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Eugene Mirman

The local comic talks about his native Russia, temping, and surviving the comedy biz

[ by Francis Heaney ]

The first time I saw Eugene Mirman, he was pretending to have sex with himself. Okay, he was actually only pretending to have sex with a video of himself. And yet: disturbing. Odd.

The Mirman family immigrated to the United States from Russia when Eugene was 4. (A photo of the young Eugene Mirman can be seen at his website, eugenemirman.com, along with his videos, songs, and other work.) At some point after his arrival in America, he became a comedian. He now cohosts a weekly comedy night at Rififi in New York's East Village, a show that features up-and-coming comics trying out new material, with none of the traditional comedy club's overpriced two-drink minimums. That is the only thing he does.

[ NOTE: Photos taken of Eugene for this interview appear only in the print version of Stay Free!, which you can purchase right here. ]

I'm sorry, that's false. Actually, he sometimes opens for rock bands (the Shins, Modest Mouse), performs on TV shows that are not hostile to the delicate art of standup comedy (Late Night With Conan O'Brien, Comedy Central's Premium Blend), acts, and releases CDs. Well, one CD, anyway: The Absurd Nightclub Comedy of Eugene Mirman (with accompanying DVD). I used my powerful media connections (I know the editor of Stay Free!) to acquire an advance copy of the CD, an extremely entertaining artifact, in exchange for which my only duty was to interview the mysterious Mr. Mirman. I finally tracked him down at a sushi restaurant, tipped off to his presence by the fact that he had offered to meet me there. This is what he had to say for himself.--Francis Heaney

Listen to an eight-minute clip of Eugene.

STAY FREE!: So, you have a new comedy CD coming out, which is kind of daring, because it's my understanding that most CDs have music on them.

EUGENE MIRMAN: Comedy albums used to be a popular thing--one of the main ways people listened to comedy. People don't really quite do that as much now.

STAY FREE!: There was a big lull.

MIRMAN: But one in which comedy was on television. HBO had young-comedians specials, and there'd be comedians on one of the three talk shows, and especially in the '80s, there was standup all over television, so albums weren't as necessary.

STAY FREE!: How did you decide what to include on the DVD? I was hoping Mr. Robot would be on it.

MIRMAN: Well, that has a bunch of music that I don't have license to, so I might have to swap the music out. It has Wilco, Jethro Tull . . . I'm going to put it on my website because I don't make money through that. If someone gets upset, I'll probably take it down. It's, like, three seconds of music.

STAY FREE!: Paying for rights is exorbitant. Of course, you could always just swap the songs with some by bands you know.

MIRMAN: Yes. That's my plan if I can't keep what I have in there.

STAY FREE!: That brings me to a whole other thing, which is that you went on a rock tour.

MIRMAN: I really like playing rock clubs, but it can be more work if an audience doesn't know you.

STAY FREE!: The comedy shows you host are structured more like rock shows than comedy. At the crappy comedy clubs here, they make the comedians bring X number of people before they're allowed to perform.

MIRMAN: Well, that's a "bringer" show. None of the people I know do those shows anymore, or would ever. That's when you're starting out. I find it easier to get on Conan O'Brien than to perform regularly at some of the clubs here, so I just don't really try anymore. Not that I tried that hard.

STAY FREE!: So it wasn't really a complex thought process of, "Oh, I'm not going to run my shows like that because that's lame."

MIRMAN: Right. When people ask me to perform at clubs, or if I audition for something, I'll go to a club, but also it's different in New York than in Boston. When I was in Boston, there were three comedy clubs. In most clubs you start as an opener, then you're a "middler," and then you're a headliner, and there's this system. But the system seems pointless and depressing. Here it's kind of different, because there's just a bunch of people performing for 20 minutes at a time at a club, as opposed to an opener. Anyway, the point is that rock clubs and alternative spaces are, for me, just as good if not better exposure, they're fun, and you make more money. The argument against it is that it doesn't exist. You have to make it. That's what's inconvenient about it. You have to create your own thing, which I personally enjoy.

STAY FREE!: Do you make your living at comedy?

MIRMAN: I don't do anything else. It's like freelancing. It's kind of tedious to be broke, but then a bunch of work will come in, or I'll get a writing job, or, like, Comedy Central recently licensed the pot movie [a fake public service announcement in which Eugene dresses as an angel and warns viewers against smoking pot].

STAY FREE!: They don't mind the part where you describe a bunch of people jerking off on you?

MIRMAN: They're gonna beep stuff, though I'm not sure that's one of the things they're beeping! It's for a new show that airs after midnight, so it's for people who are already high.

STAY FREE!: What were you doing before you did comedy full-time?

