Nick Thune
A Comic's Rough Trip
Entertainment of the Month |
Entertainment - Comedy |
By: ZPhotos: Nick Onken+ Jan 19, 2007 at 4:06pm |
Article Views: 3,913
|
Nick Thune
A small pang of insecurity is plaguing me as I drive up a steep street in Silver Lake towards Nick Thune's place. He is a comedian, a one man show; I am a reclusive writer. I am coming to interview him, on his turf, and from the media snippets and mock interview posted on his website, I'm not so sure that this meeting won't end up becoming material for his next skit. Maybe this is my pervasive cynicism at work, but visions of me on the receiving end of a videotaped prank are flitting wildly through my imagination. But once Nick Thune greets me at the door - tall, scruffy beard, handshake, smile, and self-deprecating quip about why his place is so messy - I am disarmed and at ease, a quality that must certainly help him win over his audience.
At the Backdoor Bakery on Silver Lake Boulevard, Nick tells me that there is a sandwich on the menu which is named after him, and I can't help but laugh at the dry indignation he expresses for some of the staff who continually refuse to acknowledge that. He follows that up with a witty observation about a guy in nursing scrubs, saying, nonchalantly, "Those are definitely Gap." And right as I get the feeling that this comedian's stage persona has indelibly taken over, we commence our interview, and I sit back and absorb nearly an hour and a half of colorful life stories and philosophizing on the art of stand-up, told with all the seriousness of a college lecture.
Born in Seattle, Nick Thune attributes much of his artistic inclination and love for comedy to his father, who was a jazz musician in high school and played bass in a wedding band. "...He [my father] introduced me to gems like 'Fletch' at a really young age...probably the first movies I remember watching are 'Fletch' and 'A Fish Called Wanda', and just seeing Chevy Chase and Steve Martin, pretty much my whole life I've viewed them as comedic gods." But going from early influence to subsequent career would not be the most direct, or healthy path.
Like another one of Thune's comedic inspirations, the late Mitch Hedberg, a love of hard partying became a mainstay in his life at a relatively young age. Drugs, however, were not his demon. As early as junior high school, Thune reports alcohol use, and by age seventeen his drinking had undermined his functional stability and relationship with his parents, launching him into other risk taking behaviors like fighting and getting in trouble with the law. His drinking, and all of the negative offshoots from it (like calling his math teacher a "fat bitch" in front of his classmates), had escalated to such a point that he claims he was kicked out of school and arrested on the same day, which also happened to be his father's birthday.
Insert life-changing intervention here.
"Three days later I was in a lockdown drug and alcohol facility, against my will... like totally tricked into it." With a "have your best interests in mind" type of deception, Thune states that his father veiled his impending stay at an inpatient treatment program in the guise of a father and son fishing trip. He speaks of the experience with a slight tone of severity, especially of the moment when reality sank in, "I woke up after falling asleep in the car...I woke up in front of some building with two dudes standing outside the door and my dad crying in the front seat just saying 'I'm sorry'."
A month and a half later, after sharing a substance free living space with meth-using teenage girls and processing the guilt incurred by his actions, Thune had come to a point where he once again was cognizant of his own potentials. And to this day, except for two brief relaspes, he has remained sober. While his stay in treatment helped to keep him sober for this long, it was what he did afterwards that prepared him for the stage.
Without even a hint of self-consciousness, Thune transitions right into the next phase of his life. "I eventually started speaking at schools, like high schools and just all different types of groups, and a year after I got sober I went back and spoke at the treatment facility I was in." It was during these motivational talks that he realized his natural talent for public speaking, and the reinforcement he received when he was able to produce laughter in an audience through story-telling and one-liners.
In short order, the years between his high school graduation and moving to Los Angeles were unconscious training ground for a future stand up. He made public speeches, was a popular DJ and MC of such demanding events as weddings and bar mitzvahs, half-assed a communications degree at a community college - a segment of his life which would spawn an idea for a film project aptly titled "Community College", which he has sold to a studio and is currently writing a script with two Seattle friends - led and planned activities for a local Boys & Girls Club, backpacked and bartended around Europe where he had a revelatory night at a French Karaoke bar, and started a mock cover band which gained a solid following, playing such hits as "Hero" by Enrique Iglesias and "Push It" by Salt'n Peppa.
On the bar mitzvahs, he reflects, "That's where I really learned how to relate to people, because I would do a bar mitzvah, and I got a thirteen year old kid and all his friends to please, which there's probably a hundred or two hundred of them depending on the event, the parents are paying twenty-five grand, maybe more - and my job for four hours was to make them have the best event of their lives." And he isn't Jewish, in case you were wondering.
During his Eurotrip, Thune states that he no longer "felt trapped" and made the decision to move to LA shortly thereafter, but not before receiving some crucial encouragement from the owner of a bar where his band frequently played. The owner felt that
Thune was the draw and that he should start doing half hour shows, solo, without the band to back him. While he will normally incorporate a guitar and his farcical songs into his current sets, dancing, he decided, would be the impetus to his burgeoning comedy career. "The first thing I ever did that I consider stand up comedy was a reenactment of a scene from 'Footloose'." Those five minutes of impersonating Kevin Bacon scored with the crowd, but the rest of his act bombed and he quickly gained an appreciation for the sheer amount of thought, practice and perspiration that went into forging the acts of his favorite comics, such as Steven Wright.
Confident in his ability to hold his own in front of a crowd and make them laugh, he moved to LA with a desire to move away from the improv approach that led to many nights where he would "sweat his balls off" with nothing to say in front of all his family, friends and acquaintances in Seattle. He began playing low key open mics where he worked out his material a few nights a week. Along the way, a fellow stand up let him in on a precious trade secret: many comics play every night. He then made a pact to himself to perform daily, and the results were astounding. "From January 05' to January 06' I actually performed 570 times in LA." Describing himself as a "mover and a shaker" who knows how to make things happen, he worked on and off in reality TV doing casting for shows like "Nanny 911" to support himself while relentlessly performing for free or paying for slots.
Thune wrote down premises to jokes that would later become some of the current staples of his act, such as his timeline of weed bit, or his story of an instant messenger love affair. During the latter, he will describe with wistful emotion the beautiful conversations he had with this digital vixen until, alas, he discovers that behind the screename is his fifty-seven year old neighbor, Jim. Aside from this, Thune's current style consists mostly of non-sequiturs and absurd observations in the vein of Hedberg and Wright, delivered in a stoic wrapping from his now mature stage persona.
And his implacable determination over the past two years has paid off, first with a heated local buzz sparked from constant gigging and earning the respect of his peers, then an invite to the Aspen Comedy Festival, and ending with a bidding war to manage him. He now has two regular gigs: one is "After Hours with Professor Owen and Dr. Thune," which happens every other Saturday at the Hollywood Improv where he shares the stage with friend and comedian Owen Benjamin, and the other happens every Tuesday at The Laugh Factory, where he performs as part of Jay Davis's "Life of the Party" show. He also has a great management team, which came to him along with the buzz he had created for himself, plus small roles in four upcoming films and a special coming out on Comedy Central. When asked if there is anything else he would like to accomplish, he states, with a contemplative smile, that he would love to be in a band playing in front of thousands of people, but that he would have to be playing funny songs.
Related Links:
http://www.nickonken.com/nickthune
http://www.nickonkenconnection.com/shoptalk/
Additional Credits:
Assistant:
Stylist:
Make-up:
Equipment List: Canon 1Ds Mark II, 50mm f1.4, 85mm f1.2L
