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In America there are “30,000 gun murders a year” Judah Friedlander reported in a stand-up act early in 2016.
According to the comedian, best known for his role as comedy writer Frank Rossitano on “30 Rock,” that statistic speaks to the heart of American hegemony. “It’s why we’re number one.” What other country has so much gratuitous violence and rewards it by providing free meals to 2.6 million people in the prison system? “That means our government loves us so much, that it awards 2.6 million of us free meals and health. And some of us get a lifetime supply!”
Mr. Friedlander’s humor is fiendish, but never derisive. To look at him—even not knowing he’s a TV star—one would definitely take pause at the man with long tangled hair, baggy jeans, oversized glasses and a mesh hat, a throwback to the ’80s.
Regardless, Mr. Friedlander is “an unassuming guy,” The Press was told by a prominent art gallery owner in the Greenwich Village apartment building where he resides. With his neighbors, he doesn’t act like a high-profile comic. In fact, a couple of children in the building noted that Mr. Friedlander has a multitude of his signature trucker hats hanging out to dry from his fire escape.
Like the “30 Rock” character he played for many years, Mr. Friedlander is an agitator. But unlike Frank, he confronts only difficult issues and those that have no easy answers. Indeed, his satire of U.S. domestic and foreign policies and the United States’ persona in the world today are the crux of his comedy. It’s an interest that started early in his life, around age 10, when he began drawing cartoons of politicians, such as President Reagan and Lech Walesa, the Polish labor leader. As a child, looking over his father’s shoulder, he admired the political cartoons he saw, but which he couldn’t understand. His father told him what they were about. “I remember my dad just reading the newspaper. He’d start reading it and he’d start yelling,” Mr. Friedlander remarked with a trace of whimsy.
Outside of his parents’ left-leaning politics, they were “pretty strict—they didn’t want us to watch much television,” he shared. He and his brother were encouraged “to make stuff instead of just consuming stuff.” And because they weren’t allowed to stay up late, Mr. Friedlander never really got to watch “Saturday Night Live” as a youth—as television viewers know, “30 Rock” parodied working at “SNL.” At that time, his awareness of comedians spanned the gamut from the famous names of the day, like Rodney Dangerfield, to those who would become even more famous, like Joan Rivers and Steve Martin.
Then in 1985, he said, “we got a VCR, so I was able to program shows that were on late at night.” One show, “Comedy Tonight,” which Bill Boggs hosted with a handful of no-name comics, really struck the young man’s imagination. “Before when you just see a big star on TV doing stand-up on a talk show, you don’t think that’s something you can actually do. And then when they talked about these nightclubs and comedy clubs where you can actually go see comedians, I was like: ‘Wait a second, you can do this!’” He was about 15 at the time, and he started writing jokes. At 19, he got on stage at an open mic night for the first time.
As for his quirky appearance, Mr. Friedlander confides, “That was pretty much how I always looked.” He’s never been one to follow the trend. The hats, which he started making himself 20 years ago, are the signature element of his couture. While playing Frank Rossitano, Mr. Friedlander wrote the slogans on the hats, which often boasted about the character’s filthy behaviors: “Casual Flosser,” “Hug Stain” and “Free Zits.”
When doing stand-up, the hats always say, “World Champion” in some language. “Initially,” he explained, he was mocking narcissism. “Just how cultures throughout the world have become more narcissistic with everyone having their own blogs, their own Facebook pages, their own Instagram.”
“Then it kind of morphed into a real-life superhero thing. Now it’s become more of being a champion of the world—for the animals and the earth and the plants of the world.”
In addition to his television success, Mr. Friedlander has made his mark playing diverse roles in a number of cult movies. In “American Splendor,” he portrays the excessively nerdy Toby Radloff. In “The Wrestler,” he plays a character who is overly serious in his devotion to the aging pro wrestling hero.
More recently, in 2015, Mr. Friedlander published his first book of drawings and cartoons, “If the Raindrops United,” touted by The New York Times as “terrifically entertaining.” Beyond the childlike simplicity of the drawings themselves, the cartoons deliver some shocking adult insights. Within this collection, Mr. Friedlander introduces his mini-comic book, “Gentrification Man.” The titular character, whom he describes as “a superhero for the rich and over-privileged,” looks like the universal Van Heusen man, dressed in natty business casual, with neatly swept hair.
About his show at Guild Hall on Friday, August 5, Mr. Friedlander promises a mix of things. “It’s very joke heavy. There’s a lot of one-liners, a lot of playing off the crowd.” In addition, since campaigning for the presidency kicked off, he’s begun conducting mock town halls in his act, inviting the audience to ask him questions about his own presidential platform. It’s a vehicle that challenges his stand-up skills, as the questions thrown at him call on his acquired knowledge as well as his ability to make things up, and improvise. As he explained, “I don’t really like preaching to the choir, so I try to do it in a way that no matter where you fall on the spectrum, you’re going to laugh.”
Next on his agenda is a one-hour stand-up special, based on his current acts, which he’s filming. The outcome will be a self-produced movie or documentary about his work.
What is humbling about Mr. Friedlander is his devotion to his craft, venturing off to comedy clubs at late night hours, regardless of what he did all day or how early the next one will start. He just doesn’t take anything for granted. “I try to look for my comedy in dark places or where people don’t necessarily like to look. I find that the most challenging.”
Of course, it remains to be seen how the posh Hamptons’ crowd will receive the not-so-fashion-forward Judah Friedlander.
Judah Friedlander performs at Guild Hall, 158 Main Street, East Hampton, on Friday, August 5, at 9:30 p.m. Tickets range from $35 to $75. Call 631-324-4050, or visit guildhall.org.
on Aug 1, 2016