Nick Griffin: You Always Want a Donut

You get a heavy sense, from Nick Griffin's comedy, that his world doesn't sparkle. His material covers depression, poverty, overdrinking, sexual frustration, insecurity, and the apparent cause of it all: divorce — which he reminds us is a lot worse than being scratched by a cat. Actually, divorce might be the result of it all. Either way, he has churned that fetid bubbling brew into a potent stand-up act.

Originally from Kansas City, he's been a part of both the L.A. and New York comedy machines, currently churning out of New York. During his recent stop in Indiana, I had a chance to talk with him about his writing, his traveling, his projects, and what he calls his "dopey Twitter account."

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My wife with Nick Griffin in the barely
lit lobby after his show in Lafayette, IN.

Lafayette Indiana is so small and simple that when Nick Griffin tells me he's on his way "downtown," that's enough to make our paths cross. When his next message tells me he's on Main and 9th, I don't text him back; I just look up. Because I'm already on Main and 9th too. He sees me from the car, waves, parks, then crosses the street to shake my hand. I have to add that he doesn't have to look for parking, and he barely has to look both ways before crossing the street. Downtown Lafayette is ghostly.

Why is he riding into a small town like this, for a single show? It can't be the coffee shops. The only one we can find is about to close, and it's barely past 6:15PM. What could have pulled him out here from New York?

"It's another gig," he says. "I kinda have to take it." Certainly he doesn't really "have to." Griffin isn't begging for spots. He works and travels almost constantly. He could take a break. But a look at his itinerary makes it clear that a big part of why he has to, is his work ethic.

This is the second time within the space of a week that Griffin has visited and performed in central Indiana. The previous weekend he headlined four nights at Crackers in Indianapolis, where I caught one of his sets. He believes that at a typical club show there are maybe 10 or 15 people who came out to see him. "The rest of them have no idea who I am. They just wanted to go out to a comedy club." But for the show I saw, he had the Saturday night crowd sustained in laughter as successfully as any comic I've seen. With a steady pacing that rolled as if on rails.

The consistent tightness of his writing is always impressive. Each joke works well on it's own, but he doesn't just fire them off in isolation. Griffin is a joke writer, with well-crafted chunks, connected thematically. Not only does he want each joke to serve a narrative on stage, he wants it to fit his own perspective. "As I grow older I think I would like to have material be as reflective of my thoughts as possible. I don't hold on to material if it doesn't say what I want it to say."

Altho he admits to sometimes being harder on himself than necessary, he recognizes the benefits of his self-flagellating criticism. "Quite frankly it's so hard to write great material. I saw Jerry Seinfeld talk about having this really great act, and how hard it is for a new joke to get into that act because it's such a high standard." He pauses. "Not that my act is on that level." But he trusts his standards and knows that at least being hard on himself is another way of pushing himself to write honestly. "You do feel like there's a certain standard of a great joke and you want to have every new joke be up to that."

He writes every day, then tries the material onstage. He records every set, and listens to it later, then hones the jokes. Writing. Testing. Revising. Retesting. Of course that effort and intense crafting can start to wear. "I'm one line at a time. Thirty seconds at a time." Tho there are the occasional epiphanies "where there's a joke out there in the ether, and I find it. You know immediately that that's the one. It happens very rarely, like maybe a couple times a year where you'll think 'I don't even have to try this. I could just not do this joke, and still know it's a great joke.'"

He's in awe of comedians like Louis C.K. and Bill Burr who have been almost eerily prolific. "I just watched Burr's hourlong special, Let It Go, and I just can't believe how good it is. It's tons of material, and it's chunks, and it's thematically consistent, and it's great."

Shaking his head in disbelief, "I just don't have that. Even a good month for me is like two minutes or three minutes. It's not ten. Never has been."

He hasn't taken too naturally to his Twitter account, @TheNickGriffin. He updates it occasionally, but he's wary of putting unfinished work out there with his name on it. He's not at all critical, however, of comedians who use the internet to gain exposure. "I think it's an exciting time. I think it's a creative boom maybe, even more-so than a financial boom." And he realizes the opportunity of online exposure isn't a shortcut to anything. "There's so many good comics, and only so many venues. You've gotta find a way to market yourself." Something he admits isn't his strength. "It's hard to keep up with, quite frankly."

Among the spotlighting venues that consider Griffin a go-to guy is the Bob & Tom morning radio show, based in Indianapolis. He's a regular there. This has given him a good midwest fan base, helping to set up shows like his appearance here in Lafayette with fellow Bob & Tom regular, Tim Cavanagh.

Griffin has done a half-hour for Comedy Central Presents, he's been on Craig Ferguson's Late Late show a few times, and he recently did a spot on Conan's new show.

One of the greatest sources of pride: he's becoming a familiar face on David Letterman's Late Show. Griffin has long admired the late-night host, and feels lucky to be in the stable of repeat acts. It's especially heartening, considering the dark direction where his humor tilts. Griffin's disturbed perspective is what kicks most of his material into action. So, predictably, a lot of his best stuff isn't quite sweet enough for the networks. One of his jokes complains about his inability to date younger women.

