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"World Champion" Judah Friedlander will tell Just for Laughs audiences "about my 2016 campaign for president of the United States. I might also talk about possibly running for the next Canadian prime minister."
Photograph by: ASTRID STAWIARZ , GETTY IMAGES FILES
Easy lies the head that wears the trucker hat. Judah Friedlander is in Queens, N.Y., where it is 36 C, rolling somewhere around 207 C with the humidity and the garbage reek and the angry pedestrians. But "it's all still cool."
Because it always is. Friedlander has alchemized Boastful Doughy American in Trucker Hat and TV-sized glasses into a kind of laconic cool that transcends its own unknowingness.
As we speak, he is "training, doing karate, getting ready for shows" - his sixnight run from Monday to Saturday at MainLine Theatre during Just for Laughs. "Damn straight. MainLine Theatre - not sure I've been there before, but I've been on their website. Looks like a cool place."
He'll be "talking about my 2016 campaign for president of the United States. I might also talk about possibly running for the next Canadian prime minister."
Can you do that? As an American? "Why not? I'm the World Champion."
True. Friedlander proclaims himself "the No. 1 winner in the world" - in everything. Every sport, every competition, every domain. It's on the hats and the back of his jacket. Banned from the NHL and NFL for being too good. "I bowled a 580" and killed someone with a "double strike." Wrote the book How to Beat Up Anybody. And the extra-dark black belt in karate. What, no Judah does Judo? "I was actually in a federal prison in Beijing in the '80s before I became World Champion. That's where I learned martial arts."
Prison in Beijing? For?
"Look, I was innocent, dude."
We leave it at that. The championship in karate involved "death matches for charity. Raised a lotta money," he drawls.
Who'd you beat? "Nah, don't remember his name, but his wife Karen still texts me pictures all the time."
This is the Judah Friedlander known not only to fans of his standup, but those of 30 Rock, the pass? compos? NBC hit on which he played show writer Frank Rossitano, a cynical semi-burnout with an odd love life and many homemade trucker caps. In a recent Tina Fey appearance on David Letterman's Late Night, the host asked if Friedlander really is as "fullblown goofy" as he seems. "He's one of the all-time great weirdos" in the best, most lovable way, she replied. She told
Dave how Friedlander goes to Chinatown to buy "barrels full of those hats," spelling out his own messages in tiny handmade letters.
And so, in character, Friedlander advises: "This is a standup comedy show. If you're expecting me to have a few serious moments where I break into tears and talk about childhood, go to another show." And yet suddenly, using World Champion prerogative, Friedlander doffs the metaphorical trucker
hat to slip out of character. "Let me be serious here for a minute ..." And we are. He remembers a Montreal show a few years back, "the TV taping of Paul Provenza's show, The Green Room. It was very international. Paul's American, but he's overseas almost all the time, and Chris Hardwick was on it and he's American, but the rest was all U.K.-based: Tim Minchin, Jimmy Carr, Eddie Izzard. Three Americans, two Brits and one ex-Aussie, and in Montreal, the French part of Canada. It felt international. And that experience kinda opened me up to wanting to travel more, because I think people outside the United States are more aware of politics and social issues." Do tell.
He blames the dissonance on politics and U.S. media, "which in my opinion is very poor. Rich, moneyed, of course, but substandard. I talk about these things in my act, but on a completely ridiculous level. My act is a comedy show, but there are messages on a subversive level. Even when I talk about something like gay marriage, my goal is to make the people who are left wing and right wing laugh equally as hard. If you see that stuff, that's great, you can find it. But I want you to laugh either way. But I'm not up there to preach."
Regardless, he was a fan of Bill Hicks, but approaches subversion from a gentler perspective. "It started out more as a braggart character, making fun of someone who's just so self-involved. It's become more than that over the years, because society in general, with social media, everyone thinks they're on their own reality show. Everyone thinks they should be entertained by every single thing they do every day. It's gone beyond 'sharing.' "But my act has taken some different turns. When I do the presidential stuff, you realize how unhappy people in the U.S. are. The U.S. is more divided than it's ever been, and people feel so powerless, on the left, on the right, that they're f---ing helpless and can't make a difference, so why even try? People want the Hero. So my act went from being the braggart to someone people can see as allpowerful."
And so he embodies and lampoons how radioactive that self-involved Hero has become. And under the trucker World Champion hat, there is, in fact, a message.
"Ultimately, my act is about love. Even when I'm talking about killing people, it's about love."
Judah Friedlander performs Monday to Saturday at 10:30 p.m. at MainLine Theatre, 3997 St-Laurent Blvd., as part of Just for Laughs. Tickets cost $20. Visit hahaha.com for more information.
markjlepage@yahoo.com
? Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
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