscure as we could be at the same time as going as fast as we could. So the whole idea was to sort of baffle and punish the audience at the same time it's trying to be funny and I think it was a lot more acceptance of that style of humor there. The comments that came out of that era are Jake Johansson, me, Dana Gould who's a genius. I say that because he came to San Francisco and was in the crucible there. Bobcat Goldfwey was in San Francisco then. I'm forgetting a bunch of people, Margaret Cho obviously was a just a little tiny little prawn in those

8:32days. She was about 20 years old and they all there's an element that everybody shares and even the later San Francisco comics like Brent Weinbach in and I'm bloody blanking on his name even Arch Barker whoever you think of. There's a bit of that sub-referencing. It's a little more abstruse. There's a little more hippie information. Comics in San Francisco tend to hardly ever be fascists. On stage there's a kind of a political set that comes with it. Whether or not you're explicitly talking about politics on stage there is a political mindset from San Francisco. A kind of dope smoking. We love everybody. If you don't love everybody you're an asshole and fuck you. You know that. It's a different way almost. It's liberal fascism in there. So I really believe strongly in that school

9:18having worked with so many comedians then that were genius is at that. A Bob Reuben. I don't know that he does stand up as much anymore. And when you go to Los Angeles I can take you to a show where there'll be a hundred comedians that are all born in the crucible of San Francisco. Chief amongst them Pat Naswalt who has definitely come from that school. He's finally starting to get his deal. Well he's huge now but like I met him when he moved to San Francisco and he was young and he was bathed in that with the rest of us. Brian Posain who's on Sarah Soulwoman show was just a kid then. And we all work that way. You know you listen to Pat and Zack in there's references from the movies and literature and comic books and the past and the future and you know what I mean

10:04and it's all over the map and he's got a political set even if he's not talking directly about politics and a little I don't know how to describe it. I think there's a school and I think I'm part of that school and I think some of those guys are in that school and I use the word school and the loosest possible. I don't mean that we all matriculate it together but we worked in clubs together for ages and ages and sentences and that was the motif. And as John Wing who I'm working with here this is you must put your imprimatur upon your material which all of us have done we I couldn't do his jokes you couldn't do mine. But I believe that there's if any you know for lack of a better a big cloud that we all live in. That's different than an LA cloud or a New York cloud or a Boston one or a Denver one or or an English or Scottish or Australian you know they're

10:53all different schools. I'm sure Australians would say well those Sydney comics are different than those Melbourne comics you know. Yeah of course. Well you've been all over the world. I'm sure what was it like being in the UK clubs for a while. Well it was fantastic they're so creative the style of stand-up is quite different as you know and there's only one or two comics that ever even made the attempt to breach it over here chiefly at Eizard and who's a delightful person. Such a barren wasn't a stand-up he worked in a restaurant when I lived in London he was a busboy at the Rosalind Hill or it was on Rosalind Hill I can't think of the bloody name and they used to do like Wednesday night. He said he seemed to such there you know this age just go but he was never a stand-up comedian. He's a character you know writer type and you know Ricky, Ricky Gervais but he just

11:41you know came over but he came over via sitcom and now he's sort of doing some stuff. Well Russell Brand as well. Oh and Brandi, Russell just came over like two years ago and I've had him on my show in LA a bunch of times and he's really polite and intelligent. Heavy on the knob gags. Yes you see. Heavy on the knob gags. If you like knob gags you'll like Russell. But I mean I enjoy Russell's style I think it's I think it's in the grand style of eccentric English comedians. He's adopted this rock and roll Lord Byron thing you know which is a really old idea but not for the 20-some things of today. It's new to them. When a guy with long hair gets a stage and he's you know and he's walking through his life. Yeah yeah yeah you know and all that. You know Tom

12:30Rhodes who is another San Francisco comic from my day he's pulled back on all that but he's have really long hair and Tom he would totally do this like flowing Tai Chi thing on stage. You know and I see some of that in Russell but more of a rock and roll. Fancy-dancy you know. I mean when I work with him the few times I've worked with him you've got to keep running up and down the stage because he won't stand still. You can't get him to sit it's right out of the chairs and he's up and running. Like Robin to you and Robin and Robin has to do whatever he's up and fucking her second into working with him. But you know Russell just came over. He's the newest and latest and there's gone a lot of reciprocity. I've gone over Rich Hall's really popular there. Arge Skone over Skokopuro. I'm forgetting Mike Willmont from Canada. I think as a resident in London I used to.

13:17A bunch of us go over or have gone. It's more- I don't know if it's more difficult. You know Eddie hasn't had a problem cracking it over here. American audiences understand utterly and also American audiences adored here in English accent and it immediately elevates the comedy in their tiny brains that somehow these people are smarter which is hilarious but. It doesn't work the opposite way. General well it does. I've had great success in England but the style of comedy English stand-up comics sometimes are a little like for instance there's a comic game Al Murray who's a character called the Pub-Lanlord. It would work in Canada and it would even work in America a little bit but the idea of a pub landlord is a very specific thing. You know what I mean? It would be like American. I don't know.

