Twisting the Rulebook
An Interview With Gary Rudoren
By Aemilia Scott

And yet, co-authors Gary Rudoren and Eric Hoffman did brilliantly execute an instruction manual for the uninstructable. In doing so they created something that is funny both for comedians and non-comedians. Their comedic taxonomy in the book is spot-on, every time.For a comedian, this is as hilarious as it is depressing.

Comedy by the Numbers is a lesson wrapped in a joke wrapped in a lesson. It is a lesson on how to be funny, and beneath that a parody of how-to manuals and self-help books. But beneath the parody is a critique of the state of comedy itself. Why have certain jokes been told and retold, again and again? Why is it that funny hats and fart noises still completely kill? Why old people and animals in suits? Eric and Gary don't provide an answer for the question, but they do shine an bright and often unflattering light on it. That in itself is a good thing for comedy. Plus, they wrote a funny book.

Eric Hoffman is a veteran of the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago, a venue which continues to produce the most cutting edge, hilarious and subversive comedy in the country. Eric Also wrote for the equally subversive and hilarious sketch comedy show, Mr. Show with Bob and David, and he has written a screenplay with Bob Odenkirk called Girlfriend's Day. He has also written several short films with Jay Johnston, as well as short films based on Comedy by the Numbers, both of which are featured on Superdeluxe.

Gary Rudoren happened to be passing through Chicago as this article was taking shape.

FLAK: Tell us about your history as a writer and director in Chicago, and about your relationship to Annoyance Theatre.

GARY RUDOREN: In Chicago, I acted and co-wrote several shows at The Annoyance and directed 9 Annoyance shows. My first show was called "Ayn Rand Gives Me A Boner." It wasn't really about boners. My kind of niche at the Annoyance involved a lot of one and two person shows, because I really liked getting my hands in characters. Mick [Napier] does big musicals, I do small ones. Jimmy Carrane's first show, "I'm 27, I Still Live At Home, and I Sell Office Supplies," which I directed, was the first one-man show that the Annoyance did.

FLAK: And Comedy by the Numbers started out as a series of pamphlets that you handed out for one of your shows.

RUDOREN: I directed a show called "The Idiotic Death of Two Fools" that starred Eric Hoffman and Mike Monterastelli — we all wrote it together. It ran at the Annoyance for about a year, and then we took it to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. And at the festival, everyone is always talking about all the postcards you have to make and hand out for your show. Eric and I had started talking about this "Comedy by the Numbers" thing, and I said to him that we should make a pamphlet to pass out in place of a post card. Eric was totally into it, and started doing those drawings. They're great.

FLAK: The drawings are perfect for the book. That strange, unsmiling man's face, over which you've layered all these illustrations of comedy site gags. It's almost Platonic.

RUDOREN: That's a key part of the book. We started calling that man "Webster," because the whole thing is meant to be like a manual or dictionary. It was that right combination of lines and... Well, what can I say. It's like art, really. I believe that really good art is something that you can't describe. It hits you because it hits you.

FLAK: Do you think there is also that sort of muse affecting you when something is funny?

RUDOREN: You get inspiration from places you don't expect. At least I do. And then you just aren't sure sometimes. I will say that comedy is a lot like obscenity. I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. That's why some people laugh at stuff and other people don't laugh at stuff. Mel Brooks has one of the best definitions of comedy and tragedy that I've ever heard. "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. I have a little cut, I've got to see a specialist, I've got to put some iodine on it, I've got to wrap it... I've got a cut on my finger. Comedy is when I'm walking down the street and you fall through an open sewer hole and die. What do I care? It's funny to watch."

Part of the comedy of this book is trying to purport a science and a formula to something that I believe has no real formula.

FLAK: Recently I got into a stalemate with a few of my comedy writers over what we thought was funny, and the argument took the form of unlocking the formula for what The Audience would like.

RUDOREN: I think it's very dangerous to start from a comment like, "I think the audience would like to see blank." I think that is a dangerous road to go down. To say to yourself, "Let me think about what 1000 people think is funny, and then I'll try to create that." I've always believed that I'm going to come up with something that I like, whether I'm talking about my acting, directing, writing, my architecture or my photography — I feel this way about everything I do. I'm going to make something I like, and it would be great if people like it. It's disingenuous to put up a show simply because you think other people will like it.

FLAK: At what point during all of this did you decide to stop and go to architecture school? Or at this point did you already have a degree?

RUDOREN: I graduated from architecture school in 1987, and I had a job waiting for me in New York, so I decided I wanted to take the summer off and move to Chicago. I had done a bunch of comedy writing in college while studying architecture, and so I came here and did Player's Workshop. I went to Second City every night, and I took classes there. Finally I realized that I really loved what I was doing, and decided to give up the job in New York.

