Episode #413
Kurt Braunohler started performing comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York City in 1998, and took an experimental filmmaking improv group to the Edinburgh Fringe long before meeting Kristen Schaal — with whom Kurt would start a variety show called Hot Tub, win awards and kudos at festivals from Aspen to Australia, and eventually begin his own solo career as a stand-up comedian and actor. He has hosted a game show on IFC, hired a skywriter to puff out the letters HOW DO I LAND?, jet-skied down the Mississippi River for Comedy Central, and appeared on shows such as The Good Place, Bob’s Burgers, and movies such as The Big Sick and Barbarian. In 2022, he released his second stand-up special, Perfectly Stupid, which premiered on the Moment platform before getting wider distribution. Kurt spoke with me about that decision, as well as the other big decisions in his life and career.
KURT BRAUNOHLER: PERFECTLY STUPID — Directed by Jonah Ray Rodrigues. Premiered October 27 on Moment. Available November 16 On Demand and December 16 on YouTube.
If you’re not already subscribed to my podcast, please seek it out and subscribe to Last Things First on the podcast platform of your choice! Among them: Apple Podcasts; Spotify; Stitcher; Amazon Music/Audible; iHeartRadio; Player.FM; and my original hosting platform, Libsyn.
Substack also has an app, too — which apparently is where you’ll need to be if I ever decide to launch Substack’s new Chat option (it’s app-only for now).
This transcript has been edited and condensed only slightly for your convenience.
Kurt, congratulations on your second full solo special, Perfectly Stupid. Last thing first: I have one very insignificant question and then one more.
I love it.
Did you know when you decided to open with inflatable tube dancers that you were tapping into the zeitgeist?
No, I did not. And when NOPE came out I was actually pretty bummed — not because the movie’s not good or anything — just that there’s inflatable tube dancing in it. And no, I have what I have wanted to do inflatable tube dancers at a show since I started comedy. But in my mind, what I wanted was them all to be behind me. So I would hit a punch line, I could hit a button and have them all come up, like they really loved the joke. But it doesn’t work that way because they’re very loud. And it would ruin the show. But then another idea I had was, you know those children’s toys that are like, it’ll be a giraffe or something, but it’s made up of all little tiny plastic pieces, so they’re held together with string and then you press the button on the bottom and it relaxes the string so it collapses. You know what I’m talking about?
I think I do (NOTE: I did not)
I wanted those. That was my other idea, hit a punch line and then hit a button and then they all pop up behind me, and like shake a little bit, and then I hit another button, they just drop. That’s something I’ve been wanting.
I want to see both of those things now.
I know, right?
So you’ll have to at least try it. You could always cut it in post.
We were gonna use the dancing fan guys as like marketing for the special but then once Jordan Peele was using them for NOPE, it was like, we kind of can’t do that which was OK, because I think we got some cool key art anyway.
So what made you decide to go with the team at Moment for the debut? I know it’s gonna roll out on other platforms eventually. But until a couple months ago Moment wasn’t even really a thing. So how did you decide to do it there?
It’s just a very artist-friendly site. You know, it allows it to feel like an event. It makes a premiere feel a little bit more like an event because there’s like, there’s a meet and greet. There’s an after party. You can like bundle merchandise with it as well. I made a book that I referenced in the special — I made that that you can actually buy when you watch the show. And it also feels like you know right now, there’s a lot of places to watch comedy and there’s a lot of comedy out there. The concept behind the moment where there is a specific time that it premieres and we can all watch it together, kind of reintroduces a sense of community to a comedy special that usually is just you know, people watch it whenever. Whenever they can, but now it’s like, oh, we’re all doing it together. It just felt pretty cool. And I think a lot of the reason Moment’s working their way into the comedy community is that Bart Coleman, who used to book @midnight and a bunch of other stuff is now works there.
So Bart was the real selling point for you?
