American Masters

- When you're starting standup, you can't think about what kind of comedian shall I be?

Because you're way too worried about how do I hold the microphone?

How do I deal with hecklers?

How do I write a joke in one and a half minute because that's all the time I get the open mic?

How do I write a joke when I'm nervous because this person's staring at me?

How do I write a joke that's gonna get the attention of a room full of drunk people on 14th Street at Alligator Lounge who are all screaming over you during their happy hour?

It has to be organic because you're using yourself to get through all these experiences of performing for people that don't understand you, performing for people that hate you, performing for people that, you know, voted for Trump, performing for people that, you are using all of your life experiences to survive.

It's a survival skill essentially.

So kind of, I'm the end result of what it took to survive standup.

(upbeat music) - This is "American Masters: Creative Spark," and I'm your host, Joe Skinner.

Our guest is Matteo Lane, a standup comedian who's also a triple threat.

He sings, he paints, and draws, he speaks several languages, and he recently had his Broadway debut in the musical "Chicago."

I talked to Matteo about how all these different worlds inform his creative process and his comedy.

How do you now have a Broadway debut under your belt?

How did that happen?

- It was bound to happen.

I sing opera and I'm gay and I live in New York, so it's some way I was gonna find myself to Broadway.

Yeah, they asked me, I did "Chicago," I was Billy Flynn, but I made him gayer.

And I was a professional singer and so I've always kept my voice going.

So I went on this audition and I knew that when you walk in, it was like it's stunt casting and it was all these producers and the musical director and stuff.

And I was like, I'm just gonna kind of make this like stand up.

So I tried to make them laugh as hard as I could during the interview by kind of going the opposite direction.

So they were like, "Did you memorize your lines?"

I was like, "Under no circumstances."

And they were just laughing and I was singing for them and I was doing impressions and I was like, "I can read this character, but I can't do it with my voice," like why not?

I was like, but really Billy Flynn's gonna be like, "You owe me $5,000."

You know, I was like, let me play a character.

So they kind of let me pick what I call my infomercial voice, which is like, and now 499.

So I kind of use that voice.

But a lot of standups are pretty good actors because we're writing our own material.

We learn what pacing is.

We learn rhythm in how we speak.

We learn how to interact with an audience and we have to act our jokes every night.

We have to make it feel new.

I mean, that's the biggest illusion of comedy is make what I'm saying sound like it's the first time that I have said it.

So there is a huge acting element into standup.

Now it's not Chekhov, it's not Shakespeare, but there is the process of acting.

How do I say this in a way that feels so genuine the audience feels it's just in the moment?

That is the most difficult thing to conceal when you're doing standup because really you are, when you're developing jokes, you have to say them every night for months until that joke is finished and then you can take that joke on tour.

So how do you, that's a big part of standup.

So with the acting, you know, I've done movies and stuff.

I mean, I feel very comfortable acting.

And if I can pick a character, I'm even better.

I really feel more comfortable.

If I went up as myself, I might feel more insecure 'cause it would feel too close to standup.

So the fact that I was able to talk like this and do my whole play like that, I was able to slow myself down.

And there were times when I could sort of go in, be funny, and allow myself to come out as well.

All I care about Is Love (audience cheers) - It was the hardest thing I've ever done.

It's two weeks of rehearsal and the first day I thought it was like gonna be camp.

Like you sit down, they tell you what you're gonna do.

I literally opened the door and they were like, "Okay, let's get into rehearsal for 'Razzle Dazzle' choreography."

And I got so close with the cast.

- Right, 'cause comedy can probably feel a little isolating at times, right?

- It's never isolating because you're there with an audience.

I mean, you need that back and forth with the audience.

And so it doesn't feel, it's certainly more controlling.

I mean, I don't have to lean on anybody.

I lean on just myself.

And that was something I had to learn in Broadway where even in rehearsals, I kept trying to make everything funny 'cause that's my natural disposition.

And finally the director, the stage director, Trip, who I love, he was like, "You don't have to.

You have a cast, Matteo.

Like you can lean on them to hold the humor as well."

So it was cool to be able to build that with somebody else 'cause you have the structure of the script.

You can't really go that far off.

I mean, the last night I did add in a couple of lines.

Like there's this one scene where Roxie's, I'm trying to get her to pay me $5,000 and then I'll be her lawyer.

So she tries to tempt me, she opens up her legs.

She's like, "Maybe there's another arrangement we can make."

And I just knew I could hear it.

I knew it would be funny.

So the last night I'm like, "Well, they can't fire me.

Like it's my last night."

So when she said, "I'm sure there's another arrangement we can make," and she opens her legs.

I just go, "Girl."

And you know, and it got a huge laugh.

So stuff like that was really fun.

And they were fascinated, I think by me too.

They don't get comedians.

You know, they either get singers, actors, TV stars, they get all these people coming in, you know, to sort of change up the show, like stunt casting essentially.

So for them, a comedian, they were fascinated.

They were like, "Oh, like, you're just on stage by yourself?"

I'm like, "Yeah," like, "Just you."

I go, "Yeah, just me."

So I think they're uncomfortable being, like I was interested watching Krista during rehearsals.

She was rehearsing her scene Roxie where she sings.

Roxie Hart And she's on stage alone and she has to interact with the audience.

And she said, "Oh, I just have to get used to being on stage alone for a minute."

And it dawned on me.

I was like, "Oh, that's my whole life."

I was doing the opposite from her, getting used to being on stage with other people.

It just was such a great experience.

I was so thrilled I did it.

- Is that something you dreamt of when you were a kid too?

- My mom sent me, I wrote when I was 14, "My dream is to move to New York and get some kind of day job so I could sing at night and eventually make it to Broadway."

And then she highlighted that and sent it to me.

And I was like, "Wow, that took a while."

But I did everything reverse engineered.

Like I would never have been able to make it to Broadway if I tried to be doing the Broadway circuit.

I just was meant to be a comedian.

So all my drawing, my singing, all that stuff kind of helped my standup.

And then from standup, I was able to do that stuff.

So it was weird backwards, but it worked.

- So interesting you mentioned it, like scene partners in Broadway, but then no scene partners in comedy, right?

So with an audience too, like, how is the audience experience different on Broadway versus your standup?

