The art of anti-comedy

While Madison comedian Sean Moore seems to draw plenty from both the mock-smugness of Paul Rudd and the classic deadpan of Leslie Nielsen, it’s his disarming delivery that helped him take the grand prize in the Comedy Club On State’s first annual Stand-Up Comedy Competition back in February. Whether Moore’s disparaging the “rich guy magazines” that his boss leaves in the bathroom at work (he’s a chemist by day) or questioning why all of Taco Bell’s new menu items taste exactly like the old ones (The A.V. Club still hasn’t tried the “triple nacho burrito mouthfuck” he speaks of), his conversational touch produces plenty of laughs and keeps him from falling into many of the trappings of conventional stand-up. When Moore isn’t rattling off his own jokes, he can be seen performing sketch comedy on The Dan Potacke Show with fellow comic Alan Talaga every other Monday at The Frequency, or joining forces with Madison improv troupe the Monkey Business Institute at Glass Nickel East on Friday nights. In anticipation of Moore’s upcoming gig at the Argus Bar Grille on June 24, we caught up with the mustachioed comic to discuss being a champion, comedian machismo, and why he can’t seem to find his Prince Of Persia joke.

On getting started in comedy:

"I had always wanted to try stand-up, but was constantly making excuses not to. I was living with friends out in Denver, and didn’t have a job, so I figured it would be a good time to give the local open mic a shot. I nailed it at first, but had plenty of bombings later on to make up for it. Looking back recently—I watched some videos of my first year—I was actually really bad. Moving to Madison was a tough transition, too. It was hard to start over with a whole new crew of people. Admittedly, we comedians can be guilty of getting catty and clique-y, which can seriously alienate a new guy. Sometimes I catch myself taking part in this practice, stop myself, and wonder why I’m acting like a middle-school student. [Laughs.]"

On preparing for and winning the Comedy Club On State’s first annual Stand-Up Comedy Competition:

"The competition rejuvenated the entire scene and actually brought me back into doing stand-up. For a while, I wasn’t writing new jokes or getting excited about local comedy. Preparation-wise, I’ve been writing jokes for about four years and have most of them saved on my computer. Unfortunately, I have a really shitty way of organizing data, so my jokes are labeled with just one word or phrase like 'Helen Keller' or 'pooping.' There was a lot of pressure to bring fresh material each week and I frequently found myself scouring through all of my files, trying to find some old joke I wrote about the Prince Of Persia video game or something."

On using hecklers to his advantage:

"When it comes to hecklers, I see a lot of comedian machismo-type stuff: 'Dude, did you see me rip apart that heckler? I totally punched him in the face with my words!' It doesn’t always have to be that way because hecklers can be quite useful. I do this joke where I ask the crowd, 'How many redneck NFL fans can actually read Roman numerals?' Of course, I’ll barely get the 'NFL' out before some dude screams, 'Yeah, Packers!' I can always count on at least one fanatical football fan to be in the audience, just waiting to scream something about the Packers. This allows me to dive right into my joke about how Packers fans treat Brett Favre like an ex-boyfriend."

On playing against the crowd:

"Many times my jokes are actually making fun of the act of telling jokes—like anti-comedy. I’ll ask, 'Hey, you guys hear about this oil spill?' And when the audience reacts, I’ll deadpan, 'Huh, well I spilled this oil in my driveway and didn’t tell anyone. It’s weird that you know about it.' Or, I’ll ask if there are any Harry Potter fans in the audience. Just when the crowd cheers, expecting some crazy Harry Potter joke, I’ll just shout, 'You fucking losers!' I’d love to do an entire set of just that, but I think the novelty would probably wear thin."

On why Moore prefers stand-up over his improv work with Monkey Business or performing sketch comedy on The Dan Potacke Show:

"I love stand-up because I get to be the center of attention. [Laughs.] There’s nothing more exhilarating than having an entire room of people laughing and getting me. Of course, there’s always the other end: bombing, doing the same canned jokes over and over again, pandering to the audience, and being this little monkey that dances onstage. That can get annoying, so I guess I have a love-hate relationship with it."