He'll Sleep When He's Dead: The Dave Attell Interview

By Erik Pepple
210 west Pop Culture Editor [send email]

For 16 years Dave Attell has earned a reputation as a comic’s comic. Guys like David Cross (Mr. Show) have claimed that it’s nearly impossible to follow an Attell set and Jimmy Kimmel has called him one of the best comics working today.

Attell’s notorious, some would say obsessive, work ethic results in a stand-up act that is a bracing mix of the insightful and the raunchy. Much like his spiritual brethren George Carlin and Richard Pryor, Attell is capable of making the profane poetic. Touching on topics ranging from masturbation, pornography, midgets and the benefits of having a parrot, he has mastered what he has called “the educated dick joke.”

His gifts as a stand-up have resulted in spending a season as a writer on Saturday Night Live, a recurring role on Everybody Loves Raymond, a stint as “The Ugly American” on The Daily Show and perhaps most interestingly a role in the cult hit Pootie Tang. But more than that, it’s been his hit Comedy Central show Insomniac (Thursdays at 10 p.m.) that has really brought Attell to the attention of a group other than die hard comedy fans.

Dubbed “E!’s Wild On for ugly people,” Insomniac follows Attell from city to city as he patrols the streets looking for other night crawlers. The alcohol- and nicotine-drenched half-hour finds Attell interviewing fellow drunks, hookers, street sweepers, the occasional porn star and in one episode a guy who cleans up crime scenes. It is a fascinating, good-natured travelogue about the types of people who thrive at night and who take the jobs that would make most of us cringe.

Insomniac has now entered its fourth and final season, and is at the height of its popularity. This season will find Attell and company going overseas, breaking the seven deadly sins and taking on a co-host for a special episode.

With a new live CD, "Skanks for the Memories," and a DVD of uncensored Insomniac episodes on the shelves, an extremely ingratiating and friendly Attell was kind enough to speak to 210 West by phone about the current season of Insomniac, writing for Saturday Night Live and what exactly the deal is with Pootie Tang.

210 West: So rumor has it that this is the last season for Insomniac.

Dave Attell: Yes, it is. We may come back for a series of specials, you know, for big events like the Indianapolis 500, stuff like that.

210W: So why go out now while the show seems to be at the height of its popularity?

DA: The show has sort of become a victim of its own popularity. It’s getting harder and harder to slide in and out of places anymore. In a lot of instances it’s no longer about the Q and A with drunks and people with cool late night jobs, it’s a lot of people using it as a vehicle to get on TV and use it as a soapbox to say things like “Did you know people are raping the rainforests!?”

210W: You’re missing the anonymity of the earlier seasons, then?

DA: Yeah, the undercover aspect is almost completely blown. And in some ways the show can be a grind and when it starts to feel like a grind it can get stale.
I love that people have found the show, though, it’s a great feeling. I never thought it would be this successful.

210W: Can you tell me anything about the upcoming season?

DA: This season we went overseas to London, Dublin and Amsterdam. And we have episodes in Honolulu, Columbus, Vegas, among others. The show in Amsterdam (the season premiere) is an hour and we did some stuff like break the seven deadly sins.

210W: Is there a noticeable difference doing the show overseas than here in the U.S.?

DA: Yeah, doing the show overseas is the complete opposite of how it’s done here. In London and Dublin people aren’t used to cameras coming into pubs so it was difficult to find people to talk to, so there was a lot of table hopping. Another big difference is that security is so tight in the U.S. that we can’t get in or around government buildings or things like meat packing plants. In London we were able to hang out on the London Bridge, which is like going to the roof of the White House in the United States.

210W: Were you overseas before or during the Iraq war? What was the attitude like?

DA: We were there before the war so we had a lot of people getting on camera trying to get messages to the government and things like “Tell Bush this and that.”

210W: This season the Columbus, Ohio, episode features a co-host; how did that come about? How did it alter the dynamic of how you host the show?

DA: The Columbus show is the result of an e-mail contest on the website. We had a lot of entries from all over the place and from all kinds of people. And the goal, the prize along with co-hosting, was $1,000, and we wanted to give it to someone who needed help to get on their feet. And the guy who won (James Thornburg) was cool, a regular guy and he had just come back from the Peace Corps where he had been doing all these good works and it was a chance to just help someone out, get him a start. $1,000 may not be a lot, but it’s enough to find a place to stay for a month or so.

And Columbus was cool, because school was out so we really just got the chance to just hang out with regular people.

210W: You’ve done these shows all over the place. Do you notice a difference between the degrees of depravity or drunkenness, or the scenes in the Midwest versus the coasts?

DA: Everyone thinks that New York and Los Angeles are these really glamorous party cities with these really glamorous scenes and that’s kind of true, there’s certainly that aspect to it. But generally because everything is turning into a chain, it’s turning more and more like everywhere else. The goal of the show has always been to find wild and cool stuff and drinking and with franchises like Planet Hollywood opening up all over it’s getting harder and harder.

210W: Did you ever want to take the show to these smaller cities and towns out in the boondocks that no one would ever think to go?

DA: Well the way we do the show is that we go out in towns where I do my stand-up act. But I’d love to go to places off the map and to these border towns and stuff like that. The problem is, or so I’ve been told, is that you need a way to get the equipment in and out and have easy access to equipment like battery belts and stuff and a lot of theses smaller towns with 500 people don’t have easy access to things like that. There’s not really a support staff that can accommodate a television crew.

210W: How long have you been a working stand-up comic? Was there some sort of a compulsion do it?

DA: I’ve been a stand-up for 16 years. There is a compulsion to do it, but what I like about stand-up is it’s basically just you and you don’t have to deal with bullshit like hair and make-up. I don’t consider myself a TV star; I’m just a guy with a show that people seem to like. And even though I’ve been at it for a long time, it’s only been 8 years or so since I’ve been making a living at it, so most of the time I was working day jobs, then at night doing my act and getting drunk. You’d do it until you got fired from your day job or knew when to fire yourself.

210W: You were a writer for Saturday Night Live, can you tell me what that was like?

DA: I’m not a writer, I’ve done writing work, but I’m not a writer. On Insomniac, there is no writing with the exception of the little opening intros.
With SNL it is sort of like a pit bull fight where the biggest and best will ultimately emerge. It’s really cool, though, and it taught me a lot about show business and the pecking orders and when I was writing for them I guess I was more naïve.
It wasn’t a dream of mine or anything, but that show is America’s sweetheart, isn’t it? And it was definitely a cool experience, but a lot times I’d show up, do my job and as part of my stand-up compulsion I’d leave to do stand-up while everyone else was hanging out.

210W: A year or so ago I interviewed Lewis Black and he mentioned that there was a possibility of you guys doing a tour together. Is that still an option?

DA: I love Lewis Black. He’s great and he’s not a “punch line” comic. He does these college shows and everyone always thinks he’s the funniest act they bring in.

And I’m looking at touring with Lewis and someone like Mitch Hedberg. Between us we could sell out a theatre, even though I’m not a theatre comic; I think it’d be interesting.

210W: I have one last question that’s an outgrowth from working in a video store when Pootie Tang was released. What’s the deal with the cult that is springing up around that movie?

DA: I don’t know. But that’s like trying to crack the new Taliban code figuring that out. From what I’ve heard from the writer and director, Louis CK, who is another great comic, is that it got finagled by the studios. Regardless, it is really cool to be part of a movie that is becoming this interesting cult item.