'Cause I'm imagining a lot of the people kind of filtering into these Broadway shows don't know your comedy, right, when you're coming in.

- Definitely less pressure.

I mean, with standup, you have to be funny.

They're paying for ticket for one hour to see you make me laugh, essentially.

- I never really thought about it that deeply, but that's horrifying.

- Well, when you're used to it, it's fine.

- Horrifying amount of pressure.

- It is, when you first start in standup, it is horrifying.

And when you first start in the standup, you're not performing for real people.

You're in a basement with 60 other comics and you get two minutes to do standup.

You have to do that four times a night every night.

And with Broadway, it was like, well, they're here to enjoy a show.

The script is written.

The characters are in place.

The music is here.

So even if we're not getting the most exciting audience, let's say it's at 2:00 PM on a (bleep) Saturday, you know, they're still here to enjoy the show and the music.

So there's other elements to it that you can bring to that audience.

And the pressure's not on me.

The script's already written.

- [Joe] True.

- So as long as I act it and make it enjoyable for them.

But there were nights where you had really reactive audiences and that does make the cast more excited.

It does change the show.

You know, I think audiences, but there's no audience that we would call a quote, unquote, "bad audience," right, maybe they weren't giving us much energy.

They don't know they're a bad audience.

They go to a show once or twice a year.

For them, they're experiencing a show.

We see different audiences every night, so they have no idea that the 7:0 PM show the night before was phenomenal.

For them, they think they're also, they're just enjoying a show.

- Right.

I love this, the way, you know, empathy always comes up in the arts, I've noticed, and just the way you really have to put yourself in the shoes of the audience to kind of see where they're coming from and appreciate that.

- I remember someone in comedy told me years ago, there are certain kinds of performers.

There's people who take or give, and you want to be someone that gives.

And you pick up little bits from other comedians, 'cause when you're doing comedy, you're only hanging out with comedians, you're only watching comedy, you're only in comedy clubs.

And you watching and listening and talking to other comics is a huge factor into doing standup.

You can't do it alone.

I mean, you're on stage doing it alone, but you can't do comedy alone.

You need the community, you need the other comics, and you need to be listening.

Someone, no matter how talented you are, even someone who's less talented will teach you something you don't know.

So there's just always keeping your ears open, watching people on stage.

How do they handle that?

How do they deal with this?

If you're in a bad mood, how do you handle that on stage?

How do you deal with a heckler?

How do you hold the mic?

How do you talk?

How do you wait?

How do you deal with... There's so much happening at once and just being able to be present and being able to talk to your fellow comics, even though we're usually insulting each other and yelling at each other and trying to make each other laugh, genuinely speaking, you need to be able to listen to them to pick up those types of small cues or small little tidbits to sort of help you along the way.

- Yeah, that makes sense.

The warmth that you get from seeing the crowd and working with the crowd and the comfort you get from that, was that something you had growing up too?

Like what was your first experience with getting that thrill of a crowd getting a reaction?

- Being surrounded by 34 first cousins and performing.

My family is very funny.

I think when you come from, my mother's life was very tragic growing up and I think that they all, instead of alcoholism or instead of, you know, drug, they all used humor to get through it.

And I grew up next to my cousins.

My aunt and my uncle were basically my second parents.

I still talk to all my cousins.

I was talking to my cousin Kelly before I got here and my sister and my Aunt Cindy.

I mean, we are very much like this.

It was one of those grow up, like, I grew up in a way where if I didn't like what my mom was making for dinner, I'd walk to my Aunt Cindy's house.

I'll eat what they're eating there.

It was that kind of environment.

And watching my Aunt Cindy, most of my humor on stage, the rhythm in which I talk or how I tell stories is directly from her.

I mean, she's the funniest person on the face of the planet and it's kind of nice to be able to show audiences the humor, like share the humor that I grew up with, the sensibility that I grew up with.

I like that part of it.

It feels very like homage to my family.

But that was my first experience is you were sitting at a table with 15 people every single night, and if you're gonna speak up, it better be funny.

So that's kind of how I learned.

But I was always doing impressions like Mad TV impressions or Simpsons impressions.

I mean, it got to the point where my mom was like, "Matteo, you get one Simpsons impression a day."

'Cause I would do all the voices, I would do all the... So that was sort of my first experience was just my family.

- And did you bring that sense of performance to school and friends at some point too growing up?

- Maybe in elementary school.

Middle school wasn't easy.

I mean, that's when everyone starts to hit puberty and obviously they all start dating or making out and it was pretty clear that I was, you know, (bleep).

And I wasn't well liked, I would say, but then I just had my cousins to hang out with on the weekend, so I'd be with them.

By the time I got to high school, my cousin Megan was dating this guy named Cesar, and I became friends with him and his brother and our friends Anais and Sophia and these names, Caesar, Anais, Sophia, cultural in Chicago.

Yeah, they loved my sense of humor, and so I was able to continue that development with them.

They gave me a lot of inner strength actually to get through high school.

I would just leave school 'cause we grew up in the burbs and then I would just take the train, go to the city, and hang out with my friends.

- So then, you know, the name of our show is Creative Spark.

So what was kind of like the creative spark that told you like, "Oh, I'm gonna pursue this professionally.

I'm gonna pursue a career in the arts.

I'm gonna go to college for the arts."

- Well, I wasn't good in high school.

I didn't show up to class.

I didn't like it.

I didn't like the, I guess the power dynamic.

I just didn't care.

I just didn't care.

I mean, I'm a smart person, but I just sit in class.

I just felt, it was not an environment I loved.

No one loves school.

I mean, some people do love it.

They're very like, they're in academics.

I just didn't care about it.

I'd rather be in the city with my friends.

But I went to community college.

I did one semester there and I just took an art class.

I never took art in high school.

My mother is a brilliant artist and I really do think it's genetic and I was always a good artist.

I'm not just saying that I'm so great, but I mean, I'm so far removed from it.

I can be like, "Matteo, you were like a prodigy child with your drawings."

I mean, I really was.

I was drawing all the time.

And so I took this art class and Michael was my teacher's name.

He also worked part-time at School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

And after a couple weeks, he came up to me, he's like, "Why are you not in art school?"

And I was like, "Oh I'm not gonna go to school.

I'm just doing this to make my mom happy.

