Zach Galifianakis
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

The landscape of standup comedy on television has taken a surprising turn in the past few years. People like Artie Lange, Patton Oswalt and Paul Mooney are doing these amazing standup shows and are videotaping them in a very cool verite way. In the wake of the success of The Comedians of Comedy, Zach Galifianakis and director/editor Michael Blieden have teamed up again to bring Zach Galifianakis - Live at the Purple Onion to DVD. Besides Galifianakis’ hysterical set at the world renowned venue, we also get to see his “brother” Seth get interviewed by NPR’s Brian Unger and get some real personal moments with Zach.

Buy Zach Galifianakis - Live at the Purple Onion

Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?

Zach Galifianakis: I just rolled a joint.

DRE: Nice.

Wait a second, does that mean you’ve got nothing to do for the rest of the day?

Zach: I have a lot to do, but nothing is more important than the ole joint rolling.

DRE: Can you do your normal stuff while you’re high?

Zach: I can’t do anything. I don’t know if I’m going to smoke it. I was rolling it. I’m practicing because my arthritis is really bad and I’m just trying to work on my fingers.

DRE: The only indication that you liked marijuana, was that one of your MySpace groups is the Relegalize It group.

Zach: Oh yeah, somebody added that. I’m probably also friends with sex offenders and stuff like that. But I’m all for the legalization effort of course.

DRE: You don’t do a lot of pot humor, well I didn’t see Out Cold. That’s a pot movie, right?

Zach: It is a bit. But it paints you into a corner if you’re like that. I’d rather have expanded a little bit.

DRE: Do you have a show tonight?

Zach: No, I’m going to go to one of those boring Hollywood meetings in about two hours. I’m going to sit there and pretend like I’m paying attention and nod my head. That’s all I have to do today.

DRE: Is this a meeting for something good?

Zach: I’m trying to get this movie made called Fat Jesus. I’m going around town talking about it and it is usually met with glazed over looks.

DRE: What’s it about?

Zach: The scientific community and the Catholic Church get together and release exactly what Jesus looks like. He looks exactly this assistant manager at Kinko’s. So everybody starts thinking he’s Jesus and he runs with it and his life starts paralleling the last days of Jesus but in the modern world. He’s also a complete loser, stoner type of guy so it’s as if Jesus came back as Pauly Shore.

DRE: Did you write it by yourself?

Zach: I am writing it with my friend A.D. Miles.

DRE: You’re from North Carolina, right?

Zach: I am from the mountains of North Carolina. It’s a small town in the foothills. Now I have a 60 acre farm up in the mountains that I live at sometimes. I’m getting ready for some cows. I’m really happy. It’s really nice. I’m going to make it into a writer’s retreat I think and maybe an all-black nudist colony.

DRE: You really have a farm or are you messing with me?

Zach: No, I really do have one. It’s really beautiful. I have a pond and a tractor and I drive around acting like I know what I’m doing, but I have no clue. But I’m learning how to farm and I love it.

DRE: What made you pick the Purple Onion for this DVD?

Zach: Purple Onion was this club back in the ‘60s that Woody Allen and Phyllis Diller and Mort Sahl and all these comedians used to play. They reopened it.

DRE: Did you specifically want Michael Blieden to direct so it would have the same feeling as Comedians of Comedy?

Zach: Yeah. I want Michael Blieden to work on everything I do because he’s really good at covering comedy. He’s shoots and he doesn’t tell you to do anything and he edits it nicely.

DRE: Did you guys talk about doing this when you were doing the Comedians TV show?

Zach: Well Netflix gave us some money and they said “Go shoot some stand up” and we just did it from there. It was a real organic type thing.

DRE: Netflix is getting into producing a lot of comedy. I saw their John Waters movie and they put out the Comedians movie. They seem like they give a lot of freedom.

Zach: They don’t muddle. They don’t do any of that. You just do it and you hand it in. I have all the say and the editing rights on it and that stuff, so it was good.

DRE: I’m sure you’ve been either offered or talked about comedy specials with places like Comedy Central and HBO. Is what they want out of you much different than what you want?

Zach: I definitely didn’t want it to be too polished. Standup on television is always over produced and everything’s really nice. I wanted the club feel for this. If you do it on Comedy Central or something, there are always a thousand people involved and it doesn’t really have the same feel as when you go see it live. So I wanted it to have the feeling that you are sitting in the room and hearing the drinks clink and people sucking through straws. Michael Blieden did a really good job of capturing that.