I mean, I just know Bart. They had approached me about doing stuff during the pandemic. And it never, we just never kind of like got it to work, but I was like, this is a cool way to — and also when you have like a tiered release like I do, it kind of gives an opportunity for like three cycles of press. Because again, it seems like to get people to actually commit to watching something, it has to be like the third time they’re hearing reference of it or seeing it somewhere that they’re like OK, well I guess this is good. I’ll watch it.
Now, did Bart or anyone else at Moment give you a sense of like what to expect in terms of numbers of who would show up for the actual live premiere and chat and who might show up in the next 14 days?
They say 70% of ticket sales usually happen after the premiere. But the premiere kind of gives a reason to kick it off, and get people in on that day. And that’s that seems to be bearing out which is great. Just doing a lot of press for it and doing The Tonight Show next week.
So hopefully people will watch this one. Because my last special was with Comedy Central, and they aired that once at midnight on a Tuesday, and then at 4 a.m. and then they never aired it again. And then it was behind a paywall on the fucking Comedy Central site.
Are you able to get any ownership of that back or is it still behind the paywall?
They own it, but I can post clips from it and stuff like that — even though there’s you know, Viacom has some bot that challenges me on that like once a week, and then I have to submit like a thing to either YouTube or to Instagram saying no, this is my material I own the rights to it.
I am the Kurt Braunohler in this video.
That is me. I wrote those words. I performed those words and then Viacom backs off. But I don’t know if it’s someone physically doing it or if it’s just they have like bots crawling Instagram searching for a digital copy.
Speaking of bots, do you have your own sort of bot in the special JOKEATRON?
Yeah.
Now I had already seen in the past few months, AI Artificial Intelligence, making big waves in terms of artwork. You suggest a prompt and then it creates an immediate painting or drawing for you. Is this something that’s real or is this just a gimmick?
JOKEATRON is real. It was created by two data scientists, Mark and Manuel, who programmed it and then fed it like thousands of hours of stand up. But it’s very bad. Like, the algorithm is rudimentary right now. And we had created it to pitch it as a TV show, really. We figured if we had a show, we could proceed with getting it smarter and smarter and better and better at comedy. And the show would actually be taking it out on the road doing shows with it and whatnot to kind of create the actual first artificially intelligent comedian. But nobody bought it. And so I was like, Hey, guys, can I put this in the special? And they were like, yeah, totally. But it really is very bad right now. You give it one prompt and it’ll generate 500 jokes in a second, but like 499 of them are almost unintelligible, and then there’s one that works.
I know there’s some real debate going on in the art world about what the implications of this might be on actual human artists. So I immediately wonder: Is JOKEATRON a threat not just to you specifically, but to comedians, if you could just tell this robot to tell you a joke, even if it’s nonsense, it might become more popular.
The JOKEATRON is not a threat to anybody. Because it’s so bad at its job. I find it exhausting to use because you have to comb through 500 jokes, and combing through 500 jokes to find the one that works is very difficult and arduous. However, if you put hundreds and hundreds of more hours of programming and coding into it, it would probably get at least interestingly good — not like, replace comedians good. The main thing is that algorithms can’t go out and have new experiences in the world. And so they’re not going to replace stand-up comedians, because we’re a human who interacts with the world at large and they’re just in a box. So I don’t worry about it in that way. But regardless, the thing is, is that we’re just we’re just like, just running full speed ahead towards like this crazy future. What you’re talking about with the art stuff. My friends, I was on a text chat. And when that first one came out, I can’t remember what it was called.
DALL-E?
Yeah, everybody was just like saying, here’s the funny thing I put into it and then sending us a screencap of it. And they were all bad. Like the faces were really bad. And then, like three weeks later, someone was like, did you guys see this? And it was like it was some crazy like Garfield, Capt. Von Garfield sits playing poker in 1926 was like the input or something, and it looks perfect. My friend who’s a stone sculptor was like, this is actually kind of scary for artists. And I was like, but also realize with what glee we trained it. Like we trained it, humans trained it to get better, because millions and millions of people were using it every minute, and saying like, this is the right one. This looks good. This looks good. It’s just learning from us. So we have this innate desire to want to create these intelligences, which is fascinating.
Yeah, and eventually we’ll create the Terminator. So that’s, that’s good to know.