I'm just getting my apartment in the city.

I'll just work at Whole Foods.

Like I'll figure something else out."

I had no idea about standup at that point.

And he was like, "You are very talented and I think that you should consider doing it."

So he helped me put a portfolio together.

It was the first time a teacher cared about me, number one.

He helped me, and encouraged that I was talented.

And my family didn't have money, and so we weren't in, like, clubs or sports or any of that stuff.

You know, it was just me and my cousins.

So it was the first person to ever encourage me, and I did it like 10 really big drawings, and they have this thing called Portfolio Day, IDO Day, Portfolio Day.

It's like "American Idol."

You know, SAIC is the number one art school in the country.

And so I got this portfolio together and you go.

It's like "American Idol."

There's a line of teachers who wait, you wait in this long line, you're behind people.

Everyone's getting rejected.

I mean, the school holds 1,700 kids.

Everyone's got their drawings or portfolios.

And of course, I'm with my mom and my cousins and they all came.

And yeah, I put down my drawings and I remember the... Why am I getting emotional about this?

The woman looked at it and like stopped and she looked through all the drawings and she grabbed another person next to her and they looked at it and they stamped a thing and gave me a thing and they're like, "You're going to the Art Institute of Chicago."

I just couldn't believe it.

I was like, I don't think of myself, I'm not smart.

I almost failed high school.

Like I don't deserve this.

Like I just couldn't believe that that school wanted me and my mom was crying.

And then I went to SAIC and I loved.

It was the first time I loved school.

I was surrounded by weird people, artists.

I love people that think outside the box.

I love people who are different.

I love people that are strange.

I love people, and that's why I love comedy.

These are strange people.

They think differently, and I love being around that.

And I just absorbed everything in that school.

I loved that school.

We had eight-hour painting classes.

I would just sit and paint all day.

I so badly wanted to learn.

And then I would have to come home and I had to work because obviously like my parents don't have money.

So I also had to work and then I would get home from work and then I would still paint.

And then I would wake up the next day and get on the train and go to school.

And I just loved it.

And I had such good teachers.

I still think of what my teacher, Dan Gustin said to me, where I remember he believed that painting was more psychological than technique.

In other words, we had these long painting classes and you're painting this nude model, and depending on how you're painting, he would walk up, he would see this.

I remember this one with this girl, she was like (mumbles) she was like (bleep) Renoir, and he walked up and grabbed a black paintbrush and slapped it over.

And to see how she reacted, he would then know how to teach her because if she got really angry, "I can't believe I'm working."

He said, "You are working towards the masterpiece, not on the masterpiece," which I've kept that motto in my head for everything.

It just takes away the pressure of trying to be perfect and allowing yourself to enjoy the process of making art, whether it's standup, whether it's singing, painting, drawing, animation, whatever.

It is a process and you have to enjoy the process for the end result.

And the masterpiece will come later, but in the meantime, you have to absorb and listen.

I mean, you're there to learn.

And I remember one day we would do critiques every week.

You put all your art on the wall and then they critique, everyone just can say whatever the (bleep) they want about your drawings.

And so even then I learned how to not take criticism poorly.

You know, you understand you have to be sort of objective about your own work and listen to other people and doesn't necessarily mean it's true.

Maybe they're projecting something insecure about their work as well.

So it's fascinating to watch how people and their art, how protective they are, how open they're gonna be.

You see it in standup.

There are some comics who, you know, comics don't usually go up to other comics and say, "This was bad, you should change this."

But they are talking about jokes and joke writing and this and that, and you can see some comics get extremely defensive about themselves.

I'm like, okay, you've allowed the ego to take over the process of art making, which is essentially what's happening.

I mean, I know a lot of people don't think of comics as artists, but it is the same process.

And I always held onto that thinking to myself, "Oh, that's fascinating."

(laughs) - I love that.

I mean, the whole time you're talking about this crit, it really just sounds like it could translate directly to your work in comedy and having to go through the open mic scene and all that and just face.

It sounds similar to crits in undergrad.

- It is.

- And you were on a podcast, I can't remember which one it was, it might have been Neal Brennan's, and you said something that I'll butcher about how artistry is all kind of coming from the same ball.

- It is.

- Could you expand on that idea?

- Well, I think art is... I think it's all about expression and connecting, and whether you're singing or whether you're drawing or whether you're dancing or whether, it all comes from the same place, but it's like the root of, it's like the base of a tree and then it grows out in different places.

But it all comes from the same want, which is to express yourself or to connect to something, whether it's connecting to something deep in yourself or you're connecting with an audience.

I think that 'cause, you know, painting, for example, it's really, you're doing it in solitude.

You're alone a lot when you're painting.

You're with your thoughts.

It's an emotional process.

It's difficult and it heightens your sensitivity when you're doing it, but there's still an expression happening and there's still the result of trying to connect with something.

So to me, singing, singing being the most direct, I think singing is like an absolute connection of trying to make someone feel something.

It should be, singing should be about that.

You should make someone feel something.

What am I saying?

How am I feeling?

How is the singing influencing the words that I'm saying and how is the express... And comedy's the same, is I'm trying to connect with these people.

- And I know we're kind of tiptoeing towards comedy, which is your bread and butter right now, but you've mentioned singing and now you're so multidisciplinary.

I want to get onto that too.

Like you have a Maria Callas tattoo, right?

- There she is, Maria Callas.

- So what's the deal with that?

How did you fall in love with Maria Callas's work and how did you get involved with singing?

- Well, when I was 14, I remember Ashley Stein, Ashley hey, she was in show choir and she goes, "Well, you know, they need boys for show choir and you can perform.

And if they see you perform, then maybe you can get into the comedies."

So I thought, okay, I'll try.

And so I went to Mr.

Heck, my choir teacher, who I love, and I sang, and I was good enough.

And once I started singing in choir, I started to find that I actually had natural talent for singing.

And I remember my teacher was like, "You should sit."

First I studied with this woman.

She was an opera singer and we studied for a while and you learn when you're singing, learning how to sing opera, it's all about breathe, support, project.

You're learning how to use your diaphragm, connect to the diaphragm, the muscles here to support the sound.

You know, you don't want to sing from here up because you don't want to put too much pressure on your vocal chords, so you have to learn how to breathe.

