Culture

'Cerebral' comedian Demetri Martin brings 'What's Your Major' tour to UAA

At age 24, second-year New York University law student Demetri Martin knew he wanted to be a stand-up comedian. There was only one problem: He had never done it before. "So I dropped out of law school," said Martin in a recent interview with Play, "and a few months later was the first time I tried an open mic. Shortly after stepping onstage that first time, I remember thinking, 'Oh, this is definitely what I want to do, this feels right.'"

At first, Martin struggled to book gigs because he was seen as too "cerebral." The term rubbed Martin the wrong way. "People who were calling me 'cerebral' were the same ones not giving me stage time early in my career," said Martin. "In that context, it was something pejorative." But Martin stuck with his style, and his career eventually blossomed.

In 2003, Martin won an award for "If I …," a one-man show that later became a television special on BBC. That year, Martin got a job writing for "Late Night with Conan O'Brien."

"I loved working at 'Conan,'" said Martin. "It was a great place to be a sketch writer. At that time, you got to direct and produce any piece that you wrote. If your sketch got chosen, you got to run that piece: wardrobe, props, whatever was involved. It was a little mini crash course in producing and directing comedy for TV.

"Conan was a great boss. I think he's a super smart, super funny guy, and he was really good to his staff. I felt lucky."

Despite his steady day job, Martin kept up with his stand-up, soon earning his own "Comedy Central Presents" stand-up special, featuring drawings and musical bits that still fill his act today.

Martin would go on to write and perform as a correspondent on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." "I wasn't really on the staff at 'The Daily Show,'" said Martin, "but I felt lucky that I got to write my own pieces, which was not the case for everyone who was on 'The Daily Show.' That was a great experience too; Jon (Stewart) was a great boss to work for. He and Conan are two different guys with two different ways of doing comedy, but at that time in New York, I was really lucky to have spent time at both of those places."

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Martin's style continued to earn him fans, and work. He has recorded two comedy albums, published a book, hosted a television show called "Important Things With Demetri Martin" and recently completed production on a feature film, "Dean," that he wrote and directed.

Martin will share some of his cerebral wit and wisdom with an Anchorage audience on Thursday, March 3, at the University of Alaska Anchorage, performing his new live stand-up special, "Demetri Martin. What's Your Major?" Martin kindly answered a few more questions for Play.

Play: What makes a joke funny?

Martin: Everybody knows what's funny. But I think until you are trying to present something to an audience, when you say "that's funny," you don't realize that you are really saying "that's funny to me." To present comedy, to sell comedy to people, you end up focusing on the end of that sentence. Is it funny to your roommate? Your co-workers? A theater full of people? It's just so subjective. I don't really have a theory of comedy. But I do know that it has a lot to do with who's receiving it. A lot of jokes are funny in my head, but then I'm wrong. And they let me know.

Play: When did you know you were funny?

Martin: I don't know. I'm still trying to figure that out.

Play: Who was your comedic role model?

Martin: My dad was really funny. He always seemed to make people laugh, at a dinner party, at a bank, running errands. It seemed like a natural thing, you took it for granted.

Play: How different is onstage Demetri from private Demetri?

Martin: It's weird being a comedian because it's this job where, in a sense, you are the product that you are selling. You don't get the distance that someone in a band gets to have from what they are selling. In a band, you can promote the band, but you are not the band the whole time when you are at home. For a comedian, that gets pretty murky. So you try to do what you can, be authentic, be yourself. I think I am pretty close to that person. I don't speak in one-liners all the time, I don't think I'm as efficient communicating my ideas as I am once I get my act together. But yeah, I'd say that's pretty much me. Before I did comedy, I joked around with my friends more. Once I got onto the stage, it restored a certain balance to my offstage life, where I wasn't trying to do bits all the time.

Play: What do you want audience members thinking when they leave your show? What's your entertainment goal?

Martin: Probably nothing too lofty. Hopefully they had a good time and laughed a lot and they will come see me again next time I come around.

Play: What advice do you have for emerging comedians?

Martin: What's helped me is focusing more on the process and less on the results, which maybe I do too much, but I found that when I spend more time thinking about how I come up with things and how to generate new ideas and develop them, some of the things I want to achieve end up being byproducts of that process, instead of things I have to keep chasing after. It's more like OK, what time of day works best for me to write and how frequently should I perform? When do I feel burnt out? When do I feel inspired? Just being mindful about your process.

Play: But if you had to give one specific piece of advice, what would it be?

Martin: When I finally got organized and had a system for writing down my jokes wherever I was, I was able to make better material faster. Like a lot of comedians, I started carrying a notebook, and really writing everything down in it that seems at all valuable. I started to develop that. As painful as it is to write stuff that doesn't work, it is really helpful. It helps you get to the stuff that's good, I think, a little faster.

Play: How did you become interested in writing palindromic poems?

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Martin: When I was forced to work in my parents' diner after school, on slow nights, I brought puzzle books with me to do something with my brains while I was sitting there. Some of those books had palindromes; they piqued my interest. It seemed like it would be hard to write one. And it was!

Play: What advice do you have for aspiring palindrome writers?

Martin: Get outside more.

Demetri Martin

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 3

Where: UAA Wendy Williamson Auditorium

Tickets: $15 advance/$20 door for UAA students; $35/$40 for general public at uaatix.com

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