Comedy: Joking Heads

This past Sunday afternoon, while you and I were brunching on tapas, Carl Arnheiter was cramming for a big interview he’s going to conduct. As the host of Inside Joke, a conversational show at the UCB Theater in which Carl speaks one on one to legendary comedic writers and performers about the art of comedy, there’s a lot of stuff he needs to familiarize himself with by Thursday. Chevy Chase is his next guest. And if you’re like me, you’re grossly underestimating how many Vacation films there actually are.

“My viewing marathon includes the entirety of SNL Season 1, The Groove Tube (a pre-Saturday Night Live sketch movie), Three Amigos, Fletch, Vacation, Funny Money and Foul Play,” says Arnheiter. “Hopefully I’ll get to catch Memoirs of an Invisible Man and Funny Farm again, too.”

I like Chevy Chase, but given the Sisyphean nature of such a task, I’d probably prefer to push a boulder up and down a hill. It’s through this extensive research that Arnheiter can put together movie-moment montages and learn things about his guests that people are too lazy to list in Wikipedia.

“Getting ready for shows is as fun as the shows themselves. I read as much as I can about the guest, watch their movies or shows, listen to their sets. It’s like writing a term paper,” explains Arnheiter. “I write a list of questions the day of the show but don’t have any agenda. I’m happy to go wherever the guests want to take us in conversations.”

The concept for Inside Joke came as many good concepts do: through the motivating power of rejection. Arnheiter, a former journalist, credits a haunting encounter he once had with a circular filing cabinet.

“The show started from a profile I wrote of Jon Stewart. The magazine wanted to know ‘how much money he made’ and ‘when he was getting married’. Instead, I asked him, ‘What makes people laugh?’ It was much more interesting to me. So we talked about that for an hour, I wrote the piece and the magazine killed it. Two years later, I re-read a transcript of the interview and thought it might make a fun show, and since I’d started performing improv, I thought I might be able to do it. Lewis Black was my first guest.”

On stage, Carl—who’s like a young James Lipton with the hair of a young Mick Jagger—uses a large platter of Rice Krispie treats to assist with segues or awkward moments during the interviews. Carl tells me he makes his own butter for the scrumptious squares and that you no longer need a churn to make butter. I was naturally astounded by both of these facts.

Though Inside Joke flirted with a television pickup and has garnered many nice blurbs, Arnheiter admits he sometimes encounters difficulty in booking guests if he has to run it by somebody’s “people” first. Nevertheless, Carl consistently has fantastic folks on the show such as Mike Myers, Stephen Colbert, Al Franken and Tom Davis. So, what’s the incentive for these comedic legends to do it?

“I honestly have no idea, I’m really just extremely thankful that each of them has dropped in for a night. Inside Joke is a comedy show in the form of a conversation. I’m coming from the creator point of view, it’s about the craft of comedy rather than “what was it like working with Ted?” So maybe that’s the appeal, or maybe it’s because the show’s at the UCB, or maybe they just like being on stage. It’s certainly not for the money.”

Carl described one of his favorite moments: “Steve Guttenberg did the show, and he was my first straight actor—[not] a writer/actor like Dave Foley or Mike Myers. So, to test his dramatic acting skills I challenged him to a crying contest, first one to tears wins. We both started welling up; the music shifted from Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” to a Coldplay song. Steve slides his chair over, puts his arm around me, pulls me in to his chest and kisses my forehead. And the tears did flow.”

It should be noted that Steve Guttenberg’s career had been stunted for nearly two decades before appearing on Inside Joke. Now he’s on Dancing With The Stars. I’m not saying Inside Joke makes people incredible dancers, but I think the appeal of the show for many of the guests is that it provides them a rare chance to connect in a positive way to their work in front of students and fans of comedy. Comedic actors don’t get the same praise as dramatic actors, and their artistic contributions aren’t evaluated by the same score sheet. Inside Joke is the comedy lover’s answer to that dilemma.

April 3, UCB Theatre, 307 W. 26th St. (betw. 8th & 9th Aves.), 212-366-9176; 8, $5.