I don’t even think you know, I don’t think so. We’ll never have to create the Terminator. We will create something that humans are like, Oh, yes, we like this. We’re like, Oh, yes, we will. Are you willing to decide my entire life? OK, I will just lie down and sleep and then not exist anymore.
Well take me back to the moment you first met Kristen Schaal.
I had seen Kristen improvise. I’d never seen her do stand-up. This was like in 2004, and I thought she was funny. And I think maybe she saw me. I don’t know if she saw me improvise or not.
What were you doing in 2004?
I was improvising and teaching improv. Actually in August of 2004 was when I took this improv form we created called Neutrino Video Projects to Edinburgh. And we lost $10,000. And at that point, I had been doing improv for like six years. It was pretty much my life. And I was like, OK, we’ve actually invented a thing that has never existed before. It was like a completely improvised movie that was shot, scored and edited while the audience was live watching it.
And you were doing it in a time when that wasn’t quite as accessible as it is now, where you could do that with your phone.
(here’s an example from 2010 when phones could become part of the process, and you might recognize some of these folks!)
Exactly. Yeah, it was mini DV tapes with big cameras and we had people physically running the tapes back into the theater, where a VJ would have two separate decks and a DJ would add a soundtrack to the video as it came in. And I was like this — this is something new, and it’s something very cool — and then we lost $10,000. And I was like, Oh, I feel like I’m at the peak of what I can do with improv, and I’m still losing money. I need to do something else in comedy. And so I wanted to start a variety show. And so I went to the artistic director of The PIT at the time, who was Arian Moayed, who is now on Succession and he’s a very famous actor. And I said, Hey, I want to do a variety show! And he’s like, Kristen Schaal just asked me the same thing. And I knew she was backstage at the time. And so I literally just walked backstage and I was like, Hey, you want to do a variety show? I literally yelled to her across the theater. And she was just like, OK! We had never hung out before. We had never talked, really. We’d seen each other once on a train and I was like hi and she was like hi. And we just decided to do — ah, your 20s! your 20s! — you’re just like, let’s do this. OK! We don’t have anything else going on!
So you couldn’t possibly imagine that just doing this almost kind of “Yes, And” technique with the artistic director. Yes, and I’ll ask her right now. You probably had no idea that 17 years later, you would still be doing a variety show with this woman that you yelled at across the theater?
Yeah, it’s pretty awesome.
Was there ever a point because then you go from co-hosting a variety show to doing sketches together. Was there ever a point where the two of you thought that you might succeed more as a duo than as separate solo acts?
Kristen had been doing stand-up for about five years before we started working together. And I hadn’t my first time doing stand up or writing anything was the first Hot Tub. And so I had no act. I had no solo act at the time. So I was writing for us. She was writing for us. And so we were kind of like both writing sketches for each other. But then Kristen was also writing her own stuff. And I was trying to write stuff for myself, but I was just really struggling with the transition from improv into stand-up. And so I think like maybe a year in, Kristen got Aspen for her solo stand-up. So she was always on a separate track with her solo stand-up. It took me longer because I had just kind of like build an act when I did not have one at all. But it was exciting. Kristen went to Edinburgh with her solo act. And then Melbourne Comedy Festival wanted her to bring her solo act to Australia. And she wanted us to do our show because we had a full hourlong show that we had written. And they said no. The comedy festival was like no way. So Kristen just painted me out of the money she was being paid, and flew me out herself. She did like half of her solo show and then I came on and we did like half of our double act and then we ended up winning the Melbourne Comedy Festival with that. And so then the next year we brought our full hour long act to Edinburgh and then got nominated for the big Comedy Award that year as well. So I have to give Kristen a lot of credit for kind of pushing for me to be involved with that stuff.
Right? That’s amazing because they said no and then she made it happen, and then you end up winning. So you’re like, see we told you, you should have said yes.
Yeah. And also if Susan Provan who ran it, or whoever runs the Melbourne Comedy Festival is listening to this — We also still have never gotten our plaque. Like, you win a plaque.