"Because young girls are filled with sugar and spice and everything nice. And I'm filled with anger and semen and shame."

"Maybe one of my favorite jokes I ever wrote," he says. But when he took the set to Late Show talent coordinator, Eddie Brill, semen had to be changed to Prozac. "To be honest with you I don't think I even asked them if I could say semen. I just knew they weren't gonna let me." But, of course, doing the show is a huge honor, and he's happy to do it every chance he gets.



One of his appearances on Late Night caught the attention of John Markus, a writer and producer on The Cosby Show and The Larry Sanders Show. Markus contacted Griffin about developing a sitcom. They got Letterman's company, Worldwide Pants, to help pitch it to a network, and ABC went so far as to pay them to write a pilot. It didn't go any further, but Griffin is pleased to have gotten a chance to learn about the avenue.

"I would love to have a show" he says. "If someone allowed me to do it, like Seinfeld did, where you can be the comic that you really are, that'd be great." For him, a sitcom wouldn't be a way out of stand-up. It would be a way to do more with it. "It brings more people out to see your stand-up. It's better venues. You wanna get better. You want to develop. And you want people to see you. I didn't grow up wanting to be an actor tho."

And now, to his club and TV and radio appearances, he's added a new album: Bring Out the Monkey.

Griffin is a very quotable comedian. His jokes are structurally solid and thematically direct, making them memorable, and very portable.

On despair:

Sleep is like killing yourself, but you wake up refreshed. You ever wake up refreshed but you go back to bed anyway? Yeah. That's called depression.

On laziness:

If my generation had come over as the pilgrims, this would not be the United States of America. This would be that place where all those pilgrims died.

On arousal:

I think about sex a lot. A lot. I don't know who is running the projector in my brain, but he is very immature.

The point of view and the character that says these things is clear in his act. Recently, he's been opening with material about being envious of vampires. A woman in the Lafayette audience calls out "The real ones!" She apparently doesn't appreciate the prissy vampires prancing thru the Twilight series. Griffin shrugs and reminds her: "I've got news for you. They're all fake." That's the backbone of his comedy: bare reality. He says what he believes is true. And his delivery is perfectly suited to the humor. His pauses and his rhythm are deliberate but natural. There aren't gaps; there's space. He knows how to give each joke time to connect and hit. It seems almost unfairly fortunate for him that he's such an appropriate messenger for his humor.

So it's easy to imagine him getting the attention of the right people at the right time to throw his career into a new level. He mentions the sudden sensation and discovery of Jay Pharoah, whose celebrity impressions on YouTube got the attention of Lorne Michaels, earning Pharoah a spot as a featured player on SNL. "There's a lot of different ways to develop ideas and I'm hopefully going to keep trying all of them, and maybe one of them will break thru."

He's aware of his competition. "There's a million comics. There's a million actors. I think the internet is going to create some really great comics, and it's going to create some really bad comics who'll become really famous." Not being in the second group is a source both of pride, and some frustration.

Griffin is not unknown. He's not obscure. He's getting work and he has the solid respect of other comedians. Marc Maron considers him a "kindred spirit" and Joe Matarese has called him "the top of the Letterman guys," saying that all the sets are "homeruns" full of "unbelievable jokes."

Griffin's dedication to comedy has him swirling around the country, and bouncing between the coasts. From his stint in Indianapolis on the 30th of April, he went back to New York for the week, then came back to Indiana for the show in Lafayette on the 6th, then back home again. He'll be in Columbus Ohio, from May 18-22 at the Funny Bone, and a week after that he'll be at the San Francisco Punchline. The week after that he's at the Omaha Nebraska Funny Bone.

"I used to be able to route things a little bit better" he says. "The last few years have gotten kinda weird."

The last few years have also revealed Letterman's obvious regard for him. He's already slated for another spot this coming Friday, May 13th. Maybe it'll be that consistent presence combined with his sole-thinning tour strategy that will eventually pay off.

His face is already getting recognized. As we're finishing up our conversation, a young couple walks past us on the sidewalk. They whisper something to each other, then turn back around. "Are you a comedian," the guy asks. "Yeah, I am. Nice to meet you" Griffin says, and shakes the guy's hand with a smile. The kid is excited. "Yeah, I saw you and I knew you looked familiar."

Later that night after the show, an obvious fan who looks about college age, stands in line to shake Nick's hand. He excitedly tells Nick "Right now, I have a picture of you as the wallpaper on my computer."

That's gotta be a compliment he doesn't hear too often. But if great sets, a strong new album, national TV spots, and a foot in the sitcom door aren't enough to turn Griffin into a Pollyanna, I doubt that being on another guy's computer screen is going to do the trick. But Griffin smiles, and talks to the kid for a while, shaking his hand with what looks like sincere appreciation.

It may not yet be the broad and intense fame that packs every club with nothing but fans. And he may still feel a responsibility to grind out the circuit. But it should be a good reminder that he's doing what he's doing, very well. "If I get to be a really good comic along the way, I'll be OK with that."

So maybe Griffin is doomed to always be chasing after something more than OK. Because he passed "really good comic" a while ago.