And she had me doing all these different breathing exercises, laying on the floor, breathing through a straw, learning different embellishments, connecting my voice, learning about the passaggio, you know, all the stuff that goes in with how to basically prepare yourself to be a singer, especially a classical singer.

Then I started working with Nick Falco, who was a vocal coach.

And at this point, I loved singing.

My voice is so low though.

I'm a basso profondo, which means like the lowest bass possible.

And so it was so fun to watch my teacher, Nick, try and find these like arias or little operettas or like songs that go low enough that I could work on those voices, that sound in, that part of my voice that's like, "It's so low."

You know, it goes so low.

But then, you know, I started to dip and I loved listening to Barbara Streisand.

That's when I discovered, really, music when I was 15.

So I'm listening to Mariah Carey for the first time, or Barbara Streisand, or Whitney Houston, or Patti LaBelle, or Sarah Vaughan, or Cleo Laine.

Like I love these voices that are... I like how extreme voices can go, like what you can do with the voice.

When I found Mariah, that's an obviously easy go-to or Minnie Riperton.

It's like, oh, wow, she can do, she's a five octave vocal range, five octaves in a semitone, and she can sing so high.

And how does she do that with the voice and working that with your own voice and trying to push yourself as far as you can go.

I don't love, like, if I watch a soprano, I don't love the legato sort of classical.

(Matteo sings in foreign language) I want to hear like, let's push it to its extreme.

So then I found a singer called Cleo Laine, who I loved, and she has the same range as Mariah Carey.

She just passed last year.

She was a British jazz singer.

She had the same range as Mariah Carey.

She was also half black, half white.

There was a lot of similarities with her and Mariah, but Cleo was a jazz singer, so it was interesting to hear a voice with the same capabilities as Mariah sing jazz.

And I listened to everything Cleo Laine ever did.

I mean, and her natural singing voice, her talking voice is sort of down here.

So when she sings, the first song I heard her sing was "On a Clear Day."

On a clear day She had this kind of weird sound, but I like weird sounds.

On a clear day Rise and look around you And you'll see who you are - Then, and I obviously knew about opera.

I was studying opera, but then I was on YouTube one day and somehow Maria Callas, "Una voce poco fa" from 1958, Paris came up.

And I was like, well, I know about Maria Callas.

I just don't know much of that about her.

And then I heard her sing, and there's not even a singer today with her, They called her (speaks in foreign language) which means big, ugly voice.

She's a (speaks in foreign language).

So she could sing anything written for the female voice.

She could do Wagner, she could do Rossini, she could do Donizetti, she can do legato.

She could sing deep chest tones.

She could do high notes all the way up to where the queen of the night lives.

I mean, she could do anything with the voice, and it was so extreme.

Then I started watching about her, and of course I'm gay, so I love that she was a diva and the drama and the affair and the early death and all this stuff, you know.

But her personal life isn't so important to me.

I liked hearing what she would do with the voice, listening to these operas they resurrected for her, listening to the... I mean, when she would sing "La Sonnambula," she sings, I don't know if you know much about music, but she sings this high E flat.

She had a big voice, she has this huge note, and it's a diminuendo.

She shrinks it to this tiny sound and does a chromatic scale two octaves down into her chest voice.

(high energy music) (Maria vocalizes) There's not another singer alive that could do that.

She really was like Michelangelo of opera.

She changed opera, she changed the sound.

You know, she was big and then she lost all this weight.

She became a fashion icon.

She fascinated me.

And listening to her talk too, her interviews, she cared so much about music.

I listened to all of her Julliard Masterclasses where she would take on these sort of young sopranos and she would have them sing the song in front of her.

And it wasn't like, you watch a lot of masterclasses and it feels a bit about the teacher.

And Maria was so technical.

She goes, "This is a triole and the triole is the most difficult thing you do."

So she break this up into notes, and instead of trying to sing a, da da da da da da da da da da da da da and then you'll connect it with the song, and you're singing this too much.

And that sounded, do you know the words of this song?

You have to know the words.

The expression on your face can't, you can't be smiling in "Una voce poco fa" when you're trying to tell him, "I'll show you."

You know, she was so, she was music.

She was the personification of music, and I just, there's never been anyone better.

There is no better singer, performer than Maria Callas.

I mean, it was something different.

She was something, even in all of opera, she was something very different.

So I think she's the greatest artist of all time.

- So like you said, like artistry is all coming from the same ball, so how does this feed into comedy for you?

- Well, you know, to tell you the truth, I've said this before, but it's true.

I didn't think comedy was available to gay men because there were no gay men doing standup.

Not available to me.

I know there were.

I know Mario Cantone was doing standup, but now I know he was.

At the time, I didn't know.

We didn't have that same access.

And there's still not a household gay male standup comic, the way that there's Chris Rock, Ellen, Wanda Sykes, Rosie O'Donnell, Bill Burr, you know, all these names, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy.

- Yeah, I was doing my research for this interview, I was like, yeah, you're right, there really aren't.

And it surprised me to realize that because comedy's such an important part of the gay community.

- Of course.

Oh yeah.

Gays are the funniest.

- Right, I mean, so why isn't there?

- Well, I think that the American public just maybe wasn't able to accept.

I mean, there was so much homophobia, and especially in the '80s, there was so much fear.

There was, I mean, it's homophobia.

I don't know what else to tell you, you know?

And I don't know that it was a welcoming space, not just for gays to perform, but to be accepted by.

I mean, I'm speaking very generally here.

I'm just speaking from my experience saying, when I was younger, I did not see gay people do standup.

Now, the first person I ever heard say anything positive ever in my entire life about gay men, ever, was Kathy Griffin.

I was 16 and she was just really starting to blow up with all those Bravo specials, which I still think are the most brilliant specials today.

I think Kathy Griffin's special "Allegedly" is one of the funniest specials of all time.

- You know, we've all heard so much about gays in the military, and I was determined to see how that really shook down, because if 10% of the population is gay, how can there be, you know, none in the military?

So I was looking around looking for my gays and then.

(audience laughs) 'Cause I thought, you know, I'm gonna see 'em.

- She was a huge influence on me, as was Margaret Cho, and I love Margaret Cho, but that was the first time I'd ever heard someone speak positively about gay people.