14:03I get it in Boston or something. Yeah you know and he plays the racist, sexist, you know, Lamy of a pub time gentlemen please you know and all that. I just don't- I'm not singling Al Murray out. He's somehow he'll watch this on the internet and go, troops you know really? I just don't know that they all- the timing translates in some of the specificity about England is a bit- we're not that literate in America and I'm saying America not Canadians because Canadians are much more connected to England in some respects. We're on the wrong. I understand English things a little more. We're coming home. We work a little bit until like 50. You get English programming more. There's just a little more understanding of it. Will we come and zed? You know. Well we got the UK version of

14:51Whose Line. Oh yeah. So it must have been- what was it like because I mean you understand a pack you can be very free. You can say basically whatever you want but on TV it's very different in the States compared to the UK TV. You're a lot more free in the UK to say more. We were. We could do longer things. There was more air in the show but simply by the nature of in those days half hour was 24 and a half minutes I think. American half hour is 22. 22 yeah. And so you had an extra two and a half minutes we used to do full musicals and stuff like that on the- and they weren't as they weren't as um sensorious. They had sensors but not and maybe when we did it on ABC a sensor sat in the booth and watched the show and ticked off things that they didn't like because we weren't able to present them with a script at 400. No of course. So they have to actually physically appear at

15:36the show which I found hilarious and I was forever being censored even though I would never say I mean obviously if you cursed that was how you could get them to stop tape. Yeah if we were failing we would just curse and then they'd stop and we'd reset so they needed to get another go at it. That's smart. But you know I would go like hey that's a nice shirt and everybody go ooh like for some reason everything I said was laden with double untalmed and they really picked on me I felt like the sensors that somehow they weren't you know what's he doing you know what's he saying what does he mean you know I think the meaning sort of they they were determined that I was trying to get some filth on their to bend America's minds and you know we were the gayest show on television if there wasn't

16:23a sketch we weren't dating each other on top of each other rolling around with each other kissing each other I mean you know the female presence on the show was light and I remember kissing Colin on the mouth on the show I mean you know everything and in our live act too it's the same it's just a total slash you know and M fantasy what is it about comedy that's so free because you see on SNL now all the time too it's the playground that you're allowed to one were allowed to be children and two were allowed to act out the things that people don't maybe I wouldn't think of acting out on stage that it's a release valve the theater is a release valve for people's lives and stuff and you realize things are horrible or maybe you get drunk and act like an idiot with your friends but you don't

17:08organize it the way comics do and I think there's a certain thing that people were you know we're talking about the other day with the internet and texting you know and oh my god the world so isolated now everyone's on their computer all day people still pay to come to comedy clubs or I wouldn't be working and I think that's because they want a connection with other people they want to hear about all the things that are in the air they want to hear them expressed and and dealt with and made fun of I think that people want that there's a need for it I call it theater but I mean it in the sense of you know most people don't go to the theater or I'm my general to generalize horribly you don't go to see plays as much as you might go see comedy or most the most people I think some people

17:56obviously like theater go to more but so it to me it's like theater for everyone or a little more commonality you don't have to be a subscriber to get a good ticket in a comedy show you can sometimes pitch up on the night and sit right in front right whereas if you want to go see a hot play you either got a belong or you know finagle because it's a different kind of thing and then the parameters of theater are so constrained that things that are really funny on the theatrical stage wouldn't even play on the comedy stage and things that play on the comedy stage would be far past the nail on the theatrical stage in some senses for you know for nice people theater not experimental theater right of course avant garde or whatever people come to see you that I'm sure they're coming to

18:43see a stand-back but they're probably also going to see some improv well I improvise I improvise but then not formally I would never ask anyone for a suggestion or no I don't do any of that because I do that with the boys I play with Ryan Styles Chip Eston and Jeff Davis Bob Der Cash's our musical director he was musical director of Second City Toronto for 25 years we tour as a group called Who's Live anyway and you're coming back in a few weeks we'll be back in a month's time Jack Singer yeah and we played Calgary many times in Vacherastia Chinese food and that's what you remember of Calgary the Chinese food okay where I stay and what we eat I'm I'm your Jewish 80-year-old grandmother everything was done my personal comfort I remember if the food was good and I remember if the room was okay we did some gigs in Pittsburgh last year and before

19:32we did a gig up in Mississauga and the first hotel was so skanky and I hadn't stayed in one in such a long time that was you know the bad air conditioner that runs poorly and then the window and like cigarette burns and I called our producer Rital Wood and I said let me ask you some of you Richie are we on the lamb it's the federal government pursuing us because I'm not sure why we're staying at this fucking you know it was because the gig was paying for it or whatever also the town we were in to be honest that might have been one of the only choices to stay was a small place oh that's too Pennsylvania but so that's a lot yeah I can't remember the beginning of your quote oh so I play improv with those guys so I don't do it on stage you know that stand up is I have the conch right and so it's my time not the audience's time whereas when I'm with the group

20:22the audience is absolutely involved because improv is a is all two way do you like one of the two better no I like I like them both for different reasons you know the with playing with Ryan and Ryan style says like playing with Baberit you know he just points at the fence and then hits one over the wall and then children cry he's a tremendous improviser and he doesn't give up he fights like a tiger and Chip and Jeff are just dead funny and we've been working as a force him for several years now and we've got it whipped into a you know a thing we hit the stage running and we're really lively and we really throw down so if you come to see us do improv it's much it's really good as far as you know we're not distracted we're not thinking of

21:09something else we're really there for the crowd that night and we put it together stand up is my opinion what I think how I feel all shot through my writing and performing so the difference is like total you know I can't stop the improv show to put in jokes that I've thought of mm-hmm about topics I care about I have to go with the big wash and that's how improv works so that's more like being in a band and being a stand up is more sad and lonely Oh I'm joking it's a fun life though the crying need to have the attention of a total room full of strangers and have them laugh at what you say every 15 to 30 seconds it is a fun life it is a fun life I wouldn't I wouldn't do another life

21:59because one I have no skills and two I've worked in offices and I've you know I've been a janitor and a waiter and a busboy and everything like that and it's not that great I understand what it's like for people when they come and they're tired yeah from working and looking after their families and you're there to entertain them and there I am to be their dancing monkey clown thank you all right thank you