MIRMAN: In Boston, I had an unspecific role in the creative depart-ment of a web company. Me and my office-mates turned our office into a bar. I made my gun video there; that's where I learned to edit. That was a great job, and then I moved here and was lucky enough to work at a horrible law firm for about half a year.

STAY FREE!: So it was torture but it made you a lot of money?

MIRMAN: I wasn't a lawyer, but it was a fair amount. Anyone who works at a law firm will certainly agree that it's a very feudalistic place, and they let you know right away that you are a serf and there is no hiding it. I remember being in an elevator, and there were two secretaries, and one looks at my "temporary" badge and says to the other, "How many temps do we need?" And she was looking right at me.

STAY FREE!: So you're a Russian immigrant and all that.

MIRMAN: Yes, I am all of that.

STAY FREE!: Do you remember anything about Russia at all?

MIRMAN: When I was in Boston with my parents at a Russian food store, I smelled black currant juice and said, "Oh, this is so weirdly familiar," and it turns out that we had a summer home--I say "summer home," but it probably was a cabin in the woods--and it was surrounded by black currant trees. But apparently that's the only thing I remember. That, and all our money being redistributed.

STAY FREE!: Your parents speak Russian. Do you still know any?

MIRMAN: Yes, I speak fluent Russian with my parents.

STAY FREE!: Could you go to Russia and translate your act?

MIRMAN: No. It's one thing to speak to my parents, but I'm illiterate and I forget words because I don't speak it every day.

STAY FREE!: And some words are never going to come up in conversations with parents, like "cunnilingus."

MIRMAN: People often ask me, "Do you know any swears?" As if my parents were like, "Clean your room, faggot!" They just wouldn't say that. So as a result I can only say things like "What a beautiful owl! Where's the pan? Who wants more food?"

STAY FREE!: Do you ever have to deal with corporate sponsors for your shows?

MIRMAN: No, but I'd like to. I'm going to have a CD release party, and I really want a scotch to sponsor it. Dewar's or Macallan.

STAY FREE!: I'll tell you who's a better bet--Brooklyn Brewery.

MIRMAN: Yes, but I want a scotch. Even if I get somebody to just give me a bottle, I think that'll be fine.

STAY FREE!: Do you want to follow the traditional standup comedy arc? Do you want to have a sitcom, or a sketch show?

MIRMAN: There's no genre of things that couldn't be funny. A sitcom could be funny, though I would prefer a funny movie or a funny sketch talk show, or even some kind of new, odd format that broke all the rules. All of them!

STAY FREE!: Do you have any secret projects in the works, past the CD/DVD?

MIRMAN: I'm going to do a full-length DVD. And I'm trying to come up with shows, whether it's a one-man show or stuff to pitch to various networks. I would rather wait a year to have somebody approach me than pitch ideas. I know so many people who go to pitch meetings and pitch to no real avail. It seems exhausting to come up with shows that you don't really want to do in order to get on TV. In one year, if no one has approached me, I'm going to be like, fuck it. I'll come up with some horrible, horrible shows.

STAY FREE!: You could come up with ones you like first.

MIRMAN: I have, actually, a number of shows that I think would be fun. My show is called The Late Show With David Letterman. And I can't wait to tell people about it!

STAY FREE!: If you got the right person to play David Letterman, that could be really funny.

MIRMAN: I have someone in mind already: Jon Stewart.

STAY FREE!: Do you have anything you were hoping I would ask? Like, "I want to talk about how, when I was a kid, I was a class clown. Nobody ever talks about that."

MIRMAN: Actually, I was voted class clown! But I wasn't the class clown. No, I was extraordinarily unpopular until my senior year, when I ran for class president, with the slogan, "It's not just a change . . . it's a mutation!" And though I lost, I converted students from hating me to thinking I was a swell guy, and even occasionally going on dates with me.

STAY FREE!: I was seriously underdated in high school myself. . . . So you're popular with the ladies, right?

MIRMAN: Um, no? I don't know.

STAY FREE!: Because it seems that comedy is the most geeky thing that the public at large still finds at all sexy. So you don't feel groupie pressure?

MIRMAN: I don't feel a pressure in terms of like, "Oh, I guess I have to make out with this person." Yes, I have a hundred lovers, but I don't know how to say it without hurting 95 of their feelings. And that's one person with 90 feelings, five with one feeling each, and 80 people with no feelings whatsoever. Just to break it down, I mean. Hopefully, through fame, I'll find a wife.

STAY FREE!: What if comedy totally crashes and burns for you? What would you do instead?

MIRMAN: I would just keep doing it in a sad, shitty way. There's nothing really to stop doing. There might be a point at which I become exhausted of scraping things together, or waiting for things to happen, but I would still attempt to change the world with my comedy.