And here's where we were as a state of people and where I was as a 16-year-old.

When she spoke positively about gay people, I was actually afraid for her career.

That's how internalized my homophobia was.

That's how afraid of myself I was.

I was like, "Kathy, you're saying something positive about gay people.

You're gonna be ridiculed for, you're gonna lose your career."

That's where I was.

I'm not saying I agree with it.

I'm saying that's where my internalized homophobia laid.

But she was the first person to ever say anything positive about gay people, ever.

- Sure enough, I will never forget it.

I'm at a mess hall in Kandahar, Afghanistan, right?

Sitting there, 'cause if we weren't doing a show, they would just say, "Go to the mess hall and make everybody laugh."

So I would go and sit down and I'd ask them where they're from, and that part was always really fun.

So I'm sitting there talking to these guys, and then off in the corner, there's this guy holding a tray, and this is all I hear.

(Kathy gasps) (audience laughs) (audience cheers) I knew the minute I heard the gay inhale.

(audience laughs) And he literally goes, "Diva, what are you doing here?"

(audience laughs) It was heaven.

- And people say, "How old were you when you first saw a gay comic?"

I said, "I was 23 years old.

I saw Bill Cruz in Chicago hosting an open mic."

Never saw, I had to wait 23 years in my life to see a gay man do standup, 23 years.

- [Joe] Wow.

- Talk about not thinking it was available for you, but when I was getting into Kathy Griffin, I loved her.

And that's when I started to percolate that I would love to do standup, but I mean, not as a reality.

But when I saw Joan, I was doing my storyboarding classes.

So you're up all night, you're doing hundreds of drawings and stuff.

And I remember them saying, "Well, Joan Rivers was like a Kathy Griffin kind of, you know?"

I go, okay, I'll give Joan Rivers a shot.

I never saw her before.

Obviously I knew who she was, but I'd never seen her stand up.

And it was a special called "Before Melissa Pulled the Plug."

I mean, pencils down, I was mesmerized.

I couldn't believe it, and it was literally my life was going like this.

I saw that special, my life went in a different direction.

It was a singular moment in my life where I thought this is what I'm meant to do.

I don't know why, I don't know what it was, but it was, oh, this is what I'm meant to do.

I'm meant to do that.

I'd never seen someone do standup like that.

I'd never seen someone seem so powerful.

It was like her humor was a kind of, it was like a weapon.

- I hate vegans.

I won't eat anything with eyes.

What about your husband?

It is just... (audience laughs) - She was like wielding a sword with it.

I had just never seen anything like it.

I was fascinated by her and that is when I decided I want to be a standup, that moment.

And I remember talking, my friend Anais was dating Marty DeRosa, who I absolutely love Marty DeRosa, great comedian, and he was running some bar show.

And so because he was so in love with Anais, you know, I was 22 at the time, 23 or 22.

22, oh, so I saw it when I was 22.

I said, "Can I do standup?"

And he was like, "Yeah, sure.

I'll give you three minutes on my show."

So of course all my family came and they're all 35 of them sitting there.

And of course I did terribly, but that was the first time I did standup.

And it just took that long for it to connect with me.

And I think sometimes like my peers, you know, they grew up with all these guys who do standup.

They had so much to look up to, so much to see, so much to be inspired by, so much.

Now I can.

Now I can watch standup.

I love watching Richard Pryor.

I love watching all those old specials and connecting with them and seeing what they were doing and what technique they are or how they connect with the audience or just laughing.

I mean, just enjoying it.

But I wasn't at a spot where I was able to yet 'cause I was just so used to having humor being weaponized against me.

So that was strange.

But yeah, that moment was when I was like, oh.

And I met Bill Cruz and he was, I couldn't believe it.

I was like, "You're gay and you're just doing standup and you're just hanging out with the other comics and no one's being mean to you?"

Like I think there was this idea back then, this is 18 years ago, I think there was this idea back then that like if you're gay, you're gonna be made fun of.

And I found it quite the opposite.

I found it a very different experience.

- Wow.

So 2012, you've moved to New York.

- Yes.

- And you first start out at these open mics.

What is your process like?

- Well, you bomb for a while because comics are tough.

They're just kind of sniffing you out.

You just have to stay with it.

Once they see you've stuck around for long enough, then you're fine.

But I immediately, I think the best thing to do when you do open mics is become friends with another comic so you have a buddy that you can do them with because it's a tough, tough, tough life.

Open mics are hard.

They're judgmental, they're seedy in like seedy (bleep) places, but some of the best times I ever had.

That's where I met all my friends.

I mean, when I moved to 2012, I was doing open mics, me and Michelle Wolf, Nikki Glaser.

These are the people that I was doing open mics with.

You know, and it's like they're stars.

I mean, Nikki's a star.

And it's so funny 'cause like, you know, Michelle Buteau.

I can't tell you the amount of bar shows that I did with Michelle Buteau where there's six people in the audience and now we can sit with each other and kind of laugh like, remember we did those like every single night?

But comedy's all about like sticking around.

People just drop off.

The drop off rate's like 90%.

The people you start with, you'll never see again.

They'll just drop off.

It's a very few small group of people that keep going and want to keep going.

It's not an easy life.

So I met Evan Williams when I moved to New York and we've been best friends since.

This tattoo is for him and he has a tattoo for me, a Skeletor, it's a whole thing.

And so he was my guy and we would do four or five mics a night, Monday to Monday.

Work on a joke a week and do that joke every single night and develop that joke.

And for us at the time, The Creek and the Cave is where the comics went to just do whatever we wanted essentially, like explore, do fun shows, be creative, be, you know.

And there was a Friday six o'clock mic, and that was sort of known at that time as the mic, kind of come with your best stuff.

So whatever I had been doing from Sunday to that night or Saturday to that night was the joke I presented sort of thing.

But at first, I got in pretty quick as being recognized because I had this joke.

It only works if you don't know me.

I walk up, I say nothing, and I start singing in my falsetto "O mio babbino caro."

(Matteo sings in foreign language) And everyone's kind of like clapping awkwardly.

And then I say, "That's a true story of how it came out to my dad."

And it would always get a big laugh.

And ever since that joke, it was kind of my, like, life, what is it, like a lifeboat that kind of held me on and people was like, "Oh yeah, you're funny.