DRE: During one of the interviews you said that you are shy, to do what you do did you have to overcome that?

Zach: I don’t know if it’s a shyness rather than a lack of confidence, which I think translates into shyness sometimes. But when you’re working with people that you know, it’s a lot easier. I’ve been on the road with all those guys that worked on the Purple Onion thing. So that helps you loosen up. There’s also beer involved. That’s always a great confidence booster. They don’t let you do too much on Comedy Central. I’m shy a little bit in real life but everything is unleashed when I get onstage. Other than that, I’m pretty quiet.

DRE: I know you riff a lot, is that the right word to use?

Zach: Yeah riff, that works. A lot of it is just experimental. It’s making stuff up in the moment and improvising. I can stick to my jokes, but to be honest with you, you get a little bit bored with that. So I like to ask the audience questions and I like curveballs and all that stuff. I don’t really mind getting heckled. I think it’s fun as long as it’s done organically. I don’t like when people purposely heckle me because they’re trying to make the show better. That never works. They’re like “Hey, man. I just wanted to heckle you because it’ll make your show better.” I don’t fucking need you to make the show better. You’re making things worse.

DRE: You’re not in charge.

Zach: Exactly. You’re not in charge.

DRE: Did you tone any of the riffing down for the DVD?

Zach: I will say this without going into too much detail, I did say something political that was highly illegal. People can narrow that down. There were two references to that. Netflix just overlooked it. I had to call them and say, “You have to take this out. The FBI will come.” So I had to tone that down a little bit.

DRE: It’s funny that they missed it.

Zach: One of the producers, I guess he was trying to make me a martyr. I contacted a free speech lawyer and he said that we should take this on. I’m like “I don’t have time for that.” So it never happened. Thank God.

DRE: It’s so hard to tell what’s real and what’s not real in your act. But I read that your uncle really did run against Jesse Helms.

Zach: Yeah, that’s true. He’s still alive and he’s a congressman in North Carolina. Since my uncle is Greek, the KKK would show up at campaign rallies just to intimidate him.

DRE: Because he was Greek?

Zach: Yeah. My dad’s side of the family is real dark. Like a Greek guy running for Senate is intimidating to small-minded Southerners.

DRE: So you were raised in a very political atmosphere?

Zach: We discussed politics constantly and still do. A very Greek way of being is that you discuss politics. It’s a constant theme at my house. It’s what we talk about all the time.

DRE: Since you do some political stuff in your act, what does your family think of that?

Zach: My parents are very supportive. On the back of the DVD, it says that I want to thank my parents, but I hope they never see this. My parents are liberals, but I don’t think they like their son walking around saying “Who ate all the pussy?” and stuff like that. I tell them that it’s a stage persona, which is not really true but they understand. They don’t care. I could be in pornography. As long as I’m flying them to places, they could care less.

DRE: I saw that you have done Seth Galifianakis before on Jimmy Kimmel.

Zach: My brother has been on Jimmy Kimmel before and he’s performed live with me. I’ve gone on and he follows me. The DVD will be his second like thing on tape.

DRE: So we’re talking like he’s real? That’s fine.

What does Greg Galifianakis think of Seth?

Zach: Greg, my real brother, designed me. I don’t care what he thinks because he was my Dr. Frankenstein growing up since he was so mean to me. But he’s like an angel now so it doesn’t really matter.

DRE: I have an older brother too. So it was him beating the crap out of you that made you all angry?

Zach: It didn’t make me angry. I was angry towards him, but I’m not an angry person. It affects people different ways. I think I learned to use humor to defend myself against him and make fun of him because that was the only thing I could do to rebuke because he was so much bigger than me. My brother is such a gem now and he feels so guilty about all of it.

DRE: I know what you mean.

Zach: At least he says that. But he’s had talks with me where he started crying because he feels so guilty.

DRE: During the scenes with Seth, they kept in Brian Unger actually laughing. I didn’t expect that.

Zach: I told Blieden to cut that out. He’s like “No, you’ve got to watch it again.” You start laughing as Brian is laughing. We had a hard time keeping a straight face. None of that was written. We were just fooling around.

DRE: Once again it’s hard to tell if what you were saying is real. So did a bus driver really did pull your pants down?

