Pat Thornton
If you live in Toronto and were on Twitter around this time last year, chances are you saw a whole bunch of tweets about former Hercules star Kevin Sorbo eating trash. Emerging from the jokey frenzy of Pat Thornton’s annual 24-hour stand-up marathons—held to raise money for AIDS research in Africa as part of the Stephen Lewis Foundation’s “Dare to Remember” campaign—the jokes were about Sorbo fighting snakes for trash, eating paper, and generally being a down-on-his-luck, derelict piece of shit. Astonishingly, the trending of Kevin Sorbo’s name lured the actor (who apparently isn’t homeless and doesn’t wear a beard of bees) to Comedy Bar earlier this year to perform a weekend of shows with Comedy Bar regulars.
Now the pressure’s on as Thornton prepares for another grueling, day-long stand-up set. On stage from 5 p.m. tonight until, well, 5 p.m. Tuesday night, Thornton and his team of writers will be accepting donation for the Stephen Lewis Foundation to crank out a day’s worth of riffs. Who will be this year’s garbage eater? Will “Shitty The Riddler” and other punch-line favourites from last year return? We talked to Thornton in the run-up to the event to find out how he prepares, how he makes it through 24 hours of comedy, and who he and his writers are planning to skewer this time around.
The A.V. Club: How did the idea of 24-hour stand-up come about?
Pat Thornton: So this is my third year doing it. The first year, I got approached by somebody who works for the Stephen Lewis Foundation, who was looking for people to do dares for their Dare to Remember. He was like, “Would you do a dare?” and I was like, “Uh… yeah.” I wanted to do something crazy, so I said I’d do stand-up for 24 hours. Then I realized people would have probably been impressed if I said six hours.
AVC: It seems like you’ve brought more people in every year to augment the writing team. Have you further expanded it this year?
PT: Yeah, absolutely. It’s always been an open event, for anybody who has time and wants to help. This year, what we’ve done in particular is get other people to create their own donation pages, then it feeds into one team page. Because a lot of people were spending the whole 24 hours with me writing jokes, so I figured it makes more sense to get people to sponsor them to write me jokes. We have like 23 people signed up for Team Comedy Bar. I think, all told, there’ll be like 50 or 60 comics throughout the day coming in to write jokes.
AVC: What’s your fundraising target for this year?
PT: Officially, all I want to do is beat last year’s. Last year we made $11,000. If we could make even $12,000 this year, I’d be really happy. If we could do more, I’d be even happier.
AVC: What goes into preparing for this? Is there anything in particular your metabolism requires to sustain 24 hours of even being awake, let alone 24 hours of being funny?
PT: I don’t know. There are probably good ways to prepare for this. I don’t know what they are. What I keep trying to do is set my internal clock so I can take a nice nap right before I have to start, but it never works out. I always have too much adrenaline on the day-of. So I’m up all day and then I’m up… all day.
AVC: How do you manage that adrenaline once you start going?
PT: Everybody wants to know how I stay awake the whole time, but it’s not a problem at all, because I’m standing on stage talking to people. If I took a 15-minute break, I’d pass out and be asleep forever. But you just get enough natural adrenaline standing up and doing something. You’d need to lie down before you can sleep.
AVC: In the past, the events have kind of followed this pattern of funniness, then delirium, where you don’t know if it’s funny, then it kind of gets funny again out of that. Is this exciting as a comedian, being stuck in this manic, sleep-deprived pit and having to claw your way out with jokes?
PT: [Laughs.] Yeah, it’s amazing! It’s amazing. The best part about the whole thing is that there’s no way to control everything, really. I just give myself over to the giant comedy brain, like whoever’s there, and it just kind of takes on a life of its own. And very quickly, the jokes that start being presented are jokes that would only work as jokes in this context.
AVC: The big one last year, that seems to only work in that context, were all the jokes about Kevin Sorbo eating trash. And then that ended up trending on Twitter, which panned out into Kevin Sorbo coming to the Comedy Bar. Is there any pressure after that to try and have this big joke that maybe even lures someone up here?
PT: Oh, for sure. I know a lot of people who are like, “Who would be hilarious to get this year?” If someone introduced a funny idea about somebody, it has to be funny enough that people can pick it up and start writing about it. I know some people want Shaq to come here, but I don’t think we’ll get Shaq.
AVC: When you met Sorbo, how did he take to the whole thing? Did he have a sense of humour about it?
PT: Oh yeah, he was great. Nobody asked him for clearance about what the weekend was going to be called. Then it ended up being called the Kevin Sorbo Garbage Weekend. He called up [Comedy Bar owner] Gary [Rideout, Jr.] and was like, “Hey I saw your poster.” And Gary goes, “Oh yeah.” Then Sorbo just says, “Can I have 200 of them to sign at Fan Expo?” That was pretty fucking awesome.
AVC: How do you come down after 24 hours of stand-up?
PT: The first year, I came back to my apartment. I turned on my computer, and I didn’t realize the live-feed was still connected. So then a lot of people watched me order Swiss Chalet from my house. So that’s usually what happens: I come home, I order Swiss Chalet, and then I pass out.
