Beyond Belief: Lewis Black and the Comedy of Outrage
by Brighid Mooney

Who says anger can't be funny? Again and again, stand-up comics like Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks and Sam Kinison have proven that sometimes there's nothing more hilarious than abject exasperation directed at the entire world and that cynicism and sarcasm can take the edge off of a society that would otherwise be all too depressing. Whether it's acerbic denunciation of mankind's stupidity, acidic satirization of the things we hold most dear, or barely contained rants about modern day politics, stand-up comedy's most angry and agitated have long been making the world more tolerable, one topic at a time.  There's certainly plenty to be angry about in today's world, and comedian Lewis Black, his delivery rife with angry indignation, trademark index fingers punctuating his wrath, has made a career out of taking everything from the merely annoying to the downright infuriating and turning it into the comic rants that help keep us sane in a world gone completely mad.

Most broadly visible in his weekly segment "Back in Black" on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Lewis Black has earned a reputation for his merciless verbal assaults on all the most idiotic and perplexing that modern life has to offer. His comedy has often found politics as a focal point and at one time in his career Black had nearly fifty minutes of material on former vice president Dan Quayle.  Our country's current crop of leaders hasn't let him down either. "I'm always amazed when I hear people say, 'that George Bush, he's a great leader,'" muses Black in his HBO special Black on Broadway, "And I wonder, where can one find a drug that would make one so delusional?" But despite his proclivity for going off about politics, Black doesn't consider himself foremost a political comedian. "I think I'm kind of a social commentator," he says. "I really deal with social issues." In fact, many of Black's most popular and best known jokes are his rants about everyday things like Starbucks, the weather and bottled water. But sometimes social issues and politics collide and that's where Black has found a definite niche, his television-brought recognition translating into a successful stand-up career as well, as he rants about politics, society and anything else that manages to raise his blood pressure. "America is the land where you're free to dream whatever you want," he says in one “Back in Black” segment, “as long as that dream doesn't make mid-westerners feel icky.”

The Daily Show is one of Comedy Central's top-rated shows and is especially popular among young audiences. A recent study revealed that not only do a large percentage of Americans get their news primarily from comedy shows such as The Daily Show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno or The Late Show with David Letterman, but also that viewers of the Daily Show were among the country's most informed, with a higher campaign knowledge than those watching the national news or reading newspapers. It's an interesting correlation to find in a day where mainstream media and its reporters are losing more credibility with each passing day. "I was in San Jose for four days and there was never any mention of the election," Black says. "That's staggering." But Black isn't that surprised that many viewers trust the Daily Show more than the major networks.  "Actually we consider more information," he says.  "I mean, we're not the real news. We're trying to research the news, basically trying to cram the news into it." The viewers themselves obviously find the show more informative than more traditional news sources, and Black's take on those who turn to comedy shows for information is simple. "I just think it's people, you know, who maybe have a tendency to look for more."

Before joining the Daily Show, Lewis Black was both a stand-up comic and a playwright, a graduate of the prestigious Yale School of Drama. He grew up just outside Washington, D.C., and from a young age had an interest in both politics and playwriting.  Despite being somewhat politically active through high school, Black says he never had any interest in a career in politics, adding "I just got sick of it." Instead, he studied acting and playwriting and to this day has penned over forty full-length plays, many of them produced in small theaters in New York, such as the West Bank Cafe's Downstairs Theatre where Black was playwright in residence for eight years, or in regional or summer theaters across the country. Black says his comedy and his playwriting are "totally different," though they are "probably somewhat the same concern."  Among the many subjects he approaches in his writing is music, and Black once even wrote a play called "The Czar of Rock and Roll" with a friend, "about a guy named Dean Reed, who was the Elvis Presley of Russia.  He really was not a good musician, so we wrote a musical about that and it was, you know, a mock-documentary."

Like many comedians, Black was influenced by most of the greats, such as Lenny Bruce, George Carlin and Richard Pryor. "Bruce probably had a profound impact," he says. "And Carlin and Pryor and many of those guys from the 60s and 70s."  But Bill Hicks, one of the comedians that Black is often compared to, is someone that never really had a chance to influence him. The two were contemporaries and are often grouped together in the category of "intellectual comedy," those comedians whose work makes you laugh by making you think."  I never really saw Hicks," says Black. "We were at the same time.  I never really heard his stuff until really much later on."  But as well as both being in that league of smart comics who form the upper echelon of stand-up comedy, Black also shares with Hicks a propensity for comedy full of apoplectic rage, and a discernable exasperation for the stupidity and mostly illogical nature inherent of society and humanity. Black's performances are fury-fueled repertoires of vituperation, comic conniptions full of both frustration and disbelief.  But for as animatedly infuriated as he can become during his act, Black is known off stage for his quiet, laid-back demeanor. Given the number of things in the world that are frustratingly ludicrous, illogical or overwhelmingly idiotic, Black says he never has to do much to get into a ranting mood. "Something will happen during the day to irritate me."