Zach: That’s true. My brother did stuff his underwear in my mouth and yell out, “I’m giving you a gag order.” I’m trying to think of all the stuff that was on there. There was maybe one embellished thing.

DRE: I never thought about this before but Sarah Silverman told me that the reason that she had to change her act every night was because the same people were coming to all the shows. Is that why you do your standup that way?

Zach: That’s a good point Sarah makes because you do get these nerdy followers around town and it forces you to do new stuff, but screw them. I’m not doing it for them. I get bored with the same old, same old. When I go on the road I stick to my act, but in these little rooms in Los Angeles or New York, I do the more experimental stuff.

DRE: Is Dog Bites Man officially gone?

Zach: That’s done. Yeah. That’s cancelled.

DRE: You told Michael Showalter that you didn’t really love doing the show.

Zach: I really liked doing the show. It’s the same producer of Ali G, but Ali G went after people with power. There’s a different feel to it. We went after the religious right and we went after the Republicans and I have no problem with that. There were a couple of things that maybe didn’t even air, there was one time we were doing an interview and I started crying out of character. I was like “What am I doing? What am I doing?”

DRE: Oh wow.

Zach: It was inside this church. We were interviewing this preacher and he was so sweet. We went into this Megachurch thinking we were going to take on a certain kind of person. But it turns out sometimes people are just good people. Plus we had all these lawyers behind us. It felt a little bit iffy that way, to be honest with you.

DRE: Let me guess, Matt Walsh and [Dog Bites Man creator] Dan Mazer didn’t care.

Zach: No [laughs].

DRE: They didn’t care one bit I bet.

Zach: No, Matt Walsh was the hardest worker on the show. But Matt puts these blinders on and he just goes. Matt will say the most horrible things to anyone. But he’s a really nice guy and Dan’s a really nice guy, but when it comes to nabbing people, they were a little bit more ferocious than perhaps I was. I think Dan’s theory is that he thinks everyone’s a cunt.

DRE: I remember when your talk show ads were all over Manhattan. I had at least two people go to me, “Who is that guy?” I’m like “I don’t know who he is. I’m not in college.” Was that a surreal moment when they were plugging the hell out of that thing?

Zach: Yeah. My mom happened to be in New York at the time. She was in Times Square and she called me and she was like, “My God, Zach, your face is everywhere. It’s on the side of a building.” I’m like “I know mom, it’s bizarre.” But I wish they had not thrown that show on so strong. I wish that people had found it. In the TV business, they want a hit right away. It was weird. In Los Angeles there was actually a corner where I had a billboard up and then my roommate, who was a Banana Republic model, had a billboard up and we were facing each other. We were staring at each other through billboards.

DRE: You are actually in the Sean Penn movie [Into the Wild].

Zach: Yeah, it sounds like a joke. I didn’t audition for it. He called my cell phone and next thing I know, I’m in South Dakota with him in a hunting lodge for two weeks. The first thing I asked, “How the hell do you know who I am?” He goes, “I’ve seen that movie Out Cold about 20 times.” I’m like, “Really?” His son is a big snowboarder, so his son forced him to watch it. For Into the Wild, there was no written dialogue. I just showed up and improvised it all.

DRE: Is it an all improv movie?

Zach: No, it’s all strictly scripted, But Sean was like, “I’m just running the camera, so try to come up with stuff,” which is a bit intimidating. Hopefully I’m still in it. I’ve run into him a couple times and he says I’m still in the movie, so maybe.

DRE: You do a lot of movies. Do you want to be a serious actor or have a sitcom?

Zach: At this point I just take what rolls my way. I don’t really sit around going, “Oh, I’m going to take this project because it really spoke to me” because a lot of it is shit. I take a lot of jobs based on where it’s shooting. If it’s not in Los Angeles, that’s a big bonus. But in the coming years I hope to have little movies that I’ve written that I can be in. A less aggressive Woody Allen type of brand would be really nice like his early silly stuff.

DRE: Do you rewrite movies like Patton [Oswalt] and Brian [Posehn] Brian [Posehn]?

Zach: No, those guys all do that. I think that takes discipline and I’m too busy collecting firewood and trying to keep my house warm. Those guys are good at that. I haven’t gotten into that world yet, but I’m just focusing on my tractor and farming and when things come my way or if I come up with an idea, I’ll try to pursue that. I’m more of a shaker than a mover. Let’s just put it that way.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Zach+Galifianakis/