Transcript: Finding Your Voice

Comedy Insider
Episode “Finding your voice”

Christian Thom: Hi it’s me, Christian Thom here, at the metropolitan opera house, New York’s Parnassus of high brow entertainment, where they are currently performing Polyotchy. Hi brow, please. I look like I should be hanging on the wall of a pediatrician’s office. Now I have worked here on the largest stage in New York, and as you know I have also worked on the smaller stages in New York in comedy clubs. And they actually have a lot in common, because as my girlfriend so gently reminds me every night size doesn’t matter. Unless you are taking about penis size in which case it does matter. Sorry guys.
Whether big venue or small, a performer’s career is all about finding your voice. Since I happen to know a thing or two about this, tonight comic Veronica Mosey is going to turn the tables on me. And I am going to talk all about bringing out your own voice. Come on you bastards, funny ain't free.
When you are a comic they ask you to do all kinds of stuff for money right. So they asked me to read for Shakespeare in the park this summer right. So they know I am a comic, so I go in there and I am like so I saw Al Pacino’s Richard the third. Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious somehow by the son of your car. A horse a horse, I got a horse in my throat.
This is Christopher Walken as hamlet. Now there will be or not to be what was the question, whether it is nobler in now in the mind, suffers slings and arrows, and already it’s fletching, to take arms against the, see troubles and by opposing and them.
Veronica: So how are things going?
Christian Thom: Great, they are going great.
Veronica: Now listen you are more of a character kind of guy, you morph into characters you change your whole personality. How do you go about doing that?
Christian Thom: What you need to do a character is a point of view.
Veronica: Ok.
Christian Thom: People think I am just going to make a choice of doing physicality or a voice but what you really need. The most important thing and all you need really is a point of view. You know people talk about sense of humor. It is all your take on things. My act is ultimately about language. That’s really what it is about, communication and failure to communicate. I use all these voices and all these different examples to get my, to really pull the rug under people. And that ends up being what it is about.
How about Woody Allen as Shylock, where my Jews at, alright? I am going to say one thing, I don’t think it could be fascicous in any way. But I think there are many time in the reality. You rated me but my moneys in my useless. And you hate to fuck, I feel like I was born with a patient shrug. And the sufferance I think is the badge of all our tribe. Let me ask you a question, if you cut me do I not bleed? Let’s not find out okay, I have a hot date tonight with Lady M. You know she is a dark morose type I always fall for the wrong women.
Veronica: So point of view is everything.
Christian Thom: Yeah, if you are doing impressions or you are doing characters or you are stringing a bunch together, which virtuosity people do. The through line is your point of view and what you are saying. And you move in and out of them. If you have facility but you lack point of view. Then what you get is so boring that it is total hack work. Like all those bad impressionist from the eighties. I am Robin Leech I don’t know why, or all that kind of stuff.
Or imitate Bob Dylan all those kinds of things you want to stay away from. All your saying is that person is more interesting than me. And you don’t want to say that. Dennis Miller used to, would call this out too, He would say what about that hack impressionist who would say. What if Jack Nicholson worked at the Dairy Queen? He wouldn’t work at the Dairy Queen, you would you idiot. You know that’s the kind of thing.
So I started, I started doing, I am going to make the Gunnies laugh right. I am not going to laugh at this shit c’mon. No I um, I started doing impressions in Long Island and you think the hecklers here are bad Long Island is the worst. I would be in the middle of a joke in the middle of a setup and I would hear. Do Alec Baldwin, c’mon boss you can do anybody. Come on Gina’s got a crush on him c’mon fucking do him, do him. You can always spot; I am a guinea from long island so I can tell. You can always spot the Italian kid from long island because you know when you are on the subway and you hear. Please report any suspicious looking packages. He is always the guy going; yeah I got a suspicious looking package over here.
If you are doing a character you have to be 100, like an actor you have to be 100 percent you and a 100 percent the character at the same time. You want people to remember you and not this trick you do.
Veronica: Right okay.
Christian Thom: Like Billy Crystal, great, great impressionist but you always remember Billy. But he was the through line. He always would combine these characters just to remind you that it was him being funny and not the character he is doing. Like John Belushi. Belushi was a great impressionist and Belushi did Brando. And when Belushi did Brando it wasn’t like Oh, wonderful you are a dancing monkey, I really appreciate that you did a trick. It’s always like, the audience would react to it, they would be uneasy. It was political and he was definitely playing the subversive card all the time, and he was completely himself.
So I am going to leave you with this. I got a haircut this week that was humiliating more than this. You know what they call this hairstyle? Running out of options, and when you are losing your hair they find you and they send you tapes and pamphlets. I am not joking tapes, like actual VHS tapes, cassettes. Because they figure if you are losing your hair you can’t possibly afford a DVD player.
And they advertise hair replacement surgery and what they tell me is, we can replace your hairline gradually in stages so people think your hair just grew back on its won, which would be phenomenal if except for that fact that hair doesn’t do that. It doesn’t grow back. They really shouldn’t call it losing your hair; it doesn’t just dissipate into the universe. It just enters a relocation program and ends up on your back.
So if I get a hair transplant I want all my friends and co workers to say, hey Chris, nice plugs they really look good. I don’t want them to say, oh Christian I think your hairline is growing back. The cancer must be in remission that’s fantastic.
Doing all these voices actually helps you discover your own voice.
Veronica: How is that?
Christian Thom: Well when you do voices. When you put them al together like that and then you stand back and tae a god look at them. What they all have in common is you. You were the through line, it is your writing it is your personality and it is all your choice. And they are all examples of some emotion or thought that you have, because ultimately that is what is important. And that is all you really have as a comic. You are up there expressing your point of view.
Veronica: And that is who people are there to see, Christian Thom.
Christian Thom: That’s right.
And you women you lie to me about this. Your like oh no its fine its masculine it’s sexy. No its not, we know females don’t want to mate with bald males. We see it in the animal kingdom. The eagles doing fine, but the bald eagle, he is going extinct. Just like my time with you guys, have a good night, thank you. Christian Thom everybody, Christian Thom.