Interview Kyle Kinane

Not long after comedian Kyle Kinane moved to Los Angeles from his native Chicago, a couple of kids mugged him at gunpoint as he walked to his car. After the muggers sped away, Kinane walked to where he parked his car, then realized it had been towed. As if moving to Los Angeles to be a comedian weren’t soul-sapping enough—Kinane sold cake decorations at the time, one in a series of crushing day jobs—he had the double indignity of a mugging/towing. It certainly seemed like a bad omen, but Los Angeles has been good to Kinane for the past seven years. He recently released his excellent debut album, Death Of The Party, for ASpecialThing Records, and has enjoyed high-profile touring gigs with fans Patton Oswalt and Brian Posehn. Just after the release of Death Of The Party, Kinane offered some pointers to The A.V. Club about moving to L.A. to be a comic.

Have some kind of goal, however loose

The A.V. Club: You left Chicago for L.A. about seven years ago. What made you feel like it was a better place for you professionally?

Kyle Kinane: You get to a point where you can’t really do much more. You can’t make a living on comedy in Chicago, or you could go just work the clubs, drive around and try to collect $50 here and there in a snowstorm. I had already had a pretty hearty bout of seasonal depression as it was. [Laughs.] I had to move to Los Angeles to cure that...

I started doing comedy in ’99 and, after four years, a lot of people started moving. I had only been to L.A. when I was 9—I went to Universal Studios. So I had never visited, because I didn’t really know anybody who was out there. I just had some friends who were moving to Los Angeles and New York. And again, I know people love New York, and they adore it and I do too, but when it comes down to it, I don’t want to deal with winter. I’m a real baby about it. People say, “If you complain about it, why don’t you move?” I did. I moved away. I didn’t have a plan. I just had some friends going out there, so [it was] “Let’s just see what happens. By the time I’m 30, if I have absolutely no encouragement from the industry or other people to keep pursuing comedy, then I guess we’ll go into heating and air-conditioning or something.”

Keep a day job, at least at first

KK: I always had a day job. I had a day job up until last August, actually. I definitely didn’t do the “strip my life down and work clubs” [approach]. I liked staying in town in Los Angeles. Nobody likes being broke. Maybe it’s a Midwestern thing, but you’ve gotta have a job, right? You’ve got to support yourself. So I kept a day job for quite a long time. I sold cake decorations. I worked in a music store.

AVC: The music store was like Guitar Center, right? Which is basically the bowels of hell.

KK: It was that except with, instead of a million 12-year-old kids playing some song from a magazine they just learned over and over again—because I was that kid. I was like, “Can I try that guitar? Can I see that guitar?” I’d never buy anything. A 13-year-old kid is not going to buy a $1,200 Les Paul guitar—but it was that with more studio equipment. So it was even more pretentious people. It was musicians who weren’t professional musicians, so they were salesmen. I’d work musicians and salesmen, combining to make the worst human being on the face of the earth. [Laughs.] It was disgusting. I would just go in the back and punch boxes of keyboards. I hated it. I didn’t last long at that one. [Laughs.] I think I lasted from September to March. That was a short stint. I got a job closed-captioning television shows after that.

AVC: Was the music store your worst employment experience?

KK: Yeah, definitely of my employment history, that was the worst. I think there’s a disdain for employees out here. Because you know that everybody who lives here, employers know that their employees aren’t here because they want to work up the ranks at a music store. They’ll just work you as much as they can until you break. I should have known. The guy that was supposed to train me bailed out. He was like, “Listen, there’s a computer to print out labels. Here’s some other stuff. I’m getting the fuck out of here.” [Laughs.] The other guy couldn’t even stay around two days to train me, he hated it so much. That should have been a sign.

AVC: What changed so that you didn’t need the day job anymore?

KK: Some people don’t have a day job, and that makes them hustle more and they get on track, but that’s such a risky thing to do. I guess I didn’t have the courage to do that right away, and I waited until I had enough shows coming up where I couldn’t ask for time-off from work anymore. The place I worked at, Captionmax, happily mentioned by name because they’re wonderful people, they were like, “No, go out. We know why you live in Los Angeles.” They were very accommodating up to that point. I had used all my vacation time and then some to do shows.

It was going well, and I was definitely getting delusional enough and getting enough encouragement to keep pursuing it. I did the HBO Aspen Comedy Festival in ’07, and I did it and it was a big thing, like a big comedy event. I thought to myself, “This could be the high-water mark of my career.” I went, and it was fun and I met a lot of people who were great and some of them are still friends to this day, but nothing happened career-wise. So after that it was like, “Oh, okay. Time to just go nuts. There’s no worrying about anything anymore, now I just get to talk about whatever I want.” There was this big article about Zach Galifianakis and how he felt that way after his late-night show. It was like, “I had my chance, and I took it, and I had fun, but now it’s absolute freedom because nobody is looking at me for anything, so now I can do anything I want on stage.” That’s when it started working out. I had a showcase for The Carson Daly Show where I just completely made fun of The Carson Daly Show. I mean not to be disrespectful, but I just had fun onstage, and I got booked for that. I was like, “Really?” But that’s just the attitude—you can’t give a shit. Patton had some shows, and he had me open for him. That’s been amazing. I think he’s going to ask me to kill somebody. At this point, that’s the favor that it’s going to need to be returned for how much he’s helping out.