Oh, The Barry Award!
Yes, we won The Barry and we never got our plaque. She’s like, we literally have physically holding one on stage, and then like she took it away from us. And she’s like, we’ll mail you we’ll mail you two, so that you both have one, and then no one ever mailed us anything.
I don’t know if this makes you feel any better but I never got my ECNY Award.
Jeez! You can have one of mine! I’m looking at them right here.
Emerging comics of New York, assemble. So was your first big solo break getting the game show Bunk on IFC?
Yes, that was my first big break and that’s what got me an agent. And that’s what got me like headlining at clubs, probably prior to me being ready to headline at clubs.
That seemed like such a natural fit for you. I don’t know if it was because of that format in particular, but I really, I loved that show. And I loved you as the host of it. And you really I really got the sense that like, oh, Kurt Brauohler, he’s a game show host. Yeah, he’s that guy. Was that a path that you ever seriously pursued?
Well, no, not seriously pursued, as like an actual game show. But that game show yeah, I loved that game show. So fun to do. And for those of you who are not familiar, it was like it was before @midnight, and it was more of a loosey goosey kind of absurdist version of @midnight. Where it was all three comedians competing against each other for no real prizes. All the games are just improv and craziness.
Right and it was on IFC, which I don’t know what’s on IFC now.
I was just talking about it. Does IFC exist? Does it exist anymore?
But that was a period where they had shows like Comedy Bang! Bang! They had Marc Maron having a show there. Portlandia.
They had a good run.
Now, I don’t want to spoil too much about your special, but I have to think that between having a deadbeat dad and a single mom who’s a pediatric nurse who has you babysitting by putting you in with other sick kids, that you’re pre-destined for comedy, right?
I had no idea until — I hadn’t actually realized it until recently, when I was doing a joke that I did in the special, but I was doing it at a club. I was like, oh, that’s why I’m a comedian! Yeah, I guess that is why.
I know the bit with the gas station wasn’t planned, but how would you rank that compared to the actual pranks you have successfully pulled off?
This was one just much more embarrassing. I mean, driving away with the gas pump in your car, and driving with it for a while. I found it pretty embarrassing.
I pictured in my head that the tube just keeps going and going. If I were to animate the special, which I have no skill in, that’s how I would do it. Well, where does the the impulse to do like these big things come from? Was it something that you had even before Neutrino?
It came from this thing that I did in the late 90s, early aughts called Chengwin and Chunk. Chengwin was half chicken half penguin and he was pure love and he laid eggs out of his butt. He was about eight feet tall. And then Chunk was half chicken half skunk, and he’s pure evil and he shot water out of his tail. This was like again, like giant guerilla street theater that my buddy Matt Murphy and I did. Matt just had an idea one day to build this bird, Chengwin, when out of like chicken wire and feathers. And he just walked around I think like Chinatown with it. People went apeshit, they just thought it was so interesting. He just got excited about it. And I remember it was back in the day, probably 1998 or something and it was the UCB email listserv. That’s where it was at. It was like an email listserv. And it would just like, everybody was on it at the theater, and then every day you would just get blasted with like 50 messages. And one of the messages was from him to that listserv: Does anybody want to play a half chicken half skunk? And he said I was the very first person to respond and said, I just played a monkey with a big blue dick. Which I had. I had dressed up as a monkey with a big blue dick. For money, someone else’s idea. But and so he was like, this is the guy and so then we met and I had a lot of ideas about psychogeography, about transforming public spaces. And he had a lot of ideas about the narrative of Changwin and Chunk. And it was kind of a perfect marriage, because I was in the improv scene and had access to all these improvisers like Brett Gelman and Jon Daly, who would come out and be part of like the crew that helped pull it off. And he’s just an artistic genius, could build these giant animals, and that was like my main artistic output from like 1999 to 2003 or so. We would pull one huge event off per year. I mean, Jesus, we would shut down Broadway for like two straight hours. And it would just be 1000s of people in the middle of the street. We had huge marching bands with giant parades. And then it was all just a battle between these two characters that would just bump up against each other and then eventually Chunk would fall over and his head would pop off. And we never got arrested. We would have like a truck waiting for us around the corner that then we would just run over to, throw the animals in, close it, just drive away. And so everything would just disappear very quickly. And we just loved that idea of like these big public events in a very normal place that then kind of made you appreciate why living in New York City is so fucking cool. And so that was where it came from, really. I’ve always loved that kind of stuff.