And today, it certainly doesn't take much more than watching the news to find something vexing. Since most of his segments on The Daily Show are centered on politics, it makes sense that Black has plenty of strong opinions on the subject. In his stand-up, Black is an equal opportunity offender, never limiting himself to only one side. Instead, the focus of his rage is on the senseless being passed off as sensible, on the illogical being presented as logical, on the incompetent being taken for competent. Everyone is fair game, both liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat, and even the largely confused, befuddled masses, trying desperately to make sense of it all. "We were chickens with our heads cut off," he says of the recent election, unimpressed with the candidates on both sides and disappointed in our lack of a strong leader. "You see sparks of it," he says, but "I'm not seeing real leadership." The country seems full of try-hard politicians these days, but very few "who would just rise to the occasion and be exceptional leaders," which is what he would most like to see. For all his outrage and vein-popping dissatisfaction, Black's views on what this country needs are surprisingly simple, seemingly not too much to ask. "We have to take care of each other in terms of health," he says. "Take care of each other in terms of food, clothing, shelter, education."

In addition to keeping a watchful eye on the state of the nation, Lewis Black is also involved with a number of charities, including one called the 52nd Street Project, where he once worked as a mentor, teaching inner city kids how to write and perform their own plays. He also helps to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and takes part in the Williamstown Theatre Festival every summer, working as an emcee this year and often acting in their cabarets. "The best memory I have from that is working with these kids," he says.

And for someone with a regular gig on a popular television show, as well as comedy specials on both Comedy Central and HBO, one of the great mysteries of Black's career is that he hasn't yet been blessed with his own TV show in the tradition of stand-up driven sitcoms, such as Seinfeld or The Drew Carey Show.  It’s not that he hasn't tried.  Over the years, Black has recorded a number of pilots, including a recent one for ABC called Educating Lewis, which hasn't been picked up to air, though it does still exist somewhere. "It's on my TV," he says. "It sits right next to my VCR." But the world of the TV sitcom is an enigmatic thing, and the show, which takes place in a high school where Black is the principal, may end up just another casuality in the battle for network airtime. "All I know is I think it's a really nice piece of work," says Black, "and I'm usually hypercritical."

But even if Black's attempts at scoring a sitcom have so far been fruitless, his other endeavors have more than made up for it. Black is currently enjoying great success as a stand-up, selling out shows all over the country. A new DVD, of his recent HBO special Black on Broadway, has just been released along with his fourth comedy album, Lewis Black: Luther Burbank Performing Arts Center Blues (Comedy Central Records).  The CD, which was recorded this summer at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa, California, features new stand-up material from Black on a number of topics, from gay marriage to Ronald Reagan, the Superbowl halftime show to the Iraqi war, and was recorded all in one take.  It was "kind of a one shot deal," says Black. "We just did it just in one shot, we didn't record like three or four times."

As well as being a stand-up comedian, social commentator, actor and playwright, Lewis Black is now also an author.  In April, his first book, titled Nothing's Sacred, will be published by the new Simon and Schuster imprint Simon Spotlight Entertainment. The book, unlike those written by most other comedians, is not just a print version of his stand-up act. Instead, it combines the loose format of a memoir with a comedian's view of the world, though Black says that memoir isn't quite the right word for it. "It really just goes back and tries to figure out why I think the way I think," he says. "It's really about how I came about my view." For a stand-up comic who claims to be more of a disciplined thinker than writer, and who writes most of his material from the stage, getting his ideas down on paper was something of a challenge for Black. "It took a while for me to get that muscle working," he admits. Black's comedy comes as much out of how he says things as it does what he's saying, and translating that invigorated rage and comedic fury to print involved "a lot of capital letters, a lot of exclamation points."

Known as "America's foremost commentator on everything," Lewis Black is one of the busiest men in the business, taping segments for The Daily Show in between criss-crossing the country on a seemingly endless string of stand-up tours. And as long as the world is blessed with incompetent leaders, people doing idiotic things and Starbucks, across the street from other Starbucks, Lewis Black will be there with his caustic critiques and hilarious befuddlement to help us find the humor in all that is otherwise ridiculous, absurd or unjust.

Lewis Black’s next live performance is at McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert, California on February 3.  For a complete list of upcoming live shows and other information about Lewis Black, check out his official website at http://www.lewisblack.net, and don't forget to tune in to see Lewis every week on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central.

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