Comedy Central Dave Attell (center) poses with
kickboxers on his late night, Comedy Central show "Insomniac." His
ability to find the most unique activities occurring in the wee
hours has helped the show become an almost overnight success with
an underground following.
By Christopher Cobb
Daily Bruin Contributor
For people who are tired of turning on the television to
über-titted models and chiseled men leading unbelievably over-
entertaining lives … there is hope.
Those familiar with Dave Attell’s stand-up would not be
surprised at his saying, “On TV, usually everybody’s
good-looking and sarcastically funny and you know, they’re
always walking in a door and something funny happens. Like this is
kind of a different thing. Sort of reality-based, half-reality,
half-kind of like, travelogue. It’s like a “˜Wild On
“¦ E!’ for ugly people. And it’s about
time.”
His show, “Insomniac with Dave Attell,” has become
an almost overnight, quasi-underground sensation, created for the
night-owl crowd who care to see the goings-on of big cities from
the hours of 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. Bars. Clubs. Drunk folk. People who
work late. More bars. More drunk folk. To some, these
wouldn’t be the major ingredients for a popular comedy show,
but somehow Attell has made it successful.
So it is little wonder that although the show began its run in
the armpit of the scheduling calendar (11:30 p.m., Sundays), it has
been bumped up right before Comedy Central’s G-spot,
“South Park,” starting with the new season Wednesday,
Jan. 23. Yet the question remains, will the show’s odd-ball
approach appeal to a broader audience?
“I thought Comedy Central needed a show that travels
around the country,” Attell said. “Kind of what a comic
does, you know, it’s not based in New York or L.A.”
Comedy Central When filming in San Francisco, Dave
Attell, right, met with the city’s mayor Willie
Brown, and played a game of pool with him. "Insomniac"
follows Attell on his quirky adventures through various U.S.
cities. In Miami, Dave went drag clubbing. In San Francisco, he
shot pool with Mayor Willie Brown. In New York, he hung out with
the Black Federation of Cowboys. He went ghost chasing in
Baltimore. He watched people jump the border in Tijuana. He
attended a gay fetish party in Boise. If people can dig that,
Attell’s in the black.
Still, celebrities and felons aside, there is another angle that
makes the show so appealing: Attell has the uncanny ability to find
the most hole-in-the-wall occupations in those off hours. “I
like to meet people who work late,” he said, “and the
more under-the-radar job the better, something that people take for
granted; not to jump on the bandwagon (people), but just regular
joes and dames who are doing a job that no one really thinks
about.”
So far he’s helped clean poop out of zoo cages, called
races at a dog track and helped put together sound for a porno
flick.
“Those are the people we started with last season,”
he said, “and we’re trying to see that more this next
season, to kind of give them a moment. It can’t all be people
drinking; it becomes a party on “Wild On “¦ E!,”
and I don’t have the fake breasts for that. I’m all
real, baby.”
Of course, Attell does his share of drinking on the show and
more. Name a bar in any big city, and he’s probably been
there twice. Meeting drunk folk also lends to the spontaneity that
Attell’s sense of humor operates so well on.
“So, this is the best thing for me, kind of like work with
whatever people we come across, and kind of like get something out
of them without being mean,” Attell said. “We’re
not about being mean, or putting people down, unless they’re
really super-drunk, and then they’ve really got it coming to
them … and a lot of people just want to be on TV, so it’s
their choice.”
The “we” Attell refers to includes the full staff
for the show.
“A lot of towns we go to I’ve already been to as a
comic, drinking around, hanging out, and it’s not like
I’m a one-man-band,” he said. “I have really good
producers and research people, and they put their little feelers
out over the Internet, or talk to people they know, or things
I’ve heard about I’ll ask them to check it
out.”
Even though the camera only shows Attell at work on the show,
they’re not the only ones out and about.
“I don’t think that works for almost anybody … We
usually travel with the cameraman, the producers, and then we hire
local P.A.’s to hold lights if we need that,” he said.
“If it was just me and the cameraman, it would be cool, but
you wouldn’t really see it (because) it would be below public
access.”
Still it is Attell’s off-the-wall humor that keeps the
show together. The show is structured to support that, with Attell
beginning each episode headlining a comedy club in that particular
city.
“I’m what you’d call a dick-joke comic,”
he said. “I tell jokes and I have bits. My material is
written, most of it.””
After his set he hits the street, but his stand-up persona stays
with him.
“In terms of this show, when we meet people on the street,
we try to keep that as unscripted as possible … It’s more
about, after my performance, it’s hitting the town and seeing
people do what they do.”
With “Insomniac” so enmeshed in his comedy, Attell
is equally pleased with what the show has done for his act.
“Now I’m attracting the people I want to attract, like
the cool people who are watching the show, those are the people who
I want to come see me live,” Attell said. “Whereas
before it was always like, a couple of people who were in the know,
and then like some guy who brings his grandma, and it made me feel
bad. And other people wanted to see a puppet. It’s Dave
Attell, not Dave and Attell!”