We can keep you on, you know."

- Also, it's just an interesting toolkit because not every standup is gonna go up there and be able to sing that proficiently.

- Sure.

Well, yeah, I think it showed a couple things.

It showed good joke writing.

It showed a bait and switch.

It showed I have a sense of humor about myself and it showed that I have talent outside of standup.

So it was kind of like an all encompassing joke and I always was very complimented by that joke by bigger comics.

But at the time, you know, you would write jokes and all you were looking for, you weren't looking for hits, clicks, likes, re-shares, none of that existed.

You just wanted the better comic in the back to laugh at you.

That was literally it.

If I got, you know, Dan Soder to laugh at my joke, I was on a high.

I was on a high.

Couldn't believe it.

That's all I needed.

- It's funny that it sounds so analog 'cause it's not a long time ago.

- It's not, but it is, you know, because so much has changed.

I mean, this is 2020, 2012.

It was just different.

You know, social media and albeit, I was one of that crew that started doing it first, putting all your stuff online.

When Andrew Schulz and Matt Rife started putting all their stuff online, it set a new precedent for how to expose yourself to a larger audience, which can be really beneficial, but it can also hurt you.

Now when I started doing, I remember talking to Andrew Schulz and he was like, you know, Netflix wouldn't give me a special.

I was poor, it was a tough time.

He was like, "Just cut it up and put it up online.

Just do it."

And I did, and my life literally turned around.

And yeah, before then, it was just about, like, trying to appease to the gatekeepers.

You know, oh, will Comedy Central like me?

Will they give me a half hour?

Will I finally get a late night spot?

It felt so, the power struggle, the disconnect of these people that don't see you and don't know what talent is are making decisions and most times right decisions, but a lot of times wrong.

And so now we can put it on.

But by that time I've been doing it for so many years.

I had so much material that I could put online while also developing material in the clubs.

- You know, you've talked about how comedians drop off like flies.

Like it's just like, it has a high turnover.

Is that because it's hard to stay aligned with the way that comedy shifts and changes?

- I think it's a hard life.

I think people, it's fun at first, you're doing open mics, you're doing all these bar shows, and it's a great time and it seemed like there were a million people.

And once you want to move past that, it's a hard life.

It's a lot of rejection.

It's a lot of performing for people that don't want to see you.

It's a lot of (bleep) hotels.

It's a lot of being away from friends.

It's a lot of not dating.

It's rough.

It's not easy, you know?

I never did any... I wasn't going to Fire Island and I wasn't going to all these big gay parties.

I was too busy in Dayton, Ohio at Funny Bone, you know, for six people wearing camouflage bombing.

But you just have to have it in your mind that this will work out one day.

You know, it can't just be what's in front of your face.

And I think from singing and painting, I saw where it was going and eventually got to the spot that I wanted to.

And that kept me going for standup because I would've given up a long time ago had I not had that experience.

But I just knew that it was gonna work out one day.

So that's why I never complain about performing.

I complain about traveling.

It's a (bleep).

I hate the airport.

I'm sick of being on planes.

I'm sick of, you know.

I hate flying.

But I love being on stage 'cause I remember those (bleep) shows.

I remember shows getting canceled.

Yo didn't sell any tickets.

Okay, that means I'm not making money this month.

I had to borrow money from my agent.

I had to make sure, like, just so much stuff because I was broke, just completely and utterly broke.

- So when you finally do break through with some of the specials you've had and the Hulu special last year, what becomes the new anxiety?

Because in my mind, the idea of having to start fresh with new material sounds horrifying.

I'm not a comedian though.

Maybe that's something you're just kind of constantly doing.

- I love it.

You know, it is a fear that a lot of comics have to start fresh.

But I remember Michelle Wolf saying to me once, 'cause after I finished my first hour finally and I was starting to move into my second hour, I said, "Why do I feel so light?"

She goes, "Oh, it's the best.

It's like getting out of jail free card."

That's how she described it.

I love it, I love writing material.

But my mind works in two different places.

When I'm showcasing, which is what I'm doing now, I'm on tour.

So every weekend I have to do my hour.

I'm developing this hour, hopefully to film it.

You know, the tour ends in May of 2027.

It started in September of 2025 and it's six Europe tours.

It was Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and all of the rest of North America.

It's a long tour and I'm in just refinement mode.

And once it's filmed, I film the special and once it's done and once the hour is cooked, so to speak, then my mind switches back.

I push that aside and I go back into joke writing mode and I'm back at the cellar every night.

And I'm always writing premises down and I just bullet point my premises.

I sort of align them in a way where it's like, okay, I can work on these five, that's about 15 minutes because that's how much time you get at the cellar.

And then so I'll just go on stage with these five and these five jokes and develop it.

So I get on stage and I say, "I'm writing new material.

Can I run it by you guys?"

That always sort of eases the tension.

There's less expectation, it's more fun.

And they like the idea of you joke writing.

Give it about a week, go through that, do about 22 shows, and just now I'm only thinking about joke.

And it changes almost your brain chemistry.

Now my mind is open, everything's a joke.

I'm laying in bed, I'm thinking of jokes.

I'm in the shower, I'm thinking of jokes.

You're thinking of how you can change this.

You're back in the rhythm of it.

And once I feel that that 15 is sort of locked down and I found the beats to that, I move it to the side.

I bring in the next five jokes that are about 15 minutes.

I do the same thing and I work and work and work.

So I'll spend like five, six months at the cellar just working through till I have a solid 45, 50 minutes.

Then I go to clubs.

I go to the clubs around the country, rooms that I really like.

Obviously Comedy on State was a great room or Denver Works or Zanies in Chicago, small rooms that fit 120.

Now it's my audience.

Because when you're at the cellar, you're a resistance trainee.

You're working with people that aren't coming to see you.

These are strangers, they don't know who you are, and you want these jokes to work for strangers before you bring it to your own audience.

Then you can add in your own little embellishments and things and I can talk about Nick in a way, things that are more free when people know who you are.

So then I will go to these clubs and I'll do like six shows in a weekend and bring on paper and work out the hour, find my beginning, find my ending, find the through, work that out for a couple of months.

Then once it feels solid, I have 50 solid minutes, I know where I'm starting and I know how I'm ending, you start a theater tour and you start a theater tour and that changes everything.

