Although comic Todd Levin is at home performing
in small, dark alternative clubs in Downtown Manhattan, he leapt
at the chance to do stand-up in the spotlight, on a stage before
hundreds of un-inebriated spectators, as part of Comedy Central’s
"Premium Blend."
The episode, which airs on Dec. 2, features a small portion of
Levin’s act, but his television debut, hosted by Damon Wayans,
reveals the Park Sloper to be a hilarious, smart comedian.
In his set, taped in August, Levin distinguishes himself from
the three other featured comics by poking fun at his blazer,
long hair and beard: "I’m aware that I have a look about
me that some might consider aggressively Jewish."
GO Brooklyn spoke with Levin for 40 minutes about his five-minute
set.
GO: I saw a tape of the show last night, and I have one question:
Are you REALLY Jewish?
Todd Levin: [Laughs] No, it’s part of my stage persona. I’m actually
Presbyterian. The beard is false.
GO: The "Premium Blend" episode
features a snippet of your routine. Is your whole act derived
from mocking your ethnicity?
TL: The Jewish stuff in that set may come across a little bit
unbalanced. The jokes that you heard about Nazis and me being
Jewish in the beginning are literally the only jokes I have about
my ethnicity at all.
But certainly being Jewish is part of my identity and feeds into
a lot of my anxiety and paranoia and the way I look at the world
with a suspicious eye – waiting to be rounded up.
Honestly, the whole thing at the top about me being aggressively
Jewish – I’ve been in Brooklyn for 10 years [and] somehow I’ve
transformed into this weird cultural stereotype.
It’s weird, because I’ll talk about it on stage, tell an audience
of 500 that I’m Jewish, but when the Hasidic Jews on the corner
in Park Slope ask me if I’m Jewish – because they want me to
put on the tefillin and pray with them – I always feel compelled
to tell them I’m Greek.
I’m asked pretty often.
GO: You’re in demand!
TL: I’m an easy target. Since I grew my hair out and the beard,
I get mistaken for people’s Kabbalah instructor. It wasn’t intentional
by any means. In fact, if anything, I’m really bad at being Jewish;
I don’t make it to synagogue very often. I feel guilty about
assuming it as a cultural identity.
GO: When growing the beard, were you
thinking Billy Joel, circa "Nylon Curtain"?
TL: [Laughs] No one ever said that before! I get Cat Stevens
a lot. I’ve been told I look like him by an uncomfortable number
of people, actually.
GO: What’s your opinion of those legendary
Brooklyn comics that have come before you? Andrew Dice Clay?
Colin Quinn?
TL: Legend is your word. When I was in high school, I thought
[Clay] was hilarious. To a 14- or 15-year-old kid, Andrew Dice
Clay is really, really funny. I’m not sure how I feel about him
now.
Colin Quinn is great. I think he’s one of the funniest comedians
working right now. For people who want to be a serious, working
comedian, he’s an incredible role model because he’s never stopped.
GO: Do you perform regularly in Brooklyn?
TL: There are fewer opportunities in Brooklyn [than Manhattan],
but there are fun, alternative venues like the Brooklyn Comedy
Company. They’re a bunch of Brooklyn comics who have sort of
made it their agenda to put more comedy venues in Brooklyn, so
they have a comedy night in Williamsburg, Carroll Gardens and
Prospect Heights, so I do those shows quite a bit.
I’m not a regular club comic who does the road all the time.
I tend to do more of the more alternative downtown rooms like
Rififi and Upright Citizens Brigade, which I really like doing.
They’re a lot of fun.
GO: Before taping "Premium Blend,"
did you have any pre-show jitters?
TL: Oh god, of course, yeah. It’s quite a long process. I think
I found out about it in late May, early June and they taped it
in August. So you have plenty of time to freak out. And during
those two months, I was still fussing with my set. I do this
all the time as a comic anyway, it keeps me interested in telling
[the jokes]. I spent a month, month-and-a-half maybe, trying
to figure out what I was going to do for my set.
GO: And you were on stage for seven
or eight minutes?
TL: It seems silly, but for some of the people doing that, myself
included, there are several years of performing that lead up
to those seven minutes.
GO: Was it more difficult to perform
in front of the sober "Premium Blend" audience than
the usual club crowd?
TL: There’s a very different energy to the crowd. For the "Premium
Blend" taping, you’re dealing with a huge space, a lot of
distance between you and the audience, and it’s a television
audience, which means they’ve been whipped up into a frenzy by
the emcee, by the warm-up comedian. A lot of the comedians who
did "Premium Blend" said this, too – and it’s a great
complaint to have, I guess – the audience is almost too enthusiastic.
To the point where it could potentially throw you off your rhythm
because you anticipate a certain amount of laughter at certain
beats in your performance. Sometimes you’re getting it way before
you anticipated or it’s way more than you anticipated, and you
have to decide whether to wait it out or to talk over them. But
it’s so much fun.
GO: Was it very competitive with the
other comedians backstage?
TL: It wasn’t competitive it all. In fact, it was incredibly
friendly. It kind of reminded me of taking the SATs in high school.
There, everybody had to take them, and there wasn’t a sense of
competition because we all knew we had to do this. There was
a built-in sense of camaraderie. We would go over our stuff with
each other, we would freak out and complain to each other, we
were each other’s therapists.
The only thing weird about backstage is that there are cameras
everywhere. It made me so self-conscious. As you step off into
the wings, there’s a camera in your face asking how you feel.
That was a little unnerving.
GO: What has been your worst heckle
to date?
TL: Once, I had a free show at the Upright Citizens Brigade in
Manhattan and a drunk, homeless man wandered into the show. He
wasn’t so much heckling me as having a stream of consciousness
conversation with me with whatever came into his head. And I
had to deal with him throughout the show. But that was kind of
fun, because the things coming out of his mouth were inherently
funny. Nonsensical. But it was not malicious in any way.
GO: So you don’t have a big ego. You’re
happy to share your set with a drunk, homeless man as long as
he’s got good material?
TL: [Laughs] Absolutely, yeah. He’s helping me write my stuff.
He’s helping me with a crash course in crowd work.
GO: Jerry Seinfeld has "Seinfeld."
Chris Rock has "Everybody Hates Chris." If you get
some buzz from "Premium Blend," and you’re offered
your own TV show, what would it be called?
TL: I’ve been writing a book of essays, so if I had a TV show,
I would probably give it the same name, "The Boy with Perpetual
Nervousness."
GO: It’s not going to be "Un-Levined"?
TL: No it’s not. [Laughs.] How dare you?
Comedian Todd Levin will perform on
Comedy Central’s "Premium Blend" on Dec. 2 at 11:30
pm. For more information, go to www.ComedyCentral.com.
For Levin’s upcoming performances, go to his Website, www.Tremble.com.