Take advantage of L.A.

KK: It’s rough. With some people, it just unlocks for them right away, and that’s fantastic for them. But a lot of people just think, “I just might be the guy.” No, you don’t realize how much harder you have to work, now that you’re out here. Nobody cares who you are. There’s a new crop coming in all the time, looking for the same thing. You have to do something you might hate, like being open and meeting people and shaking hands. You don’t have to do it in a sleazy way, but you have to do it. You have to go out every night. You have to go to these comedy clubs and bars and open mics. It’s tough. You go there and nobody’s there. There are other comics who don’t give a shit who you are. You have a terrible set and it’s hard, but you have to get up and do it. There’s no benefit to staying at home. Nobody’s going to call you to perform. The supply and demand is very disproportionate. [Laughs.]

AVC: Was it tough to adjust?

KK: Coming from Chicago, I had friends doing it. I had fun every time. For a while, comedy was just an excuse to go hang out at a bar with all your buddies. Then I realized I couldn’t just keep it that way. So yeah, it was tough to go. I’m not a very outgoing person, good with meeting new people. So it was strange for me, but you do it. You find your group of friends. You have people whose comedy you like. There’s a lot of great people out here. The Hollywood-scumbag thing exists, but you can sniff it out pretty early on.

AVC: So is it just a matter of grinding it out to establish yourself?

KK: People get locked into little scenes. There might be a clique in the Valley. People that live out there just go to shows that are nearby. There’s people that just hang out at one club. You moved here, why wouldn’t you try and do everything? Why would you want to hinder your career in any way by not taking full advantage of what’s out there? I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s very depressing sometimes, lonely and shitty pretty often.

AVC: At least it makes for good material?

KK: Oh yeah, [there’s] not enough material going on about loneliness in L.A. [Laughs.] You can always hear [in voice of young, hopeful comedian], “So I just moved here…” and you’re like, “I know what this joke is going to be.”

AVC: What is the joke?

KK: “Oh boy, the traffic.” “I just moved here, and I’m not pretty enough to be here. I’m not handsome enough to be here.” Now there’s this whole—“alternative comedy” is such a dumb term. It’s still comedy; making people laugh is just comedy—it’s the ironic shock comedy, where the punchline is always rape or AIDS. “I can’t believe I said that.” I can totally believe you said that. They got lazy in their joke writing. “It’s so double-bad, it’s like being raped by Hitler!” I love a good off-color bit here and there, but then again, too, I’m criticizing people that have been doing comedy for two years, and I know I was doing the exact same thing at two years. I can’t get upset with people learning.

AVC: Being in L.A., do you feel like you have to be in any sort of comic niche?

KK: You can definitely tell with certain camps of comedy where the influence came from. There’s definitely the Andy Kaufman school of people constantly trying to mess with the perception of the audience. When it’s done right, it’s fun but with some people, the influence is still very thick. There’s the one-liner guys, and if they’re funny one-liners, I love them. Then there’s guys like Pete Holmes, who’s one of the funniest people working, and he’s clean and there’s nothing “alternative” about his act, but he can walk into the UCB or some club and kill. So he’s proof that there doesn’t have to be a niche, that you can still walk into the UCB, or somewhere with the hipper, more alternative audience, and if it’s good, it’s good. That’s really what it comes down to.

Swingers is pretty accurate

AVC: Which elements of pop culture have gotten the L.A. experience right?

KK: I like the showbiz parts of Swingers, all the little angles and all the stuff about being up for the role of Goofy and then you’re humiliated because that’s what you’re going out for, and then you’re even more humiliated because you didn’t get it. It’s weird because somebody would get a job on something, and in Chicago you’d be like, “Yeah but it’s such a garbage show,” but out here, there’s no such thing. It’s just work—you’re just happy somebody’s doing something. It doesn’t matter what it is. It doesn’t matter the outcome. There’s just work—it doesn’t matter that you’re poisoning the airwaves with it. I’ve had people say, “I’m not proud of this, but this is what I’m doing, and I can afford dinner for the next few months.” It’s like, “Well then hey, that’s wonderful.” But with Swingers, like trying to hit on a girl with, “Oh I actually run an open mic,” and they’re like, “Oh no, you actually came in and put an application in at the Starbucks I work at.” It’s like, “Oh, yep I know that one.”