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36 FEATURE
SEVEN DAYS
04.11.18-04.18.18
SEVENDAYSVT.COM
tandup comedian Demetri Martin is very funny. This interview is not. But please don’t let the lack of levity stop you from reading — or prevent you from seeing Martin when he performs on the Flynn MainStage in Burlington on Saturday, April 14. Martin is currently on his new Let’s Get Awkward tour. For the most part, it’s built on the same kind of hyper-efficient, absurdist comedy that’s endeared him to fans for nearly two decades: clever oneliners, punny doodles, the occasional musical number. But the show also includes something new to Martin’s act: personal stories. When we asked him about those, the conversation led us to his 2017 movie Dean — Martin’s film debut as writer, director and star. The dramedy centers on an illustrator, played by Martin, coming to terms with his father’s death. It’s based loosely on Martin’s own experience of losing his father when he was in college. The film is poignant and funny, but it’s not exactly laugh-out-loud interview fodder. Like the following Q&A, it highlights another side of Martin that’s by turns thoughtful, compassionate and engaging. In advance of his Flynn show — where he undoubtedly will be way funnier — Seven Days spoke with Martin by phone. SEVEN DAYS: You’re experimenting with more personal material on this tour, which is something you’ve typically avoided throughout your career. Why now? DEMETRI MARTIN: There’s a little bit of personal stuff in there, a couple of stories, but it’s not too prominent. I love doing one-liners and jokes, and I can’t get away from them too much. I don’t know what it is, but there was something [pushing me] to try and talk about some personal stuff. But, for whatever reason, it’s just not usually where I find inspiration; there’s not a lot of comedy there for me. For better or worse, it’s jokes that inspire me — thoughts and ideas instead of autobiography. SD: You’ve been writing a book of fiction. Do you think working in a narrative form has prompted you to look at stories from your own life? DM: Yeah, that might be part of it. Also, I made my first film that came out last year. That was also fiction, but it was more autobiographical, at least in its themes and what I was trying to cover in the story. But, now that you bring it up, when I
Good Grief Demetri Martin is a puzzling comedian B Y D AN BO L L E S
COMEDY was doing press for [the film], we would do Q&As after the screenings, [and] that was an opportunity to talk about personal stuff in front of an audience, which was kind of fun. But, for whatever reason, I don’t get sick of the jokes as fast as I get sick of myself and my stories. And the jokes are easier to rotate and replace because they’re short. I don’t have big chunks of my show dependent on a certain
narrative. The jokes are 30 seconds, and that kind of modular quality makes it a fun game for me. SD: Speaking of games, you’ve said previously that you look at jokes as puzzles. DM: Before I did comedy, I spent more daydreaming time on puzzles, especially when I was in school. It was a way to escape: to think about a puzzle and try
to think about the answer. Years later, it dawned on me that maybe the reason I like one-liners and jokes is that they can have a kind of puzzle-like quality to them. The punch line is kind of a solution, if the crowd agrees with you that it’s funny: “Oh, I found a solution to that idea or that predicate.” Within the structure of a joke, there is so much fun that you can find as the writer or the deliverer.