You know, now there's 4,000 people instead of 120.

So the pacing changes, the timing changes, and then you're even editing on stage.

When I brought this hour to, I started in Australia first.

I was in Sydney.

On stage I'm editing.

I'm going, this joke doesn't work, I don't need that.

You're talking too much here, take that.

So do the next show, I took it all out.

You're literally, now you start the refinement.

You know, it's like sculpture.

You work from general to specific.

So first you have to sort of carve out what you think a body looks like and then the refinement is the details.

I can't start on the detail of the hand because I don't even have the (bleep) body out yet.

So it's the same with painting.

It's like general to specific.

How am I gonna put the white dot on the eye when I don't have the form of the rest of it?

I don't have the color laid out.

I don't have the composition done.

So you have to work general to specific and that's what you start with touring when you start to... Now I'm in a very different position.

It took me 18 years to get here, but this is now my process of putting out an hour that's ready for that kind of a tour, but it's just a lot of work.

So my brain, I'm in showcase mode or I'm in writing mode and I can't do both.

Some people are very good at it.

They do showcase on the weekend and they come do spots at the cellar.

But I've just discovered my brain does not work that way.

I don't function that way.

So I take time off from the cellar, tour, done touring, back to the cellar.

- In comedy, you get to really have this balance of being a writer and being a performer.

And they're just so opposite skill sets in a way that just sounds fun.

- It is fun.

You're kind of wearing different hats, you know what I mean?

But that's the great thing about comedy is there's no rules.

So you can develop whatever system works for you.

You know, Yamaneika or Godfrey, they can get on stage with nothing prepared and they are the funniest people I've ever seen.

They just are.

They just are.

And then from there, they're like, "I'll keep developing this on stage."

Now I do a lot of that where it's like I work on stage to write the jokes.

I record myself, I listen back and edit.

But then there's other people who write all day for five hours a day at a coffee shop and then they bring that to the stage.

There's just different styles of writing.

There's different styles of performing.

That's the great thing about comedy.

Everyone's different.

You know, I always say when someone's like, "Should I be more like this or that?"

I always say, "No one wants to go into museum and see the same painting on every wall.

You know, let's have all different kinds of..." You know, I love that.

I love different types of performers.

- Right.

So if you could kind of walk us through the life cycle of a specific joke, I don't want to spoil necessarily something you're like doing right now, but if you have a joke in mind that you'd be able to kind of take us through the life cycle.

- Yeah, some jokes happen like that.

It just does.

I was walking to the gym one day, my headphones.

I didn't bring my headphones, so I'm like, ugh.

So I'm walking, it was actually good to walk around with your headphones because so much happens, you know.

I walk by these two white women and they walk by me and all I heard was, "I was telling John the other day that I'm not going to be..." And I don't know why I'm like, "Oh yeah, every conversation with white women is just that."

I went on stage that night.

I said it, it hit, I never changed it.

This is what I've noticed too.

Every single conversation with white women, it is all the exact same.

Every single one, it doesn't matter where you are, what country you're in, what time of day, it's always gonna be, "I was telling Joanne the other day that she's not gonna be going..." (audience laughs) You don't have to go to them to finish the conversation.

You can go to any other group of white women.

They will finish the conversation for you.

"She was saying that I'm not doing my job, but I..." (audience laughs) Sometimes it's just as simple as that, a simple life experience.

And then I added in, like, then another group of white women walked by, "He said that I was gonna go down to..." you know.

Something like that.

It wouldn't have happened if I had my headphones on, but it just strikes you as funny.

Then there's other jokes.

I remember when I got my hair transplants and I really wanted to write jokes about this experience.

It's a unique experience.

I think a lot of men worry about their hair, obviously not you.

And, you know, I have a joke that straight men don't deserve nice hair and nice asses.

They just don't, you don't deserve.

All these men walking with these huge asses doing nothing.

And then I ask women, I'm like, "Do you like big butts?"

And, "We love it."

"Why?"

"'Cause we can grab onto it."

I'm like, that's like ordering pasta to smell it.

So I got my hair transplants and I remember writing a bunch of stuff down.

You know, I was home swollen, writing stuff down and just what was sort of happening to me.

And then I got back on stage a couple weeks after and I was trying it and it wasn't working, trying it, wasn't working, trying it, wasn't.

And there's one of the rooms the comedy cellar is called the Fat Black Pussycat Lounge.

It's a smaller room, it holds 80 people.

I love that room because I get my best work done in that room.

And you're more casual on that stage.

The stage also creates a different kind of energy.

You're more casual on one, you're less casual on the other.

And this one I was more casual and I somehow, I'm always recording myself and I somehow stumbled into my hair transplants in a way that was the right opening.

It just was the right opening.

Then I was like, ah, okay.

So what I'll do is I'll go back, I listen.

This didn't work.

Oh, that was funny.

I start writing down.

That worked, this one didn't work, that work.

Okay.

Then now I have sort of like an animation key frames.

So when you do animation, you can't just animate the hand going like this.

You start here, then you start there where the finishing result is.

Then you do the middle, then you do the in betweens, and then you go in between those.

So it's called key framing.

So I kind of do the same thing with my standup.

I key frame.

This is the opener, that's definitely the punchline.

Now I have a bit of security to sort of settle on.

Okay, I know where I'm gonna go with eventually.

And you play every night, and depending on the audience, you play differently.

So I do that every single night and then, okay, this thing came and popped up.

I'm gonna keep that.

This will be funny here.

Oh, you know, I had this old joke and that can go there.

I can move this here.

And it's kind of just about, like, it's like Legos, like you're just sort of like adding onto a structure that already works, but you have to try it a bunch of times and record it and then sort of fill it in.

But you need the stage to fill it in.

And so you just do it for months and months until really you find the rhythm.

Sometimes the rhythm is almost more important than the words.

Sometimes.

The words can be funny, but maybe it's in tandem, but like if you say something but it doesn't have the right presentation, not so funny.

Or you can speak in a funny way, but the words don't match it.

So you want to find that right balance.

- So do you have any specific joke from let's say "The Al Dente Special" that showcases that key framing approach?

- My gym joke.

I remember I've always wanted to talk about when I work out of the gym.