So then, like almost a decade later, you’re talking to Comedy Central. You’re an East Coast guy from Jersey, who went to school in Baltimore. Where does the idea come to jet ski the Mississippi River?
I sold a talk show, weirdly, to Comedy Central digital, and it was supposed to be a talk show. But it was gonna be in like weird places. Like we’re tubing in the LA River and we’re gonna be having a chat while we tube the LA River, something like that. It took so long for the deal to go through and during that time, I had pulled off the skywriting thing. And Comedy Central was like we want something big like that. And I was like, OK, you want something big? Then I just like wrote 1,000 things down and then I was like, how about we jet ski across America? And I was like, not thinking they would say yes. And bless their hearts, Comedy Central digital came fucking through. I still cannot believe it. They’re like, we’re gonna do this. And we did it. Jet skied from Chicago to New Orleans. I mean like for fucking for like a web series. That’s crazy.
Had you done much jet skiing before that?
I had, yeah, I grew up jet skiing. Because my dad had a jet ski. My dad was the rich one.
And you mentioned the skywriting, that happened before the jet skiing. And that was a Kickstarter?
Yeah, it was the only time I’ve used Kickstarter. And I just had the idea that I wanted to like write a joke in the sky with clouds. And so just made a video, put it on Kickstarter, and it was the first time I ever experienced people being like, this is great. I like this idea. I’ll give money to that. I was shocked, and it really took off. And we raised enough money to be able to do it.
But you never decided to do another one. That was your one and only Kickstarter.
Yeah. Yep. I just didn’t I didn’t want to be that. I don’t know why, I just didn’t like — I didn’t like the idea of asking for money over and over and over again for like dumb ideas. I don’t know why, really, because people are willing. The dumber it is, the more people are willing, seemingly.
That’s one of the things Steve Bannon is in trouble for, on both the federal and state level is defrauding people into thinking they were giving him money to build the border wall and he just pocketed it all. But you know, you were young and perfectly stupid and now you’re older. You’re married. You’re a father. And you know, you talk about a little bit about that. But then you also talk about how there was a period where you had to go back to New Jersey and care for your mother when she was sick. And I wonder how all of that changed your perceptions on what you wanted out of both your life and your career.
The main thing was we were really just trying to give my mom the gift of knowing that she had grandchildren. All she wanted were grandchildren, all her life. She loved kids. She was a pediatric nurse. And so it was just like this crazy time of life where we were like frantically trying to get my wife pregnant, while also caring for my dying mother. It was, yeah, it was just kind of incredibly stressful, and also actually a very good preparation for how stressful the first couple of months of being a parent are. They’re very similar, having a parent dying and being a parent in the beginning, are very similar vibes.
Obviously, you know, you talk about your kids perfectly stupid humor. Has it changed, like your own mentality, in terms of like what kinds of things you’re willing to do in terms of being perfectly stupid yourself?
I think what it has done is, for my comedy, it has made me interested in having comedy that has an emotional core to it, if you will, and that’s something that I tried to accomplish in this new hour. To have something, to not be afraid of sitting in it a little bit. Still have a ton of jokes you know, I think it’s still a mostly joke-heavy special, but still having an emotional core to and I think that is what has been informed by my mother’s death. Definitely.
Well, and don’t sell yourself short. I mean, turning Kristen Schaal into a horse does have an emotional core to it.
Over and over and over again.
It does make you sit with it. It makes her gallop with it. We sit with it. Well, Kurt, I really appreciate all the rescheduling and whatnot that we finally made this happen.
Yeah, thank you for doing it.
And congrats once again on the special.
Thank you!
From The Comic's Comic 
Leave a comment