Early on I did Improv Olympic, and met Mick Napier who had just started Metraform with some other people. And they created the legendary "Co-Ed Prison Sluts." When Mick was looking for the new building that would later become the first Annoyance Theatre, he asked me to help out architecturally. Then I started helping out with some shows there, and I was in the first official Annoyance show, called "That Darn Antichrist." And then the next year Mick asked me if I wanted to direct, and I of course said yes. So I've been lucky in that I've been able to juggle an architecture career and a theatre career at the same time.

FLAK: That's interesting, because I think the two pursuits seem sort of antithetical. Often comedy writing involves breaking things down — there's a sort of destructive impulse there. But it seems like there is something very honest and serious in architecture — in building something up.

RUDOREN: There's this comedian Juggler — I think his name was Mike Davis — he juggled three objects. Something like a bowling ball, an egg, and an axe. That was his schtick. During his bit, he'd say, "This is not just any old axe. This is the very same axe that George Washington used to cut down the cherry tree. Now... the head's been replaced, and the handle's been replaced. But otherwise it's the same exact axe." The same intrinsic mass in the universe. When you take something apart to make fun of it, you're not destroying the essence of the thing.

FLAK: Right. The boat is still the boat even if all the parts have been replaced.

RUDOREN: I like creating things. I love architecture, I love designing furniture. I love photography. I'd like to start doing some video work. As a matter of fact, Eric and I have been doing these short films that should come out in a few weeks.

FLAK: Based on the book, right?

RUDOREN: Right. We shot them and Bob Odenkirk directed them, and they're going to be on Superdeluxe.com. Bob has been great to us. Really, Bob is such an awesome guy. We've created these characters for the book, and we play those characters in the video. We're both pretty awkwardly presentational. They're these little two-minute videos, and the whole thing takes place in our "comedy lab."

FLAK: Like Mister Wizard.

RUDOREN: Yeah. Something like, "From the Comedy by the Numbers Film Library. Number 50: Funny Names." "Number 46: Fart Noises." So we break it down that way. We're going to the Montreal Comedy Festival next week and we're going to show them there.

FLAK: Do you think that someone who is a comedian should take this book as a bible, or something that names the demons thereby destroying them?

RUDOREN: You know, our book was partly written in response to this. There are books out there — one I believe is literally called The Comedy Bible — that purport to teach you how to be funny through a series of exercises. If you want to be funny about topical issues, then take our advice: read the newspaper. These books take themselves so seriously.

But this book does serve a legitimate purpose. In the book we call it the "Mental Fun-a-dex," but in reality it's like a mental Rolodex with actual comedy bits. "Two people going through a door at the same time" is an actual comedy bit out there somewhere. "Contact with something that is very hot." An actual comedy bit somewhere. These are real things, but we're looking at them differently. We deconstruct the comedy into a list as if that's what real comedians do when trying to be fun — just go to a list, plug in the bit, and poof, you're funny.

If you read this book and you're a comedian, I believe you'll get something out of it. What we've done here is taken something real and twisted it. By announcing it and making it hyperreal. Eric and I hope we've twisted it in a way that makes you focus on the original thing. So yeah, you may be able to use it. But the bottom line is, we hope you laugh at it.

FLAK: When I read the section, "Funny Movie Titles," and the list included Schindler's Fist, Poke-a-cuntus, and then Blow-Up, I laughed out loud.

RUDOREN: There's a bunch of stuff like that in there. Bizarre lists.

FLAK: "Inadvertent Hitler Mustache." Also hilarious.

RUDOREN: One of Hoffman's favorites. Hitler does make a few appearances in the book. Under "Microphone Bits,"� we claim that if the microphone had never been invented, Hitler could never have gotten everyone at the back of the mob to hear his hateful rants and join in. Maybe we're getting a little nuts with the numbers. My wife and I recently went to see Knocked Up, and I annoyed her a couple of times by saying under my breath, "That's a 36. That's a 144."

FLAK: I'd like to ask you a leading question. I really loved the section in your book on women. "If you happen to BE an actual woman and you're reading this, well, congratulations on getting away from the wife and the kids!" What were you thinking when you wrote that?

RUDOREN: That was purposefully playing up to the prejudices of men who think women aren't funny.

FLAK: The first day of my first improv class, I was told that by my teacher.

RUDOREN: That's a classic Del [Close] move. I remember being in a class with Del while he was directing a show at Second City, and he came in and said, "Ehhhh. I almost fired one of the cunts."

FLAK: Woo.

RUDOREN: But one of the first shows I ever saw at Second City had Bonnie Hunt in it, who happens to be a total genius. So that section in the book was a purposeful rip on people who have attitudes like that. There is a lot of stuff in that tone throughout the book, sprinkled purposefully. We're condescending in order to make fun of the people who condescend.

FLAK: Do you still laugh at things?

RUDOREN: Yes, absolutely. I love to laugh at things. When I see something unexpected, something that makes me laugh, it's better than sex. Don't tell my wife.

FLAK: Don't worry. It's just between you and me.

E-mail Aemilia Scott at aemilia at gmail dot com.