There's so much going on in the mind when you're working out in the gym, especially when you're gay.

And I remember this guy asked me to spot.

Now I can't even remember my joke, but I do remember a guy asking me to spot for him and he was huge.

I mean, he looked like he was eating zebras for breakfast.

I mean, this guy was massive.

You know, and then even on stage, I remember, like, the feeling, sometimes it's like an image in your mind almost.

And I remember like seeing Josie Grossie, Drew Barrymore's Josie Grossie in my head, and I added that on stage and I was like, "I felt like Josie Grossie."

And then he brought me over to the bench.

You just say what happened and then you add the jokes in.

So he did bring me over to the bench and there was so much weight on both sides.

Then the joke I wrote was like, "Sir, you have a better chance of asking the wind to spot you."

Like what do you want me to do?

And then the fear, the insecurity, the internalized homophobia where I'm like, "Oh my god, like, what if he dies 'cause I'm not strong enough to hold it and then it's my fault?"

And then you think, okay, well, how would I react?

Well, who's the most reactive gay person you've ever seen?

Oh, Nathan Lane in "The Birdcage."

You know what I mean?

"Oh!"

you know when he's piercing the toast and stuff.

So then it's like, it's a bit.

I guess now that I'm thinking about it, it's a lot of images and references that kind of come to you that help fill the story, which I think is why it's so important for comics to listen, because when you're listening your whole life, things come to you in a kind of funny, organic way.

Yeah, so it was the same thing.

It was like a key framing where it was like, here's what happened.

And then as it's happening, images are sort of coming up and then you're sort of using those references to help pull the story along.

And the thing I love about straight guys, you were never taught shame.

So your first push, you're at the Olympics, you're like (grunts).

I'm panicking, I'm like, oh, it's just me and my gay weak hands.

It's the only thing that's keeping this man alive.

(audience laughs) Because if this falls, he dies and I'm just running around like Nathan Lane in "The Birdcage" like, "No, no!"

(audience laughs) That was my favorite joke to tell in that hour, for sure.

There's certain jokes where after you said them enough times, you're like, let's get through this, you know.

But my current hour, I haven't had any of those jokes yet.

My current hour is like just very fun.

- [Joe] Really?

- Yeah.

I'm always excited.

Like, there's like an excitement.

Like I can't wait till, if they're a good audience, you're like, "I can't wait for them to hear this joke."

Like you're getting almost more excited than they are in a way.

It's weird.

- Well, there's such a breeziness to your performance style.

It's very inviting.

Like I think you even say it in "The Al Dente Special" that it's like going to brunch, that you know, you're telling jokes at brunch.

- Yeah.

- Did you kind of construct your performance style?

Is it something you're like, "Oh, I don't want to be quite like a Jerry Seinfeld or this or that," or is it just, again, just something that organically developed over time?

- I don't think any of that stuff's premeditated because when you're starting standup, you can't think about what kind of comedian shall I be?

Because you're way too worried about how do I hold the microphone?

How do I deal with hecklers?

How do I write a joke in one and a half minute because that's all the time I get the open mic?

How do I write a joke when I'm nervous because this person's staring at me?

How do I write a joke that's gonna get the attention of a room full of drunk people on 14th Street at Alligator Lounge who are all screaming over you during their happy hour?

Like how do I write a joke that's gonna work now that I'm in Staten Island?

How do I write a joke that's gonna work now that I'm, you know, on a ferry going to Staten Island for a Korean tourist crowd that doesn't speak English?

How am I gonna write a joke that works?

You know, it's like now how do I write a joke?

It has to be organic because you're using yourself to get through all these experiences of performing for people that don't understand you, performing for people that hate you, performing for people that, you know, voted for Trump, performing for people that, you are using all of your life experiences to survive.

It's a survival skill, essentially.

So kind of I'm the end result of what it took to survive standup.

So there is no premeditative.

You know, it's not the same as a singer.

It's like, what kind of artist am I gonna be, you know?

And then pull through that, you know?

It's so much more like, oh god, I made it.

I survived.

I went through the (bleep) trenches.

How did I do this?

Someone helped me.

It's a bit that.

- It reminds me of what you said your teacher said too in college, you know, slashing the painting, you know, you're working in the process of the masterpiece, not towards the masterpiece or whatever.

I butchered it again.

- No, but it's true.

You're working towards it.

I would say being able to hold on to something true to myself because, you know, part of the process of standup is also trying to break down all those barriers so whatever you're thinking in your head gets out, the most authentic version of yourself can get out to the audience.

So it requires all those kind of, you know, trials and tribulations to get through to sort of knock down that wall so you can finally enter as your authentic self.

It's like Wanda Maximoff becoming the Scarlet Witch.

I mean, it feels a bit like that.

You know, and now I'm at a place where I'm happy.

I love performing.

I really love what I'm doing.

I still love this job.

I love being creative, I love my podcast with Nick, I love.

I bring in a lot of my friends to my work, my YouTube, my Instagram, wherever I can expose my friends that I think are super funny, I just do it as much as I possibly can.

And now I feel much more calm on stage.

I mean, I used to be tough on stage because it was two o'clock in the morning.

There's a bunch of drunks and you're a (bleep) on stage.

Believe you me, the things that I've heard, you had to be tough.

I had to prove to them that I was as good as the other guy.

Now I'm not up against so much resistance.

You know, people paid money to see you in a nice theater and I'm much more calm and I'm happier.

You know, I'm a much nicer person.

- That's great, well, I think that's a really nice place to end too.

Appreciate you coming in.

- Yeah, thanks, this was a lot of fun.

- [Joe] That's our show.

A big thank you to Matteo Lane for taking the time to talk.

"American Masters: Creative Spark" is a production of the WNET Group, media made possible by all of you.

This episode is produced by me, Joe Skinner.

Our executive producer is Michael Kantor.

Original music is composed by Hannis Brown.

This episode was mixed and mastered by Josh Broome.

Funding for "American Masters: Creative Spark" is provided by the Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, the Anderson Family Charitable Fund, the Marc Haas Foundation, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, the Charina Endowment Fund, the Ambrose Monell Foundation, the Kate W. Cassidy Foundation, the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, and by PBS viewers like you.

Thanks, see you soon.

(gentle music)